versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of
intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion:

'Give me, next _good_, an _understanding wife_,
By Nature _wise_, not _learned_ by much art;
Some _knowledge_ on her side will all my life
More scope of conversation impart;
Besides, her inborne virtue fortifie;
They are most firmly good, who[225] best know why.'

When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second
time, as it shewed a disregard of his first wife, he said, 'Not at all,
Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded
that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a
second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that
she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second
time[226].'

So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on
another occasion, he owned that he once had almost asked a promise of
Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but had checked himself.
Indeed, I cannot help thinking, that in his case the request would have
been unreasonable; for if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury
to the memory of her first love,--the husband of her youth and the
father of her children,--to make a second marriage, why should she be
precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's
persevering fond appropriation of his _Tetty_, even after her decease,
he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest
Birmingham trader. I presume that her having been married before had, at
times, given him some uneasiness; for I remember his observing upon the