Two Essays of LOVE AND MARRIAGE Being A LETTER Written by a Gentleman to his Friend to disswade him from Love And an ANSWER thereunto by another Gentleman Together with some Characters and other Passages of Wit Written by Private Gentlemen for recreation Si quando gravabere curis Haec lege pro moestae medicamine mentis Hebeto London Printed for Henry Brome at the Hand in Pauls Church-yard 1657. THE STATIONER To the READERS Gentl THese scattered Papers coming to my hands I thought fit upon good Reasons to communicate them to you I might tell you they are delightfull and ingenuous but you will not take me for a competent Judge being neither learned nor indifferent Laudat venales The truth is my aim is as the Scots was for all your geuds And to please you and profit my self is the ambition and design of Your Servant H. B. To his honoured Friend on his being in love I. True Friend BUt that I know heresie is fashionable and madnesse the time-Livery thou wouldst force me to no little wonder which way possible thou shouldst stumble into Love be sick and sottish in Love lost as well to reason as good company lockt up from all the World but thy own thoughts and onely conversant with thy self yet formerly pleasant and affable desirous and desired of Society and one that I know has lived no Anchorite upon Earth nor yet hast had thine eyes tied up to any one face but hast both viewd and discourst with variety of Beauties nay I dare say not guilty of the ignorance of more yet that after so many Antidotes thou shouldst be so far fallen from thy primitive goodness as to lose thy self in dotage and that dotage on one creature and that creature a woman and call it Love too really next to a miracle is my onely admiration Prethee do not miscall thy disease and be sick of lust and complain of Love I can never believe that that noble passion can be the ruine of its subject neither will I so much disparage it as to make a woman its object If there be love t is to Heaven Vertue thy Countrey Parents Kinred Friends or what is of worth but to the femall Sex and in thy sense where sensuality cannot but have an interest though licenc'd by an Ordinance 't is onely Love scandall'd it being to the pity of the poor passion I speak it but concupiscense handsomly burnisht or a carnall appetite speciously in titled And therefore could I never win my judgement to affirm that the most eager of sinners were in love with sin but onely temptingly seduced to a vicious doting they did rather erroneously affect then truly love But let me inquire into thy passion what is it from the paint of nature those beautifull flowers of red and white methinks thou shouldst as well be enamoured with thy Mistris's picture as her body for even that too is not excusable from art and may be the worst drawn Frank he that marries for a face marries for a year 't is not a Summer since thy desires wrought as strongly upon Mistris M. R. as now on this and may be on as good a cause yet how soon did a little disease wither both her beauty and thy love and I hope thou hast not indented either with sickness or time for this Canst thou be so prodigall of thy affection as to waste it on such incertainties binde up thy self to love for an age when the cause of that love may perish in a moneth But I tell thee Frank beauty is a Chimera and has no being in nature Every man makes his own Mistris and just so much lustre do's he finde in her as first his fancy gives her For I dare challenge thee to shew me but one face in the whole world that all opinions will give in for beautifull so that Lovers as thou call'st them are but in the number of Pagans they but worship that Idoll which themselvs have made May be thou wilt tell me of manners carriage and vertue I am very glad to hear of it but let not thy passion hang in thy eyes when thou lookst on them for many of them their gestures are but School-postures and seem rather like a motion then a carriage Consider that in the presence of their Servants they are on the Stage and 't is rather action then behaviour it may be wert thou a peeper on them in their withdrawing rooms thou wouldst as much wish thine eyes closed then as now open For their vertues as I will not disallow the judgement of that reverend Doctor That 't is possible to finde some vertue in some women so I cannot believe there is such a grand stock of it in any of them as to command any man out of his senses for the love of it but I suppose as we more wonder to finde a Diamond on the shore then on the rock so but a spark of vertue in a woman gets greater reverence then a bodied lustre in the nobler Sex for 't is our humour to admire the more where we expect the less The cause then of thy love is either from beauty or vertue if from beauty how wilt thou love her when she is old If from vertue why dost thou covet to lie with her there needs not that low act of generation to the high communion of vertues and I should scarce take thee for a platonick Lover to warm a bed with her But shall I tell thee the cause don 't be afraid of truth then thou first lovest her to satisfie thy lust and if thou after continue to lie with her 't is either for want of a better or ' cause thou canst not be rid of her For I look on all the perfections in females but as so many encouragements to desire and that the best of women like the best of sallads procure the strongest appetite and in truth 't is the woman is affected not this the Sex being the substance and the Mistris but the shadow or that the rule of thy affection and this the instance But then thou wilt be goring of me with that common goad of objection thy so much curiosity in choice and rather my Lady then Jone Prethee tell me be thy appetite never so good do's thy meat relish the worse for being the cleanlier drest I never knew that good cookery did turn the edge of a good stomack and especially if thou limitest thy fancy to one dish thou hadst need to be both long in choosing and neat in dressing as well to avoid nauseating as to continue provocation Remember that July holds not all the year nor youth all thy life there is a December and Winter of age that attends on both and that passion that in its Spring will take fire at any face will in its Autumn be frost at all a bed-ridden palate is scarce sensible of sauce much less meat not the best of weapons how brisk and keen soever at the first but after long
silence but the proverb excuses me He whom sorrow makes dumb deserves double pity For my part I must confess I love to sleep in a whole skin and not to engage in anothers quarrell unless he will lend me his skull to bear the blows but this being the common cause 't is pity truth should be out-worded and her innocence be suspected to want clearness meerly for want of clearing There is no man more unfit for this work then I having been ever as atheistical in love as thy self and so far from being an Opponent to thy Thesis that I have ever been a noted Assertor of thy Doctrine till experience reformed my judgment and makes me look on my former error with regret and disdain 'T is so far from being a wonder to me that one pleasant affable and sociable one that has view'd variety of beauties should fall in love with one woman that I wonder how it could be otherwise none being fitter for love then one so qualified nor can any finde a best that have not view'd all That Love per se is the ruine of its subject I deny yet I allow it may be accidentally true and be a passion not the less noble And as I would not have it onely restrained to woman for its object so I would not have them totally excluded And truly I am so far from believing that Sex not an object of love that I can hardly admit of any besides That Love has several objects as Heaven Vertue and the rest which you reckon up with many more I deny not But all they as oblique objects are so far from being adaequate that they draw love in severall denominations as piety duty friendship c. And but that seriousness would be thrown away on thee and any thing here but sophistry useless I could tell thee from the learned that Love is onely an expansion of the soul to its object which is whatever is attractive and that naturally man loves himself best and first and all other things in subordination to himself and that whatever is most like man in nature and habit is the properest object of his love Then 't will follow whether you will or no that no object is so proper as woman But thou'lt laugh at these old-fashion'd grounds and account them like Harry's codpieces To abstract Love from sensuality in a naturall sense is both impossible and needless it deriving a greater influence from the sensitive soul and being a passion from which bruits are not exempt Nay that very thing which you call sensuality and will allow it to derive its legitimation onely from an Ordinance may shew an ancienter coat then Ordinances it being the onely way chalked out by nature for propagation and preservation of every species So that your Epithites and Synonoma's of concupiscense and carnal appetite c. I attribute to the luxuriance of your fancy and must tell you we can easily give you and your ways the like tearms without the help of a Sylva 〈◊〉 your main besitancy is 〈…〉 are you causes of love 'T is not bare red and white that are either causes of or colours for it but the scituation and contexture of both I never loved my Mistris face because fair but because I liked it and thereby thought it so and I therefore thought it so because hers so that should time or accident from which no face has a protection alter the complexion in the eye I 'd retain the same Idea still in mine Next for the Gentlemans change with which you upbraid him much may be pleaded in excuse for besides the great delight in variety I know no reason why if a man finde himself in an errour he may not repent and take a new course Nor may you call it prodigality of affection he that grounds his love right is above uncertainties in regard the true cause of love which is sympathy cannot perish before its object And because you say Beauty is a Chymaera and every man a pigmation that carves to himself a Mistris will you from thence infer that because all men do not think one face beautifull no man should think any so And I appeal to the Synod of Divines whether for a Lover to choose his own Mistris and love her or court her be a piece of ignorance or paganism Nor can you deny that manners carriage and vertue are incentives to love and that these things are really visible in that Sex by any that look not through spectacles of prejudice But he that has an ill sight dislikes all objects Thou hast an humour in thine eyes whereby thou canst not discern action from behaviour I like it not the worse if acquired no more then I do a good Scholar that speaks Latine by the Grammar That there are arcana imperii among them as well as us is undeniable for if all were as they appear they would be rather Angels then women 'T is true much action and deceptio visus is in both Sexes in point of Courtship whereby they reciprocally draw their expectations to a height unobtainable and succeeding enjoyments convince both Sexes of a handsom but commonly an equall cheat I shall not onely allow of that Doctors charity that held That 't is possible some vertue may be found in some women but also shall experimentally adde That much vertue may be found in many 'T is not for nothing that all vertues are declined by Grammarians with haec and fancied by Painters in female shadows Vertues are like Diamonds rare and small nor should we esteem them were they to be bought by the pound I take vertue and beauty to be causes of affection but I mean not by beauty the meer superficies of a visage but the symmetry of parts and he that grounds his affection rightly on that findes a becoming beauty even in old age Vertue also I conceive a cause of love and love a motive of copulation Nor is generation for the communion of vertues but propagation of issue since 't is an undoubted law of nature that all creatures desire and endeavour perpetuation You call lust the cause of love 't is true if you take all altitudes by your own Jacobs staff 't is so to you so the Wolf conceives all creatures to eat raw flesh because he do's I cannot imagine such a stoical apathy in men unless in Eutopia but that we do and may make that which you call lust a part of love Nor is that passion it self blameable but circumstances may make it so for the Stoicks themselves got children and did not deny the being of desires in men but their domineering over Reason Nor is it the work of a wise man to be without passions but above them Consider man as with a soul compounded of Will and Reason the conquest of the will in this life can be but by synechdoche which being considered it will follow That men abstracted from desires of this nature are rather to be looked for then found And
using grows dull and requires a whetting so that this studious culling of bed-fellows argues but the serious contemplations of mortality and is no more then a wise provision for futurity Where Frank is your love then Call'st thou that love that ebs and flows with the blood that is the brat of a goatish humour meerly servient to the body and often dead before it No the essence of that passion is as pure and lasting as the soul it waits on a sacred Vestall flame perpetually torrid and unextinguishable 't is thy under-girdle love that 's mortall of flames gross and transitory which moving in a region lower then thy heart prove rather flashes then steady fires I know thou art no stranger to multitude of examples that have beene hotter then Italians in the chase of their games and more frozen then Scythians after the taking it that in the same year have been ready to die of contraries both love and hate and with the same eagerness studied both a marriage and divorce that have not more long'd to obtain then having obtained to desert their hopes and their loves perish'd together the fruition of one the expiration of the other But may be thou wilt adde to thy other motive that of wealth she 's rich Nay now I hear thee and do so far allow thee to court the Lady for her fortune as I would the Chambermaid for her Mistris but have a care of loving in earnest or letting in of love farther then thy tongue a sigh or two in the presence if thou wilt but no ejaculations in private remember a difference betwixt acting and suffering a passion be nothing the sadder though nothing the richer like a good Souldier rise not so repulst from one Leaguer but to retaine strength enough presently for another that in a while thy soul will become face-proof the later beauty the pellet of the former till variety give the mastery to thy judgment make thee a Catholick Servant but no particular Lover But thou wilt justifie yet farther thou hast a fortune of thine own and the weightiness of that requires a partner in the managing it I don't gainsay it nay I am so much of thy side that I think a wife in no case more allowable then either for the getting or preservation of an Estate As for thy love-marrying I reckon it both the paradise and purgatory of fools But yet this Frank is onely an Apologie for a wife not love and think me no enemy to marriage but to the fondness of thy desire I would have thee get a wife but not to lose thy self to serve thy occasions but to master thy passions so to love with reason as not to woe without sense Credit me I do not at all think it to savour of impossibility seriously to court and marry too and yet uncing'd by any spark of love though I cannot but acknowledge the temptations of the other Sex for I reckon them amongst their studies yet that reason or the soul and gallantry of man should be basely prostituted to them I should as soon believe an Eagle to stoop at flies or Divinity at toys I conceive Frank the necessity of thy marrying streightens not thy judgement to this one Lady I would have thee to look on her as not without companions and then if thou makest an unlucky cast of it thy fortune will have this comfort thou art no loser though no winner Prethee why should not a woman be view'd with as little ardour as an handsome Statue or what is the influence of flesh as to the eye above that of marble If thou comest into a spacious Gallery variously behung thou canst walk it round look on this Picture and like it then turn thy face and forget it in the beauty of another there needing no more to the aspect of a face then of Imagery but onely the complacency of the beholder and the commendation of the Authour Women are a kinde of traffique too If thou comest to a shop seest a commodity and likest it thou cheapen'st it if thou bargainest thou takest it if not to the next standing the Markets full and free I tell thee 't is an injury no less to nature then reason to impale all perfection within the circuit of one creature Now after all this do I expect thou shouldst bid me turn the Tables and play my selfe the question Was I never in love Troth Frank I cannot excuse my selfe from the vanities of youth may be I have but let me remember thee I have had rattles and hobbi-horses too in my daies but I have left them and now look on them and thy thoughts with the same disdain That Mariner that hath scaped a rock may be a Pilot to the next passenger 'T is my faith now that 't is as possible to be sick of the plague a year as of love a day and I doubt not when time shall ripen both thy judgement and age but thou wilt then sit a most strict judge upon thy self and think no censure too severe to thy present follies or charity too bountifull to the true advice of Thy true Friend J. H. II. PRethee dear Friend do not burn Diana's Temple onely to be talked of Modern wits like spirits of the lower Region once conjured up must be set on work though of mischief I must confess thou venturest hard on the paradoxology of thy brain that darest enter the Lists Athanasius-like contra mundum disputing that with thy pen which the World from Adam and thy self by thy practice provest undeniable What is said in case of Religion a little Philosophy makes men Atheists but enough confirms them in the truth is true of thee in point of love of which and its objects thou art no more competent a Judg then a Red-coat is of a Moot-case Did I not know that all wonder proceeded of ignorance and that people most admire what they least understand I should wonder at thy wonder that a man of thy parts and complexion and born of a Mother should call that stumbling which is so gracefull and naturall a motion fall out with Love and Women yet by thy own confession understand neither Thou turnest Andabate and fightest blindfold not knowing against whom or for what I prethee Friend what Countrey Girle has sleighted thy Madrigals and disentertained thy affections that thou quarrellest and fallst at defiance with the whole Sex He that said all Crecians were liers was himself a Crecian and thou condemnest all Lovers as mad yet art thy self a Lover and consequently mad or else more mad that thou art not a Lover I never yet knew any despise Monarchy but those that could not be Monarchs Every man in this is a Huntsman who coming short of the Hare cries Hang her 't is dry meat Among the rest of thy wonders thou maist put this for one that I who am unconcerned should at this distance take up the cudgels in defence of a friend whom thou hast laught into
for your erratical love that is so planitary and unfixed it shews its own weaknesse but not your strength though it be peripatetical it makes not you a Philosopher since Love like Sun-beams being diffused are but faint but contracted to one Object are fervent and calefactory Wives are not Quelque chores in whom only variety breeds delight but are solid food which never nauseate sound stomachs For a man to love Vertue abstracted from its subject is to fancy a Chymaera but Vertue in a woman is an undoubted motive As to your similitude of Joane and my Lady take the whole Proverb put in in the dark and you 'r answered 'T is not want of difference but due discerning nor is she as good but seems so The Cuckow once sang better then the Nightingale but remember who was Judge Times swift motion and youths transitoriness are common places in the beaten roads where ever travelling wit baits and refreshes himself in his pilgrimage But yet Desires being part of the soul and so immortall do not decay in age but onely alter their motives and object Nor is the world barren of examples of aged men eagerly desiring and performing rites of conjuncture with women As for those changeable and quick-silver minds which love and loath in a moment 't is their vice and may give you this notion That as their love can so soon and easily change into disdain so your present scorn may turn to a dotage on the like ground And though perhaps you have not yet been in love 't is commune malum since you will call it so like the small pox every one hath been or must be troubled with it and bodies unacquainted with lesser diseases are irrecoverably swallowed up of greater Your wary advice to your friend to love with discretion I allow and commend and for my part were I to love again would not go a foot further then my counterpart should meet me but where I found reall love I would scorne to be out-vied being of Alexander his resolution No creature should conquer me with love or hatred T' is not good to play the Butcher with that naked Sex that have no arms but to imbrace with nor Emprick-like kill them by whole-sale I never yet met any of either Sex good at the sport but at last they met with a requitall 'T is within the memory of man since a pregnant Spark furnished with two of your Cardinall Vertues wit and disdain slung his fire-balls of contempt on the whole Sex courted some into dotage and then jeered 'um who at last fell foul on a Kitchin-wench and doated who repayed him with the same devices and which was worst at last in despight married him Homicida is of both Genders and belongs to both Sexes Your other points of marrying for wealth and yoke-fellowship I shall agree to with silence But I would not make wealth my Mistris's Master while woman stands by like the Chamber-maid with a broom to attend her Let my Mistris be a figure and her portion the Cyphers which added to her advance her much but of themselves signifie nothing Passionate Courtship should but cannot be avoided by all every one is not Hercules but dissimulation may and must be shun'd by all There is no Souldier beleaguers a Garison but with hopes to come off untouched no Lover attempts a Mistris but hopes for fruition without bloudshed yet the Souldier may receive a shot and the Woer a repulse and that which he intends for a sin oft proves a punishment He that lives a Catholick Woer may at last come to the purgatory of a generall contempt But methinks Friend you wheel about and approve that which at first you decried there might be some hopes of agreement and hand-shaking between us Allow love and marriage and I will joyn with thee against dotage and would have Love sequestred from dotage as much as thy minde from this obstinacy But I see the Devil has alwais a cloven foot you would now allow of marriage without love and confound love and dotage as if the same To wed without love is to be tied by the loyns like a Monkey to a bed-post neither is it possible to court or marry without love as you write for that want of love turns courtship to flattery and marriage to a bargain That Women are Natures Errata with Aristotle I acknowledge and that they study temptations is undoubtedly true but yet that they do it not alone your own example proves who by this fancy of Anti-womanism tempt the Sex so much that I could wish my self one to dote on thee Do not call the lawfull and necessary intermixture of both Sexes to be a base prostitution of the Reason Soul and Gallantry of a man 't is so false and groundless it deserves no answer but the lye Let thy friend alone with his choice and if he think her so she is pieceless only I admit your Caution While he seeks to win her let him not lose himself nor shoot away all his shot at one volley but keep a reserve for a fresh encounter 't is but discretion And now to answer your similitudinary Question Why a woman cannot be viewed with as little ardour as a Statue it is because a Statue is not a Woman nor directly like a Woman if it could be Pigmation will tell you there may be like affection nor is the influence different as to the eye but the power that actuates it if a man view a thousand Pictures he generally likes one best and having perused all returns to that and though the Market be free and Wares various a good Chapman sticks to what he best fancies and deals in it Neither is all perfection thereby impaled in one Creature but there may be enough supposed in one to content one That your self hath ever loved I question but that you have fancied and mist may be true but you cannot thereby go out a cometetent Tutor Nor should I ever take that Mariner for my Pilot who hath no other experience then splitting his own Ship first guide your own Vessell to the Port before you take another to your management and steerage What it is to be sick of Love or the Plague you know much alike and so shall be believed having studied both but in shape for my part I have knowne many sick of Love and yet recovered but the Plague I have no skill in My desire is that you participate of your own counsell suspend your severe censure to your friend and sit first a strict Judge on your self till time and experience ripen your judgement and change your minde Which I hope I shall not longer expect then untill you have seriously perused and weighed the experimentall directions and wholsome advice of Thine and thy Friends Friend A. B. A Letter to a Friend delivering an Opinion concerning the Scotch Rising SIR THat you may receive an account of the Scotch business and that there hath been such irresolute alteration