Page:Poor Robin's True Character of a Schold - 1678.djvu/9

Rh In a word, (for I perceive our character begins to be infected with the contagious talkativeness of its subject) a virulent scold is her neighbour's perpetual disquiet, her families evil genius, her husband's ruin, and her own daily tormentor: And that you may the better know her pedigree, I'll give you a serious account of the receipt or method made use of for her production into the world, lately found in a long-concealed manuscript of Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, as follows: viz.

That nature long since finding many of her sons oft-times bewitched to their own ruin by the charms of women, for their punishment contrived this monster called A Scold: to form which,

She first took of the tongues and galls of bulls, bears, wolves, magpies, parrots, cuckoos, and nightingales, of each a like number: The tongues and tails of vipers, adders, snakes and lizards, seven apiece: aurum fulminans aqua fortis and gunpowder, of each one pound: the clappers of nineteen bells, and the pestles of a dozen apothecaries' mortars. Which being all mixed, she calcined in Mount Strombelo and dissolved the ashes in a water distilled just under London bridge at three quarters' flood, and filtrated it through the leaves of Calepino's Dictionary,