Matrimony has been considered by some writers as a condition not so well suited to the circumstances of philosophers and men of learning. There is a little tract which professes to investigate the subject. It has for title, De Matrimonio Literati, an cœlibem esse, an verò nubere conveniat, i.e., of the Marriage of a Man of Letters, with an inquiry whether it is most proper for him to continue a bachelor, or to marry?
The author alleges the great merit of some women; particularly that of Gonzaga the consort of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; a lady of such distinguished accomplishments, that Peter Bembus said, none but a stupid man would not prefer one of her conversations to all the formal meetings and disputations of the philosophers.
The ladies perhaps will be surprised to find that it is a question among the learned, Whether they ought to marry? and will think it an unaccountable property of learning that it should lay the professors of it under an obligation to disregard the sex. But it is very questionable whether, in return for this want of complaisance in them, the generality of ladies would not prefer the beau, and the man of fashion. However, let there be Gonzagas, they will find converts enough to their charms.
The sentiments of Sir Thomas Browne on the consequences of marriage are very curious, in the second part of his Religio Medici, sect, 9. When he wrote that work, he said, "I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions, who never marry twice." He calls woman "the rib and crooked piece of man." He adds, "I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to procreate the world without this trivial and vulgar way." He means the union of sexes, which he declares, "is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life; nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed." He afterwards declares he is not averse to that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful: "I could look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse." He afterwards disserts very profoundly on the music there is in beauty, "and the silent note which Cupid strikes is far sweeter than the sound of an instrument." Such were his sentiments when youthful, and residing at Leyden; Dutch philosophy had at first chilled his passion; it is probable that passion afterwards inflamed his philosophy—for he married, and had sons and daughters!
Dr. Cocchi, a modern Italian writer, but apparently a cynic as old as Diogenes, has taken the pains of composing a treatise on the present subject enough to terrify the boldest Bachelor of Arts! He has conjured up every chimera against the marriage of a literary man. He seems, however, to have drawn his disgusting portrait from his own country; and the chaste beauty of Britain only looks the more lovely beside this Florentine wife.
I shall not retain the cynicism which has coloured such revolting features. When at length the doctor finds a woman as all women ought to be, he opens a new string of misfortunes which must attend her husband. He dreads one of the probable consequences of matrimony—progeny, in which we must maintain the children we beget! He thinks the father gains nothing in his old age from the tender offices administered by his own children: he asserts these are much better performed by menials and strangers! The more children he has, the less he can afford to have servants! The maintenance of his children will greatly diminish his property! Another alarming object in marriage is that, by affinity, you become connected with the relations of the wife. The envious and ill-bred insinuations of the mother, the family quarrels, their poverty or their pride, all disturb the unhappy sage who falls into the trap of connubial felicity! But if a sage has resolved to marry, he impresses on him the prudential principle of increasing his fortune by it, and to remember his "additional expenses!" Dr. Cocchi seems to have thought that a human being is only to live for himself; he had neither heart to feel, a head to conceive, nor a pen that could have written one harmonious period, or one beautiful image! Bayle, in his article Raphelengius, note B, gives a singular specimen of logical subtlety, in "a reflection on the consequence of marriage." This learned man was imagined to have died of grief, for having lost his wife, and passed three years in protracted despair. What therefore must we think of an unhappy marriage, since a happy one is exposed to such evils? He then shows that an unhappy marriage is attended by beneficial consequences to the survivor. In this dilemma, in the one case, the husband lives afraid his wife will die, in the other that she will not! If you love her, you will always be afraid of losing her; if you do not love her, you will always be afraid of not losing her. Our satirical celibataire is gored by the horns of the dilemma he has conjured up.
James Petiver, a famous botanist, then a bachelor, the friend of Sir Hans Sloane, in an album signs his name with this designation:—
"From the Goat tavern in the Strand, London,
Nov. 27. In the 34th year of my freedom,
A.D. 1697."