“My friend” quoth he, “thy cause is good”: 
      He glad away did trudge;
    Anon his wealthy foe did come
      Before this partial judge.

    An hog well fed this churl presents,
      And craves a strain of law;
    The hog received, the poor man’s right
      Was judged not worth a straw.

    Therewith he cried, “O! partial judge,
      Thy doom has me undone;
    When oil I gave, my cause was good,
      But now to ruin run.”

    “Poor man” quoth he, “I thee forgot,
      And see thy cause of foil;
    An hog came since into my house,
      And broke thy pot of oil."_

Will’s Coffee-house, July 15.

The discourse happened this evening to fall upon characters drawn in plays, and a gentleman remarked, that there was no method in the world of knowing the taste of an age, or period of time so good, as by the observations of the persons represented in their comedies.  There were several instances produced, as Ben Jonson’s bringing in a fellow smoking as a piece of foppery;[406] “But,” said the gentleman who entertained us on this subject, “this matter is nowhere so observable as in the difference of the characters of women on the stage in the last age, and in this.  It is not to be supposed that it was a poverty of genius in Shakespeare, that his women made so small a figure in his dialogues; but it certainly is, that he drew women as they then were in life; for that sex had not in those days that freedom in conversation; and their characters were only, that they were mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives.  There were not then among the ladies, shining wits, politicians, virtuosas, free-thinkers, and disputants; nay, there was then hardly such a creature even as a coquette:  but vanity had quite another turn, and the most conspicuous woman at that time of day was only the best housewife.  Were it possible to bring into life an assembly of matrons of that age, and introduce the learned Lady Woodby into their company, they would not believe the same nation could produce a creature so unlike anything they ever saw in it.  But these ancients would be as much astonished to see in the same age so illustrious a pattern to all who love things praiseworthy, as the divine Aspasia.[407] Methinks, I now see her walking in her garden like our first parent, with unaffected charms, before beauty had spectators, and bearing celestial conscious virtue in her aspect.  Her countenance is the lively picture of her mind, which is the seat of honour, truth, compassion, knowledge, and innocence.

    There dwells the scorn of vice and pity too.