The Essays of Francis Bacon/VIII Of Marriage and Single Life

by Francis Bacon

VIII. Of Marriage and Single Life.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times; unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some there are, who though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times impertinences.^[1] Nay, there are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges. Nay more, there are some foolish rich covetous men, that take a pride in having no children, because^[2] they may be thought so much the richer. For perhaps they have heard some talk, Such an one is a great rich man, and another except to it, Yea, but he hath a great charge of children; as if it were an abatement to his riches. But the most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous^[3] minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects; for they are like to run away; and almost all fugitives are of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen;^[4] for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly in their hortatives put men in mind of their wives and children;^[5] and I think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks maketh the vulgar soldier more base. Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, tnough they may be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust,^[6] yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hardhearted, (good to make severe inquisitors,) because their tenderness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands; as was said of Ulysses,^[7] vetulam suam prætulit immortalitati.^[8] Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds both of chastity and obedience in the wife, if she think her husband wise; which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses. So as a man may have a quarrel,^[9] to marry when he will. But yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that made answer to the question when a man should marry?—A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.^[10] It is often seen that bad husbands have very good wives; whether it be that it raiseth the price of their husband's kindness when it comes; or that the wives take a pride in their patience. But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends' consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.

1. Impertinences. Latin sense of the word, things irrelevant.

   "O, matter and impertinency mixed!
   Reason is madness!"
   

   Shakspere. King Lear. iv. 6.

2. Because. In order that.
3. Humorous. Controlled by humors; whimsical, capricious.

   "As humorous as winter."
   

   Shakspere. II. King Henry IV. iv. 4.

4. Churchmen. Clergymen.
5.  

   "Strike—for your altars and their fires;
   Strike—for the green graves of your sires;
   God—and your native land!"
   Fitz-Greene Halleck. Marco Bozzaris.

6. Exhaust. Condensed preterit for exhausted. The form is common in the Bible and in Shakspere.

   "Our State to be disjoint and out of frame."
   

   Shakspere. Hamlet. i. 2.

7. Ulysses (Greek, Odysseus), in Greek legend a king of Ithaca and one of the heroes of the Trojan war. The Odyssey, an epic poem attributed to Homer, celebrates the adventures of Odysseus during ten years of wandering spent in repeated efforts to return to Ithaca after the close of the Trojan war.
8. He preferred his aged wife to immortality. The goddess Calypso entreated Ulysses to share her immortality, instead of returning to Ithaca. Compare the Advancement of Learning I. viii. 7: "Ulysses, qui vetulam prætulit immortalitati being a figure of those which prefer custom and habit before all excellency." The thought is Plutarch's, Opera Moralia. Gryllus. 1. Plutarch took it from Cicero, De Oratore. I. 44.
9. Quarrel. Cause, reason.

   "and the chance of goodness
   Be like our warranted quarrel!"
   

   Shakspere. Macbeth. iv. 3.

   This means, 'May the success of right be as well warranted as our cause is just!'
10. This epigrammatic reply is quoted of Thales of Miletus, 640–546 B.C., one of the 'seven wise men' of Greece. The anecdote is told by Plutarch, Opera Moralia. Symposiaca. III. vi. 3. (Plutarch's Miscellanies and Essays. Edited by W. W. Goodwin, with an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vol. III. p. 276.) "Thales being asked when a man should marry, said: "Young men not yet, old men not at all." Bacon. Apophthegmes New and Old. 220.