As one cut out to pass your tricks on,
With fulhams of poetic fiction:
I rather hop'd I should no more
Hear from you o' th' gallanting score;
For hard dry-bastings us'd to prove645
The readiest remedies of love,
Next a dry diet; but if those fail,
Yet this uneasy loop-hol'd jail,
In which y' are hamper'd by the fetlock,
Cannot but put y' in mind of wedlock: 650
Wedlock, that's worse than any hole here,
If that may serve you for a cooler,
T' allay your mettle, all agog
Upon a wife, the heavier clog.
Nor rather thank your gentler fate, 655
That, for a bruis'd or broken pate,
Has freed you from those hanks that grow,
Much harder, on the marry'd brow:
But if no dread can cool your courage,
From vent'ring on that dragon, marriage; 660
Yet give me quarter, and advance
To nobler aims your puissance;
Level at beauty and at wit;
The fairest mark is easiest hit.
Quoth Hudibras, I am beforehand 665
In that already, with your command;
Por where does beauty and high wit
But in your constellation meet?
Quoth she, What does a match imply,
But likeness and equality? 670
I know you cannot think me fit
To be th' yokefellow of your wit;
Nor take one of so mean deserts,
To be the partner of your parts;
- ↑ That is, with cheats or impositions. Fulham was a cant word for a false dice, many of them, as it is supposed, being made at that place. The high dice were loaded so as to come up 4, 5, 6, and the low ones 1, 2, 3.
"For gourd and fullam holds," says Pistol,
'And high and low beguile the rich and poor.'
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. sc. 3.
And Cleveland says; "Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fulhams."
