abhor and explode them. [727]Fracastorius, a famous poet, freely grants all poets to be mad; so doth [728]Scaliger; and who doth not? Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit (He’s mad or making verses), Hor. Sat. vii. l. 2. Insanire lubet, i. versus componere. Virg. 3 Ecl.; so Servius interprets it, all poets are mad, a company of bitter satirists, detractors, or else parasitical applauders:  and what is poetry itself, but as Austin holds, Vinum erroris ab ebriis doctoribus propinatum?  You may give that censure of them in general, which Sir Thomas More once did of Germanus Brixius’ poems in particular.

------“vehuntur
In rate stultitiae sylvam habitant Furiae."[729]

Budaeus, in an epistle of his to Lupsetus, will have civil law to be the tower of wisdom; another honours physic, the quintessence of nature; a third tumbles them both down, and sets up the flag of his own peculiar science.  Your supercilious critics, grammatical triflers, note-makers, curious antiquaries, find out all the ruins of wit, ineptiarum delicias, amongst the rubbish of old writers; [730]_Pro stultis habent nisi aliquid sufficiant invenire, quod in aliorum scriptis vertant vitio_, all fools with them that cannot find fault; they correct others, and are hot in a cold cause, puzzle themselves to find out how many streets in Rome, houses, gates, towers, Homer’s country, Aeneas’s mother, Niobe’s daughters, an Sappho publica fuerit? ovum [731]prius extiterit an gallina! &c. et alia quae dediscenda essent scire, si scires, as [732]Seneca holds.  What clothes the senators did wear in Rome, what shoes, how they sat, where they went to the close-stool, how many dishes in a mess, what sauce, which for the present for an historian to relate, [733]according to Lodovic.  Vives, is very ridiculous, is to them most precious elaborate stuff, they admired for it, and as proud, as triumphant in the meantime for this discovery, as if they had won a city, or conquered a province; as rich as if they had found a mine of gold ore. Quosvis auctores absurdis commentis suis percacant et stercorant, one saith, they bewray and daub a company of books and good authors, with their absurd comments, correctorum sterquilinia [734]Scaliger calls them, and show their wit in censuring others, a company of foolish note-makers, humble-bees, dors, or beetles, inter stercora ut plurimum versantur, they rake over all those rubbish and dunghills, and prefer a manuscript many times before the Gospel itself, [735]_thesaurum criticum_, before any treasure, and with their deleaturs, alii legunt sic, meus codex sic habet, with their postremae editiones, annotations, castigations, &c. make books dear, themselves ridiculous, and do nobody good, yet if any man dare oppose or contradict, they are mad, up in arms on a sudden, how many sheets are written in defence, how bitter invectives, what apologies? [736]_Epiphilledes hae sunt ut merae, nugae_.