"And, after all, to crown my spleen, I By Dr. SHERIDAN. Written in the Year 1731. often try'd in vain to find A fimile for woman-kind, A fimile I mean to fit 'em,' In every circumftance to hit 'em. Through Through every beaft and bird I went, And, after peeping through all nature Clouds turn with ev'ry wind about, So when th' alarum-bell is rung, • XANTI, a nick-name for, XANTIPPE, that fcold of glorious memory, who never let poor SOCRATES have one moment's peace of mind, yet with unexampled patience he bore her peftilential tongue. I fhall beg the ladies pardon, if I infert a few paffages concerning her; and at the fame time I affure them, it is not to leffen The The husband dreads its loudness more. Than light’ning's flash, or thunder's roar. Clouds weep, as they do, without pain, And what are tears but womens rain? The clouds about the welkin roam, The clouds build caftles in the air, him how he could bear the Being asked another time by a friend, how he could bear her tongue, he faid, he was of this ufe to him, that the taught him to bear the impertinences of others with more eafe when he went abroad. Plut de capiend. ex hoft. utilit. SOCRATES invited hisfriend EUTHYDEMUS to fupper; XANTIPPE in great rage went in to them, and overlet the table; EUTHYDEMUS rifing in a paffion to go off, My dear friend stay, faid SOCRA TES; did not a hen do the fame thing at your house the other day, and did I fhew any refentment? Pluț. de ira cohibenda: I could give many more inftances of her termagancy, and his philosophy, if fuch a proceeding might not look as if I were glad of an opportunity to expofe the fair fex; but, to fhew I have no fuch defign, I declare,that I had much worfe ftories to tell of her behaviour to her husband, which I rather paffed over, on account of the great esteem which I bear the ladies, especially thofe in the honourable ftation of matrimony. A cloud A cloud is light by turns, and dark, Though in thedarkeftdumps you view'em, The clouds delight in gaudy show, Obferve the clouds in pomp array'd, U 4 Are they not fuch another fight, The clouds delight to change their Dear ladies, be not in a paffion, Who flaunts about in * borrow'd lace. Grave matrons are like clouds of fnow, Their words fall thick, and foft and flow, While brifk coquets, like rattling hail, Our ears on ev'ry fide affail. Clouds, when they intercept our fight, Deprive us of celestial light: *Not Flanders lace, but gold and filver lace. By borrowed, is meant fuch as run in honeft tradefmen's debts for what they were not able to pay, as many of them did for French filver lace againft the laft birth-day. Vid. the Shopkeepers books. So |