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course of nature be helped, soon wears away; in some sooner, indeed, in some later; but it never continues very long, unless where there is madness, such as will make a man have pride so fixed in his mind, as to imagine himself a king; or any other passion in an unreasonable way: for all unnecessary grief is unwise, and therefore will not be retained long by a sound mind. If, indeed, the cause of our grief is occasioned by our own misconduct, if grief is mingled with remorse of conscience, it should be lasting." BOSWELL. "But, sir, we do not approve of a man who very soon forgets the loss of a wife or a friend." JOHNSON. "Sir, we disapprove of him, not because he soon forgets his grief, for the sooner it is forgotten the better; but because we suppose, that if he forgets his wife or his friend soon, he has not had much affection for them."

No. VIII.

MARRIAGE.

JOHNSON asserted, "Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married state."

When Dr. Johnson was married, the ceremony was not performed at Birmingham, where the bride and bridegroom lived; but a resolution was taken that it should be at Derby, for which place they set out on horseback, no doubt in very good humour. But though Mr. Topham Beauclerk used archly to

mention Johnson's having told him, with much gravity, "Sir, it was a love marriage on both sides-" Boswell had from his illustrious friend the following curious account of their journey to church upon the nuptial morn, (the 9th of July, 1736) :-" Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end: I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears."

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Mr. Seward heard Johnson once say, that "a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state, unless he marries a woman of strong and fixed principles of religion.". "He maintained to me,” says Boswell, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias, I humbly differed from him. That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion.

"A Wife," a poem, 1614.

Give me, next good, an understanding wife,
By nature wise, not learned by much art;
Some knowledge on her side will all my life
More scope of conversation impart;
Besides, her inborne virtue fortify;

They are most good who best know why.'

"When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance," says Boswell," for marrying a second time, as it showed a disregard of his first wife, he said, 'Not at all, sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife, he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.' So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on another occasion, he owned, that he once had almost asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but had checked himself. Indeed I cannot help thinking, that in his case the request would have been unreasonable; for if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the memory of her first love,-the husband of her youth, and the father of her children,—to make a second marriage, why should she be precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his Tetty, even after her decease, he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader. I presume that her having been married before had, at times, given him some uneasiness; for I remember his observing, upon the marriage of one of our common friends, 'He has done a

very foolish thing, sir; he has married a widow when he might have had a maid.'"

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To Boswell he said, "Now, that you are going to marry, do not expect more from life than life will afford. You may often find yourself out of humour, and you may often think your wife not studious enough to please you; and yet you may have reason to consider yourself as upon the whole very happily married."

Talking of marriage in general, he observed, "Our marriage service is too refined. It is calculated only for the best kind of marriages; whereas, we should have a form for matches of convenience, of which there are many." He agreed with him, that there was no absolute necessity for having the marriage ceremony performed by a regular clergyman, for this was not commanded in Scrip

ture.

Boswell was volatile enough to repeat to him a little epigrammatic song of his on matrimony, which Mr. Garrick had a few days before procured to be set to music by the very ingenious Mr. Dibdin.

A MATRIMONIAL THOUGHT.

In the blithe days of honey-moon,
With Kate's allurements smitten,
I loved her late, I loved her soon,
And call'd her dearest kitten.

But now my kitten's grown a cat,
And cross like other wives-
O! by my soul, my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives.

His illustrious friend said, "It is very well, sir; but you should not swear." Upon which he altered "O! by my soul," to " alas, alas!"

A gentleman, who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died. Johnson said, "It is the triumph of hope over experience."

He observed, that a man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It was a miserable thing when the conversation could only be such as-whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about this.

He did not approve of late marriages, observing, that more was lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advantages. Even ill assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless celibacy.

He disapproved of the Royal Marriage Bill: "Because," said he, "I would not have the people think that the validity of marriage depends on the will of I should not have been against making the marriage of any of the royal family, without the approbation of the king and parliament, highly criminal."

man.

At a dinner at General Paoli's, a question was started, "whether the state of marriage is natural to man?" JOHNSON. "Sir, it is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connexion, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together." PAOLI. "In a state of nature, a man and woman uniting together will form a strong and con

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