woollen industry and of the stuffy Tudor and Stuart domestic
architecture is in the nickname. Or a single phrase can light up an
idea, as when, a few days before marriage, "the Bridegroom is running
up and down like a dog." But, on the other hand, the spirit manifests
itself sometimes in exuberance, as when Urquhart and Motteux
metagrobolized Rabelais into something almost more tumescent and
overwhelming than the original. In that vein of humour the present
work frequently runs. The author is as ready to pile up his epithets
as Urquhart himself. Let the Nurse go, he says, "for then you'll have
an Eater, a Stroy-good, a Stufgut, a Spoil-all, and Prittle-pratler,
less than you had before."

It is, in fact, as an example of English humour--exaggerated, no
doubt, by the reaction from Puritanism--that _The Ten Pleasures of
Marriage_ should be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it
is of uncertain parentage and must own to foreign kin. A well-known
but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally rare book is Antoine de
la Salle's _Quinze Joies de Mariage_. It seems possible that this was
translated into English. At any rate, in the year in which _The Ten
Pleasures_ was published--1682-1683--the following work was registered
at Stationers' Hall: _The Woman's Advocate, or fifteen real comforts
of matrimony, being in requital of the late fifteen_ sham _comforts_.
Moreover, _The Ten Pleasures_ was in all probability printed
abroad--Hazlitt thinks at The Hague or Amsterdam. The very first page
in the original edition contains one of several hints of Batavian
production--"younger" is printed "jounger." The curious allusion to
the great French poet, Clement Marot, may also suggest a temporary
foreign sojourn for the author for though Marot was doubtless known
to English readers in the seventeenth century, the exact reference of
the allusion is not at all obvious. It very possibly reflects on the
fact that in 1526 the Sorbonne condemned both Marot and his poem
_Colloque de l'abbe et de la femme scavante_; and Marot certainly
wrote about women and marriage. He is not, however, a "stock" figure
in English literary allusion, either learned or popular, and the fact
suggests at least familiarity with the literature of other countries.

But there can be no doubt of the English character of the text both in
general and in detail. It is redolent of English middle-class life as
it was in the days before our grandfathers decided th