"Your grace's honest wife,
"and humble servant,
"M. Newcastle."
The last portion of this life, which consists of the observations and good things which she had gathered from the conversations of her husband, forms an excellent Ana; and shows that when Lord Orford, in his "Catalogue of Noble Authors," says, that "this stately poetic couple was a picture of foolish nobility," he writes, as he does too often, with extreme levity. But we must now attend to the reverse of our medal.
Many chagrins may corrode the nuptial state of literary men. Females who, prompted by vanity, but not by taste, unite themselves to scholars, must ever complain of neglect. The inexhaustible occupations of a library will only present to such a most dreary solitude. Such a lady declared of her learned husband, that she was more jealous of his books than his mistresses. It was probably while Glover was composing his "Leonidas," that his lady avenged herself for this Homeric inattention to her, and took her flight with a lover. It was peculiar to the learned Dacier to be united to woman, his equal in erudition and his superior in taste. When she wrote in the album of a German traveller a verse from Sophocles as an apology for her unwillingness to place herself among his learned friends, that "Silence is the female's ornament," it was a trait of her modesty. The learned Pasquier was coupled to a female of a different character, since he tells us in one of his Epigrams that to manage the vociferations of his lady, he was compelled himself to become a vociferator.—"Unfortunate wretch that I am, I who am a lover of universal peace! But to have peace I am obliged ever to be at war."
Sir Thomas More was united to a woman of the harshest temper and the most sordid manners. To soften the moroseness of her disposition, "he persuaded her to play on the lute, viol, and other instruments, every day." Whether it was that she had no ear for music, she herself never became harmonious as the instrument she touched. All these ladies may be considered as rather too alert in thought, and too spirited in action; but a tame cuckoo bird who is always repeating the same note must be very fatiguing. The lady of Samuel Clarke, the great compiler of books in 1680, whose name was anagrammatised to "suck all cream," alluding to his indefatigable labours in sucking all the cream of every other author, without having any cream himself, is described by her husband as entertaining the most sublime conceptions of his illustrious compilations. This appears by her behaviour. He says, "that she never rose from table without making him a curtsey, nor drank to him without bowing, and that his word was a law to her."
I was much surprised in looking over a correspondence of the times, that in 1590 the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, writing to the Earl of Shrewsbury on the subject of his living separate from his countess, uses as one of his arguments for their union the following curious one, which surely shows the gross and cynical feeling which the fair sex excited even among the higher classes of society. The language of this good bishop is neither that of truth, we hope, nor certainly that of religion.
"But some will saye in your Lordship's behalfe that the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore licke enough to shorten your lief, if shee should kepe yow company, Indeede, my good Lord, I have heard some say so; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a juste cause of separation between a man and wiefe, I thinck fewe men in Englande would keepe their wives longe; for it is a common jeste, yet trewe in some sense, that there is but one shrewe in all the worlde, and everee man hath her: and so everee man must be ridd of his wiefe that wolde be ridd of a shrewe." It is wonderful this good bishop did not use another argument as cogent, and which would in those times be allowed as something; the name of his lordship, Shrewsbury, would have afforded a consolatory pun!
The entertaining Marville says that the generality of ladies married to literary men are so vain of the abilities and merit of their husbands, that they are frequently insufferable.
The wife of Barclay, author of "The Argenis," considered herself as the wife of a demigod. This appeared glaringly after his death; for Cardinal Barberini having erected a monument to the memory of his tutor, next to the tomb of Barclay, Mrs. Barclay was so irritated at this that she demolished his monument, brought home his bust, and declared that the ashes of so great a genius as her husband should never be placed beside a pedagogue.
Salmasius's wife was a termagant; Christina said she admired his patience more than his erudition. Mrs. Salmasius indeed considered herself as the queen of science, because her husband was acknowledged as sovereign among the critics. She boasted that she had for her husband the most learned of all the nobles, and the most noble of all the learned. Our good lady always joined the learned conferences which he held in his study. She spoke loud, and decided with a tone of majesty. Salmasius was mild in conversation, but the reverse in his writings, for our proud Xantippe considered him as acting beneath himself if he did not magisterially call every one names!
The wife of Rohault, when her husband gave lectures on the philosophy of Descartes, used to seat herself on these days at the door, and refused admittance to every one shabbily dressed, or who did not discover a genteel air. So convinced was she that, to be worthy of hearing the lectures of her husband, it was proper to appear fashionable. In vain our good lecturer exhausted himself in telling her, that fortune does not always give fine clothes to philosophers.
The ladies of Albert Durer and Berghem were both shrews. The wife of Durer compelled that great genius to the hourly drudgery of his profession, merely to gratify her own sordid passion: in despair, Albert ran away from his Tisiphone; she wheedled him back, and not long afterwards this great artist fell a victim to her furious disposition.95 Berghem's wife would never allow that excellent artist to quit his occupations; and she contrived an odd expedient to detect his indolence. The artist worked in a room above her; ever and anon she roused him by thumping a long stick against the ceiling, while the obedient Berghem answered by stamping his foot, to satisfy Mrs. Berghem that he was not napping.
Ælian had an aversion to the married state. Sigonius, a learned and well-known scholar, would never marry, and alleged no inelegant reason; "Minerva and Venus could not live together."
Matrimony has been considered by some writers as a condition not so well suited to the circumstances of philosophers and men of learning. There is a little tract which professes to investigate the subject. It has for title, De Matrimonio Literati, an cœlibem esse, an verò nubere conveniat, i.e., of the Marriage of a Man of Letters, with an inquiry whether it is most proper for him to continue a bachelor, or to marry?
The author alleges the great merit of some women; particularly that of Gonzaga the consort of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; a lady of such distinguished accomplishments, that Peter Bembus said, none but a stupid man would not prefer one of her conversations to all the formal meetings and disputations of the philosophers.
The ladies perhaps will be surprised to find that it is a question among the learned, Whether they ought to marry? and will think it an unaccountable property of learning that it should lay the professors of it under an obligation to disregard the sex. But it is very questionable whether, in return for this want of complaisance in them, the generality of ladies would not prefer the beau, and the man of fashion. However, let there be Gonzagas, they will find converts enough to their charms.
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