The Ten Pleasures of Marriage<br />and the Second Part, The Confession of the New Married Couple, A. Marsh [great book club books .txt] 📗

reputation, who have procreated severall children together. For this jealous and contentious house Divell, domineers as well among people of great respect, as those of lesser degree; though there be some which so order it, that they smother this fire within dores, and suffer it not to burst out at the house top. Nevertheless it is impossible to hide this unkindness from the eys of them that are in the Family. Therefore it is to be admired, that the sister who dwelleth with this married Couple, and seeth and hears all this unkindness, mumbling and grumbling, yet hath such an earnest desire to be set down in the List of the great Company. Nay though she had read all the twenty Pleasures of Marriage through and through, and finds by the example of her Brother that they are all truth; yet she is like a Fish, never at rest till she gets her self into the Marriage-Net, where she knows that she never can get out again: According to these following Verses, which she hath sung so many times:

You may in sea lanch when you will, To see the boistrous Main, Great storms, and wind, your sails will fill, Fore you return again. The married state, is much like this, O'rewhelm'd with many crosses, Yet must be born, see how it is, With tauntings, toils, and losses.

But I beleeve that the Sister makes flesh and blood her Counsellors, just as her Brother did, who hath now totally forgotten these Verses; for since the flesh is almost come to the very bone, all his designs and indeavours seem to bend now to the being separated from Bed and Table: and, if fortune would favour it, he would rather see it done by death, then any Civil Authority; for then he might look out again for a new Beloved, and by that means get another new Portion; though it might lightly happen to be some mendicant hous-divel, for a reward of his jealousie.

And perhaps he little thinks how that bawling and scolding, between him and his Wife, is spread abroad. But it hath often hapned, that those who would be separated, very unexpectedly have been parted by death; but not so neither, that they who most desired the separation, have just remained alive.

Happy were those restless Souls, if they did like the wise and prudent Chyrurgians, who will not cut off any member, before they have made an operation of all imaginable means for cure and recovery thereof: And that they first learnt to know their own deficiences perfectly, that they might the better excuse those of their Adversary.

O how thrice happy are our well-matcht Couple! who like a Looking-glass for all others, live together in love, pleasure and tranquility, and have banished that monstrous beast jealousie out of their hearts and house; wishing nothing more then to live long together, and to dy both at one time, that neither of them both might inherit that grief to be the longest liver, by missing their second-selves. These do recommend marriage in the highest degree to the whole World, as the noblest state and condition; and despise the folly of those who reject it, imagining in themselves that they have more knowledge and understanding then all the wise men of Greece ever had; who by their marrying demonstrated, that they esteemed the married estate to be the best and commendablest though some of them were married to women, who notably bore the sway.

We may very well then contemn the chattering of Epicurus that pleasurable Hoggrubber, who said, that no wise man would ever give himself in to the Bands of Matrimony; because there is so much grief, trouble, and misery to be found in it. For we see to the contrary, that the Wise men long to be in it, and that the Sun of understanding appears more gloriously in them, when it is nourisht and inlivened by marriage; especially, if they have got, like unto our well-married Couple, good Matches. To this end, all those that are unmarried, ought to look very circumspectly, for the getting themselves such a second-self, that they would never desire to part with. And for the exhortation of every one to this, I will break off and conclude with that faithfull warning given by that great Emperor and Philosopher Marcus Aurelius: saying, Because the life of Man cannot remain without Women, I do warn the young, pray the old, admonish the wise, and teach the simple, that they should shun ill-natured Women as much as the Plague: for I say, that all the venemous Creatures in the World, have not so much poison spread or contained in their whole bodies; as one divellish-natured Woman alone hath in her tongue.

The End of the Second Part of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682), by A. Marsh