CHAPTER XXII. OF MARRIAGE. SOME men have too much decried marriage, as if she (the mother) were scarce worthy to wait on virginity, (her daughter,) and as if it were an advancement for marriage to be preferred before fornication, and praise enough for her to be adjudged lawful. Give this holy estate her due, and then we shall find,— MAXIM I. Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders, in the hedge of the commonwealth.—It is the policy of the Londoners, when they send a ship into the Levant or Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, -each seaman adventuring somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo, dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are the deeper sharers in that State wherein they live; which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty. II. It is the worst clandestine marriage, when God is not invited to it.-Wherefore, beforehand beg his gracious assistance. Marriage shall prove no lottery to thee, when the hand of Providence chooseth for thee; who, if drawing a blank, can turn it into a prize, by sanctifying a bad wife unto thee. III. Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married estate.-Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive; namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, λos λаμярós, "wholly clear," without clouds. Yea, expect both wind and storms sometimes, which when blown over, the air is the clearer and wholesomer for it. Make account of certain cares and troubles which will attend thee. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as Yet if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones. all the molestations of marriage are abundantly recompensed with other comforts, which God bestoweth on them who make a wise choice of a wife, and observe the following rules : IV. Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affec-. tions.-For, love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded in true virtue, will always continue. Some hold it unhappy to be married with a diamond-ring; perchance, (if there be so much reason in their folly,) because the diamond hinders the roundness of the ring, ending the infiniteness thereof, and seems to presage some termination in their love, which ought ever to endure; and so it will, when it is founded in religion. V. Neither choose all, nor not at all, for beauty.-A cried-up beauty makes more for her own praise than her husband's profit. They tell us of a floating-island in Scotland; but, sure, no wise pilot will cast anchor there, lest the land swim away with his ship. So are they served, and justly enough, who only fasten their love on fading beauty, and both fail together. VI. Let there be no great disproportion in age.-They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves, in hope that one will come and cut the halter. Nor is God's ordinance, but man's abusing thereof, taxed in this homely expression, used by the apostle himself. If virginity enforced above the parties' power be termed by St. Paul, "a snare or halter," (1 Cor. vii. 35,) marriage is no better when against one's will, for private respects. VII. Let wealth in its due distance be regarded.-There be two towns in the land of Liege called Bovins and Dinant, the inhabitants whereof bear almost an incredible hatred one to another, and yet notwithstanding their children usually marry together; and the reason is, because there is none other good town or wealthy place near them. Thus parents, for a little * Ουχ ἵνα βρόχον ὑμῖν ἐπιβάλω, 1 Cor. vii. 35. lib. ii. cap. 1. +PHILIP DE COMINES, pelf, often marry their children to those whose persons they hate; and thus union betwixt families is not made, but the breach rather widened the more. This shall serve for a conclusion: A bachelor was saying, "Next to no wife, a good wife is best." "Nay," said a gentlewoman, "next to a good wife, no wife is the best." I wish to all married people the outward happiness which, anno 1605, happened to a couple in the city of Delph in Holland, living most lovingly together seventy-five years in wedlock; till the man, being one hundred and three, the woman, ninety-nine years of age, died within three hours each of other, and were buried in the same grave.* CHAPTER XXIII. OF FAME. FAME is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last part, but fame relates all, and often more than all. MAXIM I. Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.—She hath made whole countries, more than ever nature did, especially near the poles; and then hath peopled them likewise with inhabitants of her own invention,-pigmies, giants, and Amazons. Yea, fame is sometimes like unto a kind of mushroom, which Pliny recounts to be the greatest miracle in nature, because growing and having no root, as fame no ground of her reports.† II. Fame often makes a great deal of a little.-Absalom killed one of David's sons, (2 Sam. xiii. 30,) and fame killed all the rest; and generally she magnifies and multiplies matters. Loud was that lie which that bell told, hanging in a clock-house at West • THUANUS, De Obit. Virorum Doctorum, in eodem anno, p. 185. + In miraculis vel maximum est tubera nasci et vivere sine ullá radice.-PLINII Nat. Hist., lib. xix. cap. 2. minster, and usually rung at the coronation and funerals of princes, having this inscription about it,— "King Edward made me Thirty thousand and three; But when this bell was taken down at the dooms-day of abbeys, this and two more were found not to weigh twenty thousand.* Many relations of fame are found to shrink accordingly. III. Some fames are most difficult to trace home to their form.— And those who have sought to track them, have gone rather in a circle than forward; and oftentimes, through the doubling of reports, have returned back again where they began. Fame being a bastard, or filia populi, it is very hard to find her father; and often-times she hath rather all than any for her first authors. IV. Politicians sometimes raise fames on purpose.-As that such things are done already, which they mean to do afterwards. By the light of those false fires, they see into men's hearts; and these false rumours are true scouts to discover men's dispositions. Besides, the deed, though strange in itself, is done afterwards with the less noise, men having vented their wonder beforehand; and the strangeness of the action is abated, because formerly made stale in report. But if the rumour startles men extremely, and draws with it dangerous consequences, then they can presently confute it, let their intentions fall, and prosecute it no further. V. The Papal side, of all fame-merchants, drive the most gainful trade. As that worthy knight hath given us an exact "Survey" thereof. But, long before them, strange was that plot of Stratocles, who gave it out that he had gotten a victory; and the constant report thereof continued three days, and then was confuted and Stratocles being charged with abusing his people Srow's "Survey of London," p. 528. "View of the West Religions," p. 100. SIR EDWARD SANDYS'S with a lie, "Why," said he, "are ye angry with me for making you pass three days in mirth and jollity, more than otherwise you should?"* VI. Incredible is the swiftness of fame in carrying reports.—First, she creeps through a village, then she goes through a town, then she runs through a city, then she flies through a country, still the farther the faster. Yea, Christ, who made the dumb speak, made not tell-tale fame silent, though charging those he cured to hold their peace; "but so much the more went there a FAME abroad of him." (Luke v. 15.) Yea, some things have been reported soon as ever they were done at impossible distance. The overthrow of Perseus was brought out of Macedon to Rome in four days.† And, in Domitian's time, a report was brought two thousand five hundred miles in one day. In which accidents, 1. Fame takes post on some other advantage. Thus the overthrow of the Sabines was known at Rome prius penè quàm nunciari possit, by the means of the arms of the Sabines drowned in the river of Tiber, and carried down by the tide to Rome.§ And thus, anno 1568, the overthrow which the Spaniards gave the Dutch at the river of Ems, was known at Groningen before any horseman could reach thither, by the multitude of the Dutch caps which the river brought down into the city. But these conveyances are but slugs to make such miraculous speed: wherefore sometimes reports are carried, 2. By the ministration of spirits. The devils are well at leisure to play such pranks, and may do it in a frolic. And yet they would scarce be the carriers, except they were well paid for the portage, getting some profit thereby, (doing of mischief is all the profit they are capable of,) and do harm to some by the suddenness of those reports. Or else, 3. The fame is antedated and raised before the fact, being related at guess before it was acted. Thus, some have been causelessly commended for early rising in the morning, who indeed came to their journey's end over-night. If such foremade reports prove true, they are admired and registered; if false, neglected and forgotten: as those only which escaped shipwreck hung up votivas tabulas, "tablets with their names," • PLUTARCH's Πολιτικὰ Παραγγέλματα. princip. lib. i. + LIvy, lib. xlv., juxta "Almost sooner than it could be narrated."-EDIT. S LIVY, FAMIANUS STRADA De Bello Belgico, lib. v. p. 456. |