CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
291
And has a smack of ev'ry one,
So love does, and has ever done; 650
And therefore, though 'tis ne'er so fond,[1]
Takes strangely to the vagabond.
'Tis but an ague that's reverst,
Whose hot fit takes the patient first,
That after burns with cold as much 655
As iron in Greenland does the touch;[2]
Melts in the furnace of desire,
Like glass, that's but the ice of fire;
And when his heat of fancy's over,
Becomes as hard and frail a lover:[3] 660
For when he's with love-powder laden,
And prim'd and cock'd by Miss or Madam,
The smallest sparkle of an eye
Gives fire to his artillery,
And off the loud oaths go, but, while 665
They're in the very act, recoil:
Hence 'tis so few dare take their chance
Without a sep'rate maintenance;
And widows, who have try'd one lover,
Trust none again 'till they 've made over;[4] 670
Or if they do, before they marry,
The foxes weigh the geese they carry;[5]
So love does, and has ever done; 650
And therefore, though 'tis ne'er so fond,[1]
Takes strangely to the vagabond.
'Tis but an ague that's reverst,
Whose hot fit takes the patient first,
That after burns with cold as much 655
As iron in Greenland does the touch;[2]
Melts in the furnace of desire,
Like glass, that's but the ice of fire;
And when his heat of fancy's over,
Becomes as hard and frail a lover:[3] 660
For when he's with love-powder laden,
And prim'd and cock'd by Miss or Madam,
The smallest sparkle of an eye
Gives fire to his artillery,
And off the loud oaths go, but, while 665
They're in the very act, recoil:
Hence 'tis so few dare take their chance
Without a sep'rate maintenance;
And widows, who have try'd one lover,
Trust none again 'till they 've made over;[4] 670
Or if they do, before they marry,
The foxes weigh the geese they carry;[5]
- ↑ In the edition of 1678, "ere so fond."
- ↑ Metals, if applied to the flesh, in very cold climates, occasion extreme pain. This well-known fact is occasioned by the rapid and excessive abstraction of caloric from the flesh; just as a burn is by the rapid and excessive communication of it. Virgil, in his Georgics, I. 92, speaks of cold as burning. Some years ago, we believe in 1814, a report ran through the newspapers that a boy, putting his tongue, out of bravado, to the iron of Menai bridge, when the cold was below zero, found it adhere so violently, that it could not be withdrawn without surgical aid, and the loss of part of it.
- ↑ That is, becomes as hard and frail as glass: for after being melted in the furnace of desire, he congeals like melted glass, which, when the heat is over, is not unlike ice.
- ↑ Made over their property, in trust, to a third person for their sole and separate use.
- ↑ Sir Kenelm Digby, in his Treatise on Bodies, chap. 36, § 38, relates this story of the fox.
used to say that he remembered not only what men, but what plants and what animals, his soul had passed through. And Empedocles declared of himself, that he had been first a boy, then a girl, then a plant, then a bird, then a fish.
