'Where I leave you to consider, Gentlemen, how far unmeete women are to have such reproches laid upon them, as sundrye large lipt fellows have done: who when they take a peece of work in hand, and either for want of matter, or lack of wit, are half gravelled, then they must fill up the page with slaundering of women, who scarsly know what a woman is: but if I were able either by wit or arte to be their defender, or had the law in my hand to dispose as I list, which would be as unseemely, as an Asse to treade the measures: yet, if it were so, I would correct _Mantuans Egloge_, intituled _Alphus_: or els if the Authour were alive, I would not doubt to persuade him in recompence of his errour, to frame a new one,' &c. Greene, _Mamillia_ (ed. Grosart), 106-7. Greene is probably the '_Homer_ of Women' referred to in the first extract. l. 19. _Tenarus._ In the _Anatomy of the World_ 'Tenarif' is thus spelt in the editions of 1633 to 1669, and Grosart declared that the reference here is to that island. It is of course to 'Taenarus' in Laconia. There was in that headland a sulphurous cavern believed to be a passage to Hades. Through it Orpheus descended to recover Eurydice. Ovid, _Met._ x. 13; Paus. iii. 14, 25. l. 28. _self-accusing oaths_: 'oaths' is the reading of the MSS., 'loaths' of the editions. The word 'loaths' in the sense of 'dislike, hatred, ill-will' is found as late as 1728 (O.E.D.). 'If your Horse ... grow to a loath of his meat.' Topsell (1607). A self-accusing loath may mean a hatred, e.g. of good, which condemns yourself. In the context, however, 'cavils, untroths,' I am inclined to think that 'oaths' is right. Among the malevolent evils with which her breast swarms are oaths accusing others of crimes, which accuse herself, either because she is willing to implicate herself so long as she secures her enemy's ruin, or because the information is of a kind that could be got only by complicity in crime. PAGE =105=. ELEGIE XIV. PAGE =106=, l. 6. _I touch no fat sowes grease._ Probably 'I say nothing libellous as to the way in which this or that rich man has acquired his wealth'. I cannot find the proverb accurately explained, or given in quite this form, in any collection. l. 10. _will redd or pale._ The reading of _1669_ and the two MSS. is doubtless correct, 'looke' being an editorial insertion as the use of 'red' as a verb was growing rare. If 'looke' had belonged to the original text 'counsellor' would probably have had the second syllable elided. Compare: Roses out-red their [i.e. women's] lips and cheeks, Lillies their whiteness stain. Brome, _The Resolve_.