The curious title rather damns the literary interest of the book, which presents pictures of the cit and his wife at work and play which Fielding, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might have written. It is thought that the book was printed in Holland, and if so, it may well be that the ship carrying the printed sheets to England foundered in the North Sea, or was sunk by enemy craft. There can be no doubt that such a work would not have escaped the wits of the time; if it had survived for ordinary circulation, mention would have been made of it, however small an edition had been sold. No other so likely reason for its extreme rarity presents itself. It is reprinted, as faithfully as the altered manners of our time permit, with a Preface by John Harvey, who attributes the work to the industrious and sometimes brilliant Mrs Aphra Behn, a discovery which the Navarre Society believe to be well grounded. They hope that the issue of the book to their subscribers may help to confirm or refute that lady's responsibility for so graceless an attack upon her sex. Whether she did or did not write it, the fact remains that a work so vividly representative of Restoration life and literature is rescued from the obscurity to which its scarceness has hitherto condemned it and worthily preserved for scholars and amateurs of the future. * * * * * THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE. * * * * * THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE, _Relating_ All the delights and contentments that are mask'd under the bands of Matrimony. Written by A. MARSH, Typogr. LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1682. * * * * * TO THE READER. Courteous Reader, _This small Treatise which I here present unto thee is the fruit of some spare hours, that my cogitations, after they had been for a small time, between whiles, hovering to and fro in the Air, came fluttring down again, still pitching upon the subject of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage, in each of which I hope thou wilt find somthing worthy of thy acceptance, because I am sure 'tis matter of such nature as hath never before been extant, and especially in such a method; neither canst thou well expect it to be drest up in any thing of nice and neat words, as other subjects may be, but only to be clad in plain habit most fit for the humour of the Fancy. If I perceive that it please thee, and is not roughly or unkindly dealt withall; nor brain'd in the Nativity, to spoil its generation of a further product, it will incourage me to proceed upon a second part, some say of the same_ Tune, _but I mean to the same_ Purpose, _and apparelled very near the same dress: In the mean time, with hopes that thou wilt be kind to this, and give it a gentle reception, from him who is thine. Farewell._ * * * * *