A fourth eminent cause of jealousy may be this, when he that is deformed, and as Pindarus of Vulcan, sine gratiis natus, hirsute, ragged, yet virtuously given, will marry some fair nice piece, or light housewife, begins to misdoubt (as well he may) she doth not affect him. [6066]_Lis est cum forma magna pudicitiae_, beauty and honesty have ever been at odds.  Abraham was jealous of his wife because she was fair:  so was Vulcan of his Venus, when he made her creaking shoes, saith [6067]Philostratus, ne maecharetur, sandalio scilicet deferente, that he might hear by them when she stirred, which Mars indigne ferre, [6068]was not well pleased with.  Good cause had Vulcan to do as he did, for she was no honester than she should be.  Your fine faces have commonly this fault; and it is hard to find, saith Francis Philelphus in an epistle to Saxola his friend, a rich man honest, a proper woman not proud or unchaste.  “Can she be fair and honest too?”

[6069] “Saepe etenim oculuit picta sese hydra sub herba,
        Sub specie formae, incauto se saepe marito
        Nequam animus vendit,”------

He that marries a wife that is snowy fair alone, let him look, saith [6070] Barbarus, for no better success than Vulcan had with Venus, or Claudius with Messalina.  And ’tis impossible almost in such cases the wife should contain, or the good man not be jealous:  for when he is so defective, weak, ill-proportioned, unpleasing in those parts which women most affect, and she most absolutely fair and able on the other side, if she be not very virtuously given, how can she love him? and although she be not fair, yet if he admire her and think her so, in his conceit she is absolute, he holds it impossible for any man living not to dote as he doth, to look on her and not lust, not to covet, and if he be in company with her, not to lay siege to her honesty:  or else out of a deep apprehension of his infirmities, deformities, and other men’s good parts, out of his own little worth and desert, he distrusts himself, (for what is jealousy but distrust?) he suspects she cannot affect him, or be not so kind and loving as she should, she certainly loves some other man better than himself.

[6071]Nevisanus, lib. 4. num. 72, will have barrenness to be a main cause of jealousy.  If her husband cannot play the man, some other shall, they will leave no remedies unessayed, and thereupon the good man grows jealous; I could give an instance, but be it as it is.

I find this reason given by some men, because they have been formerly naught themselves, they think they may be so served by others, they turned up trump before the cards were shuffled; they shall have therefore legem talionis, like for like.

[6072] “Ipse miser docui, quo posset ludere pacto
        Custodes, eheu nunc premor arte mea.”

       “Wretch as I was, I taught her bad to be,
        And now mine own sly tricks are put upon me.”