Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	find_v	young_a	youth_n	60	3	7.7527	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36108	A discourse of women, shewing their imperfections alphabetically newly translated out of the French into English.; Alphabet de l'imperfection et malice des femmes. English	Olivier, Jacques.	1662 (1662)	Wing D1611; ESTC R22566	72,101	210

those who cannot or will not comply with their wills and if that which they love seriously be not complaisant enough to their purpose their love is turned into hatred which ends in poisons treasons conspirations and other attemptt upon the honor and life of those who have nothing so dear to them as their innocence Of many Tragical Histories take this Lucitia so passionately loved her husband that to bring him to her desire she gave him Aconite a deadly poison mistaking it for a love-potion of which he died instantly The same Author saith also that Cyanippe was so extremely jealous of her husband that she suspecting his custom of hunting was a pretence to his courting of other Ladies went out into the Forrest to espy it out but she could not so well conceal her self but the Dogs bearing a brusling of the leaves ran upon her and tore her in pieces at which her husband was so grieved that he killed himself in the place In these two stories there is more of indiscretion than cruelty but that of Ariadne is more doleful and Tragical because the Emperor Zeno Isauricus her husband was not so serviceable to her as she desired she caused him to be buried alive a most horrible cruelty I hope and firmly believe that the wise and discreet will bear me no ill-wil for as contraries set together do make one another show the better so these Satyres and Anatomies of vice will make the nobleness the excellency the vertues of good women whom I will maintain to be equal in number with the bad to be more illustrious For though the wise man saith He could find none 't was not that he would absolutely deny there was none but he would express that when a woman doth well she is not to be considered in the quality of a woman or according to the inclination of her sex but as having a Masculine spirit a martial courage and the heart of a man for as there are effeminate men so are there masculine women and of a more magnanimous mind than many men and indeed the greatest contumely that can be cast upon debaucht and loose men is to call them effeminate and the greatest praise that can be given to women is to name them virile and martial To which purpose Erasmus saith That Ennius in blaming the inconstancy and lightness of some young men could find no better words to his purpose then to tell them that they had the spirit of women Vos etenim juvenes animos geritis muliebres For as the Poet saith in the Fourth of the Aeneids Women are changeable every hour Laertius observes in the Sixth Book of the lives of Philosophers that Diogenes finding a young youth delicately trim'd curl'd and a la mode the Madam said unto him I marvel that thou art not ashamed of thy shame counterfeiting and disguising thy nature she made thee a man and thou makest thy self a woman by this female trimming and feminine delicacies Philo the Jew in his Book of Strength and Courage saith That God intending the man should show himself couragious in his actions in his deportments and in his habit forbad him expresly as we may see in Deut. 22. that he should never wear the habit of women Vir non utetur veste foeminea nec mulier veste virili Whereupon this learned Hebrew infers That God forbids men the garments of a woman because he ought not to have the lead feminine thing in or about him but that he should be vigorous in all his actions and so contrarily to the woman However the case be now most certain it is that God made her for an ornament of human kind for a comfort to our nature and to sweeten the miseries of our life for the contentment of men and to People the heavenly Paradise to which the blessed TRINITY conduct and bring us All. Advice of the Author to Vertuous WOMEN My LADIES IT is reported that the invincible Hercules being one day upon an adventure found in the open field Vice and Vertue in the guise of two women of different age and habit and easie to be known by their outward behaviour Both of these seeing this young man in search of some delightful good to perpetuate the contentment of his mind during the course of his life not deeming himself happy enough in his excelling Lions Tygers Centaurs and Gyants in strength presented themselves before him with all sorts of recompences and promises Vice to draw him the sooner to her discretion and charm more feelingly and forcibly his will and affections offered her self to his eyes in the shape of a young and fair Damsel ennobled with all the Beauties enriched with all the Pearls Diamonds and Jewels imaginable to be found in the East or in the bosome of Nature cloathed with the most precious raiment that can be had from the Merchants made fit to her goodly and exact stature with so much neatness modishness and sutablenese that it was enough to make heaven amorous of her beauty and the Sun himself jealous of all those who thenceforward should think themselves worthy of her affections She addressing her self thus to Hercules in this goodly array promised him That if he would partake of her favours and follow her in all things she would lead him through a way strewed with Roses with Lillies and Aromatick flowers unto the safe Haven of extreme Content which he should receive in the enjoyment of honors grandeurs pleasures estate and riches in the grace and favour of all the great Monarchs of the Earth But that at the end of that pleasant race and at taking his leave of this to go into the other world he could hope for nothing but an accumulation of misery grief pain and suffering Vice having finished her Oration and the tender of her promises Vertue being desirous to gain to her so brave a courage went another way to work appearing to him in the form of an old Matron all wrinckled dishevel'd deformed and bended cloathed as poorly and simply as might be in which posture seeing Hercules disgusted at her and to turn away his eyes she bespoke him in this manner Hercules I am not a finikin spruce beautiful woman nor so richly adorned as that woman which just now spoke with you and gave you those sweet and pleasing words therewith to bait your affections charm your will and render thee her slave I will not promise thee riches nor the pleasures of the world nor the favours of Princes nor to lead thee a way diversifi'd with sports and pastims But I dare assure thee that if thou wilt follow me in a way full of briers thorns flints rough and abrupt difficult and hard to climb to the top of a Mountain I will give thee to taste all sorts of delicacies pleasures and contentments not for a few days or years but for eternity and for ever Hercules having heard Vertue began to disdain Vice with all her caresses and temporary pleasures and consider

but I have never seen any without faults How now said the Duke My Lord quoth he I have reason to speak in this manner for if she be tall fair or of handsome stature she will be lazy toyish luxurious and proud and imagine the whole world ought to humor and serve her If she be little and black the parts of her body being so close joyned and shrunck together one may easily judge her to be very expedite variable light perfidious and proud If she be somewhat aged she will be a true Tisiphone If she be of competent age and of red hair or freckled she will be very frail and incontinent If she be ugly and deformed it 's a shame saith he but to speak of her If she be beautiful she hath that in gross which others have in parcels like another Pandora who adorned with thirty excellencies of a woman was the means of the ruine of the happiness which man could enjoy upon the earth If such an one as I said before could be found in whom were one sparke of vertue I might espouse her but finding none such I have reason to quit my self of them It is impossible to compute the troubles and the sorrows which men receive in recompence of their loves through the perfidiousness of women for without mentioning the troubles of the spirit the many jants the re-iterated complaints the shedding of tears the sighing and sobbing and a hundred thousand deaths without dying in the gaining of a Mistress even then when one would think that this death of amorous languishment was to be changed into a life of celestial pleasures then do men marry a wife like Megera her self who is never pleased but in crying yauling tempestuously complaining and disturbing the whole house which beget in the mind of her husband a thousand displeasures a thousand regrets and as many repentances as incommodities in short whole hundreds of an insupportable molestation As to the conjugal pleasure and the sport of Venus the effects thereof are so direful and hurtful that I wonder men will be such slaves to it for it doth not onely invalidate and infeeble the vigour of the spirit but render the mind base and cowardly dull the vivacity of the understanding brutalize the judgment waste the memory occasion repentance as saith Aristotle and as Demosthenes also in this case answered For being tempted by lust to court that Corinthian Strumpet Lais who set the value of a 1000 Attick Drachms as price of her honor and favour he hearing her speak at this rate and considering the inchantment of the pleasure answered gently thus by way of retreat Madam I thank you I will not buy repentance at so dear a rate Ego inquit tanti poenitere non emam This Philosopher spoke reason for I cannot think that any man inveigled with the pleasures of Venus and her deceitful sports if he consider how dear they are sold him and what repentance will attend them would not agree with Demosthenes in this his farewell to the fatal goddesses Valerius Maximus confirms that which we are about to speak by this notable sentence Quid luxuriâ foedus quidve ea damnosius aequa virtus atteritur ratio languescit sopita gloria in infamiam commutatur animi vires corporis expugnantur as if he should say Nothing is more filthy and base than impure pleasure more destructive to health more contrary to the vigour and strength of both body and mind more altering reason or that can sooner metamorphose glory and honor into infamy And if the conjugal actions are exempted from those last effects in part they often produce and occasion others as troublesome and insupportable for a woman being so insatiable as the wise wise man describeth her and her husband not able to quench her raging lust she will soon make him bear the Arms of the Persians make him heir to the Ottoman Crescents and inasmuch as she is a necessary evil the poor unfortunate man is constrained to eat many grains of Patience instead of Succory and to refresh himself in the water of dissimulation and that which is more he must love her that hath offended him calling her his Darling his pretty one and other Epithets of flatteries to conform himself to her humors and conditions or else languish and be plunged in an Ocean of sorrow and grief I meddle not with other mischiefs which attend marriage but refer you to those elegant Verses made by one who escaped the fetters and bands of a certain Dame who went about to drown him in the devouring gulphs and shipwracks of all vice While thus I liv'd bewitched by your charms While beauty held me prisoner in your arms While my heart groaned under Venus Laws Vain contentation and lascivious toys Complaints and sighs and tears alone did prove Fuel and matter to the fire of love And thus tormented with a hell of spight This was my glory to be vanquish'd quite But since kind heaven did me notice give Vnvail'd sins horror wherein I did live And freed me from this thankless woman by A sentence passed on their treachery O wise repentance I have found above Full joy and glory and most perfect love The Cynick Diogenes among other his moral sayings had this often in his mouth Nothing so displeaseth me than to meet a woman especially in the morning when I am beginning my work for being a sink and channel of all imperfections she can presage nothing to my good and contentment Socrates hath another more excellent for being one day in the plane Licaeum where they were treating of the imperfections of women some saying that they were the causes of all the miseries in the world others that it was certain that men without them would never be disquieted or molested Socrates undertook to defend their cause and declared freely that they ought not thus to vilifie women for that there is something in them wherein they excel men These words he promising to maintain them by reason caused the Disputants to give attention and to desire an account thereof which he willingly consented to and replyed My masters That which prefers women before men is among other things their vivacity of spirit and the subtlety of their understanding I speak knowingly for my wife Xantippe ceaseth not day nor night raising and contriving against me such causes of displeasure unconceivable to others with so much activity and artifice that all the men in the world together cannot invent the like and less apparent her alone brawlings and froward looks are able to unsettle my constancy and to overthrow my patience This famous person invented this device to deride the error of his companions who spent their time in disputing of the defers of women which affront the Sun with their light and clearness I shall need no more Philosophical sentences which expresly forbid acquaintance with evil women nor also those Histories which show the misfortunes and ruines of several by the means