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To fight our battles in our steads,

And have your brains beat out o' your heads:
Encounter, in despite of nature,

And fight at once with fire and water,

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With pirates, rocks, and storms, and seas,
Our pride and vanity t' appease;

Kill one another, and cut throats,

For our good graces, and best thoughts;

To do your exercise for honour,

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And have your brains beat out the sooner;
Or crack'd, as learnedly, upon

Things that are never to be known:

And still appear the more industrious,
The more your projects are prepost❜rous:
To square the circle of the arts,

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And run stark mad to shew your parts;

Expound the oracle of laws;

And turn them which way we see cause:

Be our solicitors and agents,

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And stand for us in all engagements.

And these are all the mighty pow'rs
You vainly boast, to cry down our's;
And what in real value's wanting
Supply with vapouring and ranting:
Because yourselves are terrify'd,
And stoop to one another's pride:
Believe we have as little wit
To be out-hector'd, and submit;

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By your example, lose that right

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In treaties, which we gain'd in fight;

And terrify'd into an awe,

Pass on ourselves a salique law:

Or, as some nations use, give place,
And truckle to your mighty race;
Let men usurp th' unjust dominion,
As if they were the better women.

380

NOTES

TO THE

LADY'S ANSWER TO THE KNIGHT.

V. 4. Did from the pound replevin you.] The widow commences her answer in a very high strain of ridicule. Playing upon the Knight's confession, that her unkindness had reduced him to the condition of a beast, she, by a very slight stretch of language, changes the pillory into a pound, and reminds the Knight how she replevied him from his confinement. A pound is a place where cattle that are distrained for rent are impounded or confined, until replevied, which means until security be given to answer the distrainer's suit.

A

V. 13. Your heels degraded of your spurs.] Knight degraded from his dignity, has his spurs hacked off his heels, and his sword broken over his head. At the ceremony of the installation of the Knights of the Bath, the King's master-cook attends, in an appropriate costume, with a butcher's cleaver in his hand, and warns the Knights successively as they take the oath, that it will be his duty to hack off their spurs, if they should violate the engagements of their Knighthood. V. 43-4. Like sturdy beggars, that entreat

For charity at once and threat.] Whether the beggars of the metropolis in Butler's day were so clamorous and importunate as the present race of men. dicants, we have not the means of determining; and

it would be difficult to decide whether most money is given away in the pure spirit of charity to relieve distress, or given forth in no other view than to silence importunity and clamour.

V. 55-6-7. 'Tis not those paultry counterfeit

French stones, which in our eyes you set,

But our right diamonds, that inspire.] Nothing is more common than for lovers to compare their mistresses' eyes to diamonds, their lips to rabies, and their teeth to pearls. This hyperbolical mode of expression had its rise in the east, where these precious productions of nature are comparatively plentiful; and the genius of the people leads them to delight in extravagant metaphors. But with Europeans it is ridiculous and unnatural. The widow very plainly tells Hudibras, that it is not the diamonds of her eyes, nor the rubies of her lips, or the pearls of her teeth, that have inspired him with a flame; but the real jewels which she has treasured up in her cabinet. In a word, that there is not an atom of affection in his suit, and that he is solely governed by mercenary views.

V. 61. And make us wear like Indian dames.] The custom of perforating various parts of the body for the purpose of ornamenting it, is so universal, that no nation has yet been discovered among whom something like this practice has not been found to prevail. The perforation of the lip exists, at the present day, among the Esquimaux: perhaps it forms part of the toilet among some more polished nation.

V. 89-90. These are th'attracts which most men fall Enamour'd, at first sight, withal.] The lady recapitulates, with much satirical humour, the chief objects of allurement which tempt men to marry. Having an eye particularly to herself, she insinuates to our Knight, that he would never have thought of her, but for her jewels and guineas, her land and cattle, her house and furniture, her mortgages and bonds, which are the things alone, she tells him, that have any attraction in his eyes, and stimulate him to urge his hopeless suit.

V. 103.

like a deodand.] When an accidental homicide happens, the thing causing the loss of life, as, for instance, the wheel of a carriage, is forfeited to the lord of the manor, and is called a deodand. V. 117-8. Hence 't is, you have no way t'express Our charms and graces, but by these.] The reason which the widow assigns for men comparing the beauties of their mistresses to precious stones, gold, &c. is highly comic and diverting. Men, says she, set their affections on gold, &c. it is natural therefore that they should resemble their mistresses to those objects which they have chiefly in view.

V. 123 4. This is the way all parents-prove,

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In managing their children's love.] The author of the Devil upon Two Sticks, says Dr. Grey, gives an instance of this, in the case of a delicate young lady, whom her prudent parents prostituted to the embraces of an old brute. "The beastly sot (says he) was rival to one of a very agreeable character; their fortunes were equal; but I dare say you'll laugh at the merit which preferred this worthy to the choice of the mother: you must know he had a pigeon-house upon his estate, which the other had not: this turned the balance in his favour, and determined the fate of that unfortunate lady."

V. 127. Cast earth to earth, as in the grave.] Alluding to the burial office, which Dr. Grey says, was scandalously ridiculed in those times. One Brook, a London lecturer, at the burial of Mr. John Gough, of St. James's, Duke's-place, within Aldgate, London, used the following words:

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,

Here's the pit, and in thou must."

Mr. Cheynel, he says, behaved as remarkably at the funeral of Mr. Chillingworth. After reflecting upon the deceased, he threw his book, entitled the Religion of the Protestants a safe way to Salvation, into the grave, saying, "Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious souls: Earth to

earth, dust to dust: Get thee into the place of rottenness, that thou may'st rot with the author, and see corruption."

V. 131-2. For money has a power above

The stars, and fate, to manage love.] The power of money in love-affairs has been acknowledged from the earliest times; and how small a matter will sometimes preponderate appears from the Spectator, No. 15, who mentions a young lady, who was warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals, who, for many months together, did all they could to recommend themselves by complacency of behaviour and agreeableness of coversation. At length, when the competition was doubtful, and the lady undetermiued in her choice, one of the young lovers luckily bethought himself of adding a supernumerary lace to his liveries, which had so good an effect, that he married her the very week after.

V. 133-4. Whose arrows learned poets hold

That never miss are tipp'd with gold.] The poets feign Cupid to have had two sorts of arrows, the one tipped with gold, and the other with lead; the golden always inspire and inflame love in the person he wounds with them; but, on the contrary, the leaden create the utmost aversion and hatred. With the first of these he shot Apollo, and with the other Daphne, according to Ovid.

V. 183. When 'tis laid hands upon, and kiss'd.] The way of taking an oath is by laying the right hand upon the New Testament, which denominates it a corporal oath. "This method," Dr. Grey says, " was not always complied with in those iniquitous times. In the trial of Mr. Christopher Love, in the year 1651, one Jaquel, an evidence, laid his hands upon his buttons, and not upon the book, when the oath was tendered him; and, when he was questioned for it, he answered I am as good as under an oath. And in the trial of the brave Colonel Morrice (who kept Pontefract Castle for the King) at York, by Thorp and Puleston, when be challenged one Brook, his professed enemy, the

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