Assuredly it would not have been a question whether these literary characters should have married, had not MONTAIGNE, when a widower, declared that “he would not marry a second time, though it were Wisdom itself;” but the airy Gascon has not disclosed how far Madame was concerned in this anathema.

If the literary man unite himself to a woman whose taste and whose temper are adverse to his pursuits, he must courageously prepare for a martyrdom.  Should a female mathematician be united to a poet, it is probable that she would be left amidst her abstractions, to demonstrate to herself how many a specious diagram fails when brought into its mechanical operation; or discovering the infinite varieties of a curve, she might take occasion to deduce her husband’s versatility.  If she become as jealous of his books as other wives might be of his mistresses, she may act the virago even over his innocent papers.  The wife of Bishop COOPER, while her husband was employed on his Lexicon, one day consigned the volume of many years to the flames, and obliged that scholar to begin a second siege of Troy in a second Lexicon.  The wife of WHITELOCKE often destroyed his MSS., and the marks of her nails have come down to posterity in the numerous lacerations still gaping in his “Memorials.”  The learned Sir HENRY SAVILLE, who devoted more than half his life and nearly ten thousand pounds to his magnificent edition of St. Chrysostom, led a very uneasy life between the saint and her ladyship.  What with her tenderness for him, and her own want of amusement, Saint Chrysostom, it appears, incurred more than one danger.

Genius has not preserved itself from the errors and infirmities of matrimonial connexions.  The energetic character of DANTE could neither soften nor control the asperity of his lady; and when that great poet lived in exile, she never cared to see him more, though he was the father of her six children.  The internal state of the house of DOMENICHINO afflicted that great artist with many sorrows.  He had married a beauty of high birth and extreme haughtiness, and of the most avaricious disposition.  When at Naples he himself dreaded lest the avaricious passion of his wife should not be able to resist the offers she received to poison him, and he was compelled to provide and dress his own food.  It is believed that he died of poison.  What a picture has Passeri left of the domestic interior of this great artist! Cosi fra mille crepacuori mori uno de’ piu eccellenti artefici del mundo; che oltre al suo valore pittorico avrebbe piu d’ogni altri maritato di viver sempre per l’onesta personale. “So perished, amidst a thousand heart-breakings, the most excellent of artists; who besides his worth as a painter, deserved as much as any one to have lived for his excellence as a man.”