WIVES OF FOOLS.

Oh! ye women, who have the good, or ill luck (selon) to be married to fools, attempt not to reason with your dears—expect not to seduce, and despair of persuading. Wit, grace, and understanding, are only influential with men of feeling and intellect: to such arms the sensible and the clever never fail to yield. But the fool “bears a charmed life.” Remember the maxim of your great law-giver: “On ne séduit pas un sot; on le dompte.”⁠[37] A fool is incapable of giving quarter, and unworthy of receiving it. The worst of a fool is not that he is a fool, but that he is so self-sufficient and self-conceited; just as obscure people become burthensome, when they imagine themselves important; and as those who live out of the world are unmanageable, from a fancy that all the world is occupied about them. Foolish husbands are always jealous of their authority, and fearful of being supposed to be ruled; they oppose, for the sake of asserting themselves, even when their inclinations are neutral: and once launched into an opposition, they persevere, in spite of conviction, because it does not become their dignity to be less wise than a woman.