Canker or Grub. 
425 
Armado. The destructive propensities of these small 
insects are referred to by Valeria :— 
“ You would be another Penelope : yet, they say, all the yarn she 
spun in Ulysses, absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths. 5 ’ ( Coriolanus , 
i. 3, 92.) 
Ben Jonson writes:— 
“ But greatness hath his cankers. Worms and moths 
Breed out of too much humour, in the things 
Which after they consume, transferring quite 
The substance of their makers into themselves.” 
( Sejanus , iii. 3.) 
By medieval writers the words caterpillar, worm, and 
canker were used synonymously, as denoting the grub 
stage of any insect. Viola relates in a few pathetic words 
the history of many a lovelorn damsel:— 
“ She never told her love 
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, 
Feed on her damask cheek.” 
( Twelfth Night , ii. 4, 114.) 
Proteus makes use of a similar comparison :— 
“ Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud 
The eating canker dwells, so eating love 
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.” 
thus adroitly turns this image against the 
“ And writers say, as the most forward bud 
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, 
Even so by love the young and tender wit 
Is turn’d to folly, blasting in the bud, 
Losing his verdure even in the prime, 
And all the fair effects of future hopes.” 
( Two Gentlemen of Verona , i. 1.) 
Chester writes:— 
“ Of wormes are divers sorts and divers names. 
Some feeding on hard timber, some on trees. 
Valentine 
speaker 
