to render the operation more verbal. After which, she distilled it again through a speaking-trumpet, and closed up the remaining spirits in the mouth of a cannon. Then she opened the graves of all new-deceased pettifoggers, mountebanks, barbers, coffee-newsmongers, and fish-wives; and with the skin of their tongues, made a bladder covered o'er with drum-heads, and filled with storms, tempests, whirlwinds, thunders, lightnings, &c. These for better incorporation, she set seven years in a rough sea to ferment, and then mixing them with the rest, rectified the whole three times a day for a twelvemonth in a balneum of quicksilver. Lastly, to irrabiate the whole elixir, and make it more churlish, she cut a vein under the tongue of the dog-star, drawing thence a pound of the most choleric blood; from which sublimating the spirits, she mixed them with the foam of a mad dog and then putting altogether in the forementioned bladder, stitched it up with the nerves of Socrates's wife. Out of this noble preparation, and a crooked rib (emblem of future crossness) Dame Nature. first composed a SHREW, whose posterity (as is frequent with noxious animals) has since so overspread the world, that scarce an alley or village is free from some of her lineage. But that you may see her end as well as beginning, be pleased to peruse this ЕРІТАРН. After some threescore years of caterwauling, Here lies A SCOLD, stopped from above-ground bawling, Though ill she liv'd, I dare not read her doom; But sure, go where she will, she's troublesome. |