Montaigne l. 3.  But sure it is more outrageous in women, as all other melancholy is, by reason of the weakness of their sex.  Scaliger Poet. lib. cap. 13. concludes against women:  [6037]"Besides their inconstancy, treachery, suspicion, dissimulation, superstition, pride,” (for all women are by nature proud) “desire of sovereignty, if they be great women,” (he gives instance in Juno) “bitterness and jealousy are the most remarkable affections.”

       “Sed neque fulvus aper media tam fulvus in ira est,
        Fulmineo rapidos dum rotat ore canes. 
        Nec leo,” &c.------

       “Tiger, boar, bear, viper, lioness,
        A woman’s fury cannot express.”

[6038]Some say redheaded women, pale-coloured, black-eyed, and of a shrill voice, are most subject to jealousy.

[6039] “High colour in a woman choler shows,
        Naught are they, peevish, proud, malicious;
        But worst of all, red, shrill, and jealous.”

Comparisons are odious, I neither parallel them with others, nor debase them any more:  men and women are both bad, and too subject to this pernicious infirmity.  It is most part a symptom and cause of melancholy, as Plater and Valescus teach us:  melancholy men are apt to be jealous, and jealous apt to be melancholy.

       “Pale jealousy, child of insatiate love,
        Of heart-sick thoughts which melancholy bred,
        A hell-tormenting fear, no faith can move,
        By discontent with deadly poison fed;
        With heedless youth and error vainly led. 
        A mortal plague, a virtue-drowning flood,
        A hellish fire not quenched but with blood.”

If idleness concur with melancholy, such persons are most apt to be jealous; ‘tis [6040]Nevisanus’ note, “an idle woman is presumed to be lascivious, and often jealous.” Mulier cum sola cogitat, male cogitat:  and ’tis not unlikely, for they have no other business to trouble their heads with.

More particular causes be these which follow.  Impotency first, when a man is not able of himself to perform those dues which he ought unto his wife:  for though he be an honest liver, hurt no man, yet Trebius the lawyer may make a question, an suum cuique tribuat, whether he give every one their own; and therefore when he takes notice of his wants, and perceives her to be more craving, clamorous, insatiable and prone to lust than is fit, he begins presently to suspect, that wherein he is defective, she will satisfy herself, she will be pleased by some other means.  Cornelius Gallus hath elegantly expressed this humour in an epigram to his Lychoris.

[6041] “Jamque alios juvenes aliosque requirit amores,
          Me vocat imbellem decrepitumque senem,” &c.

For this cause is most evident in old men, that are cold and dry by nature, and married, succi plenis, to young wanton wives; with old doting Janivere in Chaucer, they begin to mistrust all is not well,