As Seneca lived with his Paulina, Abraham and Sara, Orpheus and Euridice, Arria and Poetus, Artemisia and Mausolus, Rubenius Celer, that would needs have it engraven on his tomb, he had led his life with Ennea his dear wife forty three years eight moneths, and never fell out. There is no pleasure in this world comparable to it, 'tis summum mortalitatis bonum * hominum divúmq; voluptas, Alma Venus-latet enim in muliere aliquid majus potentiusq; omnibus aliis humanis voluptatibus, as one holds, there's something in a woman beyond all humane delight; a magnetique vertue, a charming quality, an occult and powerful motive. The husband rules her as head, but she again commands his heart, he is her servant, she his onely joy and content: no happiness is like unto it, no love so great as this of man and wife, no such comfort as tplacens uxor, a sweet wife: "Omnis amor magnus, sed aperto in conjuge major." when they love at lasɩ as fresh as they did at first, "§ Charaq; charo consenescit conjugi,” as Homer brings Paris kissing Helena, after they had been married ten years, protesting withall that he loved her as dear as he did the first hour that he was betrothed. And in their old age, when they make much of one another, saying as he did ta his wife in the Poet, "Uxor vivamus quod viximus, & moriamur, Dear wife, let's live in love, and dye together, But let's be young to one another still, Such should conjugal love be, still the same, and as they are one flesh, so should they be of one mind, as in an aristocratical government, one consent, Geryon-like, coalescere in unum, have one heart in two bodies, will and nill the same. A good wife, according to Plutarch, should be as a looking-glass to represent her husband's face and passion: If he be pleasant, she should be merry: if he laugh, she should smile; if he look sad, she should participate of his sorrow, and bear a part with * Lucretius. + Fonseca. + Hor. • Propert. § Simonides. græc. Ausonins. Geryon amicitiæ symbolum. him, him, and so they should continue in mutual love one towards another. «* Et me ab amore tuo deducet nulla senectus, No age shall part my love from thee sweet wife, Though I live Nestor or Tithonu's life. And she again to him, as the † Bride saluted the Bridegrome of old in Rome, Ubi tu Caius, ego semper Caia, be thou still Caius, ile be Caia. 'Tis an happy state this indeed, when the fountain is blessed (saith Solomon, Prov. 5. 17.) "and he rejoyceth with the wife of his youth, and she is to him as the loving Hinde, and pleasant Roe, and he delights in her continually." But this love of ours is immoderate, inordinate, and not to be comprehended in any bounds. It will not contain it self within the union of marriage, or apply to one object, but is a wandring, extravagant, a domineering, a boundless, an irrafragable, a destructive passion: sometimes this burning lust rageth after marriage, and then it is properly called Jealousie; sometimes before, and then it is called Heroicall melancholy; it extends sometimes to corrivals, &c. begets rapes, incests, murders: Marcus Antonius compressit Faustinam sororem, Caracalla Juliam Novercam, Nero Matrem, Caligula sorores, Cyneras Mirrham filiam, &c. But it is confined within no terms of bloud, years, sex, or whatsoever else. Some furiously rage before they come to discretion or age. Quartilla in Petronius, never remembred she was a maid: and the wife of Bath, in Chaucer, cracks, Since I was twelve years old, believe, Aratine Lucretia sold her maiden-head a thousand times before she was twenty four years old, plus millies vendideram virginitatem, &c. neq; te celabo, non deerant qui ut integram ambirent. Rahab that harlot began to be a professed quean at ten years of age, and was but fifteen when she hid the spies, as Hugh Broughton proves, to whom Serrarius the Jesuite, quæst. 6. in cap. 2. Josue, subscribes. Generally women begin pubescere as they call it, or catullire, as Julius Pollux cites, lib. 2. cap. 3. onomast. out of Aristophanes, & at * Propert. 1. 2. + Plutarch. c. 30. Rom. hist. Junonem habeam ira · tam, si unquam meminerim me virginem fuisse. Infans enim paribus inquinata sum, & subinde majoribus me applicui, donec ad ætatem perveni; ut Milo vitulum, &c. § Parnodidasc. dial. lat. interp. Casp. Barthio ex Ital || Angelico scriptur, concentu. Epictetus c. 42. mulieres statim ab anno 14 movere incipiunt, &c. attrectari se sinunt & exponunt. Levinu Lemnius. fourteet fourteen years old, then they do offer themselves, and some plainly rage. *Leo Afer saith, that in Africk a man shall scarce finde a maid at fourteen years of age, they are so forward, and many amongst us after they come into the teens do not live without husbands, but linger. What pranks in this kinde the middle age have played, is not to be recorded. "Si mihi sint centum linguæ, sint oraq; centum," no tongue can sufficiently declare, every story is full of men and women's unsatiable lust, Nero's, Heliogabali, Bonosi, &c. +Cælius Amphilenum, sed Quintius Amphelinam depereunt, c. They neigh after other men's wives (as Jeremy cap. 5. 8. complaineth) like fed horses, or range like town Buls, raptores virginum & viduarum, as many of our great ones do. Solomon's wisdom was extinguished in this fire of lust, Sampson's strength enervated, piety in Lot's daughters quite forgot, gravity of Priesthood in Helie's sons, reverend old age in the Elders that would violate Susanna, filial duty in Absolon to his stepmother, brotherly love in Ammon towards his sister. Humane, divine laws, precepts, exhortations, fear of God and men, fair, foul means, fame, fortune, shame, disgrace, honor cannot oppose, stave off, or withstand the fury of it, omnia vincit amor, &c. No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twin'd thread. The scorching beams under the Equinoctiall, or extremity of cold within the circle Artique, where the very Seas are frozen, cold or torrid zone cannot avoid or expel this heat, fury, and rage of mortall men. "§ Quo fugis ab demens, nulla est fuga, tu licet usq; Of women's unnatural, unsatiable lust, what Country, what Village doth not complain?. Mother and daughter sometimes dote on the same man, father and son, master and servant, on one woman. "Sed amor, sed ineffrenata libido, Quid castum in terris intentatumq; reliquit?" What breach of vows and oaths, fury, dotage, madness, might I reckon up? Yet this is more tolerable in youth, and such as are still in their hot blood; but for an old fool to dote, to see an old leacher, what more odious, what can be more absurd? and yet what so common? Who so furious? *L. 3. fol. 126. + Catullus. § Euripides. De mulierum inexhausta libidine luxuq; iusatiabili omnes æque regiones conqueri posse existimo. Steph. «<* Amare «*Amare ea ætate si occiperint, multo insaniunt acriùs," Some dote then more then ever they did in their youth. How many decrepit, hoary, harsh, writhen, bursten-bellied, crooked, toothless, bald, blear-eyed, impotent, rotten, old men shall you see flickering still in every place? One gets him a young wife, another a Curtisan, and when he can scarce lift his leg over a sill, and hath one foot already in Charon's boat, when he hath the trembling in his joynts, the gout in his feet; a perpetuall rhume in his head, "a continuate cough, + his sight fails him, thick of hearing, his breath stinks, all his moisture is dried up and gone, may not spit from him, a very child again, that cannot dress himself, or cut his own meat, yet he will be dreaming of, and honing after wenches, what can be more unseemly? Worse it is in women then in men, when she is ætate declivis, diu vidua, mater olim, parum decorè matrimonium sequi videtur, an old widdow, a mother so long since (* in Plinie's opinion) she doth very unseemly seek to marry, yet whilst she is so old a crone, a beldam, she can neither see, nor hear, go nor stand, a meer karcass, a witch, and scarce feel; she catterwauls, and must have a stallion, a Champion, she must and will marry again, and betroth her self to some yong man, I that hates to look on, but for her goods; abhors the sight of her, to the prejudice of her good name, her own undoing, grief of friends, and ruin of her children. k But to enlarge or illustrate this power and effects of love, is to set a candle in the Sun. It rageth with all sorts and conditions of men, yet is most evident among such as are yong and Justy, in the flowre of their years, nobly descended, high fed, such as live idly, and at ease; and for that cause (which our Divines call burning lust) this "ferinus insanus amor, this mad and beastly passion, as I have said, is named by our Physitians, Heroical love, and a more honourable title put upon it, Amor nobilis, as • Savanarola stiles it, because noble men and women make a common practise of it, and are so ordinarily affected with it. Avicenna lib. 3. Fen. 1. tract. 4. cap. 23. calleth this passion Ilishi, and defines it "P to be a disease or * Plautus. f Oculi caligant, aures graviter audiunt, capilli fluunt, cutis arescit, flatus olet, tussis, &c. Cyprian. Lib. 8. Epist. Ruffinus. Hiatq turpis inter aridas nates podex. Cadaverosa adeo ut ab inferis reversa videri possit, vult adhuc catullire. Nam & matrimoniis est despectum senium. Eneas Silvius. Quid toto terrarum orbe communius? quæ civitas, quod oppidum, quæ familia vacat amatorum exemplis ? Eneas Silvius. Quis trigesimum annum natus nullum amoris causa peregit insigne facinus? ego de me facio conjecturam, quem amor in mille pericula misit. n Forestus. Plato. Pract. major. Tract. 6. cap. 1. Rub. 11, de ægrit. cap. quod his multum contingat. PHæc ægritudo est solicitudo melancholica in qua homo applicat sibi continuam cogitationem super pulchritudine ipsius quam amat, gestuum, morum, melancholy melancholy vexation, or anguish of minde, in which a man continually meditates of the beauty, gesture, manners of his Mistris, and troubles himself about it: desiring" (as Savanarola adds) with all intentions and eagerness of minde" to compass or enjoy her, as commonly Hunters trouble themselves about their sports, the covetous about their gold and goods, so is he tormented stil about his Mistris." Arnoldus Villanovanus in his book of Heroical love defines it, "a continual cogitation of that which he desires, with a confidence or hope of compassing it:" which definition his Commentator cavils at. For continual cogitation is not the genus, but a symptome of love; we continually think of that which we hate and abhor, as well as that which we love; and many things we covet and desire, without all hope of attaining. Carolus à Lorme in his Questions makes a doubt, An amor sit morbus, whether this heroicall love be a disease: Julius Pollux Onomast. lib. 6. cap. 44. determines it; They that are in love are likewise sick; lascivus, salax, lasciviens, & qui in venerem furit, verè est ægrotus. Arnoldus will have it improperly so called, and a malady rather of the body, then minde. Tully in his Tusculanes defines it a furious disease of the minde, Plato madness it self, Ficinus his Commentator, cap. 12. a species of madness, "for many have run mad for women,' Esdr. 4. 26. but Rhases" a melancholy passion," and most Physitians make it a species or kinde of melancholy (as will appear by the Symptomes), and treat of it apart: whom I mean to imitate, and to discuss it in all his kinds, to examine his several causes, to shew his symptomes, indications, prognosticks, effect, that so it may be with more facility cured. The part affected in the mean time, as "Arnoldus supposeth, "is the former part of the head for want of moisture," which his Commentator rejects. Langius med. epist. lib. 1. cap. 24. will have this passion sited in the liver, and to keep residence in the heart," to proceed first from the eyes so carried by our spirits, and kindled with imagination in the liver and heart;" cogit amare jecur, as the saying is. Medium feret per epar, as Cupid in Anacreon. For some such cause belike Homer fains Titius' liver (who was enamored on Latona) to be still gnawed by two Vultures day and night in hell, for 66 2 Animi forte accidens quo quis rem habere nimia aviditate concupiscit, ut ludos venatores, aurum & opes avari. Assidua cogitatio super rem deside tatam, cum confidentia obtinendi, ut spe apprehensum delectabile, &c. Morbus corporis potius quam animi. Amor est passio melancholica. Ob calefactionem spirituum pars anterior capitis laborat ob consumptionem humiditatis. *Affectus animi concupiscibilis e desiderio rei amatæ per oculos in mente concepto, spiritus in corde & jecore incendens. ▾ Odyss. & Metamor. 4. Ovid. Quod talem carnificinam in adolescentum visceribus that amor facial inexplebilis. V |