are less confident and more distrustful; nothing can assure us of being beloved, considering our condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to see myself in company with those young wanton creatures, "Cujus in indomito constantior inguine nervus, To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay and sprightly humour? "Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi, Multo non sine risu, Dilapsam in cinere facem."2 3 They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have nothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer not themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him because he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to, "Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese." It is a commerce that requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receive may be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not to be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the pleasure I give more tickles. my imagination than that they give me; now, he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where he confers none-it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can be content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that a gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us out of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have right to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: "Fate ben per voi," or after the manner that Cyrus exhorted his soldiers, "Who loves himself let him follow me." "Consort yourself," some one will say to me, "with women of your own condition, whom 994 1 "Ever ready for love."-HORACE, Epod., xii. 19. 2 "That fervid youth may behold, not without laughter, a burning torch worn to ashes."-HORACE, Od. iv. 13, 26. 4"Do good for yourself." 3 Bion. like fortune will render more easy to your desire." O ridiculous and insipid composition ! L 2 "Nolo Barbam vellere mortuo leoni." 1 Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that he never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more pleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties, or only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in a piteous and imperfect conjunction;3 I leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only for old curried flesh: and to this poor wretch, "O, ego Di faciant talem te cernere possim, Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis, 4 Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis !" 5 Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon," a young fellow of Chios, thinking by fine dressing to acquire the beauty that nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and asked him if it was possible for a wise man to be in love-"Yes," replied he, "provided it be not with a farded and adulterated beauty like thine." Ugliness of a confessed antiquity is to me less old and less ugly than another that is polished and plastered up. Shall I speak it, without the danger of having my throat cut? love, in my opinion, is not properly and naturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood; "Quem si puellarum insereres choro, 1 "I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion.”—MARTIAL, x. 90, 9. 2 Anabasis, ii. 6, 15. 3 Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second with a deformed creature." 4 Suetonius, in vita, c. 21. 5 Ovid, who (Ex. Ponto, i. 4, 49) thus writes to his wife: " Oh, would to heaven that such I might see thee, and kiss thy dear locks changed into grey, and embrace thy withered body." Diogenes Laertius, iv. 24. The question was whether a wise man could love him. Cotton has "" Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios." Discrimen obscurum, solutis Crinibus ambiguoque vultu : "1 nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the budding of the beard, Plato himself has remarked this as rare; and the reason why the Sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs of adolescence Aristogitons and Harmodiuses is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some sort a little out of date, though not so much as in old age; "Importunus enim transvolat aridas 3 and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends the advantage of women, ordaining that it is time, at thirty years old, to convert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority we give to love over our lives, 'tis so much the better for us. Do but observe his port; 'tis a beardless boy. Who knows not how, in his school, they proceed contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are there ways for insufficiency: there novices rule; "Amor ordinem nescit." Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when mixed with inadvertency and trouble miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace; provided it be sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it be prudent or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing: you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is restrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callous clutches. ; As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there have into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have often seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in favour of their outward beauty, but have never yet seen that in favour "Who, in a company of girls, with his dishevelled hair and ambiguous face would deceive the subtlest there, so difficult is it to say whether he is girl or boy.”—HORACE, Od. ii. 5, 21. 2 Plutarch, On Love, c. 34. "It flies from whithered oaks."-HORACE, Od. iv. 13, 9. 4 "Love knows no rule."-ST. JEROME, Letter to Chromatius. of mind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to a body that was never so little in decadence. Why does not some one of them take it into her head to make that noble Socratical bargain between body and soul, purchasing a philosophical and spiritual intelligence and generation at the price of her thighs, which is the highest price she can get for them? Plato ordains in his Laws that he who has performed any signal and advantageous exploit in war may not be refused during the whole expedition, his age or ugliness notwithstanding, a kiss or any other amorous favour from any woman whatever. What he thinks to be so just in recommendation of military valour, why may it not be the same in recommendation of any other good quality? and why does not some woman take a fancy to possess over her companions the glory of this chaste love? I may well say chaste, "Nam si quando ad prælia ventum est Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis the vices that are stifled in the thought are not the worst. To conclude this notable commentary, which has escaped from me in a torrent of babble, a torrent sometimes impetuous and hurtful, I "Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum Quod miseræ oblitæ molli sub veste locatum, Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor." 2 say that males and females are cast in the same mould, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his Commonwealth; and the "For when they engage in love's battle, his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw."-VIRGIL, Georg., iii. 98. "As when an apple, sent by a lover secretly to his mistress, falls from the chaste virgin's bosom, where she had quite forgotten it; when, starting at her mother's coming in, it is shaken out and rolls over the floor, before her eyes, a conscious blush covers her face."-CATULLUS, lxv. 19. philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction betwixt their virtue and ours.' It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; 'tis according to the saying, "The Pot and the Kettle." CHAPTER VI. OF COACHES. It is very easy to verify, that great authors, when they write of causes, not only make use of those they think to be the true causes, but also of those they believe not to be so, provided they have in them some beauty and invention: they speak true and usefully enough, if it be ingeniously. We cannot make ourselves sure of the supreme cause, and therefore clutter a great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them, 66 Namque unam dicere causam "2 Will you ask me, whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze? we break wind three several ways; that which sallies from below is too filthy; that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some reproach of having eaten too much; the third eruption is sneezing, which because it proceeds from the head, and is without offence, we give it this civil reception: do not laugh at this distinction; for they say 'tis Aristotle's." I think I have read in Plutarch* (who of all the authors I ever conversed with, is he who has best mixed art with nature, and judgment with knowledge), his giving as a reason for the rising of the stomach in those who are at sea, that it is occasioned by fear; having first found out some reason by which he proves that fear may produce such an effect. I, who am very subject to it, know well that this 1 Diogenes Laertius, vi. 12. 2 Lucretius, vi. 704. The sense is in the preceding passage. • Problem, s. 331; Quæst. 9. On Natural Causes, c. 11. |