A Lover in Calcagninus Apologies, wished with all his heart he were his mistris Ring, to see, hear, embrace, see, and do I know not what: O thou fool, quoth the Ring, if thou wer’st in my room, thou shouldst hear, observe, and see pudenda & pœnitenda, that which would make thee loath and hate her, yea peradventure all women for her sake.

I will say nothing of the vices of their mindes, their pride, envy, inconstancy, weakness, malice, selfwill, lightness, insatiable lust, jealousie; Ecclus 5. 14. No malice to a womans, no bitterness like to hers, Eccles. 7. 21. and as the same Author urgeth Prov. 31. 10. Who shall finde a vertuous woman? He makes a question of it.

Neq; jus neq; bonum, neq; æquum sciunt, melius peius, prosit, obsit, nihil vident, nisi quod libido suggerit. They know neither good nor bad, be it better or worse (as the Comicall Poet hath it) beneficiall or hurtfull, they will do what they list.

Insidiæ humani generis, querimonia vitæ, Exuviæ noctis, durissima cura diei, Pœna virum, nex & juvenum, &c. ——

And to that purpose were they first made, as Jupiter insinuates in the Poet;

The fire that bold Prometheus stole from me, With plagues cal’d women shall revenged be, On whose alluring and entising face, Poor mortalls doting shall their death embrace.

In fine, as Diogenes concludes in Nevisanus, Nulla est fœmina quæ non habeat Quid: they have all their faults.

Every each of them hath some vice, If one be full of villany, Another hath a liquorish eye. If one be full of wantonness, Another is a Chideress.

When Leander was drowned, the inhabitants of Sestos consecrated Heros Lanterne to Anteros, Anteroti sacrum, and he that had good successe in his love, should light the candle: but never any man was found to light it; which I can refer to nought, but the inconstancy and lightness of women.

For in a thousand, good there is not one; All be so proud, unthankfull and unkinde, With flinty hearts, careless of others moane, In their own lusts carried most headlong blinde, But more herein to speak I am forbidden, Sometime for speaking truth one may be chidden.

I am not willing, you see, to prosecute the cause against them, and therefore take heed you mistake me not, matronam nullam ego tango, I honour the sex, with all good men, and as I ought to do, rather then displease them, I will voluntarily take the oath which Mercurius Britannicus took, Viragin. descript. lib. 2. fol. 95; Me nihil unquam mali nobilissimo sexui, vel verbo, vel facto machinaturum, &c.

let Simonides, Mantuan, Platina, Pet. Aratine, and such women-haters bare the blame, if ought be said amiss; I have not writ a tenth of that which might be urged out of them and others; non possunt invectivæ omnes, & satyræ in fœminas scriptæ, uno volumine comprehendi.

And that which I have said (to speak truth) no more concerns them then men, though women be more frequently named in this Tract; (to Apologize once for all) I am neither parciall against them, or therefore bitter: what is said of the one, mutato nomine, may most-part be understood of the other.

My words are like Passus picture in Lucian, of whom, when a good fellow had bespoke an horse to be painted with his heeles upward, tumbling on his back, he made him passant: now when the fellow came for his piece, he was very angry, and said, it was quite opposite to his minde; but Passus instantly turned the Picture upside down, shewed him the horse at that site which he requested, and so gave him satisfaction. If any man take exception at my words, let him alter the name, read him for her, and ’tis all one in effect.

But to my purpose: If women in generall be so bad (and men worse then they) what a hazard is it to marry? where shall a man finde a good wife, or a woman a good husband? A woman a man may eschue, but not a wife: wedding is undoing (some say) marrying marring, wooing woing: a wife is a fever hectick, as Scaliger calls her, and not to be cured but by death, as out of Menander, Atheneus addes,

In pelagus te jacis negotiorum, —— Non Lybium, non Ægeum, ubi ex triginta non pereunt Tria navigia: ducens uxorem servatur prorsus nemo:

Thou wadest into a sea it self of woes; In Libycke and Ægæan each man knowes Of thirty not three ships are cast away, But on this rock not one escapes, I say.

The worldly cares, miseries, discontents, that accompany marriage, I pray you learn of them that have experience, for I have none; παῖδας ἐγὼ λόγους ἐγεννησάμην, libri mentis liberi. For my part I’le dissemble with him,

Este procul nymphæ, fallax genus este puellæ, Vita jugata meo non facit ingenio: Me juvat, &c.

many married men exclaime at the miseries of it, and rail at wives downright; I never tried, but as I hear some of them say,

Mare haud mare, vos mare acerrimum,

An Irish Sea is not so turbulent and raging as a litigious wife.

Scylla & Charybdis Sicula contorquens freta, Minus est timenda, nulla non melior fera est.

Scylla and Charybis are lesse dangerous, There is no beast that is so noxious.

Which made the Divell belike, as most interpreters hold, when he had taken away Job’s goods, corporis & fortunæ bona, health, children, friends, to persecute him the more, leave his wicked wife, as Pineda proves out of Tertullian, Cyprian, Austin, Chrysostome, Prosper, Gaudentius, &c. ut novum calamitatis inde genus viro existeret, to vex and gaule him worse quam totus infernus, then all the fiends in hell, as knowing the conditions of a bad woman.

Jupiter non tribuit homini pestilentius malum, saith Simonides: better dwell with a Dragon or a Lion, then keep house with a wicked wife. Ecclus 25. 18. better dwell in a wilderness. Prov. 21. 19. no wickedness like to her, Ecclus 25. 22. She makes a sorry heart, an heavy countenance, a wounded minde, weak hands, and feeble knees, vers. 25. A woman and death are two the bitterest things in the world:

uxor mihi ducenda est hodie, id mihi visus est dicere, abi domum & suspende te. Ter. And. 1. 5. And yet for all this we Batchelors desire to be married, with that Vestall virgin, we long for it,

Felices nuptæ! moriar, nisi nubere dulce est.

Tis the sweetest thing in the world, I would I had a wife, saith he,

For fain would I leave a single life, If I could get me a good wife.

hai-ho for an husband cries she, a bad husband, nay the worst that ever was is better then none: O blissfull marriage, O most welcome marriage, and happy are they that are so coupled: we do earnestly seek it, and are never well till we have effected it.

But with what fate? like those birds in the Embleme, that fed about a cage, so long as they could fly away at their pleasure, liked well of it; but when they were taken and might not get loose, though they had the same meat, pined away for sullenness, and would not eat. So we commend marriage;

—— donec miselli liberi Aspicimus dominam; sed postquam heu janua clausa est, Fel intus est quod mel fuit:

So long as we are wooers, may kiss and koll at our pleasure, nothing is so sweet, we are in heaven as we think: but when we are once tied, and have lost our liberty, marriage is an hell, give me my yellow hose again: a mouse in a trap lives as merrily, we are in a purgatory some of us, if not hell it self.

Dulce bellum inexpertis, as the proverb is, ’tis fine talking of war, and marriage sweet in contemplation, ’till it be tried: and then as wars are most dangerous, irksome, every minute at deaths door, so is, &c.

When those wild Irish Peers, saith Stanihurst, were feasted by King Henry the second (at what time he kept his Christmas at Dublin) and had tasted of his Prince-like cheer, generous wines, dainty fare, had seen his massie plate of silver, gold, inamel’d, beset with jewels, golden candle-sticks, goodly rich hangings, brave furniture, heard his trumpets sound, Fifes, Drums, and his exquisite musick in all kindes: