Huck wrote:
If you wanted to make a good minced meat
take the Arezzans and Orvietans et Bessians
and tailors, mule-drivers, and assumed liars,
and make each one well beaten;
It's clear, that this is mockery, but against whom? Tailors, mule-drivers and assumed liars are anonymous and naturally only mentioned to design the mockery.
There were many references to other poets in his work, many to Dante, so they may be literary references, in Hell canto XV, among the circle of Sodomites, Dante meets a troupe who:
They each one eyed us, as at eventide
One eyes another under a new moon;
And toward us sharpend their sight, as keen
As an old tailor at his needle's eye.
Among whom is Brunetto Latini, with whom he talks. The sodomite reference would fit in with sodomy double-entendres. Mule-driver could refer to Franco Sacchetti's Mule-driver, who recites Dante to his mule, interspersed with the vulgar vernacular of his own and the occassional ey-ors - which would fit with the theme of mediocre poets who are but pale imitators of Dante/Petrach/Boccaccio, such being analogous to the mule driver, and to those who appreciate them to mules.
privy-emptier = ?
https://books.google.de/books?id=2XtWDh ... er&f=false
Excrement + gold is mentioned the 5th part of poem
...
The fifth part:
A parliament of fleas,
how much grace heaven has given them,
that in dragging shit is made the gold.
And we meet shit and gold in one line: gold + excrement, possibly connected to anal sex.
***************
Gold-finder was a slang term for a dung farmer, rake farmer, privie emptier:
1383. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales. 'The Parsons Tale' [Riverside Ed. (1880)], ii., 241. Thise fool wommen, that mowe be likned to a commune gong, whereas men purgen hire ordure.
gong-farmer (or gong-man),
subs, (old).—An emptier of cesspools ; a gold-finder (q.v.).
1598. Florio, A Worlde of Wördes. Curadestri, a iakes, goong, or doong farmer.
•Gold-finder, subs, (old).-—i. An ' emptier of privies. Also Tomturd-man ; Gong-man ; and Night-man. Fr., un fouillemerde; un fifi. Also passer la jambe à Jules = to upset Mrs. Jones, i.e., to empty the privy tub.
1611. Cotgrave, Dictionarie, Gadouard, a gould-finder, Jakes-farmer.
1635. Feltham, Resolves. As our goldfInders .... in the night and darkness thrive on stench and excrements.
1653. Middleton, Sp. Gipsy, ii., 2, p. 398 (Mermaid series). And if his acres, ... cannot fill this pocket, give 'em to gold finders.
1659. Torriano, Vocabolario, s.v.
1704. Gentleman Instructed, p. 445 (1732). We will commit the further discussion of the poet to a committee cf goldfinders, or a club of rake-kennels.
Perhaps in keeping with the scatiological, minchiatar is here simply bullshit? (and for sourness bullshit between them) ? One version has not minchiatar but "agresto minghiattar" , cioè spisciagliare dal verbo
latino mingo; which would give a meaning along the lines of
and for verjuice piss in them