This tomb, yet safeguard of its citizens,
Which shuts the sword out, and locks hunger in;
(Where many a wretch, pale, gaunt, and famine-shrunk,
Smiles, ghastly, at the slaughter's threat, and dies:)
Did not these walls—like Vulcan's swarthy arms,
Clasping sweet beauty's queen—encircle now,
Within their cold and ponderous embrace,
The fair, yet, ah! I fear, the fickle Julia,
My sluggish zeal would lack the spur to rouse it.
La Gloire. And, of all the spurs in the race of mortality, love is the only true tickler to quicken a man's motions. But to reconcile a mistress by victualling a town!—Well; dark and puzzling is the road to woman's affection; but this is the first time I ever heard of sliding into her heart through her palate; or choking her anger, by stopping her mouth with a meal. An' this pantry fashion of wooing should last, woe to the ill-favoured! Beauty will raise the price of provisions, and poor ugliness soon be starved out of the country.