ay CARDENIO married.
What then? the Nymph no doubt was young?
She was: but yet--she had a tongue!
Most women have, you seem to say.
I grant it--in a different way.

'Twas not that organ half-divine,
With which, Dear Friend, your spouse or mine,
What time we seek our nightly pillows,
Rebukes our easy peccadilloes:
'Twas not so tuneful, so composing;
'Twas louder and less often dozing;
At _Ombre_, _Basset_, _Loo_, _Quadrille_,
You heard it resonant and shrill;
You heard it rising, rising yet
Beyond SELINDA'S parroquet;
You heard it rival and outdo
The chair-men and the link-boy too;
In short, wherever lungs perform,
Like MARLBOROUGH, it rode the storm.

So uncontrolled it came to be,
CARDENIO feared his _chere amie_
(Like ECHO by _Cephissus_ shore)
Would turn to voice and nothing more.

That ('tis conceded) must be cured
Which can't by practice be endured.
CARDENIO, though he loved the maid,
Grew daily more and more afraid;
And since advice could not prevail
(Reproof but seemed to fan the gale),
A prudent man, he cast about
To find some fitting nostrum out.
What need to say that priceless drug
Had not in any mine been dug?
What need to say no skilful leech
Could check that plethora of speech?
Suffice it, that one lucky day
CARDENIO tried--another way.

A Hermit (there were hermits then;
The most accessible of men!)
Near _Vauxhall's_ sacred shade resided;
In him, at length, our friend confided.
(Simples, for show, he used to sell;
But cast _Nativities_ as well.)
Consulted, he looked wondrous wise;
Then undertook the enterprise.

What that might be, the Muse must spare:
To tell the truth, she was not there.
She scorns to patch what she ignores
With _Similes_ and _Metaphors_;
And so, in short, to change the scene,
She slips a fortnight in between.

Behold our pair then (quite by chance!)
In _Vauxhall's_ garden of romance,--
That paradise of nymphs and grottoes,
Of fans, and fiddles, and ridottoes!
What wonder if, the lamps reviewed,
The song encored, the maze pursued,
No further feat could seem more pat
Than seek the Hermit after that?
Who then more keen her fate to see
Than this, the new LEUCONOE,
On fire to learn the lore forbidden
In Ba