To be short, let it be what sort of person it will, they no sooner
touch the shell of this Marriage-nut, but before they can come to tast
the kernel they look for; they feel nothing else then thorns and
briars of sorrow and misery. If there be any one that thinks he is
gotten a footstep further then another, in the favour of his Mistriss,
and that in time he questions not th' obtaining his desired happiness;
immediately, that imagined joy, is crush'd with an insuing despair;
being presently molested with a fear, that Father, Mother, Uncle, or
Tutor will not like his person, or that he has not means enough; or
else either they, or the Gentlewoman, will make choice of another in
his place. Or, if he sees another have access to the Lady as well as
himself, at the same moment he's possessed with jealousie, and falls a
pondering how he shall make this Rival odious in the eys of her. And
if the other get any advantage of him; then he challenges him to
fight; hazarding in that manner his precious life, for the getting of
her, who when he had her, would perhaps, occasion him a thousand
torments of death and misery. Pray observe what pleasures this
introduction imparts unto us; alas, what may we then expect from the
marriage it self?

Really, those that will take this into due consideration, who would
not but curse the Gentlewoman that draws him into such a raging
madness? yet Lovers go forward, and please your selves with this
imagined happiness; but know, that if according to your hope, you
obtain her for a Bride, that at the least you must expect a sence and
feeling of the Ten insuing Pleasures.

* * * * *

[Illustration: Folio 10. _Published by the Navarre Society, London._]