That foemall Mastix, to limme with his penne
Chambers, following the editions from 1639 onwards, drops the comma after 'Mastix', which suggests that Julia is the 'foemall Mastix', not Mantuan. By Mantuan he understands Virgil, and supposes there is a reference to the 'flammis armataque Chimaera' of Aen. vi. 289. The Mantuan of the text is the 'Old Mantuan' of Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 92. Donne calls Mantuan the scourge of women because of his fourth eclogue De natura mulierum. Norton quotes from it:
Femineum servile genus, crudele, superbum.
The O.E.D. quotes from S. Holland, Zara (1656): 'It would have puzzell'd that Female Mastix Mantuan to have limn'd this she Chymera'—obviously borrowed from this poem. The dictionary gives examples of 'mastix' in other compounds.
The reference to Mantuan as a woman-hater is a favourite one with the prose-pamphleteers: 'To this might be added Mantuans invective against them, but that pittie makes me refraine from renewing his worne out complaints, the wounds whereof the former forepast feminine sexe hath felt. I, but here the Homer of Women hath forestalled an objection, saying that Mantuans house holding of our Ladie, he was enforced by melancholic into such vehemencie of speech', &c. Nash, The Anatomy of Absurdity (ed. McKerrow, i. 12).
'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.