"But she is more intolerable yet, Who plays at critic when at table set: Calls Virgil charming, and attempts to prove Poor Dido right in venturing all for love. From Maro and Mæonides she quotes The striking passages, and, while she notes Their beauties and defects, adjusts her scales, And accurately weighs which bard prevails. The astonished guests sit mute; grammarians yield, Loud rhetoricians, baffled, quit the field; Even auctioneers and lawyers stand aghast, And not a woman speaks.--So thick and fast The wordy shower descends, that you would swear A thousand bells were jangling in your ear, A thousand basins clattering. Vex no more Your trumpets and your timbrels, as of yore, To ease the laboring moon; her single yell Can drown their clangor, and dissolve the spell She lectures too in Ethics, and declaims On the Chief Good!--but, surely, she who aims To seem too learned, should take the male array; A hog, due offering, to Sylvanus slay, And, with the Stoic's privilege, repair To farthing baths, and strip in public there. Oh, never may the partner of my bed With subtleties of logic stuff her head; Nor whirl her rapid syllogisms round, Nor with imperfect enthymemes confound. Enough for me. If common things she know, And boast the little learning schools bestow. I hate the female pedagogue, who pores O'er her Palaemon hourly; who explores All modes of speech, regardless of the sense, But tremblingly alive to mood and tense; Who puzzles me with many an uncouth phrase From some old canticle of Numa's days; Corrects her country friends, and cannot hear Her husband solecize without a sneer."