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PDFBut bravely scorning to defile
My sword with feeble blood and vile,
I judg’d it better from a quick-
Set hedge to cut a knotted stick,
With which I furiously laid on 305
Till, in a harsh and doleful tone,
It roar’d, O hold for pity, Sir
I am too great a sufferer,
Abus’d, as you have been, b’ a witch,
But conjur’d into a worse caprich; 310
Who sends me out on many a jaunt,
Old houses in the night to haunt,
For opportunities t’ improve
Designs of thievery or love;
With drugs convey’d in drink or meat, 315
All teats of witches counterfeit;
Kill pigs and geese with powder’d glass,
And make it for enchantment pass;
With cow-itch meazle like a leper,
And choak with fumes of guiney pepper; 320
Make leachers and their punks with dewtry,
Commit fantastical advowtry;
Bewitch
Stark staring mad with manicon;
Believe mechanick Virtuosi 325
Can raise ’em mountains in POTOSI;
And, sillier than the antick fools,
Take treasure for a heap of coals:
Seek out for plants with signatures,
To quack of universal cures: 330
With figures ground on panes of glass
Make people on their heads to pass;
And mighty heaps of coin increase,
Reflected from a single piece,
To draw in fools, whose nat’ral itches 335
Incline perpetually to witches;
And keep me in continual fears,
And danger of my neck and ears;
When less delinquents have been scourg’d,
And hemp on wooden anvil forg’d, 340
Which others for cravats have worn
About their necks, and took a turn.
I pity’d the sad punishment
The wretched caitiff underwent,
And left my drubbing of his bones,
345
Too great an honour for pultrones;
For Knights are bound to feel no blows
From paultry and unequal foes,
Who, when they slash, and cut to pieces,
Do all with civilest addresses:
350
Their horses never give a blow,
But when they make a leg, and bow.
I therefore spar’d his flesh, and prest him
About the witch with many a. question.
Quoth he, For many years he drove
355
A kind of broking-trade in love;
Employ’d in all th’ intrigues, and trust
Of feeble, speculative lust:
Procurer to th’ extravagancy,
And crazy ribaldry of fancy,
360
By those the Devil had forsook,
As things below him to provoke.
But b’ing a virtuoso, able
To smatter, quack, and cant, and dabble,
He held his talent most adroit
365
For any mystical exploit;
As others of his tribe had done,
