Avoid union with one supremely selfish, or so wound up in his
occupation that he has no room for another. You occasionally find a
man who spreads himself so widely over the path of life that there is
no room for any one to walk beside him. He is not the one blade of the
scissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a chisel made
to cut his way through life alone, or a file full of roughness, made
to be drawn across society without any affinity for other files. His
disposition is a lifelong protest against marriage. Others are so
married to their occupation or profession that the taking of any other
bride is a case of bigamy. There are men as severely tied to their
literary work as was Chatterton, whose essay was not printed because
of the death of the Lord Mayor. Chatterton made out the following
account: "Lost by the Lord Mayor's death in this essay one pound
eleven shillings and six-pence. Gained in elegies and essays five
pounds and five shillings." Then he put what he had gained by the Lord
Mayor's death opposite to what he had lost, and wrote under it: "And
glad he is dead by three pounds thirteen shillings and six-pence."
When a man is as hopelessly literary as that he ought to be a
perpetual celibate; his library, his laboratory, his books are all the
companionship needed.
Indeed, some of the mightiest men this world ever saw have not
patronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole,
Gibbon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of these marriage would
have helped. The right kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom,
and given to Newton more practicability, and been a relief to Locke's
overtasked brain. A Christian wife might have converted Hume and
Gibbon to a belief in Christianity. But Dean Swift did not deserve a
wife, from the way in which he broke the heart of Jane Waring first,
and Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all "Vanessa." The great wit
of the day, he was outwitted by his own cruelties.