A Second Burlesque LETTER written for a Friend, suppos'd to be a CUCKOLD'S GHOST, coming from Hell, and answering a Satyr of STUM CLARET his Brother Vintner; With a Conjugal Reprimand to SALACIA his late Mournful WIDOW.

IN Limbo where there loudly howls
Cuckolds, and Cuckold makers Souls,
Where Courtiers with their Wealth and Wits
Are dam'd as well as snivelling Cits;
And Lady fair, with shape Divine,
Are rank'd with Ioan that milk'd the Kine.
Where Country Knight, and Country Clown,
Esquire and Plowmen are all one;
To shew all Fools whom Pride does seize,
Hell and the Grave know no degrees;
There is a dismal smoaky hole,
The Cell of many a wretched Soul,
[Page 146]13 Whose sin of Marriage was occasion
Of his remediless Damnation.
A Crue of Ghosts infest this place,
Pale Monsters of so strange a Race,
That tortur'd Imps this Cavern shun,
As far more dreadful than their own,
Round a blew fire compos'd of Souls,
Of Rampant Wives instead of Coals,
Poor Cockolds come, and fry by turns,
And thump each other with their Horns,
Like Rutting Deer, with Antlets large,
Or Rams they vigorously charge,
Doom'd to this kind of Punishment,
For giving an ill President;
And changing blessed single Life,
For that perpetual Plague a Wife,
From this forlorn Eternal Grave,
Which Belzebub calls Cuckolds Cave,
This Melancholly Brimstone Bed,
I come to answer Tory Ned,
[Page 147]33 And school a Woman that Surprizes,
Nay quite out-does all Hell with vices:
But first, Dull Ghost, how can it be,
That thou shouldst dare to lash at me,
With thy late senceless Poetry.
Thou hast in Hell, I'm sure, thy share,
If Devils can shew Justice there,
For every deadly Sin of thine,
Millions against thy head Combine
Whom thou hast poyson'd with dam'd Wine,
And though I'm with these Horns made rich,
For marrying a Salacious B—
Shake thine and mine in Bag together,
You'll find there's Chastity in neither;
Thine would have fear'd no Tongues reproach,
For setting of her Cask a broach,
Had not Age cool'd her by degrees,
And sunk the Liquor to the Lees,
Then what a Plague make thee a roaring,
And scribling on my Fubses whoring;
[Page 148]53 For were she in her Fame as Odious,
As the lewd Wife of Cesar Claudius,
That twenty five one Morning try'd,
Yet went away unsatisfi'd;
Or pos'd the World in these lewd times
With a new Catalogue of Crimes,
She in the vicious Mystery
Could ne'er out-do thy Wife and thee;
The cause of all her Crimes have been,
Because to thee she's near of Kin,
She might have prov'd a hopeful piece
Had she not chanc'd to be thy Neice;
For as in Cocks of Game there is
A Metal which can never miss,
Where if the Breed be true, not one,
Shall ever leave the Pit and Run:
So 'tis in Kindred understood,
Vertue and Vices run i'th Blood,
And Whores and Rogues from each Relation,
Descend to th' twentieth Generation;
[Page 149]73 If this be true, thou wretched Ghost,
How didst thou dare to leave thy Post,
When thou wert bottling Molten Lead,
Which is in Hell thy daily Trade,
As punishment for many a Cheat,
Done in thy Transitory State,
To Dam thy self by Poetry
Upon Agario and me?
Thy haggard Genius vilely spends
Her Heat, for know, as Fate intends
Cuckolds are always made by friends,
'Tis your friend still that tops your Spouse,
For strangers come not to your House,
At least to have acquaintance there,
Like friends familiarly and near,
And I with him am satisfi'd,
In all things that concerns my Bride,
For whether Husbands are or no,
If their Wives itch, it will be so;
[Page 150]92 Therefore leave off, Good Ned, in time,
And tempt no more my Rage in Rhime,
For I Agario's Muse inherit,
And double portion of his Spirit;
And shall so thump thy clodded Brain,
If thou dost dare to write again,
The Devil shall think it an Abuse,
To have in Hell so dam'd a Muse,
And send thee back to mortal Life,
Condemn'd to a worse Plague thy Wife.
And now I talk of Wives, I groan
To think how I must maul my own,
Though ill, I will not let thee use her,
I have a Title to abuse her;
And must long smother'd silence break,
Losers have always leave to speak,
And if that common Rule prevail,
Sure Cuckolds may have leave to rail.
* Oh thou sworn Foe to all my Ease,
Thou curst disturber of my Peace,
[Page 151]112 When living I no rest could have,
Nor now can find it in the Grave,
Thy mischiefs are so manifold,
They have pierc'd through the crumbling Mould,
And rais'd me from the shades agen
To be divulger of thy Sin,
Wast not enough, oh thou Obsceen.
Proud, Salt, Lascivious, Rampant Quean;
That I've endur'd the Countries scorns,
And drawn within my Hat my Horns;
And when I've broach'd some Hogshead new,
Have seen some other Tapping you;
Yet small account o' th' Object made,
Believing 'twas to force a Trade:
Have I not hid my Patient Noddle,
When Bully Rock has call'd for Bottle,
And took you to some inner Room,
To beat a March upon your Drum?
Nay, to complete thy nauseous Crimes,
When friend Agario came sometimes;
[Page 152]132 When thou with flattering Smiles hast met him,
And thy Mouth water'd to be at him;
I like a Man that knew good breeding,
Have slipt away no matters heeding,
Because a Friend of him we made,
And for each kiss he soundly paid,
And canst thou be a base Detractor,
Of one so much thy benefactor,
And with dam'd Female spite decry,
One that knew all as oft as I,
That did our Family such good,
And was so free t' amend our Blood;
To us and to our Son, Pox Rot him,
Was full as kind as if he got him,
Though a true Rogue as ever twang'd,
And will in all due time be hang'd,
For to what end can he be brought,
That by thy Morals has been taught;
And canst thou, worse than Fiend of Hell,
Thou Jilt incomprehensible;
[Page 153]152 Canst thou forswear things plain as light,
Nay things unquestionably right,
And does not Pillory plague thy Mind
With loss of Ears which wretches find,
That are in spite of Conscience blind;
Plain is thy Sexes vice by thee,
Made obvious to Posterity:
That when a Woman once grows Lewd,
No Art can turn her back to good,
The spreading Seed has taken root,
And spite of Industry will shoot,
Our wholsome grain we vainly sow,
Spite of our Art the Tares will grow,
And gay and flourishing appear,
As if the Devil had sow'd 'em there;
No Women of the former times
Arriv'd to know thy heighth of Crimes,
Thy falshood, baseness, Perjury,
Ingratitude and Villany,
Were never known in this degree;
[Page 154]172 For had the Scripture e'er exprest,
A Woman with thy Devils possest,
Our Saviour would have been in doubt
Whether his Power could cast'em out,
The Herd of Swine had been too small,
And never have contain'd 'em all;
How happy then is that good Man,
That Cloaks thy Sins now I am gone,
That at the Mark still widely shoots,
And wears with pleasure my old Boots,
Or if the truth were plainly found,
The Boots of all the Country round?
Faith if a Cuckold e'er behav'd
Himself with Merit to be sav'd,
Thy Case, poor Fool, is singular,
For thou hast so much Hell from her,
'Tis even pity thou shouldst know
A second Penance here below.
Couldst thou not find, egregious Sot,
Why thou wert married, or for what?
[Page 155]192 Could'st thou be Ignorant of all
The Vermin in her Trap did fall?
And never know 'til 'twas too late,
Thy morsel was but for a Bait;
Or that it was thy noble place
To Father all her spurious Race,
That if she whelp'd a squauling Lad,
The Todpole Imp might call thee Dad;
Although by Men of all degrees.
Compounded like a Chetworth Cheese;
Or was it really thy want,
Brought thee to wed this Widow Saint,
As no one knows a wretches Case,
Except he feels the same distress,
If so, thou'rt fall'n from bad to worse,
No Poverty is half the Curse
Of him that has to dam his Life,
A Rampant Strumpet for his Wife,
Thus say the Fates, and lastly tell
Thy pretious Mate, that I from Hell,
[Page 156]212 And Fiends that fill each gloomy Room,
Where she at last must surely come,
Ascend to purge each vile Offence,
And urge her to repent her Sins,
With Tears deny what late she swore,
And never henceforth play the Whore;
Else from my melancholly Tomb,
With Troops of Ghosts agen I'll come,
And fiercely drag her hence to slaughter,
Where all her Priests and Holy Water,
With all the Aid and Fopperies they can make,
Shall never have the power to bring her back.

Text

TEI/XML (XML - 708K / ZIP - 49K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 7.9K / ZIP - 4.1K)

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [Harding C 1197 (1)].)

Images

Image #1 (JPEG - 2.8M)
Image #2 (JPEG - 3.1M)
Image #3 (JPEG - 3.0M)
Image #4 (JPEG - 2.9M)
Image #5 (JPEG - 2.8M)
Image #6 (JPEG - 3.1M)
Image #7 (JPEG - 2.7M)
Image #8 (JPEG - 2.9M)
Image #9 (JPEG - 2.9M)
Image #10 (JPEG - 3.0M)
Image #11 (JPEG - 2.8M)
Image #12 (JPEG - 2.8M)

PDF

All Images (PDF - 12M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): A Second Burlesque LETTER written for a Friend, suppos'd to be a CUCKOLD'S GHOST, coming from Hell, and answering a Satyr of STUM CLARET his Brother Vintner; With a Conjugal Reprimand to SALACIA his late Mournful WIDOW.

Author: Thomas D'Urfey

Themes:

Genres:

Text view / Document view

Source edition

D'Urfey, Thomas, 1653-1723. New poems, consisting of satyrs, elegies, and odes together with a choice collection of the newest court songs set to musick by the best masters of the age / all written by Mr. D'Urfey. London: Printed for J. Bullord ... and A. Roper ..., 1690, pp. 145-156. [16],207,[1]p. (ESTC R17889) (Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [Harding C 1197 (1)].)

Editorial principles

Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

A Second Burlesque LETTER written for a Friend, suppos'd to be a CUCKOLD'S GHOST, coming from Hell, and answering a Satyr of STUM CLARET his Brother Vintner; With a Conjugal Reprimand to SALACIA his late Mournful WIDOW.

Text

Facsimile (Source Edition)

Images

PDF

About this text

Source edition

Editorial principles

Other works by Thomas D'Urfey

Phonological layer

Morphological layer

Syntactic layer

Semantic layer

Pragmatic layer