"We are wonderful severe in laws, that they shall not marry
without our consent, as if it were care and tenderness over them;
but is it not lest we should not have the other ?1,000 with this
son, or the other ?100 a year more in jointure for that daughter?
These, when we are crossed in them, are the sins for which we
water our couch with tears, but not of penitence. Seeing whereas
it is a mischief beyond any that we can do to our enemies, we
persist to make nothing of breaking the affection of our
children. But there is in this agrarian a homage to pure and
spotless love, the consequence whereof I will not give for all
your romances. An alderman makes not his daughter a countess till
he has given her ?20,000, nor a romance a considerable mistress
till she be a princess; these are characters of bastard love. But
if our agrarian excludes ambition and covetousness, we shall at
length have the care of our own breed, in which we have been
curious as to our dogs and horses. The marriage-bed will be truly
legitimate, and the race of the commonwealth not spurious.
"But (impar magnanimis ausis, imparque dolori) I am hurled from
all my hopes by my lord's last assertion of impossibility, that
the root from whence we imagine these fruits should be planted or
thrive in this soil.
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