To lay their native arms aside,
Their modesty, and ride astride;[1] 390
To run a-tilt at men, and wield
Their naked tools in open field;
As stout Armida, bold Thalestris,[2]
And she that would have been the mistress
Of Gondibert, but he had grace, 395
And rather took a country lass:[3]
They say 'tis false, without all sense
But of pernicious consequence
To government, which they suppose
Can never be upheld in prose;[4] 400
Strip nature naked to the skin,
You'll find about her no such thing.
It may be so, yet what we tell
Of Trulla, that's improbable,
Shall be deposed by those have seen't, 405
Or, what's as good, produced in print;[5]
And if they will not take our word,
We'll prove it true upon record.
The upright Cerdon next advanc't,[6]
Of all his race the valiant'st; 410
Cerdon the Great, renown'd in song,
Like Herc'les, for repair of wrong:
He raised the low, and fortified
The weak against the strongest side.[7]
- ↑ Camden says that Anne, wife of Richard II., daughter of the Emperor Charles IV., taught the English women the present mode of riding, about the year 1388; before which time they rode astride. And Gower, in a poem dated 1394, describing a company of ladies on horseback, says, "everich one ride on side."
- ↑ Two formidable women-at-arms, in romances, that were cudgelled into love by their gallants. See Classical Dictionary.
- ↑ It was the humble Birtha, daughter of the sage Astragon, who supplanted the princess Rhodalind in the affections of Gondibert.
- ↑ Butler loses no opportunity of rallying Sir William Davenant, who, in his preface to Gondibert, endeavours to show that government could not be upheld either by statesmen, divines, lawyers, or soldiers, without the aid of poetry.
- ↑ The vulgar imagine that everything which they see in print must be true.
- ↑ A one-eyed cobbler, and great reformer: there is an equivoque upon the word upright.
- ↑ Meaning that he supplied and pieced the heels, and strengthened a weak sole.
