That either it must quickly end
Or turn about again, and mend:[1]
In which he found the event, no less
Than other times, beside his guess.
There is a tall long-sided dame,—[2]45
But wond'rous light—yeleped Fame,
That like a thin chameleon boards
Herself on air,[3] and eats her words;[4]
Upon her shoulders wings she wears
Like hanging sleeves, lin'd thro' with ears,50
And eyes, and tongues, as poets list.
Made good by deep mythologist.
With these she thro' the welkin flies,[5]
And sometimes carries truth, oft lies:
With letters hung, like eastern pigeons.[6]55
And Mercuries of furthest regions;
- ↑ It was a maxim among the Stoic philosophers that things which were violent could not be lasting: Si longa est, levis est; si gravis est, brevis est.
- ↑ Our author has evidently followed Virgil (AEneid. iv.) in some parts of this description of Fame.
- ↑ The vulgar notion is, that chameleons live on air, but they are known to feed on flies, caterpillars, and other insects. See Brown's Vulgar Errors, book iii. ch. 21 .
- ↑ The beauty of this simile, says Mr Warburton, "consists in the double meaning: the first alluding to Fame's living on report; the second implying that a report, if narrowly inquired into and traced up to the original author, is made to contradict itself"
- ↑ Welkin is derived from the Anglo-Saxon wole, wolen, clouds, and is generally used by the English poets to denote the sky or visible region of the air.
- ↑ The pigeons of Aleppo served as couriers. They were taken from their young ones, and conveyed to distant places in open cages, and when it became necessary to send home any intelligence, one was let loose, with a billet tied to her foot, when she flew back with great swiftness. They would return in less than ten hours from Alexandretto to Aleppo, and in two days from Bagdad. This method was practised at Mutina, when besieged by Antony. Sec Pliny's Natural History, lib. x. 37.
thing denoted by the noun annexed to it is vile, bad, savage, or unfortunate in its kind: thus dog-rose, dog-latin, dog-trick, dog-cheap, and many others. Wright, in his Glossary, explains dog-bolt as a term of reproach, and gives quotation from Ben Jonson and Shadwell to that effect. The happiest illustration of the text is afforded in Beaumont and Fletcher's Spanish Curate:
"For, to say truth, the lawyer is a dog-bolt,
An arrant worm."
