actions, employments, which to duller apprehensions is not offensive, earnestly seeking that which others so scornfully neglect.  Thus through our foolish curiosity do we macerate ourselves, tire our souls, and run headlong, through our indiscretion, perverse will, and want of government, into many needless cares, and troubles, vain expenses, tedious journeys, painful hours; and when all is done, quorsum haec? cui bono? to what end?

[2367] “Nescire velle quae Magister maximus
        Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.”

Unfortunate marriage.] Amongst these passions and irksome accidents, unfortunate marriage may be ranked:  a condition of life appointed by God himself in Paradise, an honourable and happy estate, and as great a felicity as can befall a man in this world, [2368]if the parties can agree as they ought, and live as [2369]Seneca lived with his Paulina; but if they be unequally matched, or at discord, a greater misery cannot be expected, to have a scold, a slut, a harlot, a fool, a fury or a fiend, there can be no such plague.  Eccles. xxvi. 14, “He that hath her is as if he held a scorpion,” &c. xxvi. 25, “a wicked wife makes a sorry countenance, a heavy heart, and he had rather dwell with a lion than keep house with such a wife.”  Her [2370]properties Jovianus Pontanus hath described at large, Ant. dial.  Tom. 2, under the name of Euphorbia.  Or if they be not equal in years, the like mischief happens.  Cecilius in Agellius lib. 2. cap. 23, complains much of an old wife, dum ejus morti inhio, egomet mortuus vivo inter vivos, whilst I gape after her death, I live a dead man amongst the living, or if they dislike upon any occasion,

[2371] “Judge who that are unfortunately wed
        What ’tis to come into a loathed bed.”

The same inconvenience befalls women.

[2372] “At vos o duri miseram lugete parentes,
        Si ferro aut laqueo laeva hac me exsolvere sorte
        Sustineo:”------

       “Hard hearted parents both lament my fate,
        If self I kill or hang, to ease my state.”

[2373]A young gentlewoman in Basil was married, saith Felix Plater, observat. l. 1, to an ancient man against her will, whom she could not affect; she was continually melancholy, and pined away for grief; and though her husband did all he could possibly to give her content, in a discontented humour at length she hanged herself.  Many other stories he relates in this kind.  Thus men are plagued with women; they again with men, when they are of divers humours and conditions; he a spendthrift, she sparing; one honest, the other dishonest, &c.  Parents many times disquiet their children, and they their parents. [2374]"A foolish son is an heaviness to his mother.” Injusta noverca:  a stepmother often vexeth a whole family, is matter of repentance, exercise of patience, fuel of dissension, which made Cato’s son expostulate with his father, why he should offer to marry his client Solinius’ daughter, a young wench, Cujus causa novercam induceret; what offence had he done, that he should marry again?