in his verse is the second: because she was fortunate enough to die within the first year, before he found time to grow weary of her. Even then, it was not until after she had died that he uttered her praise. His housekeeper wife was tolerated, and came in for his money, because she had cooked him nice dinners. Not only a sheet, but an entire volume might be easily filled, if necessary, with specimens of the playful badinage against matrimony, in which poets and prose-writers have indulged from early times, but at none with more frequency and more sparkling wit than during the reign of the last two Stuarts.' 1 We are glad to see, since the above was written in our text, that Robert Roberts, of Boston, the excellent printer and publisher of our three volumes, The "Drolleries" of the Restoration, announces that "At some future time I may publish a volume containing the most elegant compliments and the bitterest epigrams which have been written on the fair sex,-not compilations from Byron and Tennyson, but further a-field" (p. 417 of The Apophthegmes of Erasmus, translated into English by Nicolas Udall. Literally reprinted from the scarce edition of 1564. Boston, Lincolnshire, 1877). By the way, the writers of the bitter epigrams have often written also the elegant compliments; for "the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers, is always the first to be touched by the thorns." Not many things were better phrased than Southey's praise of woman, and Sir Walter Scott's in Marmion, which we quoted as motto on p. 880. [Bagford Collection, III. 102.] The Philosophical Wife; Hey'r many that Wedlock a Plague do call, Yet these are but dull Philosophers all, Which no body can deny. For when Adam led a single life, Sole Monarch of the World, and free from Strife, Which no body will deny. To make this out, that you may know so, Which no body, &c. In Grammar first, her skill's not slender, She shews the Case, and Declines not the Gender,' And in varying Amo, there's no man can mend her, What though her Stock perhaps be but small Her own Tongue utters more than they all, Which no body, &c. Her Rhetorick next is more moving far, 8 12 16 20 Than a Spruce young Law[y]ers new call'd to the Barr, When with Tropes and Figures he levies Warr, Which no body, &c. For when an obliging Wench does perswade, But when to chop Logick, her mind is bent, Which no body, &c. In Numbers she hath knowledge store, Which my Hostess cannot deny. 1 Early manuscript correction reads "not to Gender." 40 44 48 I' th' Art of Musick she leads the Van, Her Tune she can easily grace and embellish, Hence come the Beats, and they'r never at rest, In Astrology next, none righter than she, With Venus none better acquainted can be, [Which no body can deny.] But Aries and Taurus are Enemies still, And when she is crabbed you'l swear that the Sun Now if that her love be cold, and she scorn But if thou art kind and of frolli[c]king brains, In Law too she hath knowledge, for if from thy Bed 60 64 68 You'l find by her own Law she may scratch her own head, Which no body, &c. Though Dike for Limning famous be, I' th' Mathematicks too she leads the Ring, This by th' Attractive Power she'll prove, Though Chymists, Natures bratts alone But She, that can find the Philosopher's Stone, Anthony Vandyck, of course. He died in Dec. 1641, but we need not therefore attribute this balled to a date so early: his repute accounting fully for the mention of him many years later. |