WIFE, WIVES-continued.

WIFE, WIVES.

In the election of a wife, as in

A project of war, to err but once is

685

To be undone for ever. Middleton, Anything for a Quiet Life. What thou bidd'st

Unargued I obey; so God ordains :

God is thy law; thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.

Milton, P. L. IV. 634.

Ib. VIII. 450.

Ib. IX. 232.

Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,
Thy wish, exactly to thy heart's desire.
Nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures. Ib. 1x. 267.
When you would give all worldly plagues a name,
Worse than they have already, call 'em wife
But a new married wife's a teeming mischief,
Full of herself. Why what a deal of horror

Has that poor wretch to come, that married yesterday?

I look on wives, as on good dull companions
For elder brothers to sleep out their time with :
All we can hope for in the marriage bed,
Is but to take our rest; and what care I
Who lays my pillow for me.

Otway, Orph.

Dryden, Rival Ladies.

If I but hear wife nam'd, I'm sick that day;

The sound is mortal, and frights life away. Dryden, Aurengz.

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!

Now she's at rest, and so am I. Dryden, suggested Epitaph.

Sometimes my plague, sometimes my darling,
Kissing to-day, to-morrow snarling.

The man to Jove his suit preferr'd;

He begg'd a wife. His prayer was heard.
Jove wonder'd at his bold addressing:
For how precarious is the blessing!
Beauty and worth in her alike contend,
To charm the fancy, and to fix the mind;
In her, my wife, my mistress, and my friend,
I taste the joys of sense and reason join'd.

Prior.

Gay, Fable 39.

Hammond.

WIFE, WIVES-continued.
Lycoris of her friends still makes an end:
I would she were to my wife such a friend.

Martial, Iv. 24 (Wright).

A wife becomes the truest, tend'rest friend,
The balm of comfort, and the source of joy!
Thro' every various turn of life the same.

spare

Savage, Sir Thomas Overbury. What so pure, which envious tongues will Some wicked wits have libell'd all the fair, With matchless impudence they style a wife, The dear-bought curse, and lawful plague of life; A bosom serpent, a domestic evil,

A night invasion, and a mid-day devil;

Let not the wise these sland'rous words regard,

But curse the bones of ev'ry living bard. Pope, Jan. & May, 43.

Horses (thou say'st) and asses men may try,
And ring suspected vessels ere they buy;
But wives, a random choice, untried they take;
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake;
Then, nor till then, the veil 's removed away,

And all the woman glares in open day. Pope, Wife of Bath, 101.
Who builds his house on sands,

Pricks his blind horse across the fallow lands,

Or lets his wife abroad with pilgrims roam,

Deserves a fool's-cap and long ears at home. Pope, Ib. 247.

Is't not enough plagues, wars, and famines, rise

To lash our crimes, but must our wives be wise?

What is there in the vale of life

Half so delightful as a wife,

When friendship, love, and peace combine

Young, L. F. sat. 5.

To stamp the marriage bond divine ? Cowper, Love Abused.

Lord Erskine, on woman presuming to rail,

Calls a wife

66

a tin canister tied to one's tail;"

And fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on,
Seems hurt at his lordship's degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? consider'd aright,

A canister's polish'd, and useful, and bright;
And should dirt its original purity hide,

That's the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.

Sheridan.

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,

He would have written sonnets all his life. Byron, D. J. 111. 8.

WIFE, WIVES-WILFULNESS.

WIFE, WIVES—continued.

687

The wife was pretty, trifling, childish, weak;
She could not think, but would not cease to speak.
Crabbe, Struggles of Conscience.

Oh! 't is a precious thing, when wives are dead,

To find such numbers who will serve instead.

And in whatever state a man be thrown,

"Tis that precisely they would wish their own. Ib. Learned Boy.

At home my wife will supervise

Each meal I take. I wish her eyes

Were sometimes touch'd with blindness!
But no-they move not from my plate:
God bless her! how I love, yet hate
Her ever watchful kindness.

"My dear! you know you're bilious-pray
Avoid the turtle soup to-day,

And do not touch the salmon ;
Just take a chicken wing, or leg,

But no rich sauce-and let me beg

You will not taste the gammon."

Horace Smith, Answer to an Old Man's Praise.

The world well tried-the sweetest thing in life
Is the unclouded welcome of a wife.

A courage to endure and to obey

N. P. Willis (Am.).

A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway,
Crown'd Isabel, through all her placid life,
The queen of marriage-a most perfect wife.

A man may spare,

And still be bare,

If his wife be nowt, if his wife be nowt;
But a man may spend,

And have money to lend,

If his wife be owt, if his wife be owt.

Tennyson.

The Gipsy's Rhyme (N. & Q., Feb. 10, 1866).

Of earthly goods, the best is a good wife;

A bad, the bitterest curse of human life.

WILFULNESS.

Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;

Simonides.

For what I will, I will-and there's an end. Sh. Two G. 1. 3.

To wilful men,

Must be their schoolmasters.

The injuries, that they themselves procure,

Sh. Lear, II. 4.

688

WILL-see Argument.

WILL-WIND.

In idle wishes fools supinely stay,
Be there a will, and wisdom finds a way.
WILLINGNESS.

Crabbe, Birth of Flattery.

A willing heart adds feathers to the heel,
And makes the clown a winged Mercury.
WILLOW.

Thou art to all lost love the best,
The only true plant found;

Jo. Baillie, De Montford.

Wherewith young men and maids distrest,
And left of love, are crown'd.

Herrick, Amatory Ode, 108.

Willow's a sentimental wood,
And many sonneteers, to quicken 'em,
A relic kept of that which stood
Before Pope's Tusculum at Twickenham.

Horace Smith, Poet among the Trees.

Tree of the gloom, o'erhanging the tomb,
Thou seem'st to love the churchyard sod;
Thou ever art found on the charnel ground,
Where the laughing and happy have rarely trod,
When thy branches trail to the wintry gale,
Thy wailing is sad to the hearts of men;
When the world is bright in a summer's light,

'Tis only the wretched that love thee then.

The golden moth and the shining bee

Will seldom rest on the willow tree. Eliza Cook, Willow Tree.

WIND.

Except wind stands as never it stood,

It is an ill wind turns none to good.

Thos. Tusser, Moral Reflection on the Wind.

What wind blew you hither, Pistol?

Not the ill wind which blows none to good. Sh. H. IV. 2, v. 3.
Ill blows the wind that profits nobody. Sh. Hen. VI. 3, II.5.
Seas are the fields of combat for the winds;

But when they sweep along some flowery coast,
Their winds move mildly, and their rage is lost.

Dryden, Rival Ladies.
The winds come lightly whispering from the west,
Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene. Byron, Ch. H.11.70.
Many are the notes

Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth,

From rocks, woods, caverns, heath, and dashing shore.

The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Wordsworth.

Kisses the blushing leaf.

Longfellow.

Whose are Windsor and Hampton, the pride of the land, With their treasures and trophies so varied and grand? The Queen's, you reply:

Deuce a bit! you and I

Through their gates, twice a week, making privileg'd way, Tread their gilded saloons,

View their portraits, cartoons,

And, like Crusoe, are monarchs of all we survey.

Horace Smith, Unpossessed Possessions.

WINE-see Drinking, Nectar, Spirits.

O thou invisible spirit of wine! if thou hast

Athenæus, III.

No name to be known by let us call thee devil! Sh. Oth. II. 3.
Three cups of wine a prudent man may take;
The first of them for constitution sake;
The second to the girl he loves the best;
The third, and last, to lull him to his rest.
What cannot wine perform? It brings to light
The secret soul, it bids the coward fight:
Gives being to our hopes, and from our hearts
Drives the dull sorrow, and inspires new arts.
Is there a wretch whom bumpers have not taught

A flow of words, and loftiness of thought?

Even in th' oppressive grasp of poverty

It can enlarge, and bid the soul be free. Horace, Francis, 1, v.23.

So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on

The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
And all the passengers he bore,
Were on the new world set ashore,
He made it next his chief design

To plant, and propagate the vine,

Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd
Far greater numbers, on dry ground,
Of wretched mankind, one by one,

Than all the flood before had done.

Wine fills the veins, and healths are understood
To give our friends a title to our blood.

Wine makes Love forget its care,
And mirth exalts a feast.

Butler, Sat. 2.

Waller.

Parnell, Anacreontic, II.

Gay, Fable 6.

From wine what sudden friendship springs!

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