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I shall give the detail in the next Chapter. Whether my Advice be of Weight or not, I refer to what follows.
I am told, in the very Moment of writing this Head, that to talk of Inequalities and Unsuitable Things in marrying, is too general; that 'tis an Amusement only, and gives no light into my Meaning. A young Man marries a Wife, his Thoughts are to be sure upon having a suitable Bedfellow, a pleasant, agreeable, handsome Woman, to divert himself, and to sport with. What do we tell him of Inequalities and Unsuitableness? he knows nothing of it; I must explain my self.
In obedience to the Ignorance of the Objector, and supposing it the Sense of the Times, I shall explain my self accordingly: And first, I grant, that young Gentlemen now act just as the Objection is stated; they marry, get a Fortune and a Bedfellow, and that is all they trouble themselves about. The Case is excellently well express'd by my Lord Rochester:
"The solid Comforts of a Coxcomb's Life.
Roch. Art. to Clo.
I grant, I say, that this is much of the Case before me; and this is that makes so much Matrimonial Whoredom in the World: This is the very Essence of the Crime I am reproving, namely, that the married People look to the Coxcomb's Comforts, not to the real Comforts of a married Life, to the Enjoyments of the Night, not the Enjoyments of the Day; to what's present, not what's to come; and while they do so, no wonder we have such dreadful Family-Doings as we havein
