On looking over this last
repository, the other day, I found a series of poetical extracts, in
the Squire's handwriting, which might have been intended as
matrimonial hints to his ward. I was so much struck with several of
them, that I took the liberty of copying them out. They are from the
old play of Thomas Davenport, published in 1661, entitled "The City
Night-Cap;" in which is drawn out and exemplified, in the part of
Abstemia, the character of a patient and faithful wife, which, I
think, might vie with that of the renowned Griselda.
I have often thought it a pity that plays and novels should always end
at the wedding, and should not give us another act, and another
volume, to let us know how the hero and heroine conducted themselves
when married. Their main object seems to be merely to instruct young
ladies how to get husbands, but not how to keep them: now this last, I
speak it with all due diffidence, appears to me to be a desideratum in
modern married life. It is appalling to those who have not yet
adventured into the holy state, to see how soon the flame of romantic
love burns out, or rather is quenched in matrimony; and how deplorably
the passionate, poetic lover declines into the phlegmatic, prosaic
husband.
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