A young heir, bred to wealth and luxury.
A wife
With wealth enough, and young and beauteous,
Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman;
Her only fault,—and that is faults enough,—
Is, that she is intolerable curst
And shrewd and froward; so beyond all measure,
That I would not wed her for a mine of gold.
His eyes have glorious meanings that declare
More than the light of common day shines there;
A holier triumph, and a sterner aim.
A lady far more beautiful
Than any woman in this waning age.
A very foolish, fond old man!
A shrewd, ill-favored wife,
And yet I promise thee she shall be rich,
And very rich.
His ruling passion to create the splendid,
He can indulge without restraint; can give
A princely patronage to every art.
Will be married to a wealthy widow.
He is true,
He wears no mask—he hates all crooked ways,
He is so good, so noble.
She is not froward, but modest as the dove,
She is not hot, but temperate as the morn;
For patience, she will prove a second Grissel,
And Roman Lucrece for chastity.
He grinds divinity of other days
Down into modern use; transforms old print
To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
He is one,
The truest manner’d; such a holy witch,
That he enchants societies unto him;
Half all men’s hearts are his.
It is his nature ever to be giving
And making happy.
She taketh most delight
In music, instruments, and poetry.
Heaven never meant him for that passive thing
That can be struck and hammer’d out to suit
Another’s taste and fancy. He ’ll not dance
To every tune of every minister,
It goes against his nature—he can’t do it.
Two of the sweetest companions in the world.
She cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.
He doth nothing but talk of his horse.
He sits ’mongst men like a descended god;
He hath a kind of honor sets him off
More than a mortal seeming.
The prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
She is a lady
So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,
And strokes death to her.
He’s a man worth any woman.
A body slight and round, like a pear
In growing; modest eyes, a hand, a foot
Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin
As white and clean as privet when it flowers.
The grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
Eyes
Darker than darkest pansies; hair
More black than ashbuds in the front of March.
As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd
As Socrates’ Xantippe.
Is of a churlish disposition,
And little recks to find the way to Heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality.
Her care shall be
To comb your noddle with a three legg’d stool,
And paint your face, and use you like a fool.
Loose in morals and in manners vain.
In conversation frivolous in dress
Extreme ; at once rapacious and profuse;
Frequent in park with lady at his side,
Ambling, and prattling scandal as he goes,
But rare at home, and never at his books,
Or with his pen, save when he scrawls a card;
Constant at routs, familiar with a round
Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor.
As brown in hue
As hazel nuts, and sweeter than the kernel.
A merchant of incomparable wealth.
Two; the one as famous for a scolding tongue,
As is the other for beauteous modesty.
Three proper young men; of excellent growth and presence.
She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife of thine.
A strappan youth; he takes the mother’s eye.
A woman in her freshest age,
Of wondrous beauty and of bounty rare,
Full of great love.
She is like a milk-white lamb that bleats
For man’s protection.
A justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances.
A left-hand, love, imprudent sort of marriage,
With an Italian exile’s dark-eyed daughter.
His theme divine,
His office sacred, his credentials clear.
By him the violated law speaks out
Its thunders; and by him, in strains as sweet
As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace.
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest where’er she goes.
A huge feeder,
Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day
More than the wild-cat.
An unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Oh, but she will love thee truly;
Thou shalt have a pleasant home;
She will order all things duly,
When beneath your roof you come.
He is but a landscape painter.
All of her that’s out of doors, most rich!
If she be furnished with a mind so rare,
She is alone the Arabian bird.