obis
Sic vos non vobis_

And there it remained a great while because no man wist what it meant,
till _Virgill_ opened the whole fraude by this deuise. He wrote aboue the
same halfe metres this whole verse _Exameter_.
_Hos ego versiculos feci tulit alter honores._

And then finished the foure half metres, thus.
_Sic vos non vobis Fertis aratra boues
Sic vos non vobis Vellera fertis oues
Sic vos non vobis Mellificatis apes
Sic vos non vobis Indificatis aues._

And put to his name _Publius Virgilius Maro_. This matter came by and by
to Th'emperours eare, who taking great pleasure in the deuise called for
_Virgill_, and gaue him not onely a present reward, with a good allowance
of dyet a bonche in court as we vse to call it: but also held him for euer
after vpon larger triall he had made of his learning and vertue in so
great reputation, as he vouchsafed to giue him the name of a frend
(_amicus_) which among the Romanes was so great an honour and speciall
fauour, as all such persons were allowed to the Emperours table, or to the
Senatours who had receiued them (as frendes) and they were the only men
that came ordinarily to their boords, & solaced with them in their
chambers, and gardins when none other could be admitted.

_CHAP. XXVIII._

_Of the poeme called Epitaph used for memoriall of the dead._

An Epitaph is but a kind of Epigram only applied to the report of the dead
persons estate and degree, or of his other good or bad partes, to his
commendation or reproch: and is an inscription such as a man may
commodiously write or engraue vpon a tombe in few verses, pithie, quicke
and sententious for the passer by to peruse, and iudge vpon without any
long tariaunce: So as if it exceede the measure of an Epigram, it is then
(if the verse be correspondent) rather an Elegie then an Epitaph which
errour many of these bastard rimers commit, because they be not learned,
nor (as we are wont to say) their catftes masters, for they make long and
tedious discourses, and write them in large tables to be hanged vp in
Churches and chauncells ouer the tombes of great men and others, which be
so exceeding long as one must haue halfe a dayes leasure to reade one of
them, & must be called away before he come halfe to the end, or else be
locked into the Church by the Sexten as I my selfe was once serued reading
an Epitaph in a certain cathedrall Church of England. They be ignorant of
poesie