She brought him wherewithal to be call'd chaste;
His tongue is ty'd in golden fetters fast:
He sighs, adores, and courts her every hour;
Who would not do as much for such a dower?
She writes love-letters to the youth in grace;
Nay, tips the wink before the cuckold's face;
And might do more; her portion makes it good;
Wealth has the privilege of widowhood.

These truths with his example you disprove,
Who with his wife is monstrously in love:
But know him better; for I heard him swear,
'Tis not that she's his wife, 'but that she's fair.
Let her but have three wrinkles in her face,
Let her eyes lessen, and her skin unbrace,
Soon you will hear the saucy steward say,
"Pack up with all your trinkets, and away;
You grow offensive both at bed and board:
Your betters must be had to please my lord."
Meantime she's absolute upon the throne:
And, knowing time is precious, loses none:
She must have flocks of sheep, with wool more fine
Than silk, and vineyards of the noblest wine:
Whole droves of pages for her train she craves:
And sweeps the prisons for attending slaves.
In short, whatever in her eyes can come,
Or others have abroad, she wants at home.
When winter shuts the seas, and fleecy snows
Make houses white, she to the merchant goes;
Rich crystals of the rocks she takes up there,
Huge agate vases, and old china-ware.

But is none worthy to be made a wife

In all this town? Suppose her free from strife,
Rich, fair, and fruitful, of unblemish'd life;
Chaste as the Sabines, whose prevailing charms
Dismiss'd their husbands, and their brothers' arms:
Grant her, besides, of noble blood, that ran
In ancient veins ere heraldry began:
Suppose all these, and take a poet's word,
A black swan is not half so rare a bird.

A wife, so hung with virtues, such a freight,
What mortal shoulders could support the weight!
Some country-girl, scarce to a curtsey bred,
Would I much rather than Cornelia wed:
If, supercilious, haughty, proud, and vain,
She brought her father's triumphs in her train.
Away with all your Carthaginian state,
Let vanquish'd Hannibal without doors wait,
Too burly and too big to pass my narrow gate.
"O Pæan," cries Amphion, "bend thy bow
Against my wife, and let my children go :"
But sullen Pæan shoots at sons and mothers too.
His Niobe and all his boys he lost;

Ev'n her, who did her numerous offspring boast,
As fair and fruitful as the sow that carry'd
The thirty pigs, at one large litter farrow'd.

What beauty or what chastity can bear

So great a price? If stately and severe,
She still insults, and you must still adore;
Grant that the honey's much, the gall is more.
Upbraided with the virtues she displays,

Seven hours in twelve, you loath the wife you

In Greek they flatter, all their fears they speak,
Tell all their secrets; nay, they scold in Greek:
Ev'n in the feat of love, they use that tongue.
Such affectations may become the young;
But thou, old hag, of threescore years and three,
Is showing of thy parts in Greek for thee?
Ζωὴ καὶ ψυχὴ! All those tender words
The momentary trembling bliss affords,
The kind soft murmurs of the private sheets
Are bawdy, while thou speak'st in public streets.
Those words have fingers; and their force is such,
They raise the dead, and mount him with a touch.
But all provocatives from thee are vain :
No blandishment the slacken'd nerve can strain.

If then thy lawful spouse thou canst not love,
What reason should thy mind, to marriage move?
Why all the charges of thy nuptial feast,
Wine and desserts, and sweet-meats to digest?·
Th' endowing gold that buys the dear delight,
Giv'n for their first and only happy night?
If thou art thus uxoriously inclin'd,
To bear thy bondage with a willing mind,
Prepare thy neck, and put it in the yoke:
But for no mercy from thy woman look.
For though, perhaps, she loves with equal fires,
To absolute dominion she aspires;

Joys in the spoils, and triumphs o'er thy purse;
The better husband makes the wife the worse,
Nothing is thine to give, or sell, or buy,
All offices of ancient friendship die;
Nor hast thou leave to make a legacy.
By thy imperious wife thou art bereft;
A privilege, to pimps and panders left;
'Thy testament's her will; where she prefers
Her ruffians, drudges, and adulterers,
Adopting all thy rivals for thy heirs.

"Go drag that slave to death :" your reason, why Should the poor innocent be doom'd to die? What proofs For, when man's life is in debate, The judge can ne'er too long deliberate. "Call'st thou that slave a man," the wife re

plies:

"Prov'd, or unprov'd, the crime, the villain dies.
I have the sovereign power to save or kill;
And give no other reason but my will." [change,
Thus the she-tyrant reigns, till, pleas'd with
Her wild affections to new empires range:
Another subject husband she desires,
Divorc'd from him, she to the first retires,
While the last wedding-feast is scarcely o'er,
And garlands háng yet green upon the door,
So still the reckoning rises; and appears,
In total sum, eight husbands in five years.
The title for a tomb-stone might be fit ;
But that it would too commonly be writ.

Her mother living, hope no quiet day;
She sharpens her, instructs her how to flea
Her husband bare, and then divides the prey.
She takes love-letters, with a crafty smile,
And, in her daughter's answer, mends the style.
In vain the husband sets his watchful spies;
She cheats their cunning, or she bribes their eyes,
The doctor's call'd; the daughter, taught the trick,
Pretends to faint; and in full health is sick.
The panting stallion, at the closet-door,
Hears the consult, and wishes it were o'er.
Canst thou, in reason, hope, a bawd so known,
Should teach her other manners than her own?
Her interest is in all th' advice she gives:
'Tis on the daughter's rents the mother lives.

No cause is try'd at the litigious bar, But women plaintiffs or defendants are, They form the process, all the briefs they write; The topics furnish, and the pleas indite; And teach the toothless lawyer how to bite.

They turn viragos too; the wrestler's toil
They try, and smear their naked limbs with oil:
Against the post their wicker shields they crush,
Flourish the sword, and at the flastron push.
Of every exercise the mannish crew
Fulfils the parts, and oft excels us too;
Prepar'd not only in feign'd fight t' engage,
But rout the gladiators on the stage.
What sense of shame in such a breast can lie,
Inur'd to arms, and her own sex to fly?
Yet to be wholly man she would disclaim;
To quit her tenfold pleasure at the game,
For frothy praises and an empty name.
Oh what a decent sight 'tis to behold
All thy wife's magazine by auction sold!
The belt, the crested plume, the several suits
Of armour, and the Spanish leather-boots!
Yet these are they, that cannot bear the heat
Of figur'd silks, and under sarsenet sweat.
Behold the strutting Amazonian whore,
She stands in guard with her right-foot before:
Her coats tuck'd up; and all her notions just,
She stamps, and then cries "Hah!" at every
thrust.

The ghosts of ancient Romans, should they rise,
Would grin to see their daughters play a prize.
Besides, what endless brawls by wives are bred:
The curtain-lecture makes a mournful bed.
Then, when she has thee sure within the sheets,
Her cry begins, and the whole day repeats.
Conscious of crimes herself, she teases first;
Thy servants are accus'd; thy whore is curst;
She acts the jealous, and at will she cries:
For womens' tears are but the sweat of eyes.
Poor cuckold-fool, thou think'st that love sincere,
And suck'st between her lips the falling tear:
But search her cabinet, and thou shalt find
Each tiller there with love-epistles lin❜d.
Suppose her taken in a close embrace,
This you would think so manifest a case,

No rhetoric could defend, no impudence out-face;
And yet, ev'n then, she cries, "The marriage-vow
A mental reservation must allow ;
And there's a silent bargain still imply'd,
The parties should be pleas'd on either side:
And both may for their private needs provide.
Though men yourselves, and women us you call,
Yet homo is a common name for all."

There's nothing bolder than a woman caught;
Guilt gives them courage to maintain their fault.
You ask from whence proceed these monstrous
crimes?

Once poor, and therefore chaste, in former times,
Our matrons were: no luxury found room
In low-rooft houses, and bare walls of lome;
Their hands with labour harden'd while 'twas light,
A frugal sleep supply'd the quiet night, [strait;
While pinch'd with want, their hunger held them
When Hannibal was hovering at the gate:
But wanton now and lolling at our ease,
We suffer all th' inveterate ills of peace,
And wasteful riot, whose destructive charms
Revenge the vanquish'd world, of our victorious
No crime, no lustful postures are unknown; [arms.
Since Poverty, our guardian god, is gone:

Pride, laziness, and all luxurious arts,
Pour like a deluge in from foreign parts:
Since gold obscene, and silver, found the way,
Strange fashions with strange bullion to convey,
And our plain simple inanners to betray. [spread?
What care our drunken dames to whom they
Wine no distinction makes of tail or head.
Who, lewdly dancing at a midnight ball,
For hot eringoes and fat oysters call:
Full brimmers to their fuddled noses thrust;
Brimmers, the last provocatives of lust.
When vapours to their swimming brains advance,
And double tapers on the tables dance.

Now think what bawdy dialogues they have,
What Tullia talks to her confiding slave,
At Modesty's old statue; when by night
They make a stand, and from their litters light;
The good man early to the levee goes,
And treads the nasty puddle of his spouse.

The secrets of the goddess nam'd the good, Are ev'n by boys and barbers understood: Where the rank matrons, dancing to the pipe, Gig with their bums, and are for action ripe; With music rais'd, they spread abroad their hair; And toss their heads like an enamour'd mare: Rank'd with the lady the cheap sinner lies; For here not blood, but virtue, gives the prize. Nothing is feign'd in this venereal strife; "Tis downright lust, and acted to the life. So full, so fierce, so vigorous, and so strong, That looking on, would make old Nestor young. Impatient of delay, a general sound, And universal groan of lust, goes round; For then, and only then, the sex sincere is found. "Now is the time of action! now begin!" They cry, " and let the lusty lovers in. The whoresons are asleep; then bring the slaves, And watermen, a race of strong-back'd knaves." I wish, at least, our sacred rites were free From those pollutions of obscenity: But 'tis well known what singer, how disguis'd, A lewd audacious action enterpris'd; Into the fair, with women mixt, 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 veil'd, Yet no profaneness on that age prevail'd; No scoffers at religious rites are found; Though now, at every 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, nurst 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 store, The more exhausted, would increase the more: Some men, instructed by the labouring ant, Provide against th' extremities of want; But womankind, that never knows a mean, Down to the dregs their sinking fortune drain: Hourly they give, and spend, and waste, and wear: And think no pleasure can be bought too dear,

If songs they love, the singer'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 Vesta's deity,
That Pollio might, in singing, win the prize;
Pollio the dear, the darling of her eyes:

She pray'd, and brib'd; what could she more have
For a sick husband, or an only son? [done
With her face veil'd, and heaving up her hands,
The shameless suppliant at the altar stands;
The forms of prayer she solemnly pursues:
And, pale with fear, the offer'd entrails views.
Answer, ye powers; for, if you heard her vow,
Your godships, sure, had little else to do.

This is not all, for actors they implore:
An impudence not known to Heaven before.
Th' Aruspex, tir'd with this religious rout,
Is forc'd to stand so long, he gets the gout.
But suffer not thy wife abroad to roam,
If she loves singing, let her sing 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 stepdame and the son.
Tell who loves who, what favours some partake:
And who is jilted for another's sake.
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 lands destroys, Still for the newest news she lies in wait; And takes reports just entering at the gate. Wrecks, floods, and fires: whatever she can meet, She spreads, and is the fame of every 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 prayer can bind her, no excuse appease. Th' unmanner'd malefactor is arraign'd; But first the master, who the cur maintain'd, Must feel the scourge: by night she leaves her bed, By night her bathing equipage is led, That marching armies a less noise create; She moves in tumult, and she sweats in state. Meanwhile, her guests their appetites must keep ; Some gape for hunger, and some gasp for sleep. At length she comes, all flush'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 sour savour nauseates every nose. She drinks again: again she spews a lake; Her wretched husband sees, and dares not speak: But mutters many a curse against his wife; And damns himself for choosing such a life.

But of all the plagues, the greatest is untold;
The book-learn'd wife in Greek and Latin bold.
The critic dame, who at her table sits:
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 suit ;
Nay, every other female tongue is mute.

Hammers, and beating anvils, you would swear,
And Vulcan with his whole militia there.
Tabors and trumpets cease; for she alone
Is able to redeem the labouring Moon.
Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long:
But she, who has no continence of tongue,
Should walk in breeches, and should wear a beard;
And mix among the philosophic herd.

O what a midnight curse has he, whose side
Is pester'd with a 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, distinctly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle, grows;
Corrects her country-neighbour; and, a-bed,
For breaking Priscian's, breaks her husband's head.
The gaudy gossip, when she's set agog,
In jewels drest, and at each ear a bob,
Goes flaunting out, and, in her trim of pride,
Thinks all she says or does is justify'd.
When poor, she's scarce a tolerable evil;
But rich, and fine, a wife's a very devil.

She duly, once a month, renews her face;
Meantime, it lies in dawb, and hid in grease;
Those are the husband's nights; she craves her due,
He takes fat kisses, and is stuck with glue.
But to the lov'd adulterer when she steers,
Fresh from the bath, in brightness she appears:
For him the rich Arabia sweats her gum;
And precious oils from distant Indies come:
How haggardly soe'er she looks at home.
Th' eclipse then vanishes; and all her face
Is open'd, and restor❜d to every grace,
The crust remov'd, her cheeks as smooth as silk,
Are polish'd with a wash of asses' milk;
And should she to the farthest north be sent,
A train of these attend her banishment.
But hadst thou seen her plaister'd up before,
'Twas so unlike a face, it seem'd a sore.

'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 slack, Or counterfeited sleep, and turn'd his back, Next day, be sure, the servants go to wrack. The chamber-maid and dresser are call'd whores; The page is stript, and beaten out of doors. The whole house suffers for the master's crime: And he himself is warn'd, to wake another time.

She hires tormentors by the year, she treats Her visitors, and talks; but still she beats. Beats while she paints her face, surveys her gown, Casts 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 such a proud, insulting dame, Sicilian tyrants may renounce their name. For, if she hastes abroad to take the air, Or goes to Isis' church (the bawdy-house of prayer) She hurries all her handmaids to the task; Her head, alone, will twenty dressers ask. Psecas, the chief, with breast and shoulders bare, Trembling, considers every sacred hair; If any straggler from his rank be found, A pinch must, for the mortal sin, compound. Psecas is not in fault: but, in the glass, The dame's offended at her own ill face. The maid is banish'd; and another girl, More dextrous, manages the comb and curl;

One of that hue, that, should he cross the way,
His omen would discolour all the day.

I pass the foundling by, a race unknown,
At doors expos'd, whom matrons make their own:
And into noble families advance

A uaineless issue, the blind work of chance.
Indulgent Fortune does her care employ,
And, smiling, broods upon the naked boy:
Her garment spreads, and laps him in the fold,
And covers, with her wings, from nightly cold:
Gives him her blessing; puts him in a way;
Sets up the farce, and laughs at her own play.
liim she promotes; she favours him alone,
And makes provision for him, as her own.

The craving wife the force of magic tries,
And philtres for th' unable husband buys:
The potion works not on the part design'd;
But turns his brains, and stupities his mind.
The sotted moon-calf gapes, and staring on,
Sees his own business by another done:
A long oblivion, a benumbing frost,
Constrains his head; and yesterday is lost:
Some nimbler juice would make him foam and rave,
Like that Cæsonia to her Caius gave:
Who, plucking from the forehead of the fole
His mother's love, infus'd it in the bowl:
The boiling blood ran hissing in his veins,
Till the mad vapour mounted to his braius.
The thunderer was not half so much on fire,
When Juno's girdle kindled his desire.
What woman will not use the poisoning trade,
When Cæsar's wife the precedent has made?
Let Agrippina's mushroom be forgot,
Giv'n to a slavering, old, unuseful sot;
That only clos'd the driveling dotard's eyes,
And sent his godhead downward to the skies.
But this fierce potion calls for fire and sword;
Nor spares the common, when it strikes the lord.
So many mischiefs were in one combin'd;
So much one single poisoner cost mankind.

If stepdames seek their sons-in-law to kill, 'Tis venial trespass; let them have their will: But let the child, entrusted to the care Of his own mother, of her bread beware: Beware the food she reaches with her hand; The morsel is intended for thy land. The tutor be thy taster, ere thou eat; There's poison in thy drink, and in thy meat. You think this feign'd; the Satire in a rage Struts in the buskins of the tragic stage, Forgets his business is to laugh and bite: And will of deaths and dire revenges write. Would it were all a fabic, that you read; But Drymon's wife pleads guilty to the deed. "I," she confesses, "in the fact was caught, Two sons dispatching at one deadly draught." "What two! two sons, thou viper, in one day!" "Yes, seven," she cries, if seven were in my Medea's legend is no more a lye; One age adds credit to antiquity. Great ills, we grant, in former times did reign, And murders then were done but not for gain. Less admiration to great crimes is due, Which they thro' wrath, or thro' revenge, pursue. For, weak of reason, impotent of will, The sex is hurry'd headlong into il: And, like a cliff from its foundation torn, By raging earthquakes, into seas is borne. But those are ficuds, who crimes from thought And, cool in mischief, meditate the sin.

[way!"

[begin:

THE TENTH SATIRE OF

JUVENAL.

THE ARGUMENT.

Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good; or, knowing it, pursue.
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears
So well design'd, so luckily begun,
But, when we have our wish, we wish undone

Whole houses, of their whole desires possest,
Are often ruin'd, at their own request.
In wars, and peace, things hurtful we require,
When made obnoxious to our own desire.

With laurels some have fatally been crown'd; Some, who the depths of eloquence have found, In that unnavigable stream were drown'd.

The brawny fool, who did his vigour boast; In that presuming confidence was lost: But more have been by avarice opprest, And heaps of money crowded in the chest: Unwieldy sums of wealth, which higher mount Than files of marshall'd figures can account. To which the stores of Croesus, in the scale, Would look like little dolphins, when they sail In the vast shadow of the British whale.

For this, in Nero's arbitrary time, When virtue was a guilt, and wealth a crime, A troop of cut-throat guards were sent to seize The rich mens' goods, and gut their palaces: The mob, commission'd by the government, Are seldom to an empty garret sent.