[Eighteenth-century ballad.] Manuscript of untitled poem beginning 'Ere ye. read ys. ye. may suppose. | That some new listed Lover. | By means of Poetry has chose. | His Passion to discover.'

2pp., on both sides of a strip of 35.5 x 11.5 cm laid paper with fleur-de-lys watermark. In a secretary hand employing the thorn and long s. In fair condition, on aged and worn paper. An untitled forty-line poem, divided into five numbered eight-line stanzas. The narrator is an older married woman, advising a younger woman not to marry, with observations on the frailties of the male sex. The first stanza reads: 'Ere ye. read ys. ye. may suppose. | That some new listed Lover. | By means of Poetry has chose. | His Passion to discover. | Know Faire one I am a Matron Grave | Which Time & Care has wasted | And would thy Youth from sorrow save | Which I have in Wedlock tasted.' A variation of the poem was published in the Gentleman's Magazine, May 1744, with the title 'The MATRON's Advice to a YOUNG LADY, A new BALLAD. Tune, Sally.' The grammar of the Gentleman's Magazine version is more modern in tone, its first line reading: 'Ere you read this, you may suppose', and the variations are most apparent in the third stanza, including 'Beset thy dwelling' in the published version for 'Surround thy Threshold' in the manuscript; 'heedless' for 'regardless'; 'Pass all your minutes' for 'Thy Moments pass on'; 'While flames are offer'd at our shrine, | And Men like Idols sue us' for 'Darts flames & hoards adorn Our shrine | And Awful Hymen woo us.' The writer has begun to write another poem on the reverse of the slip: 'Come lesten [sic] ye tories & jacobites now | Your Plot <...> shew'. Not present in the English Broadside Ballad Archive.