senectus."

"At last thy snow-white age in suburb schools,
Shall toil in teaching boys their grammar rules."

Like an ass, he wears out his time for provender, and can show a stump rod,
_togam tritam et laceram_ saith [2006]Haedus, an old torn gown, an ensign
of his infelicity, he hath his labour for his pain, a modicum to keep him
till he be decrepit, and that is all. _Grammaticus non est felix_, &c. If
he be a trencher chaplain in a gentleman's house, as it befell [2007]
Euphormio, after some seven years' service, he may perchance have a living
to the halves, or some small rectory with the mother of the maids at
length, a poor kinswoman, or a cracked chambermaid, to have and to hold
during the time of his life. But if he offend his good patron, or displease
his lady mistress in the mean time,

[2008] "Ducetur Planta velut ictus ab Hercule Cacus,
Poneturque foras, si quid tentaverit unquam
Hiscere"------

as Hercules did by Cacus, he shall be dragged forth of doors by the heels,
away with him. If he bend his forces to some other studies, with an intent
to be _a secretis_ to some nobleman, or in such a place with an ambassador,
he shall find that these persons rise like apprentices one under another,
and in so many tradesmen's shops, when the master is dead, the foreman of
the shop commonly steps in his place. Now for poets, rhetoricians,
historians, philosophers, [2009]mathematicians, sophisters, &c.; they are
like grasshoppers, sing they must in summer, and pine in the winter, for
there is no preferment for them. Even so they were at first, if you will
believe that pleasant tale of Socrates, which he told fair Phaedrus under a
plane-tree, at the banks of the river Iseus; about noon when it was hot,
and the grasshoppers made a noise, he took that sweet occasion to tell him
a tale, how grasshoppers were once scholars, musicians, poets, &c., before
the Muses were born, and lived without meat and drink, and for that cause
were turned by Jupiter into grasshoppers. And may be turned again, _In
Tythoni Cicadas, aut Lyciorum ranas_, for any reward I see they are like to
have: or else in the mean time, I would they could live, as they did,
without any viaticum, like so many [2010]manucodiatae, those Indian birds
of paradise, as we commonly call them, those I mean that live with the air
and dew of heaven, and need no other food; for being as they are, their
[2011]"rhetoric only serves them to