mortgages, and debts, or wholly sunk in their estates.) The last was
immoderate excess in apparel, which consumed their revenues. How this
concerns and agrees with our present state, look you. But of this
elsewhere. As it is in a man's body, if either head, heart, stomach,
liver, spleen, or any one part be misaffected, all the rest suffer with
it: so is it with this economical body. If the head be naught, a
spendthrift, a drunkard, a whoremaster, a gamester, how shall the
family live at ease? [700]Ipsa si cupiat solus servare, prorsus, non
potest hanc familiam, as Demea said in the comedy, Safety herself
cannot save it. A good, honest, painful man many times hath a shrew to
his wife, a sickly, dishonest, slothful, foolish, careless woman to his
mate, a proud, peevish flirt, a liquorish, prodigal quean, and by that
means all goes to ruin: or if they differ in nature, he is thrifty, she
spends all, he wise, she sottish and soft; what agreement can there be?
what friendship? Like that of the thrush and swallow in Aesop, instead
of mutual love, kind compellations, whore and thief is heard, they
fling stools at one another's heads. [701]Quae intemperies vexat hanc
familiam? All enforced marriages commonly produce such effects, or if
on their behalves it be well, as to live and agree lovingly together,
they may have disobedient and unruly children, that take ill courses to
disquiet them, [702]their son is a thief, a spendthrift, their daughter
a whore; a step [703]mother, or a daughter-in-law distempers all;
[704]or else for want of means, many torturers arise, debts, dues,
fees, dowries, jointures, legacies to be paid, annuities issuing out,
by means of which, they have not wherewithal to maintain themselves in
that pomp as their predecessors have done, bring up or bestow their
children to their callings, to their birth and quality, [705]and will
not descend to their present fortunes. Oftentimes, too, to aggravate
the rest, concur many other inconveniences, unthankful friends, decayed
friends, bad neighbours, negligent servants [706]servi furaces,
Versipelles, callidi, occlusa sibi mille clavibus reserant, furtimque;
raptant, consumunt, liguriunt; casualties, taxes, mulcts, chargeable
offices, vain expenses, entertainments, loss of stock, enmities,
emulations, frequent invitations, losses, suretyship, sickness, death
of friends, and that which is the gulf of all, improvidence, ill
husbandry, disorder and confusion, by which means they are drenched on
a sudden in their estates, and at unawares precipitated insensibly into
an inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief,
discontent and melancholy itself.
I have done with families, and will now briefly run over some few sorts
and conditions of men. The most secure, happy, jovial, and merry in the
world's esteem are princes and great men, free from melancholy: but for
their cares, miseries, suspicions, jealousies, discontents, folly and
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