Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	hour_n	young_a	youth_n	31	3	8.0107	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

nothing in them to mend Plutarch tells another story of a person called Pittacus much reverenced for his valour wisdom and justice this man upon a time feasting some of his friends kindred and strangers it hapned that his wife fell a railing on him with much fire and fury which he endeavouring to repress she was so outragiously impudent as to over-turn the table and all that was set upon it Whereat when the strangers seemed to be much abashed and ashamed Pittacus to shew his constancy contented himself in saying pleasantly There is no person in the world that wants not something but for me I were the most happy if it were not for this cross piece my wife who so afflicts me that I am well rank'd in the number of the miserable Marcus Aurelius as renowned a Philosopher as valiant Emperor having married to his second wife Faustina the daughter of Antoninus Pius the most unchast and salacious of her sex made this answer to some discourse concerning it It is six years since Antoninus Pius gave me his daughter to wife and the Empire for her dower but we were both deceived as much the one as the other he in adopting me to be his son in law and I in wedding his daughter The same Emperor having experimented the sharp points of his wives extreme badness and desiring that himself alone might suffer such martyrdom left this good advertisement to all men young and old Fly lewd women as the plague for no Viper or Serpent hath so much poison as a wicked woman hath throughout her body and particularly in her tongue Plutarch accosts us again and tells us That there is nothing more light then a womans unbridled tongue nothing more picquant or stinging than her outrages more rash than her audaciousness more detestable than her malice more dangerous than her fury more dissembling than her tears to which purpose they are often called Crocodile tears for as that cruel Creature weeps over the head of any man it kills not out of compassion but to soften it to the intent the more easily to draw out the brain which is the dainty bit so naughty women when they cry in their anger 't is not from themselves but from rage and despite that they cannot revenge themselves as they desire nor know not how to bring about their wicked purposes and designes See we here also what is said in favour of them in this antient Proverb A good Lawyer is an ill Neighbour A good Soil is an ill Road. A good Mule is an evil Beast A good Woman 's an ill help For if you do consider and observe these two last creatures at a nearer view you will find some contradictory humors in them as from the influence of the Moon To which purpose a certain facetious person being asked What God did with the old Moons seeing that Planet so oft renewed it self every month presently replyed that he put them into the heads of Women and Mules which are called by Rhodig Selenitudes which is to say Lunaticks for that these two sorts of creatures have always some of the Moons inconstancy increasing and waning in their opinions not onely every month but almost every hour And to say no more of the Mule it is notorious in the forming of the Woman that she was to the man a spirit of contradiction for God framed her body out of one of his crooked and cross ribs as a presage that she should prove wayward and contrary to him in all his actions It was the witty answer of one to those who wondred to see the drowned corps of his wife to swim above water My masters quoth he 't is heaven that presents this miracle to you that my wife hath been a thwart to me through all my life and that against the Law of God and of Nature she has perpetually contraried me in my designes I shall leave this crime to pursue another and shew that the remedy which is used and applied to all other evils by coercion and restraining of their violence renders them the worse putting them into an unquenchible heat and fury So that one may with good reason call them E Exitium Iracundissimum Envious Rage CHoler of it self to speak properly is no Vice but rather an Instrument of vertue for being not an Intention or desire to chastise punish or correct all unjust and unbeseeming actions it is necessary that he who exercise th● justice must have something of that passion to prove that he abhors such unequity but when this passion exceeds its limits and that it Masters reason raising and conjuring up such furious storms in the Spirit of a man to the precipitation of him into those Designs which seem fairest and dearest to his beloved revenge then it becomes a violent rage and the ready road to Madnesse a foolish passion which hurries men into unlawful actions will be judge and party would have all men to be of the same scandalous intemperance which yet cannot bar or hinder a sorrowful repentance Which gave occasion to Pythagoras to say That Choler was the beginning of repentance But that which is more deplorable is this that it fastens it self so tenaciously to the Soul that it not only deprives it of reason and judgement rendering it like a Ship without Rudder Pilot Sails or Oares committed to the mercy of the Waves Winds Storms and Tempests but so changeth the man as to the outward part of him that it is a pitiful sight to see and behold them for it makes their face as red as the Gills or Combe of a Cock enflames and fills their Eyes with fury deafens their ears makes their mouths foame their heart pant disorders their pulse blowes up their veins stammers the Tongue locks the Teeth together strains their voyce to hoarsenesse in precipitant and inconsiderate language in short it puts the whole body into a fiery Feaver lamentable to see or consider Neverthelesse we see four sorts of persons diversly enflamed by this passion the one resemble the Chaffe or Strawe which soon is set on fire and soon consumes it self in the blaze for their anger passeth away as suddenly as it comes readily Others are like the hard Oake or Iron which is with as much difficulty quenched as it is difficultly kindled or heated for they longest retain their spleen who are the slower to entertain it others voluntarily thrust themselves into this indisposition of mind and as unvoluntarily depart from it The last are seldome so troublesome to themselves and others and if it so happen are easily appeased the latter sort of these are certainly the best But if you ask in which of these four we rank Women I answer in the Third for they provoke and trouble themselves so often and are appeased so difficultly that they might well be consigned to the Hospital of the Incurables Their Anger properly resembles the Dog that barks as soon as any one knocks at Dore not knowing whether it be