Quoth she, I've heard old cunning stagers
Say, fools for arguments use wagers.
And though I prais'd your valour, yet
I did not mean to baulk your wit,300
Which, if you have, you must needs know
What, I have told you before now,
And you by experiment have prov'd,
I cannot love where I'm belov'd.
Quoth Hudibras, 'Tis a caprich[1] 305
Beyond the infliction of a witch;
So cheats to play with those still aim,
That do not understand the game.
Love in your heart as idly burns
As fire in antique Roman urns,[2]310
To warm the dead, and vainly light
Those only that see nothing by 't.
Have you not power to entertain,
And render love for love again?
As no man can draw in his breath 315
At once, and force out air beneath.
Or do you love yourself so much
To bear all rivals else a grutch?
What fate can lay a greater curse,
Than you upon yourself would force; 320
For wedlock without love, some say,[3]
Is but a lock without a key.
It is a kind of rape to marry
One that neglects, or cares not for ye:
- ↑ Caprice is here pronounced in the manner of the Italian capriccio.
- ↑ Fortunius Licctus wrote concerning these lamps; and from him Bishop Wilkins quotes largely in his Mathematical Memoirs. In Camden's Description of Yorkshire, a lamp is said to have been found burning in the tomb of Constantius Chlorus. The story of the lamp, in the sepulchre of Tullia, the daughter of Cicero, which was supposed to have burnt above 1500 years, is told by Pancirollus and others. These so-called perpetual lamps of the ancients were probably the spontaneous or accidental combustion of inflammable gases generated in close sepulchres; or the phosphorescence exhibited by animal substances in a state of decomposition.
- ↑ Thus Shakspeare, 1 Henry VI. Act v. sc. 5.
"For what is wedlock forced, but a hell,
An age of discord and continual strife?"
