A notion of the whole may be formed from the
following translation of four of the _terze rime_--
"_Nothing_ is brother to primaeval matter,
'Bout which philosophers their brains may batter
To find it out, but still their hopes they flatter.
"Its virtue is most wondrously display'd,
For in the Bible, we all know, 'tis said,
God out of _nothing_ the creation made.
"Yet _nothing_ has nor head, tail, back, nor shoulder,
And tho' than the great _Dixit_ it is older,
Its strength is such, that all things first shall moulder.
"The rank of _nothing_ we from this may see:
The mighty Roman once declared that he
Caesar or _nothing_ was resolv'd to be."
[But after all, had not Nash more probably in his recollection Sir
Edward Dyer's "Praise of Nothing," a prose tract printed in 1585?]
[119] [See Hazlitt's "Handbook," v. Fleming.]
[120] [Alluding to the "Grobianus et Grobiana" of Dedekindus.]
[121] Ovid's lines are these--
"Discite, qui sapitis, non quae nos scimus inertes,
Sed trepidas acies, et fera castra sequi."
--"Amorum," lib. iii. el. 8.
[122] The author of "The World's Folly," 1615, uses _squitter-wit_ in
the same sense that Nash employs _squitter-book_: "The _primum mobile_,
which gives motion to these over-turning wheels of wickedness, are
those mercenary _squitter-wits_, miscalled poets.
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