It is, in fact, as an example of English humour--exaggerated, no doubt, by the reaction from Puritanism--that _The Ten Pleasures of Marriage_ should be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it is of uncertain parentage and must own to foreign kin. A well-known but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally rare book is Antoine de la Salle's _Quinze Joies de Mariage_. It seems possible that this was translated into English. At any rate, in the year in which _The Ten Pleasures_ was published--1682-1683--the following work was registered at Stationers' Hall: _The Woman's Advocate, or fifteen real comforts of matrimony, being in requital of the late fifteen_ sham _comforts_. Moreover, _The Ten Pleasures_ was in all probability printed abroad--Hazlitt thinks at The Hague or Amsterdam. The very first page in the original edition contains one of several hints of Batavian production--"younger" is printed "jounger." The curious allusion to the great French poet, Clément Marot, may also suggest a temporary foreign sojourn for the author for though Marot was doubtless known to English readers in the seventeenth century, the exact reference of the allusion is not at all obvious. It very possibly reflects on the fact that in 1526 the Sorbonne condemned both Marot and his poem _Colloque de l'abbé et de la femme sçavante_; and Marot certainly wrote about women and marriage. He is not, however, a "stock" figure in English literary allusion, either learned or popular, and the fact suggests at least familiarity with the literature of other countries. But there can be no doubt of the English character of the text both in general and in detail. It is redolent of English middle-class life as it was in the days before our grandfathers decided that the human body was an obscene thing and its functions deplorable. It has the middle-class love of good food--Colchester oysters (famous then as now), asparagus, peaches, apricots, candied ginger, China oranges, comfits, pancakes--enough to make the mouth water. It has the solid English furniture, with all its ritual of solemnity; "vallians" (valences), "daslles" (tassels), big bedsteads, Chiny-ware, plush chairs, linen cupboards. It has all the fuss of preparation for childbirth--the accumulations of wrappings, the obstetric furniture, the nods and winks of the midwife and the gossips, authentic ancestors of Mrs Sarah Gamp and Mrs Elizabeth Prig--why, the haste to fetch the midwife at the crisis might almost be the foundation upon which Dickens built the visit of Seth Pecksniff, Esq., to Kingsgate Street, High Holborn.