Page:Works of Sir John Suckling.djvu/323

Rh you are not to be frighted hither, I hope you are to be persuaded; and if good sermons, or good plays, new braveries, or fresh wit, revels (Madam), masques that are to be, have any rhetoric about them, here they are, I assure you, in perfection, without asking leave of the provinces beyond seas, or the assent of. I write not this that you should think I value these pleasures above those of Milcot; for I must here protest, I prefer the single tabor and pipe in the great hall, far above them; and were there no more belonging to a journey than riding so many miles (would my affairs conspire with my desires) your ladyship should find there, not at the bottom of a letter, ''Madam, Your humble Servant.''

Madam, I thank Heaven we live in an age in which the widows wear colours, and in a country where the women that lose their husbands may be trusted with poison, knives, and all the burning coals in Europe, notwithstanding the precedent of Sophonisba and Portia. Considering the estate you are in now, I should reasonably imagine meaner physicians than Seneca or Cicero might administer comfort. It is so far from me to imagine this accident should surprise you, that, in my opinion, it should not make you wonder, it being not strange at all that a man who hath lived ill all his time in a house should break a window, or steal away in the night through an unusual postern. You are now free; and what matter is it to a prisoner whether the fetters be taken off the ordinary way or not? If instead of putting off handsomely the chain of matrimony, he hath rudely broke it, 'tis at his own charge, nor should it cost you a tear. Nothing (Madam) has worse mien than counterfeit sorrow; and you must have the height of woman's art to make yours appear other, especially when the spectators shall consider all the story.

The sword that is placed betwixt a contracted princess and an ambassador was as much a husband; and the only difference was that that sword, laid in the bed, allowed one to supply its place. This husband denied all, like a false crow set up in a garden, which keeps others from the fruit it cannot taste itself. I would not have you so much as enquire whether it were with his garters or his cloak-bag strings, nor engage yourself to fresh sighs by hearing new relations.