In writing on the subject of the influence of matrimony on men of genius, E.P. Whipple, the Boston essayist and lecturer, mentioned the cases of several who, like Molière and Rousseau, have had unsympathetic wives. Among these was Sir Walter Scott, who while walking with his wife in the fields called her attention to some lambs, remarking that they were beautiful.
"Yes," echoed she, "lambs are beautiful—boiled!"
That incomparable essayist and chirping philosopher, Montaigne, married but once. When his good wife left him, he shed the tears usual on such occasions, and said he would not marry again, though it were to Wisdom herself.
A young painter of great promise once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had taken a wife. "Married!" ejaculated the horrified Sir Joshua; "then you are ruined as an artist."
Michelangelo, when asked why he never married, replied:
"I have espoused my art, and that occasions me sufficient domestic cares; for my works shall be my children."
The wives of Dante, Milton, Dryden, Addison, and Steele shed no glory on the sex, and brought no peace to their firesides.
The list of "unhappily married" is large and brilliant. It includes William Beckford, the author of "Vathek," who, however, does not seem to have deserved a happy life, and whose enormous fortune and great talents were alike wasted.
Lord Lytton was also unhappily, though romantically, married, and a large part, at least, of the subsequent misery was due to his temper and conduct. But perhaps full justice has not been done to the ill effects of the long and hard struggle with poverty, which he maintained with such success, but with such constant labor, during many years.
The temperaments of Charles Dickens and his wife were so different that they lived apart for several years preceding the great novelist's death.