Some are reduc'd their utmost shifts to try:
But women have no fhame of poverty.
They live beyond their fint; as if their store,
The more exhaufted, would encrease the more:
Some men, inftructed by the labouring ant,
Provide against th' extremities of want;
But womankind, that never knows a mean,
Down to the dregs their finking fortune drain:
Hourly they give, and spend, and wafte, and wear s
And think no pleasure can be bought too dear.

If fongs they love, the finger's voice they force
Beyond his compass till his quail-pipe's hoarfe;
His lute and lyre with their embrace is worn;
With knots they trim it, and with gems adorn:
Run over all the ftrings, and kifs the cafe;
And make love to it, in the master's place.
A certain lady once, of high degree,

To Janus vow'd, and Vefta's deity,

That Pollio might, in finging, win the prize;
Pollio the dear, the darling of her eyes:

She pray'd, and brib'd; what could the more have done

For a fick husband, or an only fon?

With her face veil'd, and heaving up her hands,
The fhameless fuppliant at the altar ftands;
The forms of prayer fhe folemnly pursues:
And, pale with fear, the offer'd intrails views.
Anfwer, ye powers; for, if you heard her vow,
Your godfhips, fure, had little else to do.
This is not all; for actors they implore:
An impudence not known to heaven before.

ΤΕ

Th Arufpex, tir'd with this religious rout,
Is forc'd to ftand so long, he gets the gout.
But fuffer not thy wife abroad to roam,

If the loves finging, let her fing at home;
Not ftrut in streets, with Amazonian pace;
For that 's to cuckold thee before thy face.

Their endless itch of news comes next in play;
They vent their own, and hear what others fay.
Know what in Thrace, or what in France, is done;
Th' intrigues betwixt the stepdam and the fon.
Tell who loves who, what favours fome partake:
And who is jilted for another's fake.

What pregnant widow in what month was made;
How oft fhe did, and doing, what she said.

She, first, beholds the raging comet rise :
Knows whom it threatens, and what lands destroys,
Still for the newest news fhe lies in wait;

And takes reports juft entering at the gate.
Wrecks, floods, and fires: whatever she can meet,
She fpreads; and is the fame of every ftreet.
This is a grievance; but the next is worse;
A very judgment, and her neighbours curse;
For, if their barking dog disturb her ease,
No prayer can bind her, no excufe appease.
Th' unmanner'd malefactor is arraign'd;
But firft the mafter, who the cur maintain'd,
Muft feel the fcourge: by night the leaves her bed,
By night her bathing equipage is led,

That marching armies a less noise create;
She moves in tumult, and she fweats in state.

Mean

Mean while, her guests their appetites must keep;
Some gape for hunger, and fome gafp for fleep.
At length fhe comes, all flufh'd; but ere fhe fup,
Swallows a fwinging preparation-cup ;

And then, to clear her stomach, spews it up.
The deluge-vomit all the floor o'erflows,
And the four favour nauseates every nose.
She drinks again; again fhe fpews a lake;
Her wretched husband fees, and dares not speak :
But mutters many a curse against his wife;
And damns himself for chufing such a life.

But of all plagues, the greatest is untold;
The book-learn'd wife in Greek and Latin bold.
The critic-dame, who at her table fits:
Homer and Virgil quotes, and weighs their wits
And pities Dido's agonizing fits.

She has fo far th' afcendant of the board,
The prating pedant puts not in one word:
The man of law is non-plust, in his fuit;
Nay, every other female tongue is mute.

Hammers, and beating anvils, you would fwear,
And Vulcan with his whole militia there.
Tabors and trumpets ceafe; for she alone
Is able to redeem the labouring moon,

Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long:
But the who has no continence of tongue,
Should walk in breeches, and should wear a beard
And mix among the philofophic herd.

O what a midnight curfe has he, whofe fide

Is pefter'd with a mood and figure bride!

}

Let

Let mine, ye Gods! (if fuch must be my fate)
No logic learn, nor history translate;
But rather be a quiet, humble fool:

I hate a wife to whom I go to school,

Who climbs the grammer-tree, diftinctly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle, grows;
Corrects her country-neighbour; and, a-bed,
For breaking Prifcian's, breaks her husband's head.
The gawdy goffip, when the 's fet agog,

In jewels dreft, and at each ear a bob,

Goes flaunting out, and, in her trim of pride,
Thinks all the fays or does is justify’d.

When poor, she's fcarce a tolerable evil;
But rich, and fine, a wife's a very devil.

She duly, once a month, renews her face;
Mean time, it lies in dawb, and hid in grease;
Thofe are the husband's nights; the craves her due,
He takes fat kiffes, and, is ftuck with glue.
But to the lov'd adulterer when the fteers,
Fresh from the bath, in brightness she appears:
For him the rich Arabia fweats her gum;
And precious oils from diftant Indies come:
How haggardly foe'er she looks at home.
The eclipse then vanishes; and all her face
Is open'd, and restor'd to every grace,

The cruft remov'd, her cheeks as smooth as filk,
Are polish'd with a wash of affes milk;

And should she to the fartheft north be fent,

A train of these attend her banishment,

}

But hadft thou seen her plaister'd up before, 'Twas fo unlike a face, it feem'd a fore.

'Tis worth our while, to know what all the day
They do, and how they pass their time away,
For, if o'er-night the husband has been flack,
Or counterfeited fleep, and turn'd his back,
Next day, be fure, the fervants go to wrack.
The chamber-maid and dresser are call'd whores ;
The page is ftript, and beaten out of doors.
"The whole houfe fuffers for the master's crime:
And he himself is warn'd, to wake another time.
She hires tormentors by the year; he treats
Her visitors, and talks; but fill the beats.
Beats while the paints her face, furveys her gown,
Cafts up the day's account, and still beats on :
"Tir'd out, at length, with an outrageous tone,
She bids them in the devil's name be gone.
Compar'd with fuch a proud, infulting dame,
Sicilian tyrants may renounce their name.
For, if the haftes abroad to take the air,
Or goes to Ifis' church (the bawdy-houfe of prayer)
She hurries all her handmaids to the task ;
Her head, alone, will twenty dreffers afk.
Plecas, the chief, with breast and shoulders bare,
Trembling, confiders every facred hair;

If any fraggler from his rank be found,
A pinch muft, for the mortal fin, compound.
Pfecas is not in fault: but, in the glafs,
The dame 's offended at her own ill-face.

The