IN YOUTH AND PROSPERITY. 137

• y ' A fair but luckless girl, my lot lias been

j To wed perforce the meanest of the mean. I Oft have I longed to burst the reins, and flee From hateful yoke to freedom, love, and thee." Perhaps, on the whole, he had no great reason to speak well of the sex, for in one place, as if he looked upon marriage, like friendship, as a lottery, he moralises to the effect " That men's and women's hearts you cannot try Beforehand, like the cattle which you buy ; Nor human wit and wisdom, when you treat } For such a purchase, can escape deceit : Fancy betrays us, and assists the cheat." (F.) But, if his witness is true, m erwp ary pa/ran fa. w^re as common of old aa jn nnr own day. He was led, both by_his exclusiveiiess as an aristocrat, and his impa- tience of a mere money-standard of worth, to a disgust of-

w^ make, Where price is everything : formjonay's sake Men marry ; women are in marriage given. The churl or ruffian that in wealth has thriven May match his offspring with the proudest race ; Thus everything is mixt, noble and base ! " (F.) And that he did ponder the yegftnp.rfl.ti on nf and strive to fathom the depths of the education ques- tion agitated in the old world, we know from a passage in his elegies, which, though we have no clue to the time he wrote it, deserves to be given in this place, both as connected with his notions about birth, and as