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32 Erasmus to be carried whither they please to hurry him. But forasmuch as such as are born to the business of the world have some little sprinklings of Reason more than the rest, yet that they may the better manage it, even in this as well as in other things, they call me to counsel; and I give ’em such as is worthy of my self, to wit That they take to ’em a wife—a silly thing, God wot, and foolish, yet wanton and pleasant, by which means the roughness of the Masculine temper is season’d and sweeten’d by her folly. For in that Plato seems to doubt under which Genus he should put woman, to wit that of rational Creatures or Brutes, he intended no other in it than to shew the apparent folly of the Sexe. For if perhaps any of them goes about to be thought wiser than the rest, what else does she do but play the fool twice, as if a man should 1‘ teach a Cow to dance’, ?‘a thing quite against the hair’. For as it doubles the crime if any one should put a disguise upon Nature, or endeavour to bring her to that she will in no wise bear, according to that Proverb of the 1 Bovem ad ceroma. ? invita reluctanteque Minerva.
