With flinty hearts, careless of other's moan.
In their own lusts carried most headlong blind,
But more herein to speak I am forbidden;
Sometimes for speaking truth one may be chidden.
But to my purpose: If women in general be so bad (and men worse than they) what a hazard is it to marry? where shall a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband? A woman a man may eschew, but not a wife: wedding is undoing (some say) marrying marring, wooing woeing: [5759]“a wife is a fever hectic,” as Scaliger calls her, “and not be cured but by death,” as out of Menander, Athenaeus adds,
In pelaprus te jacis negotiorum,—
Non Libyum, non Aegeum, ubi ex triginta non pereunt
Tria navigia: duceus uxorem servatur prorsus nemo.
Thou wadest into a sea itself of woes;
In Libya and Aegean each man knows