Flies: " The Hosts of Achor" 217 



" Diseased, decayed, to take up half a crown 

 Must mortgage her long scarf and matua gown, 

 Poor creature who, unheard of, as a fly 

 In some dark hole must lie a whole half-year 

 That, for one month, she tawdry may appear." Rochester. 



A masquerading maggot, a tawdry gaudy grub. And, say 

 the poets, "blood will out" The fine fly reveals in its 

 progeny its own descent. It is bound to betray itself, and 

 lay eggs which will turn to maggots. All this is very curious, 

 and somewhat puzzling. 



However, to return to metaphors. Flies are " courtiers," 

 "sycophants," "beggars," "triflers," "rhymesters," "critics" 

 everything in fact that poets specially censure, and that 

 are elsewhere described as "vermin" or "reptiles": 



" You like the gaudy fly your wings display, 

 And sip the sweets, and bask in your great patron's day." Dryden, 



" Beggars like flys that oft return." Broome. 



" Whether he measure earth, compute the sea, 

 Weigh sunbeams, carve a fly, or spit a flea, 

 The solemn trifler with his boasted skill 

 Toils much, and is a solemn trifler still." Cowper. 



"Witlings, brisk fools, cursed with half-sense 

 That stimulates their impotence, 

 Who buzz in rhyme, and, like blind flies, 

 Err with wings for want of eyes." Green, 



The fly-critic deserves more than one quotation, so here 

 are three, from Butler, Young, and Byron : 



" Critics are like a kind of flies that breed 

 In wild fig-trees ; and, when they're grown up, feed 

 Upon the raw fruit of the nobler kind, 

 And, by their nibbling on the outward rind, 

 Open the pores ; and make way for the sun 

 To ripen it sooner than he would have done. 



Slight peevish insects round a genius rise 

 As a bright day awakes the world of flies ; 

 With hearty malice, but with feeble wing. 

 (To show they live) they flutter and they sting ; 



