THE LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER.
He'er Eslept, I dream'd of him alone,
And dreams foretell, as learned men have shown,
All this I said, but dreams, sirs. I had none;
Ifollow'd but my crafty crony's lore,
Who bid me tell this lie-and twenty more.
Thus day by day, and month by month we past;
pleas'd the Lord to take my sponse at last.
tore my gown, I soil'd my locks with dust,
and heat my breasts, as wretched widows-must.
efore my face my handkerchief I spread,
hide the floods of tears I did not sbed.
he good man's coffin to the church was borne ;
round the neighbours, and my clerk too, mourn,
of as he march'd, good gods! he show'd a pair
flegs and feet so clean, so strong, so fair!
twenty winters' age he seem'd to be;
(to say truth) was twenty more than he;
it vigorous still, a lively buxom dame,
d had a wondrous gift to quench a flame.
conjuror once, that deeply could divine,
jord me Mars in Taurus was my sign.
The stats order'd, such my life has been,
ala! that ever love was sin!
ir Venus gave me fire and sprightly grace,
Mars assurance and a dauntless face.
wirtue of this powerful constellation
illow'd always my own inclination.
And close the sermon, as beseem'd his wit,
With some grave sentence out of Holy Writ.
Oft would he say-Who builds his house on sands,
Pricks his blind horse across the fallow lands,
Or lets his wife abroad with pilgrims roam,
Deserves a fool's cap and long ears at home.
All this avail'd not; for whoe'er he be
That tells my faults, I hate him mortally;
And so do numbers more, I'd boldly say,
Men, women, clergy, regular, and lay.
My spouse (who was, you know, to learning
bred)
A certain treatise oft at evening read,
Where divers authors (whom the devil confound
For all their lies) were in one volume bound ;
Valerius whole, and of St. Jerome part;
Chrysippus and Tertullian, Ovid's Art.
Solomon's Proverbs, Eloisa's Loves,
And many more than sure the Church approves.
More legends were there here of wicked wives,
Than good in all the Bible and Saints' Lives.
Who drew the Lion vànquish'd?' 'Twas a man ;
But could we women write as scholars can,
Men should stand mark'd with far more wiek-
edness
Than all the sons of Adam could redress.
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Those play the scholars who can't play the men,"
And use that weapon which they have-their peu,
When old, and past the relish of delight,
Then down they sit, and in their dotage write
That not one woman keeps her marriage-vow,
face,(This by the way, but to my purpose now.)
et to my tale. A month scarce pass'd away,
dance and song we kept the nuptial day.
possess'd I gave to his command,
oods and chattels, money, house, and land:
aft repented, and repent it still:
prov'd a rebel to my sovereigu will
Ee, by Heav'n ! he struck me on the
but the fact, and judge yourselves the
born as any lioness was I,
new full well to raise my voice on high;
a rambler as I was before,
uld be so in spite of all he swore.
ast this right sagely would advise,
examples set before my eyes;
the Roman matrons led their life,
chus' mother, and Duilius? wife :
It chane'd my husband on a winter's night,'
Read in this book aloud with strange delight,
How the first female (as the scriptures show)
Brought her own spouse, and all his race to woe;
How Samson fell; and he whom Dejanire
Wrapp'd in th' envenom'd shirt, and set on fire;
How curs'd Eriphyle her ford betray'd,'
And the dire ambush Clytemnestra laid;
But what most pleas'd him was the Cretan dame
And busband-bull, uir, monstrous! fye for shame!
Rich luscious wines, that youthful blood improve, | How quaint an appetite in woman reigns !"
And warm the swelling veins to feats of love;
For 'tis as sure as cold engenders hail,
A liquorish mouth must have a lecherous tail;
Wine lets no lover unrewarded go,
As all true gamesters by experience know.
But oh, good gods! whene'er a thought I cast
On all the joys of youth and beauty past,
To find in pleasures I have had my part,
Still warms me to the bottom of my heart,
This wicked world was once my dear delight;
Now all my conquests, all my charms, good night!
The flour consum'd, the best that now I can,
Is ev'n to make my market of the brau.
My fourth dear spouse was not exceeding true; He kept, 'twas thought, a private miss or two; But all that score I paid.-As how you'll sav. Not with my body in a filthy way;
But so I dress'd, and danc'd, and drank, and din'd,
And view'd a friend with eyes so very kind,
As stung his heart, and made his marrow fry
With burning rage and frantic jealousy,
His soul, I hope, enjoys eternal glory,
For here on earth I was his purgatory.
Oft, when his shoe the most severely wrung,
He put on careless airs, and sat and sung.
How sore I gall'd him only Heav'n could know,
And he that felt, and I that caus'd the woe;
He died when last from pilgrimage I came,
With other gossips from Jerusalem;
And now lies buried underneath a rood,
Fair to be seen, and rear'd of honest wood;
A tomb, indeed, with fewer sculptures grac❜d
Than that Mausolus' pious widow plac'd,
Or where enshrin'd the great Darius lay;
But cost on graves is merely thrown away.
The pit fill'd up with turf we cover'd o'er ;
So bless the good man's soul! I say no more.
Now for my fifth lov'd lord, the last and best;
(Kind Heav'n afford him everlasting rest!)
Full hearty was his love, and I can sbew
The tokens on my ribs in bluck and blue;
Yet with a knack my heart he could have won,
While yet the smart was shooting in the bone.
Free gifts we scorn, and love what costs us painą
Let men avoid us, and on them we leap;
A glutted market makes provision cheap.
In pure good will I took this jovial spark,
Of Oxford he, a most egregious clerk.
He boarded with a widow in the town,
A trusty gossip, one dame Alison;
Full well the secrets of my soul she knew,
Better than e'er our parish-priest could do,
To her I told whatever could befal;
Had but my husband lean'd against a wall
Or done a thing that might have cost his life,
She-and my niece-and one more worthy wife,
Had known it all; what most he would contral,
To these I made no scruple to reveal.
Oft has he blush'd from ear to ear for shame
That e'er be told a secret to his dame.
It so befel in holy time of Lent,
That oft a day I to this gossip went &
(My husband, thank my stars, was out of town)
From house to house we rambled up and down,
This clerk, myself, and my good neighbour Alsc.
To see, be seen, to tell, and gather tales.
Visits to every church we daily paid,
And march'd in every holy masquerade;
The stations duly and the vigils kept,
Not much we fasted, but scarce ever slept.
At sermons, too, I shone in scarlet gay;
The wasting moth ne'er spoil'd my best array;
The cause was this, I wore it every day.
'Twas when fresh May her carly bles
yields,
This clerk and I were walking in the fields.
We grew so intimate, I can't tell how,
I pawn'd my honour and engag'd my vow,
If e'er I laid my husband in his urn,
That he, and only he, should serve my turn.
We straight struck hands, the bargain was agree
I still have shifts against a time of need.
The mouse that always trusts to one poor bole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.
I vow'd I scarce could sleep since first I kera And durst be sworn he had bewitched me lo tis
Ife'er I slept, 1 dream'd of him alone,
And dreams foretell, as learned men have shown,
All this I said, but dreams, sirs. I had none;
I follow'd but my crafty crony's lore,
Who bid me tell this lie-and twenty more.
Thus day by day, and month by month we past;
It pleas'd the Lord to take my sponse at last.
1 tore my gown, I soil'd my locks with dust,
And beat my breasts, as wretched widows-must.
Before my face my handkerchief I spread,
To hide the floods of tears I did not shed.
The good man's coffin to the church was borne ;
Around the neighbours, and my clerk too, mourn,
But as he march'd, good gods! he show'd a pair
Of legs and feet so clean, so strong, so fair!
Of twenty winters' age he seem'd to be;
1 (to say truth) was twenty more than he;
But vigorous still, a lively buxom dame,
And had a wondrous gift to quench a flame.
A conjuror once, that deeply could divine,
Award me Mars in Taurus was my sign.
As the stats order'd, such my life has been,
Alas, alas! that ever love was sin!
Fair Venus gave me fire and sprightly grace,
4 Mars assurance and a dauntless face.
By virtue of this powerful constellation
I follow'd always my own inclination.
And close the sermon, as besɛeem'd his wit,
With some grave sentence out of Holy Writ.
Oft would he say-Who builds his house on sands,
Pricks his blind horse across the fallow lands,
Or lets his wife abroad with pilgrims roam,
Deserves a fool's cap and long ears at home.
All this avail'd not; for whoe'er he be
That tells my faults, I hate him mortally;
And so do numbers more, I'd boldly say,
Men, women, clergy, regular, and lay.
My spouse (who was, you know, to learning
bred)
A certain treatise oft at evening read,
Where divers authors (whom the devil confound
For all their lies) were in one volume bound;
Valerius whole, and of St. Jerome part;
Chrysippus and Tertullian, Ovid's Art.
Solomon's Proverbs, Eloisa's Loves,
And many more than sure the Church approves.
More legends were there here of wicked wives,
Than good in all the Bible and Saints' Lives.
Who drew the Lion vanquish'd? 'Twas a man ;
But could we women write as scholars can,
Men should stand mark'd with far more wick-
edness
Than all the sons of Adam could redress.
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Those play the scholars who can't play the men,
And use that weapon which they have-their peu,
When old, and past the relish of delight,
Then down they sit, and in their dotage write
That not one,woman keeps her marriage-vow,
face,(This by the way, but to my purpose now.)
But to my tale.-A month scarce pass'd away, Wish dance and song we kept the nuptial day. 11 I possess'd I gave to his command, Ay goods and chattels, money, house, and land: et oft repented, and repent it still The prov'd a rebel to my sovereign will
hay once, by Heav'n! he struck me on the Her but the fact, and judge yourselves the
Stubborn as any lioness was I,
ad knew full well to raise my voice on high; true & rambler as I was before, f kud would be so in spite of all he swore. against this right sagely would advise, old examples set before my eyes;
- bow the Roman matrons led their life, Gracchus' mother, and Duilias' wife:
It chanc'd my husband on a winter's night,
Read in this book aloud with strange delight,
How the first female (as the scriptures show)
Brought her own spouse, and all his race to woe;
How Samson fell, and he whom Dejanire
Wrapp'd in th' envenom'd shirt, and set on fire
How curs'd Eriphyle her ford betray'd,
And the dire ambush Clytémnestra laid;
But what most pleas'd him was the Cretan dame"
And busband-bull, uh, monstrous! fye for shame!
He had by heart the whole detail of woe
Xantippe made her good man undergo ¿
How oft she scolded in a day he knew,
How many jordens on the sage she threw,
Who took it patiently, and wip'd his head,
Rain follows thunder," that was all he said.
He read how Arius to his friend complain'd
A fatal tree was growing in his land,
On which three wives successively had twin'd
A sliding noose, and waver'd in the wind.
"Where grows this, plant," replied the friend,
"oh! where?
For better fruit did never orchard bear;
Give me some slip of this most blissful tree,
And in my garden planted it shall be."
Then how two wives their lords' destruction prove,
Through hatred one, and one through too much love,
That for her husband mix'd a poisonous draught,
And this for lust an amorous philtre bought;
The nimble juice soon seiz'd his giddy head,
Frantic at night, and in the morning dead.
How some with swords their sleeping lords have slain,
And some have hammer'd nails into their brain, And some have drench'd them with a deadly potion ;
All this be read, and read with great devotion. Long time I heard, and swell'd, and blush'd,
But after many a hearty struggle past, I condescended to be pleas'd at last. Soon as he said, "My mistress and my wife! Do what you list the term of all your life;" I took to heart the merits of the cause, And stood content to rule by wholesome laws; Receiv'd the reins of absolute command, With all the government of house and land, And empire o'er his tongue and o'er his band As for the volume that revil'd the dames, 'Twas torn to fragments and condemn'd to face Now Heav'n on all my husband's gone bestow Pleasures above, for tortures felt below: That rest they wish'd for grant them in the grave,
And bless those souls my conduct help'd to save
THE WORLD.
What is the world? a term that men have got,
To signify, not one in ten knows what;
A term with which no more precision passes,
To point out herds of men, than herds of asses.
In common use, no more it means we find,
Than many fools in one opinion join'd.
WIFE'S AFFECTION.
cruel Death, why wert thou so unkind
To take my husband, and leave me behind?
Thou shouldst have taken both of us, if eithrin
Which would have been more grateful to
In no instance have I seen grasping after more whimsically exhibited than in the fam my old acquaintance Timothy Giblet. Ite old Giblet when I was a boy, and he was the surly curmudgeon I ever knew. He wasz scarecrow to the small-fry of the day, andis the hatred of all these unlucky little shaven never could we assemble about his door of an ing to play, and make a little bubbub, dete sallied from his nest like a spider, flouris fórmidable horsewhip, and dispersed the
But when no end of these vile tales I found,
When still be read, and laugh'd and read again,
And half the night was thus consum'd in vain,
Provok'd to vengeance, three large leaves I tore,
And with one buffet fell'd him on the floor.
With that my husband in a fury rose,
And down he settled me with hearty blows.
I groan'd, and lay extended on my side;
"Oh! thou hast slain me for my wealth, (I cried)
Yet I forgive thee-take my last embrace"
He wept, kind soul! and stoop'd to kiss my face,
I took him such a box as turn'd him blue,
n sigh'd and cried, “ Adieu, my dear, adieu!" I crew in the twinkling of a lamp. I perive
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ber a bill he sent in to my father for a pane of young ladies could dance the waltz, thunder LoI had accidentally broken, which came well doiska, murder French, kill time, and commit viogetting me a sound flogging; and I remember, lence on the face of nature in a landscape in watererfectly, that the next night I revenged myself colours, equal to the best lady in the land; and reaking half-a-dozen, Giblet was as arrant a the young gentlemen were seen lounging at corners ›-worm as ever crawled; and the only rules of of streets, and driving tandem; heard talking loud t and wrong he cared a button for were the rules at the theatre, and laughing in church, with as ultiplication and addition; which he practised much ease and grace, and modesty, as if they had h more successfully than he did any of the rules been gentlemen all the days of their lives. ligion or morality. He used to declare they And the Giblets arrayed themselves in scarlet, e the true golden rules: and he took special and in fine linen, and seated themselves in bigh to put Cocker's arithmetic in the hands of his places; but nobody noticed them except to honour Iren, before they had read ten pages in the them with a little contempt. The Giblets made a e or the prayer-book. The practice of these prodigious splash in their own opinion; but nourite maxims was at length crowned with the body extolled them except the tailors, and the milest of success; and.after a life of incessant liners, who had been employed in manufacturing deuial, and starvation, and after enduring all their paraphernalia. The Giblets thereupon being, pounds, shillings, and pence miseries of a like Caleb Quotem, determined to have a place r, he had the satisfaction of seeing himself at the review," fell to work more fiercely than h a plum, and of dying just as he had deter-ever; they gave dinners, and they gave balls; d to enjoy the remainder of his days in con- they hired cooks, they hired confectioners, and lating his great wealth and accumulating they would have kept a newspaper in pay, had Igages. they not been all bought up at that time for the is children inherited his money; but they election. They invited the dancing men, and the ed the disposition, and every other memorial dancing women, and the gormandizers, and the eir father in his grave. Fired with a noble epicures of the city, to come and make inerry at t for style, they instantly emerged from the their expense; and the dancing men, and the ed lane in which themselves and their accom-dancing women, and the epicures, and the gørmeats had hitherto been buried; and they mandizers, did come; and they did make merry ed, and they whizzed, and they cracked about at their expense; and they eat, and they drank, , like a nest of squibs and devils in a fire and they capered, and they danced, and they -laughed at their entertainers.
ving once started, the Giblets were deter- Then commenced the hurry and the bustle, and & that nothing should stop them in their ca- the mighty nothingness of fashionable life ;-such until they had run their full course and rattling in coaches! such flaunting in the streets! ed at the very tip-top of style. Every tailor, such slamming of box-doors at the theatre! such a shoemaker, every coachmaker, every milli- tempest of bustle and unmeaning noise wherever every mantua-maker, every paper-hanger, they appeared! The Giblets were seen here and * piano-teacher, and every dancing-master in there and every where ;-they visited every body ty, were enlisted in their service; and the they knew, and every body they did not know; Eg wights most courteously answered their and there was no getting along for the Giblets. and fell to work to build up the fame of the Their plan at length succeeded. By dint of dinefs, as they had done that of many an as-nere, of feeding and frolicking the town, the g family before them. In a little time the Giblet family worked themselves into notice, and
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