248 
and 
of Cariazture 
Grotcfque 
waiting to be caught. One fool is taken in the trap, while another is 
already fecured and pinioned, and others are rufhing into the fnare. A 
number of people of the world, high in their dignities and iiations, are 
looking on at this remarkable fcene. 
The evil influence of the female fex was at this time proverbial, and, 
in fact, it was an age of extreme licentioufnefs. Another poet-laureat of 
the time, Henricus Bebelius, born in the latter half of the fifteenth 
century, and rather well known in the literature of his time, publilhed, 
in I515, a fatirical poem in Latin, under the title of "Triumphus Veneris," 
which was a fort of expofition of the generally licentious charariter of the 
age in which he lived. It is diilributecl into {ix books, in the third of 
which the poet attacks the whole ecclefiaitical flatc, not [paring the pope 
himfelf, and we are thereby perfectly well initiated into the weakneffes 
of the clergy. Bebelius had been preceded by another writer on this part 
of the fubjeet, and we might fay by many, for the incontinence of monks 
and