“Who in an angle, where the ants inhabit,
(The emblems of his labours) will sit curl’d,” etc.
[Ed.]
[30] But it was not “these ‘glories’,” but the Faction of Chronomastix, and the “Fame of his own,” who, according to the real Fame, were destined to “deify a Pompion.” The suggestion which follows that the “glories” were “a selection from among the dramatis personæ who were about to figure in the First Folio” is an hypothesis which will not, I fear, meet with general acceptance even among “Baconians.” [Ed.]
[31] It might be well here to quote the original words. Chronomastix, addressing Fame, delivers himself as follows:
“It is for you I revel so in rhyme,
Dear Mistress, not for hope I have, the Time
Will grow the better by it; to serve Fame
Is all my end, and get myself a name.”
To which Fame answers:
“Away, I know thee not, wretched impostor,
Creature of glory, mountebank of wit,
Self-loving braggart, Fame doth sound no trumpet
To such vain empty fools: ’tis Infamy
Thou serv’st, and follow’st, scorn of all the Muses!
Go revel with thine ignorant admirers,
Let worthy names alone.”
Whereupon Chronomastix makes an appeal to his “ignorant admirers”:
“O you, the Curious,
Breathe you to see a passage so injurious,
Done with despight, and carried with such tumour
’Gainst me, that am so much the friend of rumour?
I would say, Fame?
Who with the lash of my immortal pen
Have scourg’d all sorts of vices and of men.
Am I rewarded thus? have I, I say,
From Envy’s self-torn praise and bays away,
With which my glorious front, and word at large,
Triumphs in print at my admirers’ charge?
Whereat “Ears,” one of “The Curious,” exclaims:
Rare! how he talks in verse, just as he writes!
[Ed.]