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38 Erasmus chuse you whether. But what? Is not the Author and Parent of all our Love, Cupid, as blind as a beetle? and as with him tall colours agree, so from him is it that every one likes his own Sweeter-kin best, though never so ugly, and ?‘that an old man dotes on his old wife, and a boy on his girle’. These things are not onely done every where but laught at too, yet as ridiculous as they are, they make society pleasant, and, as it were, glew it together. And what has been said of Friendship may more reasonably be presum’d of Matrimony, which in truth is no other than an inseparable conjunction of life. Good God! What Divorces, or what not worse than that, would daily happen, were not the converse between a man and his wife supported and cherished by flattery, apishnesse, gentlenesse, ignorance, dissembling, certain Retainers of mine also! Whoop holiday! how few marriages should we have, if the Husband should but through-examin how many tricks his pretty little Mop of Modesty has plaid before she was marry?d! And how 1 TÀ pr KaXà rada mépavrat, 2 ut cascus cascam et pupus pupam deamet.
