for a tradesman's wife. Hocus fed her extravagancy (what was still
more shameful) with John's own money. Everybody said that Hocus had
a month's mind to her; be that as it will, it is matter of fact,
that upon all occasions she ran out extravagantly on the praise of
Hocus. When John used to be finding fault with his bills, she used
to reproach him as ungrateful to his greatest benefactor; one that
had taken so much pains in his lawsuit, and retrieved his family
from the oppression of old Lewis Baboon. A good swinging sum of
John's readiest cash went towards building of Hocus's country
house.** This affair between Hocus and Mrs. Bull was now so open,
that all the world was scandalised at it; John was not so
clod-pated, but at last he took the hint. The parson of the parish
preaching one day with more zeal than sense against adultery, Mrs.
Bull told her husband that he was a very uncivil fellow to use such
coarse language before people of condition;*** that Hocus was of the
same mind, and that they would join to have him turned out of his
living for using personal reflections. How do you mean, says John,
by personal reflections? I hope in God, wife, he did not reflect
upon you? "No, thank God, my reputation is too well established in
the world to receive any hurt from such a foul-mouthed scoundrel as
he; his doctrine tends only to make husbands tyrants, and wives
slaves; must we be shut up, and husbands left to their liberty?
Very pretty indeed! a wife must never go abroad with a Platonic to
see a play or a ball; she must never stir without her husband; nor
walk in Spring Garden with a cousin. I do say, husband, and I will
stand by it, that without the innocent freedoms of life, matrimony
would be a most intolerable state; and that a wife's virtue ought to
be the result of her own reason, and not of her husband's
government: for my part, I would scorn a husband that would be
jealous, if he saw a fellow with me." All this while John's blood