conjunctions of which death is the only honourable divorce, and that you have now to please another as well as yourself; who, though she be a woman, and by the patent she hath from nature hath liberty to do simply, yet can she never be so strongly bribed against herself as to betray at once all her hopes and ends, and for your sake resolve to live miserably. Examples of such loving folly our times afford but few; and in those there are, you shall find the stock of love to have been greater, and their strengths richer to maintain it, than is to be feared yours can be.
Woman (besides the trouble) has ever been thought a rent-charge; and though through the vain curiosity of man it has often been inclosed, yet has it seldom been brought to improve or become profitable. It faring with married men for the most part, as with those that at great charges wall in grounds and plant, who cheaper might have eaten melons elsewhere, than in their own gardens cucumbers. The ruins that either time, sickness, or the melancholy you shall give her, shall bring, must all be made up at your cost; for that thing a husband is but tenant for life in what he holds, and is bound to leave the place tenantable to the next that shall take it. To conclude, a young woman is a hawk upon her wings; and if she be handsome, she is the more subject to go out at check. Falconers, that can but seldom spring right game, should still have something about them to take them down with. The lure to which all stoop in this world is either garnished with profit or pleasure; and when you cannot throw her the one, you must be content to shew out the other. This I speak not out of a desire to increase your fears, which are already but too many, but out of a hope that, when you know the worst, you will at once leap into the river, and swim through handsomely, and not (weather-beaten with the divers blasts of irresolution) stand shivering upon the brink.
Doubts and fears are, of all, the sharpest passions, and are still turning distempers to diseases. Through these false opticks 'tis, all that you see is, like evening shadows, disproportionable to the truth, and strangely longer than the true substance. These (when a handsome way of living, and expense suitable to your fortune, is represented to you) makes you in their stead see want and beggary, thrusting upon your judgment impossibilities for likelihoods, which they with ease may do, since (as Solomon saith) they betray the succours that reason offers.
