And though some criticks here cry shame,
And say our authors are to blame, 380
That (spite of all philosophers,
Who hold no females stout, but bears;
And heretofore did so abhor
That women should pretend to war,
’They wou’d not suffer the stoutest dame 385
To swear by HERCULES’S name)
Make feeble ladies, in their works,
To fight like termagants and Turks;
To lay their native arms aside,
 Their modesty, and ride astride; 390
 To run a-tilt at men, and wield
 Their naked tools in open field;
 As stout Armida, bold TRALESTRIS,
 And she that wou’d have been the mistress
 Of Gundibert; but he had grace, 395
And rather took a country lass;
They say, ’tis false, without all sense,
But of pernicious consequence
To government, which they suppose
Can never be upheld in prose; 400
Strip nature naked to the skin,
You’ll find about her no such thing. 
It may be so; yet what we tell
Of TRULLA that’s improbable,
Shall be depos’d by those who’ve seen’t, 405
Or, what’s as good, produc’d in print: 
And if they will not take our word,
We’ll prove it true upon record.

The upright CERDON next advanc’t,
Of all his race the valiant’st:  410
CERDON the Great, renown’d in song,
Like HERC’LES, for repair of wrong: 
He rais’d the low, and fortify’d
The weak against the strongest side: 
Ill has he read, that never hit 415
On him in Muses’ deathless writ. 
He had a weapon keen and fierce,
That through a bull-hide shield wou’d pierce,
And cut it in a thousand pieces, 420
Tho’ tougher than the Knight of Greece his,
With whom his black-thumb’d ancestor
Was comrade in the ten years war: 
For when the restless Greeks sat down
So many years before Troy town, 425
And were renown’d, as Homer writes,
For well-soal’d boots no less than fights,
They ow’d that glory only to
His ancestor, that made them so. 
Fast friend he was to reformation, 430
Until ’twas worn quite out of fashion. 
Next rectifier of wry law,
And wou’d make three to cure one flaw. 
Learned he was, and could take note,
Transcribe, collect, translate, and quote. 435
But preaching was his chiefest talent,
Or argument, in which b’ing valiant,
He us’d to lay about and stickle,
Like ram or bull, at conventicle: 
For disputants, like rams and bulls, 440
Do fight with arms that spring from skulls.