No. 150.
[Steele.
Thursday, March 23, to Saturday, March 25, 1710.
Hæc sunt jucundi causa, cibusque mali.
Ovid, Rem. Amor. 138.
From my own Apartment, March 24.
I have received the following letter upon the subject of my last paper. The writer of it tells me, I there spoke of marriage as one that knows it only by speculation, and for that reason he sends me his sense of it, as drawn from experience:
"Mr. Bickerstaff,
"I have read your paper of this day, and think you have done the nuptial state a great deal of justice in the authority you give us of Pliny, whose letters to his wife you have there translated: but give me leave to tell you, that it is impossible for you, that are a bachelor, to have so just a notion of this way of life, as to touch the affections of your readers in a particular wherein every man's own heart suggests more than the nicest observer can form to himself without experience. I therefore, who am an old married man, have sat down to give you an account of the matter from my own knowledge, and the observations which I have made upon the conduct of others in that most agreeable or wretched condition.
"It is very commonly observed, that the most smart pangs which we meet with are in the beginning of wedlock, which proceed from ignorance of each other's humour, and want of prudence to make allowances for a change from the most careful respect to the most unbounded familiarity. Hence it arises, that trifles are commonly occasions of the greatest anxiety; for contradiction being a thing wholly unusual between a new married couple, the smallest instance of it is taken for the highest injury; and it very seldom happens, that the man is slow enough in assuming the character of a husband, or the woman quick enough in condescending to that of a wife. It immediately follows, that they think they have all the time of their courtship been talking in masks to each other, and therefore begin to act like disappointed people. Philander finds Delia ill-natured and impertinent; and Delia, Philander surly and inconstant.