"When the sun sets, shadows, that show'd at noon
But small, appear most long and terrible;
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads.
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds,
Owls, ravens, crickets seem the watch of death,
Nature's worst vermin scare her god-like sons.
Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,
Grow babling ghosts, and call us to our graves:
Each molehill thought swells to a huge Olympus,
While we fantastick dreamers heave and puff,
And sweat with an imagination's weight;
As if, like Atlas, with these mortal shoulders
We could sustain the burden of the world."
[357] i.e., Easy, easily. Eath is an old Saxon word, signifying ease. Hence uneath [or unneth] for uneasily, [or, rather, scarcely.] So, in the "Second Part of Henry VI.," act ii. sc. 4—
"Uneath may she endure the flinty streets."—S.
Again, in Spenser's "Fairy Queen," B. iv. c. 12. § 1—
"For much more eath to tell the starres on hy,
Albe they endlesse seeme in estimation."
[358] Probably booters.—S. P.
S. P. [Dr Pegge] would read booters; but he ought to have known that the Scythians were contemptuously styled porters, because they carried their huts and families about with them in wains; omnia sua secum portantes. So Lucan, lib. ii. v. 641—
"Pigra palus Scythici patiens Mæotica plaustri."
Again, Horace, "Carm.," lib. iii. Od. 24—
"Campestres melius Scythoe,
Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos."