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,

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

Things that are never to be known;

F

355

And still appear the more industrious

Το

The more your projects are preposterous; square the circle of the arts,

360

And these are all the mighty pow'rs

You vainly boast to cry down ours,
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

370

By your example, lose that right

375

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 or impounded are confined, until replevied, which means until security be given to answer the distrainer's suit.

V. 13. Your heels degraded of your spurs.] A 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 intreat

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 mendicants, 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 paltry counterfeit

French stones, which in our eyes you set,

But our bright diamonds, that inspire.] Nothing is more common than for lovers to compare their mistresses' eyes to diamonds, their lips to rubies, 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 nations.

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 'tis you

have no way

ť' express

Our charms and graces but by these.] The reason which the widow assigns for men comparing the beauties of their