Into the fair, with women mix’d, he went,
Arm’d with a huge two-handed instrument ;
A grateful present to those holy choirs,
Where the mouse, guilty of his sex, retires;
And ev'n male-pictures modestly are vail'd;
Yet no profaneness on that age prevailid;
No scoffers at religious rites are found ;
Tho' now, at ev'ry altar they abound.

I hear your cautious counsel, you would say,
Keep close your women under lock and key :
But, who shall keep those keepers ? Women, nurft
In craft : begin with those, and bribe them first.
The sex is turn'd all whore ; they love the game :
And mistresses and maids are both the same.

The poor Ogulnia, on the poet's day, Will borrow clothes, and chair, to see the play: She, who before had mortgag'd her estate, And pawn'd the last remaining piece of plate. Some are reduc'd their utmost shifts to try : But women have no shame of poverty. They live beyond their stint; as if their ftore The more exhausted, would encrease the more : Some men, instructed by the lab'ring ant, Provide againt 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 : And think no pleasure can be bought too dear.

There are who in soft eunuchs place their bliss; To fhun the scrubbing of a bearded kiss ; And 'scape abortion ; but their folid joy Is 5 when the page, already past a boy, Is capon'd late ; and to the guelder shown, With his two pounders to perfection grown.

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When all the navel-ftring could give, appears ;
All but the beard, and that's the barber's loss, not theirs,
Seen from afar, and famous for his ware,
He struts into the bath, among the fair :
Th'admiring crew to their devotions fall;
And, kneeling, on their new 6 Priapus cali.

6
Kerv’d for his lady's use, and with her lies
And let him drudge for her, if thou art wise,
Rather than trust him with thy fay’rite boy;
He proffers death, in proffering to enjoy.

If songs they love, the finger's voice they force .
Beyond his compass 'till his quail-pipe's hoarse ;
His lute and lyre, with their embrace is worn;
With knots they trim it, and with gems

adorn: Run over all the strings, and kiss the case ; 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 7 Pollio might, in singing, win the prize; Pollio the dear, the darling of her eyes : She pray’d, and brib'd; what could the more have done For å fick husband, or an only fon? With her face veild, and heaving up her hands, The shameless suppliant at the altar stands; The forms of pray'r fe folemnly pursues; And, pale with fear, the offer'd entrails views Answer, ye Pow'rs : for, if you heard her vow, Your Godthips, sure, had little else to do.

This is not all; for 8 actors, they implore : An impudence not known to heav'n before, Th'9 Aruspex, tir'd with this religious rout, Is forc'd to stand so long, he gets the gout.

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6 The god of luft.
7 A famous singing boy.
Ś That such an actor whom they love might win the prize.

9 He who inspects the entrails of the sacrifice, and from thence foretels the success,

But

:

But suffer not thy wife abroad to roam,
If she loves singing, let her fing at home;
Not strut 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 say.
Know what in Thrace, or what in France is done ;
Th'intrigues betwixt the stepdam, and the fon.
Tell who loves who, what favours some partake :
And who is jilted for another's fake.
What pregnant widow in what month was made ;
How oft she did, and doing, what she said.

She, first, beholds the raging comet rise : Knows whom it threatens, and what land destroys, Still for the freshest news fhe lies in wait; And takes reports juft entring at the gate. Wrecks, floods, and fires; whatever she can meet, She spreads; and is the fame of ev'ry street.

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 pray'r can bind her, no excuse appease. Th' unmanner'd malefactor is arraign’d ; But first the master, who the curr maintain'd, Muft feel the scourge : by night fhe leaves her bed. By night her bathing equipage is led, That marching armies a less noise create ; She moves in tumult, and the sweats in state. Mean while, her guests their appetites must keep; Some gape for hunger, and fome gasp for fleep. At length she comes, all Aufh'd; but ere she sup, Swallows a swinging preparation-cup; And then to clear her stomach, spews it up. The deluge-vomit all the floor o'erflows, And the four favour nauseates ev'ry nose. She drinks again ; again the spews a lake ; Her wretched hulband sees, and dares not speak :

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But mutters many a curse against his wife ;
And damns himself for choosing 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 so far th' ascendant of the board,
The prating pedant puts not in one word :
The man of law is non-plust, in his sute ;
Nay, every other female tongue is mute.
Hammers, and beating anvils, you would swear,
And 1 Vulcan with his whole militia there.
Tabors 2 and trumpets cease; for she alone
Is able to redeem the lab'ring moon.
Ev'n wit's a burden, 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 curse has he, whose fide
Is pefter’d with a 3 mood and figure bride!
Let mine, ye Gods! (if such 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 grammar-tree, distinAly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle grows;
Corrects her country-neighbour; and, a-bed,
For breaking 4 Priscian's, breaks her husband's head.

The gawdy gossip, when she's set agog, In jewels drest, and at each ear a bob,

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Goes flaunting out, and in her trim of pride,
Thinks all the says or does, is juftify'd.
When poor, she's scarce a tolerable evil ;
But tich, and fine, a wife's a very devil.

She duely, once a month, renews her face ;
Mean time, it lies in dawb, and hid in grease ;
Those are the husband's nights; the craves her due,
He takes fat kisses, and is fuck with glue.
But to the lov'd adult'rer when the steers,
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 foeler she looks at home.
Th'eclipse then vanishes; and all her face
Is open'd, and restor'd to ev'ry grace,
The crust remov'd, her cheeks as smooth as filk,
Are polish'd with a wath of affes milk;
And should the to the fartheft North be fent,
A train 5 of these attend her banishment.
But hadit thou seen her plaifter'd up before,
'Twas so unlike a face, it seem'd a fore.

'Tis worth our while, to know what all the day
They do, and how they pafs their time away,
For, if o'er-night the husband has been slack,
Or counterfeited sleep, and turn'd his back,
Next day, be sure, the fervants go to wrack.
The chamber-maid and dresser, are callid whores ;
The page is stript, and beaten out of doors.
The whole house fuffers for the master's crime:
And he himself is warn'd, to wake another time.
She hires tormentors by the