ngings, or close hid and trussed upon an
unbound faggot, it is more pleasing to the Cyprian goddess, and to me also
--I speak this without prejudice to any better or more sound opinion--than
to perform that culbusting art after the Cynic manner, in the view of the
clear sunshine, or in a rich tent, under a precious stately canopy, within
a glorious and sublime pavilion, or yet on a soft couch betwixt rich
curtains of cloth of gold, without affrightment, at long intermediate
respites, enjoying of pleasures and delights a bellyfull, at all great
ease, with a huge fly-flap fan of crimson satin and a bunch of feathers of
some East-Indian ostrich serving to give chase unto the flies all round
about; whilst, in the interim, the female picks her teeth with a stiff
straw picked even then from out of the bottom of the bed she lies on. If
you be not content with this my exposition, are you of the mind that my
wife will suck and sup me up as people use to gulp and swallow oysters out
of the shell? or as the Cilician women, according to the testimony of
Dioscorides, were wont to do the grain of alkermes? Assuredly that is an
error. Who seizeth on it, doth neither gulch up nor swill down, but takes
away what hath been packed up, catcheth, snatcheth, and plies the play of
hey-pass, repass.

The fourth article doth imply that my wife will flay me, but not all. O
the fine word! You interpret this to beating strokes and blows. Speak
wisely. Will you eat a pudding? Sir, I beseech you to raise up your
spirits above the low-sized pitch of earthly thoughts unto that height of
sublime contemplation which reacheth to the apprehension of the mysteries
and wonders of Dame Nature. And here be pleased to condemn yourself, by a
renouncing of those errors which you have committed very grossly and
somewhat perversely in expounding the prophetic sayings of the holy sibyl.
Yet put the case (albeit I yield not to it) that, by the instigation of the
devil, my wife should go about to wrong me, make me a cuckold downwards to
the very breech, disgrace me otherwise, steal my goods from me, yea, and
lay violently her hands upon me;--she nevertheless should fail of her
attempts and not attain to the proposed end of her unreasonable
undertakings. The reason which induceth me hereto is grounded totally on
this last point, which is extracted from the profoundest privacies of a
monastic pantheology, as good Friar Arthur Wagtail told me once upon a
Monday