SPOKEN BY LIMBERHAM.
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beg a boon, that, ere you all disband,Some one would take my bargain off my hand:To keep a punk is but a common evil;To find her false, and marry,--that's the devil.Well, I ne'er acted part in all my life,But still I was fobbed off with some such wife.I find the trick; these poets take no pityOf one that is a member of the city.We cheat you lawfully, and in our trades;You cheat us basely with your common jades.Now I am married, I must sit down by it;But let me keep my dear-bought spouse in quiet.Let none of you damned Woodalls of the pit,Put in for shares to mend our breed in wit;We know your bastards from our flesh and blood,Not one in ten of yours e'er comes to good.In all the boys, their fathers' virtues shine,But all the female fry turn Pugs--like mine.When these grow up, Lord, with what rampant gaddersOur counters will be thronged, and roads with padders!This town two bargains has, not worth one farthing,--A Smithfield horse, and wife of Covent-Garden[1]. Footnote:1. Alluding to an old proverb, that whoso goes to Westminster for awife, to St Paul's for a man, and to Smithfield for a horse, maymeet with a whore, a knave, and a jade. Falstaff, on being informedthat Bardolph is gone to Smithfield to buy him a horse, observes,"I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield; anI could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, andwived." _Second Part of Henry IV._ Act I. Scene II. * * * * *
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