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Here is a profane and drunken minstrel, called Allan-a-Dale 'nebulo quidam' who has menaced me with corporal punishment nay, with death itself, an I pay not down four hundred crowns of ransom, to the boot of all the treasure he hath already robbed me of gold chains and gymmal rings to an unknown value; besides what is broken and spoiled among their rude hands, such as my pouncer-box and silver crisping-tongs."
He is nebulo nebulonum, an impudent, fraudulent, mendacious quack, that has cost me a hundred pounds by his roguery, and my neighbour Sir Arthur, God knows how much. And besides, Bailie, I do not hold him to be a sound friend to Government." "Indeed?" said Bailie Littlejohn; "if I thought that, it would alter the question considerably."
In answer to a question from Hegius, Agricola goes on to distinguish the words mimus, histrio, persona, scurra, nebulo; with quotations from Juvenal and Gellius. 'Leccator', he says, 'is a German word; like several others that we have turned into bad Latin, reisa, burgimagister, scultetus, or like the French passagium for a military expedition, guerra for war, treuga for truce.
Eginhard's indignation at the "rapine" of this "nequissimus nebulo" is exquisitely droll. It would appear that the adage about the receiver being as bad as the thief was not current in the ninth century. Let us now briefly sum up the history of the acquisition of the relics. Eginhard makes a contract with Deusdona for the delivery of certain relics which the latter says he possesses.
"Tu senex lathro," says he, "quomodo audes me mendacem prædicare?" "Et, tu, sacrilege nebulo," says the Pope, "quomodo audacitatem habeas, me Dei in terris vicarium, lathronem conwiciari?" "Interroga circumcirca," says his Riv'rence. "Abi ex ædibus meis," says the Pope. "Abi tu in malam crucem," says his Riv'rence. "Excimnicabo te," says the Pope. "Diabolus curat," says his Riv'rence.
They described Fontenelle, adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps, "a youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;" but when they describe the elder Crébillon, puer ingeniosus sed insignis nebulo, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of unparalleled atrocity.
The next year I quibbled again in three or four lines against him, then he printed twenty-two sheets against me. I was persuaded by Dr. Gauden, late Bishop of Exeter, to let him alone; but in my next year's Anglicus, in August observations, I wrote, Hâc in tumbâ jacet Presbyter & Nebulo, in which very month he died.
He is nebulo nebulonum, an impudent, fraudulent, mendacious quack, that has cost me a hundred pounds by his roguery, and my neighbour Sir Arthur, God knows how much. And besides, Bailie, I do not hold him to be a sound friend to Government." "Indeed?" said Bailie Littlejohn; "if I thought that, it would alter the question considerably."
For a parallel to these transactions one must read a police report of the doings of a "long firm" or of a set of horse-coupers; yet Eginhard seems to be aware of nothing, but that he has been rather badly used by his friend Hildoin, and the "nequissimus nebulo" Hunus.
Gataker died in July 1654, and Lilly, having written in his almanack for that year, for the month of August, the following barbarous latin line Hoc in tumbo, jacet presbyter et nebulo! Here in this tomb lies a presbyter and a knave, had the impudence to assert, that he had predicted Gataker's death!
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