hen it was too late. 'Tis so with us bachelors, when we see and
behold those sweet faces, those gaudy shows that women make, observe their
pleasant gestures and graces, give ear to their siren tunes, see them
dance, &c., we think their conditions are as fine as their faces, we are
taken, with dumb signs, _in amplexum ruimus_, we rave, we burn, and would
fain be married. But when we feel the miseries, cares, woes, that accompany
it, we make our moan many of us, cry out at length and cannot be released.
If this be true now, as some out of experience will inform us, farewell
wiving for my part, and as the comical poet merrily saith,

[5768] "Perdatur ille pessime qui foeminam
Duxit secundus, nam nihil primo imprecor!
Ignarus ut puto mali primus fuit."

[5769] "Foul fall him that brought the second match to pass,
The first I wish no harm, poor man alas!
He knew not what he did, nor what it was."

What shall I say to him that marries again and again, [5770]_Stulta
maritali qui porrigit ora capistro_, I pity him not, for the first time he
must do as he may, bear it out sometimes by the head and shoulders, and let
his next neighbour ride, or else run away, or as that Syracusian in a
tempest, when all ponderous things were to be exonerated out of the ship,
_quia maximum pondus erat_, fling his wife into the sea. But this I confess
is comically spoken, [5771]and so I pray you take it. In sober sadness,
[5772]marriage is a bondage, a thraldom, a yoke, a hindrance to all good
enterprises, ("he hath married a wife and cannot come") a stop to all
preferments, a rock on which many are saved, many impinge and are cast
away: not that the thing is evil in itself or troublesome, but full of all
contentment and happiness, one of the three things which please God, [5773]
"when a man and his wife agree together," an honourable and happy estate,
who knows it not? If they be sober, wise, honest, as the poet infers,

[5774] "Si commodos nanciscantur amores,
Nullum iis abest voluptatis genus."

"If fitly match'd be man and wife,
No pleasure's wanting to their life."

But to undiscreet sensual persons, that as brutes are wholly led by sense,
it is a feral plague, many times a hell itself, and can give little or no
content, being that they are often so irregular and prodigious in their
lusts, so diverse in their affections. _Uxor nomen dignitatis, non
voluptatis_, as [5775]he said, a wi