Soon after the termination of this controversy, Poggio happily lost the remembrance of the uneasiness occasioned by the mutual recrimination of polemic disquisitions, in the tender assiduities of honourable courtship. As he was now arrived at the advanced age of fifty-five, the intemperate heat of his passions was allayed, and the remonstrances of his friend, the cardinal of St. Angelo, on the subject of his unlicensed amours, began to make an impression on his mind. He was also weary of the unsettled state in which he had hitherto lived, and sighed for the participation of those pure domestic comforts, which heighten the pleasures, and alleviate the sorrows of human life. He accordingly sought amongst the Tuscan ladies for a partner of his future fortunes. The object of his research he found in Vaggia, the daughter of Ghino Manente de’ Bondelmonti, a lady of a wealthy and honourable family, to whom he was united in the latter end of the month of December, 1435.[267] From a memorandum inserted in a diary kept by Manente, it appears, that he gave Poggio together with his daughter the sum of six hundred florins[268] as a marriage portion. Pecuniary affairs do not, however, appear to have occupied much of the attention of the bridegroom, whose gallantry led him to dwell with happy pride upon the most valuable of all dowries—the beauty and virtues of his spouse. Previously to his taking the decisive step of matrimony, Poggio deliberately weighed the probable advantages and disadvantages which might arise from the disparity of the ages of himself and Vaggia, who had not yet seen eighteen summers. The result of his cogitations on this interesting topic he set forth in a Latin dialogue on the question—“_An seni sit uxor ducenda_,” which he published soon after his marriage. This dialogue, to which was originally prefixed a dedicatory epistle from its author to Cosmo de’ Medici, is represented as having taken place at a dinner given by Poggio, on occasion of his entering into the holy state, to his friends Niccolo Niccoli and Carlo Aretino. The former of these guests, in the freedom of conversation over his wine, declares, with his habitual bluntness, that nothing but insanity could have induced the founder of the feast, by encumbering himself with matrimonial duties, to undertake a burden which wisdom would avoid at any period of life, but which must be particularly grievous to one, like Poggio, far advanced in years. In reply to this sally of caustic humour Poggio protests that his experience of matrimony by no means vindicates Niccolo’s opinion of that state, from which he has hitherto derived nothing but satisfaction. Niccolo avers that he hears with pleasure this declaration, to which he politely professes to give full credence; but he at the same time maintains, that, regarding the case of his friend as an exception to a general rule, he cannot, abstractedly speaking, applaud the wisdom of a man, who, at the age of