them, or therefore bitter; what is said of the one, mutato nomine, may most part be understood of the other.  My words are like Passus’ picture in [5758]Lucian, of whom, when a good fellow had bespoke a horse to be painted with his heels upwards, tumbling on his back, he made him passant:  now when the fellow came for his piece, he was very angry, and said, it was quite opposite to his mind; but Passus instantly turned the picture upside down, showed him the horse at that site which he requested, and so gave him satisfaction.  If any man take exception at my words, let him alter the name, read him for her, and ’tis all one in effect.

But to my purpose:  If women in general be so bad (and men worse than they) what a hazard is it to marry? where shall a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband?  A woman a man may eschew, but not a wife:  wedding is undoing (some say) marrying marring, wooing woeing:  [5759]"a wife is a fever hectic,” as Scaliger calls her, “and not be cured but by death,” as out of Menander, Athenaeus adds,

       “In pelaprus te jacis negotiorum,—­
        Non Libyum, non Aegeum, ubi ex triginta non pereunt
        Tria navigia:  duceus uxorem servatur prorsus nemo.”

       “Thou wadest into a sea itself of woes;
        In Libya and Aegean each man knows
        Of thirty not three ships are cast away,
        But on this rock not one escapes, I say.”

The worldly cares, miseries, discontents, that accompany marriage, I pray you learn of them that have experience, for I have none; [5760][Greek:  paidas ego logous egensamaen], libri mentis liberi.  For my part I’ll dissemble with him,

[5761] “Este procul nymphae, fallax genus este puellae,
        Vita jugata meo non facit ingenio:  me juvat,” &c.

many married men exclaim at the miseries of it, and rail at wives downright; I never tried, but as I hear some of them say, [5762]_Mare haud mare, vos mare acerrimum_, an Irish Sea is not so turbulent and raging as a litigious wife.

[5763] “Scylla et Charybdis Sicula contorquens freta,
        Minus est timenda, nulla non melior fera est.”

       “Scylla and Charybdis are less dangerous,
        There is no beast that is so noxious.”

Which made the devil belike, as most interpreters hold, when he had taken away Job’s goods, corporis et fortunae bona, health, children, friends, to persecute him the more, leave his wicked wife, as Pineda proves out of Tertullian, Cyprian, Austin, Chrysostom, Prosper, Gaudentius, &c. ut novum calamitatis inde genus viro existeret, to vex and gall him worse quam totus infernus than all the fiends in hell, as knowing the conditions of a bad woman.  Jupiter non tribuit homini pestilentius malum, saith Simonides:  “better dwell with a dragon or a lion, than keep house with a wicked wife,” Ecclus. xxv. 18. “better dwell in a wilderness,”