Do you see this russet?
Doubt not but there lurketh under it some hid property and occult virtue
known to very few in the world. I did not take it on before this morning,
and, nevertheless, am already in a rage of lust, mad after a wife, and
vehemently hot upon untying the codpiece-point; I itch, I tingle, I
wriggle, and long exceedingly to be married, that, without the danger of
cudgel-blows, I may labour my female copes-mate with the hard push of a
bull-horned devil. O the provident and thrifty husband that I then will
be! After my death, with all honour and respect due to my frugality, will
they burn the sacred bulk of my body, of purpose to preserve the ashes
thereof, in memory of the choicest pattern that ever was of a perfectly
wary and complete householder. Cops body, this is not the carpet whereon
my treasurer shall be allowed to play false in his accounts with me, by
setting down an X for a V, or an L for an S. For in that case should I
make a hail of fisticuffs to fly into his face. Look upon me, sir, both
before and behind,--it is made after the manner of a toga, which was the
ancient fashion of the Romans in time of peace. I took the mode, shape,
and form thereof in Trajan's Column at Rome, as also in the Triumphant Arch
of Septimus Severus. I am tired of the wars, weary of wearing buff-coats,
cassocks, and hoquetons. My shoulders are pitifully worn and bruised with
the carrying of harness. Let armour cease, and the long robe bear sway!
At least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding year, if I be
married; as yesterday, by the Mosaic law, you evidenced. In what
concerneth the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that
the breeches were only ordained for the use of the codpiece, and to no
other end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give credit to
every whit, as well as to the saying of the fine fellow Galen, who in his
ninth book, Of the Use and Employment of our Members, allegeth that the
head was made for the eyes. For nature might have placed our heads in our
knees or elbows, but having beforehand determined that the eyes should
serve to discover things from afar, she for the better enabling them to
execute their designed office, fixed them in the head, as on the top of a
long pole, in the most eminent part of all the body--no otherwise than we
see the phares, or high towers erected in the mouths of havens, that
navigators may the further off perceive wit