Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/286

as to bear a resemblance to the heads of snarling mastiffs. In this was borne, as led in triumph, a tall image of deformity, whose head was bald, and wound about with nettles for a chaplet. The tongue lay lolling out, to show a contempt of mankind, and was forked at the end, to confess its love to detraction. The hands were manacled behind, and the fingers armed with long nails, to cut deep through the margins of authors. Its vesture was of the paper of Nilus, bearing inscribed upon its breast in capital letters, ZOILUS THE HOMERO-MASTIX; and all the rest of it was scrawled with various monsters of that river, as emblems of those productions with which that critic used to fill his papers. When they had reached the temple, where the king and his court were already placed to behold them from its galleries, the image of Zoilus was hung upon a gibbet, there erected for it, with such loud acclamations as witnessed the people's satisfaction. This being finished, the Hours knocked at the gates, which flew open, and discovered the statue of Homer magnificently seated, with the pictures of those cities which contended for his birth, ranged in order around him. Then they who represented the deities in the procession, laying aside their ensigns of divinity, ushered in the men of learning with a sound of voices, and their various instruments, to assist at a sacrifice in honour of Apollo and his favourite Homer.