No. 159.
[Steele.
Thursday, April 13, to Saturday, April 15, 1710.
Nitor in adversum, nec me qui cætera, vincit
Impetus.—Ovid., Met. ii. 72.
From my own Apartment, April 14.
The wits of this island, for above fifty years past, instead of correcting the vices of the age, have done all they could to inflame them. Marriage has been one of the common topics of ridicule that every stage-scribbler has found his account in; for whenever there is an occasion for a clap, an impertinent jest upon matrimony is sure to raise it. This has been attended with very pernicious consequences. Many a country squire, upon his setting up for a man of the town, has gone home in the gaiety of his heart and beat his wife. A kind husband has been looked upon as a clown, and a good wife as a domestic animal, unfit for the company or conversation of the beau monde. In short, separate beds, silent tables, and solitary homes have been introduced by your men of wit and pleasure of the age.
As I shall always make it my business to stem the torrents of prejudice and vice, I shall take particular care to put an honest father of a family in countenance, and endeavour to remove all the evils out of that state of life, which is either the most happy, or most miserable, that a man can be placed in. In order to this, let us, if you please, consider the wits and well-bred persons of former times. I have shown in another paper,[201] that Pliny, who was a man of the greatest genius, as well as of the first quality of his age, did not think it below him to be a kind husband, and to treat his wife as a friend, companion and counsellor. I shall give the like instance of another, who in all respects was a much greater man than Pliny, and has written a whole book of letters to his wife. They are not so full of turns as those translated out of the former author, who writes very much like a modern, but are full of that beautiful simplicity which is altogether natural, and is the distinguishing character of the best ancient writers. The author I am speaking of, is Cicero; who, in the following passages which I have taken out of his letters,[202] shows, that he did not think it inconsistent with the politeness of his manners, or the greatness of his wisdom, to stand upon record in his domestic character.
These letters were written at a time when he was banished from his country, by a faction that then prevailed at Rome.
Cicero to Terentia.
I.