298
HUDIBRAS.
[PART III.
To whom it is as necessary
As to be born and breathe, to marry;
So universal, all mankind 815
In nothing else is of one mind:
For in what stupid age, or nation,
Was marriage ever out of fashion?
Unless among the Amazons,[1]
Or cloister'd friars and vestal nuns, 820
Or Stoics, who, to bar the freaks
And loose excesses of the sex,
Prepost'rously would have all women
Turn'd up to all the world in common;[2]
Tho' men would find such mortal feuds 825
In sharing of their public goods,
'Twould put them to more charge of lives,
Than they're supply'd with now by wives;
Until they graze, and wear their clothes,
As beasts do, of their native growths:[3] 830
For simple wearing of their horns
Will not suffice to serve their turns.
For what can we pretend t' inherit,
Unless the marriage deed will bear it?
Could claim no right to lands or rents, 835
But for our parents' settlements;
Had been but younger sons o' th' earth,
Debarr'd it all, but for our birth.[4]
What honours, or estates of peers,
Could be preserv'd but by their heirs? 840
And what security maintains
Their right and title, but the banns?
As to be born and breathe, to marry;
So universal, all mankind 815
In nothing else is of one mind:
For in what stupid age, or nation,
Was marriage ever out of fashion?
Unless among the Amazons,[1]
Or cloister'd friars and vestal nuns, 820
Or Stoics, who, to bar the freaks
And loose excesses of the sex,
Prepost'rously would have all women
Turn'd up to all the world in common;[2]
Tho' men would find such mortal feuds 825
In sharing of their public goods,
'Twould put them to more charge of lives,
Than they're supply'd with now by wives;
Until they graze, and wear their clothes,
As beasts do, of their native growths:[3] 830
For simple wearing of their horns
Will not suffice to serve their turns.
For what can we pretend t' inherit,
Unless the marriage deed will bear it?
Could claim no right to lands or rents, 835
But for our parents' settlements;
Had been but younger sons o' th' earth,
Debarr'd it all, but for our birth.[4]
What honours, or estates of peers,
Could be preserv'd but by their heirs? 840
And what security maintains
Their right and title, but the banns?
- ↑ The Amazons, according to the old mythological stories, avoided marriage and permitted no men to live amongst them, nevertheless held periodical intercourse with them. The vestals were under a vow of perpetual chastity.
- ↑ Diogenes asserted that marriage was nothing but an empty name. And Zeno, the father of the Stoics, maintained that all women ought to be common, that no words were obscene, and no parts of the body need be covered.
- ↑ i. e. such intercommunity of women would be productive of the worst consequences, unless mankind were reduced to the most barbarous state of nature, and men became altogether brutes.
- ↑ If there had been no matrimony, we should have had no provision made for us by our forefathers; but, like younger children of our primitive parent the earth, should have been excluded from every possession.
