Must thou marry a youth again?  And yet ducentas ire nuptum post mortes amant:  howsoever it is, as [6260]Apuleius gives out of his Meroe, congressus annosus, pestilens, abhorrendus, a pestilent match, abominable, and not to be endured.  In such case how can they otherwise choose but be jealous, how should they agree one with another?  This inequality is not in years only, but in birth, fortunes, conditions, and all good [6261]qualities, si qua voles apte nubere, nube pari, ’tis my counsel, saith Anthony Guiverra, to choose such a one. Civis Civem ducat, Nobilis Nobilem, let a citizen match with a citizen, a gentleman with a gentlewoman; he that observes not this precept (saith he) non generum sed malum Genium, non nurum sed Furiam, non vitae Comitem, sed litis fomitem domi habebit, instead of a fair wife shall have a fury, for a fit son-in-law a mere fiend, &c. examples are too frequent.

Another main caution fit to be observed is this, that though they be equal in years, birth, fortunes, and other conditions, yet they do not omit virtue and good education, which Musonius and Antipater so much inculcate in Stobeus: 

[6262] “Dos est magna parentum
        Virtus, et metuens alterius viri
        Certo foedere castitas.”

If, as Plutarch adviseth, one must eat modium salis, a bushel of salt with him, before he choose his friend, what care should be had in choosing a wife, his second self, how solicitous should he be to know her qualities and behaviour; and when he is assured of them, not to prefer birth, fortune, beauty, before bringing up, and good conditions. [6263]Coquage god of cuckolds, as one merrily said, accompanies the goddess Jealousy, both follow the fairest, by Jupiter’s appointment, and they sacrifice to them together:  beauty and honesty seldom agree; straight personages have often crooked manners; fair faces, foul vices; good complexions, ill conditions. Suspicionis plena res est, et insidiarum, beauty (saith [6264]Chrysostom) is full of treachery and suspicion:  he that hath a fair wife, cannot have a worse mischief, and yet most covet it, as if nothing else in marriage but that and wealth were to be respected. [6265]Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, was so curious in this behalf, that he would not marry the Duke of Mantua’s daughter, except he might see her naked first:  which Lycurgus appointed in his laws, and Morus in his Utopian Commonwealth approves. [6266]In Italy, as a traveller observes, if a man have three or four daughters, or more, and they prove fair, they are married eftsoons:  if deformed, they change their lovely names of Lucia, Cynthia, Camaena, call them Dorothy, Ursula, Bridget, and so put them into monasteries, as if none were fit for marriage, but such as are eminently fair:  but these are erroneous tenets:  a modest virgin well conditioned, to such a fair snout-piece, is much to be preferred.  If thou wilt avoid them, take