PAGE =105=, ll. 13-14. _Liv'd Mantuan now againe,
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.