Page 134
Scene 7.
Come my learned brothers, are we come now to hear a girle to read lectures of natu∣rall Philosophy to teach us? Are all our studyes come to this?
Her doting father is to blame, he should be punished for this great affront, to us that's learned men.
Philosophers should be men of yeares, with grave and Au∣ster lookes, whose countenances should like rigid lawes affright men from vanityes; with long wise beards, sprinkled with gray, that every hair might teach, the bare young Chins for to obey. And every sentence to be delive∣red like the Law, in flames and lightning, and flashes with great thunder, a foolish girle to offer for to read: O times! O manners!
Beauty and favour and tender years, a female which na∣ture hath denyed hair on her Chin, so smooth her brow, as not to admit one Philosophycall wrinckle, and she to teach, a Monster tis in Nature; since Na∣ture hath denyed that sex that fortitude of brain.
Counsel her father that her mother may instruct her in high huswifry, as milking Kyne, as making Cheese, Churning Butter, and raising past, and to preserve consectionary, and to teach her the use of her needle, and to get her a Husband; and then to practise naturall Philosophy without a Lecture.
'Tis a prodigious thing, a girle to read Philosophy; O di∣vine Plato! how thy Soul will now be troubled, Diogenes repents his Tub, and Seneca will burn his bookes in anger. And old Aristotle wish he had never been the master of all Schooles, now to be taught, and by a girle.
Have patience and but hear her, and then we shall have matter store to speak and write against her, and to pull down her fame; in∣deed her very lecture will disgrace her more than we can write, and be re∣venged thus by her tongue.
Content, let us then go and hear her, for our sport, not be∣ing worth our anger.