temper, it is altogether incorrigible, and not to be amended by admonition. Sir Francis Bacon, as I remember, lays it down as a maxim ', that no marriage can be happy in which the wife has no opinion of her husband's wisdom; but, without offence to so great an authority, I may venture to say, that a sullen wise man is as bad as a good-natured fool. Knowledge softened with complacency and goodbreeding, will make a man equally beloved and respected; but when joined with a severe, distant, and unsociable temper, it creates rather fear than love. I, who am a bachelor, have no other notions of conjugal tenderness but what I learn from books; and shall therefore produce three letters of Pliny, who was not only one of the greatest, but the most learned man in the Roman empire. At the same time I am very much ashamed, that on such occasions I am obliged to have recourse to heathen authors; and shall appeal to my readers, if they would not think it a mark of a narrow education in a man of quality, to write such passionate letters to any woman but a mistress. They were all three written at a time when she was at a distance from him. The first of them puts me in mind of a married friend of mine, who said, • Sickness itself is pleasant to a man that is attended in it by one whom he dearly loves.' 'PLINY TO CALPHURNIA. I NEVER was so much offended at business, as when it hindered me from going with you into the country, or following you thither: for I more particularly wish to be with you at present, that I might be sensible of the progress you make in the recovery of your strength and health; as also of the enter Essays, Ess. viii. tainment and diversions you can meet with in your retirement. Believe me, it is an anxious state of mind to live in ignorance of what happens to those whom we passionately love. I am not only in pain for your absence, but also for your indisposition. I am afraid of every thing, fancy every thing, and as it is the nature of man in fear, I fancy those things most, which I am most afraid of. Let me therefore earnestly desire you to favour me, under these my apprehensions, with one letter every day, or, if possible, with two; for I shall be a little at ease while I am reading your letters, and grow anxious again as soon as I have read them 2. 29 SECOND LETTER. You tell me that you are very much afflicted at my absence, and that you have no satisfaction in any thing but my writings, which you often lay by you upon my pillow. You oblige me very much in wishing to see me, and making me your comforter in my absence. In return I must let you know, I am no less pleased with the letters which you write to me, and read them over a thousand times with new pleasure. If your letters are capable of giving me so much pleasure, what would your conversation do? Let me beg of you to write to me often; though at the same time I must confess, your letters give me anguish whilst they give me pleasure 3.' THIRD LETTER. It is impossible to conceive how much I languish for you in your absence; the tender love I bear you 2 C. Plin. epist. lib. vi. ep. iv. is the chief cause of this my uneasiness; which is still the more insupportable, because absence is wholly a new thing to us. I lie awake most part of the night in thinking of you, and several times of the day go as naturally to your apartment as if you were there to receive me; but when I miss you I come away dejected, out of humour, and like a man that had suffered a repulse. There is but one part of the day in which I am relieved from this anxiety, and that is when I am engaged in public affairs. • You may guess at the uneasy condition of one who has no rest but in business, no consolation but in trouble 4.' I shall conclude this paper with a beautiful passage out of Milton, and leave it as a lecture to those of my own sex, who have a mind to make their conversation agreeable as well as instructive to the fair partners who are fallen into their care. Eve having observed that Adam was entering into some deep disquisitions with the angel who was sent to visit him, is described as retiring from their company, with a design of learning what should pass there from her husband. So spake our sire, and by his count'nance seem'd With lowliness majestic from her seat Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers. Of what was high. Such pleasures she reserv'd, Her husband the relater she preferr'd 4 C. Plin, epist. lib. vii. ep. v. Before the angel, and of him to ask Chose rather. He, she knew, would intermix With conjugal caresses; from his lip Not words alone pleas'd her. O! when meet now STEELE. N° 150. SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1710. Hæc sunt jucundi causa cibusque mali. OVID. 'Tis this that causes and foments the evil, R. WYNNE. From my own Apartment, March 24. I HAVE received the following letter upon the subject of my last paper. The writer of it tells me, I there spoke of marriage as one that knows it only by speculation, and for that reason he sends me his sense of it, as drawn from experience. MR. BICKERSTAFF, 'I HAVE received your paper of this day, and think you have done the nuptial state a great deal of justice in the authority you give us of Pliny; whose letters to his wife you have there translated. But give me leave to tell you, that it is impossible for you, that are a bachelor, to have so just a notion of this way of life, as to touch the affections of your readers in 5 Milton's Paradise Lost, b. viii. 1. 39–58. a particular, wherein every man's own heart suggests more than the nicest observer can form to himself, without experience. I therefore, who am an old married man, have sat down to give you an account of the matter from my own knowledge, and the observations which I have made upon the conduct of others in that most agreeable or wretched condition. It is very commonly observed, that the most smart pangs which we meet with, are in the beginning of wedlock, which proceed from ignorance of each other's humour, and want of prudence to make allowances for a change from the most careful respect, to the most unbounded familiarity. Hence it arises, that trifles are commonly occasions of the greatest anxiety; for contradiction being a thing wholly unusual between a new-married couple, the smallest instance of it is taken for the highest injury; and it very seldom happens, that the man is slow enough in assuming the character of a husband, or the woman quick enough in condescending to that of a wife. It immediately follows, that they think they have all the time of their courtship been talking in masks to each other, and therefore begin to act like disappointed people. Philander finds Delia ill-natured and impertinent, and Delia, Philander surly and inconstant. I have known a fond couple quarrel in the very honey-moon about cutting up a tart: nay, I could name two, who, after having had seven children, fell out and parted beds upon the boiling of a leg of mutton. My very next neighbours have not spoke to one another these three days, because they differed in their opinions, whether the clock should stand by the window, or over the chimney. It may seem strange to you, who are not a married man, when I tell you how the least trifle can strike a woman dumb VOL. III. N |