I'm having great fun this week with the scribblings of Thomas Nashe; I am however puzzled by some of the following screed:

I utterly despair of them, or not so much despair of them as
count them a pair of poor idiots, being not only but also two
brothers, two blockheads, two blunderkins, having their
brains stuffed with nought but balderdash, but that they are
the very botts & the glanders to the gentle readers, the dead
palsy and apoplexy of the press, the serpigo and the sciatica
of the 7 liberal sciences, the surfeiting vomit of Lady Vanity,
the sworn bawds to one another's vainglory, &, to conclude,
the most contemptible Monsieur Ajaxes of excremental
conceits and stinking kennel-raked-up invention that this or
any age ever afforded.

I assume that Monsieur Ajax is a literary allusion of some sort? but surely not Toby Tyler, which came about 400 yrs. *after Nashe.

meanwhile, I shall see what I can find of the very botts & the glanders.. and I thought serpigo was a bad cop gone good.

edit: botts, glanders, palsy, apoplexy, serpigo, sciatica - all afflictions you wouldn't wish on your worst.. horse.

Last edited by tsuwm; 12/16/2005 2:35 AM.