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A45495
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Essays of love and marriage being letters written by two gentlemen, one dissuading from love, the other an answer thereunto : with some characters and other passages of wit.
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1673
(1673)
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Wing H64A; ESTC R11545
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27,815
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110
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ESSAYS OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE Being LETTERS written by two Gentlemen One dissuading from LOVE the other an Answer thereunto With some CHARACTERS and other Passages of Wit Si quando gravabere curis Haec lege pro moestae medicamine mentis habete London Printed for H. Brome at the Gun in S. Paul's Church-yard 1673. SIC DONEC The Right Hon. ble Scroop Egerton Earl of Bridgwater Vâ—scount Brackley Baron of Elsmere 1703 THE Book-seller to the Reader ' T Is Expectation that makes the best welcome and therefore I question not what acceptance this Second Edition of the Essays of Love and Marriage may find I was very seasonably presented with a short Discourse conteining what is remarkable in the late Piece called Reflections on Marriage before the committing of this to the Press Which being suitable as well in the Subject as in its Bulk to the former Essays I have linked them together It matters not whether I praise it with a commendatory Frontispiece Good Wine wants no Bush But not being in this an indifferent Judge I might not in my Attempt be much regarded Laudat venales qui vult extrudere merces However I hope the same Fate will not attend this as does the Subject now adays to remain uncourted but to find Acceptance with all which will answer my Design to please you and profit my self Yours Hen. Brome To his Honoured Friend being in Love I. True Friend BUt that I know heresie is fashionable and madness 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 lock d up from all the world but thy own thoughts and only conversant with thy self yet formerly pleasant and affable desirous and desired of Society and one that I know has lived no Anchoret upon Earth nor yet hast had thine eyes tied up to any one face but hast both view'd 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 only 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 Virtue thy Country Parents Kinred Friends or what is of worth but to the Female Sex and in thy sense where Sensuality cannot but have an interest though licenc'd by an Ordinance 't is only Love scandal'd it being to the pity of the poor Passion I speak it but concupiscence handsomly burnisht or a carnal appetite speciously intitled And therefore could I never win my judgment to affirm that the most eager of sinners were in love with sin but only temptingly seduced to a vicious doting they did rather erroneously affect than truly love But let me enquire into thy Passion what is it from the paint of Nature those beautiful flowers of red and white Methinks thou shouldst as well be enamour'd with thy Mistris ' 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 prodigal of thy Affection as to waste it on such incertainties bind 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 find in her as first his fansie gives her For I dare challenge thee to shew me but one Face in the whole world that all opinions will give in for beautiful so that Lovers as thou call'st them are but in the number of Pagans they but worship that Idol which themselves have made May be thou wilt tell me of manners carriage and virtue I am very glad to hear of it but let not thy Passion hang in thy eyes when thou lookest on them for many of them their Gestures are but School-postures and seem rather like a Motion than a Carriage Consider that in the presence of their Servants they are on the Stage and 't is rather Action than Behaviour it may be wert thou a peeper on them in thier withdrawing rooms thou wouldst as much wish thine eyes closed then as now open For their virtues as I will not disallow the judgment of that Reverend Doctor That 't is possible to find some virtue 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 find a Diamond on the shore than on the rock so but a spark of virtue in a woman gets greater reverence than 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 Virtue if from Beauty how wilt thou love her when she is old If from Virtue why dost thou covet to lie with her there needs not that low act of Generation to the high Communion of Virtues and I should scarce take thee for a Platonic Lover to warm a bed with her But shall I tell thee the cause don 't be afraid of truth then thou first lov'st 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 than 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 stomach and especially if thou limitest thy fansie to one dish thou hadst need to be both long in
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 mayst 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 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 quarrel 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 merely for want of clearing There is no man more unfit for this work than 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 than one so qualified nor can any find 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 only 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 Virtue and the rest which you reckon up with many more I deny not But all they as oblique objects are so far from being adequate that they draw Love in several 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 only 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 natural sense is both impossible and needless it deriving a greater influence from the sensitive soul and being a Passion from which Brutes are not exempt Nay that very thing which you call sensuality and will allow it to derive its legitimation only from an Ordinance may shew an antienter coat than Ordinances it being the only way chalked out by nature for propagation and preservation of every species So that your Epithetes and Synonyma's of concupiscence and carnal appetite c. I attribute to the luxuriance of your fansie and must tell you we can easily give you your ways the like terms without the help of a Sylva But your main hesitancy is What are your causes of Love 'T is not bare red and white that are either causes of or colours for it but the situation 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 retein 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 find 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 Pygmalion that carves to himself a Mistris will you from thence infer that because all men do not think one face beautiful no man should think any so And I appeal to the Synod of Divines whether for a Lover to chuse his own Mistris and love her or court her be a piece of ignorance or paganism Nor can you deny that manners carriage and virtue 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 than 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 than women 'T is true much action and deceptio visus is in both sexes in point of Courtship whereby they reciprocally draw their expectations to an height unobteinable and succeeding enjoyments convince both Sexes of a handsom but commonly an equal cheat I shall not only allow of that Doctors charity that held That 't is possible some virtue may be found in some women but also shall experimentally add That much virtue may be found in many 'T is not for nothing that all virtues are declined by Grammarians with haec and fansied by Painters in female shadows Virtues are like Diamonds rare and small nor should we esteem them were they to be bought by the pound I take virtue and beauty to be causes of affection but I mean not by beauty the mere superficies of a visage but the symmetry of parts and he that grounds his affection rightly on that finds a becoming beauty even in old Age. Virtue also I conceive a cause of love and love a motive of copulation Nor is generation for the communion of virtues 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 Jacob's staff 't is so to you so the Wolf conceives all creatures to eat raw flesh because he does I cannot imagin such a Stocial 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 itself blameable but circumstances may make it so