That straight he flags and tumbles in a ditch. 50 His sprightly hot high-soaring poesy Is like that dreamèd of imagery, Whose head was gold, breast silver, brassy thigh, Lead legs, clay feet;[506] O fair-framed poesy! Here's one, to get an undeserved repute Of deep deep learning, all in fustian suit Of ill passed, far-fetch'd words attiereth His period, that sense forsweareth. Another makes old Homer Spenser cite, Like my _Pygmalion_, where, with rare[507] delight, 60 He cries, "O Ovid!" This caus'd my idle quill, The world's dull ears with such lewd stuff to fill, And gull with bumbast lines the witless sense Of these odd nags, whose pates' circumference Is fill'd with froth. O these same buzzing gnats That sting my sleeping brows, these Nilus' rats,[508] Half dung, that have their life from putrid slime-- These that do praise my loose lascivious rhyme! For these same shades, I seriously protest, I slubbered up that chaos indigest, 70 To fish for fools that stalk in goodly shape; "What, though in velvet cloak, yet still an ape." Capro reads, swears, scrubs, and swears again, "Now by my soul an admirable strain;" Strokes up his hair, cries, "Passing passing good;" O, there's a line incends his lustful blood! Then Muto comes, with his new glass-set face, And with his late-kiss'd hand my book doth grace, Straight reads, then smiles, and lisps, "'Tis pretty good," And praiseth that he never understood. 80 But room for Flaccus, he'll my Satires read; O how I trembled straight with inward dread! But when I saw him read my fustian, And heard him swear I was a Pythian, Yet straight recall'd, and swears I did but quote Out of Xylinum[509] to that margent's note, I could scarce hold and keep myself conceal'd, But had well-nigh myself and all reveal'd. Then straight comes Friscus, that neat gentleman, That new-discarded academian, 90 Who, for he could cry _Ergo_ in the school, Straightway with his huge judgment dares control Whatsoe'er he views: "That's pretty, pretty[510] good; That epithet hath not that sprightly blood Which should enforce it speak; that's Persius' vein; That's Juvenal's; here's Horace' crabbèd strain;" Though he ne'er read one line in Juvenal, Or, in his life, his lazy eye let fall On dusky Persius. O, indignity To my respectless free-bred poesy! 100 Hence, ye big-buzzing little-bodied gnats, Ye tattling echoes, huge-tongued pigmy brats: I mean to sleep: wake not my slumb'ring brain With your malignant, weak, detracting vein. What though the sacred issue of my soul I here expose to idiots' control; What though I bare to lewd opinion, Lay ope to vulgar profanation, My very genius,--yet know, my poesy