EPIGRAM

TO LORD

Agrippa, on the uncertainty and Vanity of the
sciences and arts, and also the declaimer of the
excellence of the word of God, or rather

• Artemasticem scourge of the arts, to be received with a favorable interpretation
• without injury or envy
  or invective, far
  absent, and at the same time
  a stranger, a disciple of Busconus a critical reference to a specific adversary

• Artemasticem is a new word from Busconus, composed from Latin and Greek, nowhere found among other poets or grammarians: for it would be of a most miserable talent to always use discovered terms, and not to invent new words oneself.

• "Without injury" is a rhetorical coloring, by which he denies doing what he most of all does, calling me a trifler original: "Ardelionem", and furthermore accusing me of perjury and tergiversation regarding the word of God.

• Disciple of truth: If Busconus were a disciple of truth, he would not have been punished with such a notable penalty in the judgment at Brussels, condemned for the committed crime of forgery.

Clear dogmas are approved originally: "probantur," meant as "exprobrantur" (reproached) under the crafty Agrippa.

• Approved, for reproached, by a figure which is called poetic ignorance.