men, as a
sacred oracle:

["Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as
from a traitor."]

which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical,
and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equally
injurious and hard. I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say the
truth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of
wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule and
order that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do
not presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion.

(If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion. D.W.)

If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and
acknowledge it; 'tis treachery to marry without espousing.

Let us proceed.

Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord wherein
nevertheless there is not much loyalty. Does he mean, that it is not
impossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield
to the importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage,
and that it may be hurt, without being totally broken? A serving man may
cheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate. Beauty,
opportunity, and destiny (for destiny has also a hand in't),

"Fatum est in partibus illis
Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent,
Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;"

["There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have
endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star
fails you in the nick of time."--Juvenal, ix. 32.]

have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but
that she may have some remains of kindness for her husband. They are two
designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being
confounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no
means have married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but for
those also of his person. Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who
have not repented it. And even in the other world, what an unhappy life
does Jupiter lead with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress!
'Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one's
head. I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and
dishonestly cured by marriage: the considerations are widely different.
We love a