Stultifera Navis or, The Modern Ship of Fools [by S. W. H. Ireland] |
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| LIII. | SECTION LIII.
OF THE ENVIOUS FOOL. |
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 | Stultifera Navis |  |
SECTION LIII. OF THE ENVIOUS FOOL.
That you will nourish jealousy,
And from just praise refrain?
What reason, fool, have you to care,
Although your face be not so fair,
Should that give cause for pain ?
Because you see another's robe
More costly to the view?
In music? Or, like Parisot,
The figure steps can't do ?
To hear from all the female sex,
Another's form commended ?
To see a mind with learning fraught,
And polish'd manners blended?
Of emulation unto thee:
A sure reward thou'lt find.
For, by such tributary praise,
Thou'lt weave for thine own brow the bays;
Ennobling soul and mind.
L'ENVOY OF THE POET.
Be wise, O fool! and, if thou wouldst find rest,Forth from thy mind each envious thought dispel:
For he that hugs this demon to his breast,
Is curs'd thro' life with an eternal hell .
THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.
Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis,Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.
The female sex is proverbial for envy; and particularly that part whom Nature has not arrayed in such external fascinations as others can boast; as if the human countenance was everlasting; and that the mind and manners did not possess more sterling fascinations than those of the body.
Out of the teeth of emulation.”
Every little accomplishment is equally a source of envious detraction; but not alone to the bodily requisites do these meannesses extend; virtue itself is not proof against calumny; for so rancorous is her tooth, that, as Livy says,
I have alluded above to the folly of females, in regard to envy: not that I can discriminate the difference of a shade between them and the male part of the creation, which is equally enslaved by this degrading folly: for, let a man be extolled in a society of males for any superior endowments, whether mental or corporeal, and you will never fail to hear the hue and cry raised against him for numberless faults, to counterbalance the eulogium, whether they belong to him or not. The injured man, however, has always this consolation, that, not-withstanding the tale may be credited by the multitude of fools, the wise man will always discern the truth, and see clearly through the flimsy veil, which malicious spirits, conscious of their own inferiority, purposely weave, in order to conceal the truth from their envious minds.
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