Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 16

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A Very Woman is a dough-baked man, or a She meant well towards man, but fell two bows short, strength and understanding. Her virtue is the hedge, modesty, that keeps a man from climbing over into her faults. She simpers as if she had no teeth but lips; and she divides her eyes, and keeps half for herself, and gives the other to her neat youth. Being set down, she casts her face into a platform, which dureth the meal, and is taken away with the voider. Her draught reacheth to good manners, not to thirst, and it is a part of their mystery not to profess hunger; but nature takes her in private and stretcheth her upon meat. She is marriageable and fourteen at once, and after she doth not live but tarry. She reads over her face every morning, and sometimes blots out pale and writes red. She thinks she is fair, though many times her opinion goes alone, and she loves her glass and the knight of the sun for lying. She is hid away all but her face, and that's hanged about with toys and devices, like the sign of a tavern, to draw strangers. If she show more she prevents desire, and by too free giving leaves no gift. She may escape from the serving-man, but not from the chambermaid. Her philosophy is a seeming neglect of those that be too good for her. She's a younger brother for her portion, but not for her portion for wit--that comes from her in treble, which is still too big for it; yet her vanity seldom matcheth her with one of her own degree, for then she will beget another creature a beggar, and commonly, if she marry better she marries worse. She gets much by the simplicity of her suitor, and for a jest laughs at him without one. Thus she dresses a husband for herself, and after takes him for his patience, and the land adjoining, ye may see it, in a serving-man's fresh napery, and his leg steps into an unknown stocking. I need not speak of his garters, the tassel shows itself. If she love, she loves not the man, but the best of him. She is Salomon's cruel creature, and a man's walking consumption; every caudle she gives him is a purge. Her chief commendation is, she brings a man to repentance.