'Tis like that sturdy thief that stole,
And dragg'd beasts backward into's hole;[1]430
So love does lovers, and us men
Draws by the tails into his den,
That no impression may discover,
And trace t' his cave, the wary lover.
But if you doubt I should reveal 435
What you intrust me under seal,[2]
I'll prove myself as close and virtuous
As your own secretary, Albertus.[3]
Quoth she, I grant you may be close
In hiding what your aims propose: 440
Love-passions are like parables,
By which men still mean something else:
Tho' love be all the world's pretence,
Money's the mythologic sense,[4]
The real substance of the shadow, 445
Which all address and courtship's made to.
Thought he, I understand your play,
And how to quit you your own way;
He that will win his dame, must do
As Love does, when he bends his bow; 450
With one hand thrust the lady from,
And with the other pull her home.[5]
I grant, quoth he, wealth is a great
Provocative to am'rous beat:
- ↑ Cacus, the noted robber, when he had stolen cattle, drew them backward by their tails into his den, lest their tracks should lead to the discovery of them. See Virgil, Æneid. viii. 205. Also Addison's Works (Bohn), v. 220.
- ↑ There is, no doubt, an allusion here to the obligation of secrecy, on the part of the confessor, respecting the confession of penitents, except in the ease of crimes; which was also enjoined upon ministers of the English Church, by the 113th Canon of 1603.
- ↑ Albertus Magnus, Bp of Ratisbon about 1260, wrote a book, De Secretis Mulierum; whence the poet facetiously calls him woman's secretary.
- ↑ Grey says this is illustrated in the story of Inkle aud Yarico. Spectator, XI.
- ↑ The Harleian Miscellany, vol. vi. p. 530, describes an interview between Perkin Warbeck and Lady Katharine Gordon, which illustrates this kind of dalliance. "With a kind of reverence: and fashionable gesture, after he had kissed her thrice, he took her in both his hands, crosswise, and gazed upon her, with a kind of putting her from him and pulling her to
