of the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the
conventions of love? And also it is a kind of incest to employ in this
venerable and sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorous
licence, as I think I have said elsewhere. A man, says Aristotle, must
approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too
lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of
reason. What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say
upon the account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious,
voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders
conception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as
this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must
do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:

"Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."

["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in
his bosom."--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]

I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
nothing.

They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
virtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one another,
but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names
and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them. Nobility is a
brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a