Amongst popular proverbs we find the cautious—"Marry in haste and repent at leisure,"[233:A] and "Love and lordship like not fellowship," and the advice—"Marry for love, but only love that which is lovely." It is very gracefully true, too, that "When the good-man's from home the good-wife's table is soon spread," while there is quaint sarcasm in this: "Next to no wife a good wife is best";[233:B] and the value of influence is brought before us in the adage, "A good Jack makes a good Jill."
In Torrington churchyard we find the following high testimony to a wife:—
"She was—my words are wanting to say what—
Think what a woman should be—she was that";
while in Chaucer's "Shipmanne's Tale" we find the following quaint appeal:—
"For which, my dere wife, I thee beseke,
As be to every wight buxom and meke,
And for to kepe our good be curious,
And honestly governe wel our hous."
The following Italian proverb is a very happy one, and accords entirely with general experience:—"La donna savia è all' impensata, alla pensata è matta": "Women are wise offhand and fools on reflection"; while the advice of the Spaniard, though ungracious enough in its utterance, is valuable—"El consejo de la muger es poco, y quieu no le toma es loco": "A woman's counsel is no great thing, but he who does not take it is a fool." An old English proverb goes so far as to declare that "A man must ask his wife's leave to thrive," and there is not a little wisdom in the counsel. A very ungracious proverb, indeed, is the German—"Es giebt nur zwei gute Weiber auf der Welt: die Eine ist gestorben, die Andere nicht zu finden": "There are only two good women in the world; one of them is dead, and the other is not to be found."
Some would tell us that marriages are made in heaven,[234:A] but a sapient saw reminds us that "There is no marriage in heaven, neither is there always heaven in marriage."
Gossip, and the mischief-making that may too often accrue from imprudent loquacity, have at all times been so commonly attributed to the fair sex that we naturally find many such proverbs as these: "Silence is not the greatest vice of a woman"; "A woman conceals what she does not know"; "He that tells his wife news is but newly married." The words of Hotspur will be recalled:
"Constant you are,
But yet a woman, and for secrecy
No lady closer; for I well believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know."
The writer of Ecclesiasticus declares that "As the climbing up a sandy way is to the feet of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a quiet man"; while in a MS. of the time of Henry V. we find the following quaint statement:—