The Essays, vol 15 | Page 9

infusus gremio per membra soporem."
["The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft
embraces, caresses him hesitating. Suddenly he caught the wonted

flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran
thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with thunder,
a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the skies. Having
spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace, and in the bosom
of his spouse sought placid sleep." --AEneid, viii. 387 and 392.]
All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented her
a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of
coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.
Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but
faintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as marriage
is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more than grace
and beauty. Men do not marry for themselves, let them say what they
will; they marry as much or more for their posterity and family; the
custom and interest of marriage concern our race much more than us;
and therefore it is, that I like to have a match carried on by a third hand
rather than a man's own, and by another man's liking than that of the
party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the conventions of
love? And also it is a kind of incest to employ in this venerable and
sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorous licence, as I think
I have said elsewhere. A man, says Aristotle, must approach his wife
with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too lasciviously with her,
the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of reason. What he
says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say upon the
account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious, voluptuous,
and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders conception": 'tis said,
elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as this naturally is, to
supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must do it but seldom and
at appreciable intervals:
"Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."
["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in his
bosom."--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]
I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
nothing.
They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do,

methinks, like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing
else but virtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one
another, but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix
their names and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them.
Nobility is a brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but
forasmuch as 'tis a quality depending upon others, and may happen in a
vicious person, in himself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below
virtue';
["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein not
virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter." --La Byuyere.]
'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending upon
time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living and
mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common; of
succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in
itself, and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one
of our kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of
whom one was a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without
respect to quality, they should choose him who had the most merit; but
where the worth of the competitors should appear to be entirely equal,
they should have respect to birth: this was justly to give it its rank. A
young man unknown, coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's
command, a valiant man lately dead: "Friend," said he," in such
preferments as these, I have not so much regard to the nobility of my
soldiers as to their prowess." And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did
with the officers of the kings of Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the
children of whom always succeeded to their places, how ignorant
soever, and were preferred before the most experienced in the trade.
They of Calicut make of nobles a