Note 708 — XVII. NORMAN ENGLAND.
Reading edition
Mapes’s Poems, pp. 176-9.—All the poetasters of the period, however, were not enlisted on one side. There is extant an exhortation against marriage, addressed to the clergy, which consists of a violent invective against the sex, recapitulating the customary accusations against women with all the brutal coarseness of the age:—
Hæc est iniquitas omnis adulteræ Qui virum proprium vellet non vivere, Ut det adultero non cessat rapere— Desistat igitur clerus nunc nubere. Du Méril, op. cit. p. 184.
The “Confessio Goliæ” feelingly bewails the difficulty of rendering obedience to the new regulations:—
Res est arduissima vincere naturam, In aspectu virginum mentem ferre puram; Juvenes non possumus legem sequi duram, Leviumque corporum non habere curam. Quis in igne positus igne non uratur? Quis in mundo demorans castus habeatur? Ubi Venus digito juvenes venatur Oculis illaqueat, facie prædatur? Mapes’s Poems, p. 72.