hazard is it to marry? where shall a man find a good wife, or a
woman a good husband? A woman a man may eschew, but not a wife: wedding is
undoing (some say) marrying marring, wooing woeing: [5759]"a wife is a
fever hectic," as Scaliger calls her, "and not be cured but by death," as
out of Menander, Athenaeus adds,

"In pelaprus te jacis negotiorum,--
Non Libyum, non Aegeum, ubi ex triginta non pereunt
Tria navigia: duceus uxorem servatur prorsus nemo."

"Thou wadest into a sea itself of woes;
In Libya and Aegean each man knows
Of thirty not three ships are cast away,
But on this rock not one escapes, I say."

The worldly cares, miseries, discontents, that accompany marriage, I pray
you learn of them that have experience, for I have none; [5760][Greek:
paidas ego logous egensamaen], _libri mentis liberi_. For my part I'll
dissemble with him,

[5761] "Este procul nymphae, fallax genus este puellae,
Vita jugata meo non facit ingenio: me juvat," &c.

many married men exclaim at the miseries of it, and rail at wives
downright; I never tried, but as I hear some of them say, [5762]_Mare haud
mare, vos mare acerrimum_, an Irish Sea is not so turbulent and raging as a
litigious wife.

[5763] "Scylla et Charybdis Sicula contorquens freta,
Minus est timenda, nulla non melior fera est."

"Scylla and Charybdis are less dangerous,
There is no beast that is so noxious."

Which made the devil belike, as most interpreters hold, when he had taken
away Job's goods, _corporis et fortunae bona_, health, children, friends,
to persecute him the more, leave his wicked wife, as Pineda proves out of
Tertullian, Cyprian, Austin, Chrysostom, Prosper, Gaudentius, &c. _ut novum
calamitatis inde genus viro existeret_, to vex and gall him worse _quam
totus infernus_ than all the fiends in hell, as knowing the conditions of a
bad woman. Jupiter _non tribuit homini pestilentius malum_, saith
Simonides: "better dwell with a dragon or a lion, than keep house with a
wicked wife," Ecclus. xxv. 18. "better dwell in a wilderness," Prov. xxi.
19. "no wickedness like to her," Ecclus. xxv. 22. "She makes a sorry heart,
an heavy countenance, a wounded mind, weak hands, and feeble knees," vers.
25. "A woman and death are two the bitterest things in the world:" _uxor
mihi ducenda est hodie, id mihi visus est dicere, abi domum et suspende
te_. _Ter. And. 1. 5._ And yet fo