Sir P. Studious.
Why wife, you may have my company at any time, Nay, never to be from me if you please, for I am alwaies at home.
Lady Ignorant,
'Tis true, your person is alwaies at home, and fixt to one place, your Closet as a dull dead statue to the side of a wall, but your mind and thoughts are alwaies abroad.
Sir P. Studious
The truth is, my mind sometimes sends out my thoughts like Coye ducks, to bring more understanding in.
Lady Ignorant,
You mistake Husband, for your thoughts are like vain, or rather like false Scouts that deceives your understanding, imprisons your sen∣ses, and betrayes your life to a dull solitariness.
Sir P. Studious.
'Tis better to live a quiet solitary life, than a troublesome and an uneasie life.
Lady Ignorant.
What is a man born for, but to serve his Countrey, side with his friends, and to please the esseminate Sex.
Sir P. Studious.
You say right wife, and to serve his Countrey, is to finde out such inventions as is usefull either in Peace or War; and to form, order and settle Common-wealths by Denizing Laws, which none but studious brains e're did, or can do. Tis true, practice doth pollish beauty and adorn, but neither layes the Foundation, nor brings the Materials, nor builds the walls thereof; and to side with friends, is to defend Right and Truth with sound arguments and strong proofs, from the tyrannical usurpation of false opinions, vain phantasines, malicious satires, and flattering oratorie, and to please the effeminate Sex, is to praise their beauty, wit, vertue and good graces in soft Numbers, and smooth Language, building up Piramides of poetical praises, Printing their fame thereon, by which they live to After-ages.
Lady Ignorant.
Prithy Husband mistake us not, for women cares not for wide mouthed fame; and we take more delight to speak our selves whilst we live, than to be talked of when we are dead, and to take our present pleasures, than to abstain our selves for After-ages.
Sir P. Studeous.
Well wife, what would you have me do?
Lady Ignorance.
Why, I would have you so sociable, as to sit and discourse with our friends and acquaintance, and play the good fellow amongst them.
Sir P. Studious.
What need we to have any other friends than our selves; our studies, books and thoughts.
Lady Ignorance.
Your studies, books and thoughts, are but dull acquain∣tance, melancholly companions, and weak friends.
Sir P. Studious.
You do not wife consider their worth; for books are conversable, yet silent acquaintance, and study, is a wise Counsellor; and kind friends, and poetical thoughts are witty Companions, wherein other So∣cieties and Companies are great inconveniences, and oftimes produces evil effects, as Jealousie, Adulterie, Quarrels, Duels, and Death, besides slanders, back••itings and the like.
Lady Ignorance.
Truly Husband, you are strangely mistaken; for those So∣cieties as I would have you frequent, doth Sing, Dance, Rallie, make Balls Masks, Playes, Feasts, and the like, and also makes Frollicks or Rubices, or Playes, at Questions and Commands, Purposes or Ridles, and twenty such like Pastimes and fine sports they have.
Sir P. Studious.
But surely Wife you would not like this kind of life, nor I neither; especially if we were in one and the same Company; for perchance you may hear wanton Songs sung, and see amorous glances, or rude or immo∣dest Actions, and when you dance, have a secret nip, and gentle gripe of