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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 15
+by Michel de Montaigne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 15
+
+Author: Michel de Montaigne
+
+Release Date: September 17, 2006 [EBook #3595]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE, VOLUME 15 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
+
+Translated by Charles Cotton
+
+Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
+
+1877
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME 15.
+
+V.  Upon Some verses of Virgil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  V.
+
+By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are
+they also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are
+grave and grievous subjects.  A man should have his soul instructed in
+the means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules of
+living and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this
+noble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with
+moderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon
+it.  I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind and
+solicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say,
+so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present
+in another state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urge
+me to wisdom, and preach to me.  From the excess of sprightliness I am
+fallen into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and for
+that reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run into
+disorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith
+it diverts itself.  I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too
+ripe; years every day read to me lectures of coldness and temperance.
+This body of mine avoids disorder and dreads it; 'tis now my body's turn
+to guide my mind towards reformation; it governs, in turn, and more
+rudely and imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour alone,
+sleeping or waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, and
+repentance.  I now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly done
+from pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity.  Now I
+will be master of myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has its
+excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.  Therefore, lest
+I should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in the
+intervals and truces my infirmities allow me:
+
+               "Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis."
+
+     ["That my mind may not eternally be intent upon my ills."
+     --Ovid., Trist., iv. i, 4.]
+
+I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I
+have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but not
+without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my
+better years:
+
+                          "Animus quo perdidit, optat,
+               Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat."
+
+     ["The mind wishes to have what it has lost, and throws itself
+     wholly into memories of the past."--Petronius, c. 128.]
+
+Let childhood look forward and age backward; was not this the
+signification of Janus' double face?  Let years draw me along if they
+will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the
+pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though
+it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image
+of it out of my memory:
+
+                                        "Hoc est
+                    Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."
+
+     ["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy one's former life again."
+     --Martial, x. 23, 7.]
+
+Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances,
+and sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for the
+activity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to
+mind the grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in
+these recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that young
+man who has most diverted the company.  I was formerly wont to mark
+cloudy and gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days;
+the extraordinary are the clear and bright; I am ready to leap for joy,
+as for an unwonted favour, when nothing happens me.  Let me tickle
+myself, I cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine;
+I am only merry in conceit and in dreaming, by artifice to divert the
+melancholy of age; but, in faith, it requires another remedy than a
+dream.  A weak contest of art against nature.  'Tis great folly to
+lengthen and anticipate human incommodities, as every one does; I had
+rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so.' I seize on
+even the least occasions of pleasure I can meet.  I know very well, by
+hearsay, several sorts of prudent pleasures, effectually so, and glorious
+to boot; but opinion has not power enough over me to give me an appetite
+to them.  I covet not so much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and
+pompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile, and ready:
+
+               "A natura discedimus; populo nos damus,
+               nullius rei bono auctori."
+
+     ["We depart from nature and give ourselves to the people, who
+     understand nothing."--Seneca, Ep., 99.]
+
+My philosophy is in action, in natural and present practice, very little
+in fancy: what if I should take pleasure in playing at cob-nut or to whip
+a top!
+
+               "Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem."
+
+     ["He did not sacrifice his health even to rumours." Ennius, apud
+     Cicero, De Offic., i. 24]
+
+Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition; it thinks itself rich
+enough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleased
+where most retired.  A young man should be whipped who pretends to a
+taste in wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less
+valued or knew: now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on't; but
+what should I do?  I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put
+me upon't.  'Tis for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for young
+men to stand upon their reputation and nice punctilios; they are going
+towards the world and the world's opinion; we are retiring from it:
+
+     "Sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam,
+     sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus, ex lusionibus
+     multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;"
+
+     ["Let them reserve to themselves arms, horses, spears, clubs,
+     tennis, swimming, and races; and of all the sports leave to us old
+     men cards and dice."--Cicero, De Senec., c. 16.]
+
+the laws themselves send us home.  I can do no less in favour of this
+wretched condition into which my age has thrown me than furnish it with
+toys to play withal, as they do children; and, in truth, we become such.
+Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by
+alternate services in this calamity of age:
+
+               "Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem."
+
+          ["Mingle with counsels a brief interval of folly."
+          --Horace, Od., iv. 12, 27.]
+
+I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly would
+not have rippled the skin, now pierce me through and through: my habit of
+body is now so naturally declining to ill:
+
+          "In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;"
+
+          ["In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious."
+          --Cicero, De Senec., c.  18.]
+
+          "Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil."
+
+     ["And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion."
+     --Ovid, De Ponto., i.  5, 18.]
+
+I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more
+tender now, and open throughout.
+
+               "Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent."
+
+     ["And little force suffices to break what was cracked before."
+     --Ovid, De Tris., iii. 11, 22.]
+
+My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the
+inconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take away
+my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be
+merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one
+good year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity.  A melancholic and dull
+tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am
+not contented with it.  If there be any person, any knot of good company
+in country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, who
+can like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistle
+and I will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone:
+
+Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I
+advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue
+green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree.  But I
+fear 'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the
+body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need.  I
+wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from
+this correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and
+ladies and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems to
+have it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its
+own cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied
+and asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be not
+at the same time an equal proportion in the body too.
+
+Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the
+extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine
+ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also
+attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health,
+such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me
+withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes
+that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all
+enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.
+
+It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit,
+and produce a contrary effect:
+
+          "Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;"
+
+     ["When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing."
+     (Or:) "It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body."
+     --Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.]
+
+and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out,
+much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men of
+my age.  Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommodities
+and difficulties from our commerce:
+
+          "Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:"
+
+     ["Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow."
+     --Herod., Ep., xiii. 7.]
+
+               "Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus."
+
+     ["Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant."
+     --Sidonius Apollin., Ep., i. 9.]
+
+I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of
+manners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me:
+
+               "Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:"
+
+          ["The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face."--Auctor Incert.]
+
+               "Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos."
+
+          ["And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries." (Or:)
+          "An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind."
+          --Idem.]
+
+I am very much of Plato's opinion, who says that facile or harsh humours
+are great indications of the good or ill disposition of the mind.
+Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly
+austere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh.  Virtue is a
+pleasant and gay quality.
+
+I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings,
+who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts:
+I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their
+eyes.  'Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his
+pretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:
+
+               "Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire."
+
+     ["Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think."]
+
+I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips over all the pleasures of
+life and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stick
+to a smooth and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggy
+and rough places, and like cupping-glasses, that only suck and attract
+bad blood.
+
+As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to
+do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst
+of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it evil
+and base not to dare to own them.  Every one is wary and discreet in
+confession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing ill
+is in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing
+it.  Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do
+nothing that he must be forced to conceal.  I wish that this excessive
+licence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing
+virtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my
+immoderation I may reduce them to reason.  A man must see and study his
+vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it
+from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see
+it: they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences:
+
+     "Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur?  Quia etiam nunc in
+     illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est."
+
+     ["Why does no man confess his vices?  because he is yet in them;
+     'tis for a waking man to tell his dream."--Seneca, Ep., 53.]
+
+The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find
+that to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of
+the soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure;
+the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with an
+unrelenting hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened,
+and torn from the hollow of the heart.  As in doing well, so in doing
+ill, the mere confession is sometimes satisfaction.  Is there any
+deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?
+It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of
+another's secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge.  I can
+keep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violence
+to myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, not
+by obligation.  'Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be
+secret, if a man be not a liar to boot.  If he who asked Thales the
+Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed
+adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he ought
+not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other.
+Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield the
+greater fault by the less;
+
+     [Montaigne's memory here serves him ill, for the question being put
+     to Thales, his answer was: "But is not perjury worse than
+     adultery?"--Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36.]
+
+nevertheless, this counsel was not so much an election as a
+multiplication of vice.  Upon which let us say this in passing, that we
+deal liberally with a man of conscience when we propose to him some
+difficulty in counterpoise of vice; but when we shut him up betwixt two
+vices, he is put to a hard choice as Origen was either to idolatrise or
+to suffer himself to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave they
+brought to him.  He submitted to the first condition, and wrongly, people
+say.  Yet those women of our times are not much out, according to their
+error, who protest they had rather burden their consciences with ten men
+than one mass.
+
+If it be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great
+danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said,  that the
+winds men most fear are those that lay them open.  We must tuck up this
+ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the
+stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins
+espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty.  So that neither
+can injustice complain of incivility, nor malice of indiscretion.  'Tis
+pity but a bad man should be a fool to boot, and that outward decency
+should palliate his vice: this rough-cast only appertains to a good and
+sound wall, that deserves to be preserved and whited.
+
+In favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private
+confession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely: St.
+Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their
+opinions; I, moreover, of my manners.  I am greedy of making myself
+known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or to say
+better, I hunger for nothing; but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those
+who happen to learn my name.  He who does all things for honour and
+glory, what can he think to gain by shewing himself to the world in a
+vizor, and by concealing his true being from the people?  Praise a
+humpback for his stature, he has reason to take it for an affront:
+if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you
+they speak?  They take you for another.  I should like him as well who
+glorifies himself in the compliments and congees that are made him as if
+he were master of the company, when he is one of the least of the train.
+Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw
+water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish:
+"Aye, but," said he, "whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me,
+but upon him whom he took me to be."  Socrates being told that people
+spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he, "there is nothing, in me of what
+they say."
+
+For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being
+very modest or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoever
+should call me traitor, robber, or drunkard, I should be as little
+concerned.  They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselves
+with false approbations; not I, who see myself, and who examine myself
+even to my very bowels, and who very well know what is my due.  I am
+content to be less commended, provided I am better known.  I may be
+reputed a wise man in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.
+I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common piece of
+furniture, and a piece for the hall; this chapter will make me part of
+the water-closet.  I love to traffic with them a little in private;
+public conversation is without favour and without savour.  In farewells,
+we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leave
+of; I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world: these are our
+last embraces.
+
+But let us come to my subject: what has the act of generation, so
+natural, so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not to
+be spoken of without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious and
+moderate discourse?   We boldly pronounce kill, rob, betray, and that we
+dare only to do betwixt the teeth.  Is it to say, the less we expend in
+words, we may pay so much the more in thinking?  For it is certain that
+the words least in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the
+best and most generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them,
+no more than the word bread they imprint themselves in every one without
+being, expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that
+most practises it is bound to say least of it.  'Tis an act that we have
+placed in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime even
+to accuse and judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasis
+and picture.  A great favour to a criminal to be so execrable that
+justice thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free, and safe by the
+benefit of the severity of his condemnation.  Is it not here as in matter
+of books, that sell better and become more public for being suppressed?
+For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that
+"bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age."  These
+verses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much more
+adhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, and
+the vices less:
+
+              "Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent,
+               Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent."
+
+     ["They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too
+     frequent in her rites."--A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A
+     philosopher should converse with princes.]
+
+              "Tu, dea, rerum naturam sola gubernas,
+               Nec sine to quicquam dias in luminis oras
+               Exoritur, neque fit laetum, nec amabile quidquam."
+
+     ["Goddess, still thou alone governest nature, nor without thee
+     anything comes into light; nothing is pleasant, nothing joyful."
+     --Lucretius, i. 22.]
+
+I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, and
+make them cold towards Love; but I see no deities so well met, or that
+are more indebted to one another.  Who will deprive the Muses of amorous
+imaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and of
+the noblest matter of their work: and who will make Love lose the
+communication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons:
+by this means they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and the
+protecting goddesses of humanity and justice, with the vice of
+ingratitude and unthankfulness.  I have not been so long cashiered from
+the state and service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect in
+his force and value:
+
+               "Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae;"
+
+     ["I recognise vestiges of my old flame."--AEneid., iv. 23.]
+
+There are yet some remains of heat and emotion after the fever:
+
+          "Nec mihi deficiat calor hic, hiemantibus annis!"
+
+     ["Nor let this heat of youth fail me in my winter years."]
+
+Withered and drooping as I am, I feel yet some remains of the past
+ardour:
+
+              "Qual l'alto Egeo, per the Aquilone o Noto
+               Cessi, the tutto prima il volse et scosse,
+               Non 's accheta ei pero; ma'l suono e'l moto
+               Ritien del l'onde anco agitate e grosse:"
+
+          ["As Aegean seas, when storms be calmed again,
+          That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blasts,
+          Do yet of tempests passed some show retain,
+          And here and there their swelling billows cast."--Fairfax.]
+
+but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god are
+more lively and animated in the picture of poesy than in their own
+essence:
+
+                    "Et versus digitos habet:"
+
+          ["Verse has fingers."--Altered from Juvenal, iv. 196.]
+
+it has I know not what kind of air, more amorous than love itself.  Venus
+is not so beautiful, naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil:
+
+         "Dixerat; et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis
+          Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet.  Ille repente
+          Accepit solitam flammam; notusque medullas
+          Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit
+          Non secus atque olim tonitru, cum rupta corusco
+          Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.
+          . . . . . .  Ea verba loquutus,
+          Optatos dedit amplexus; placidumque petivit
+          Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem."
+
+     ["The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft
+     embraces, caresses him hesitating.  Suddenly he caught the wonted
+     flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran
+     thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with
+     thunder, a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the
+     skies.  Having spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace,
+     and in the bosom of his spouse sought placid sleep."
+     --AEneid, viii.  387 and 392.]
+
+All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented
+her a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of
+coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.
+Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but
+faintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as
+marriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more
+than grace and beauty.  Men do not marry for themselves, let them say
+what they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity and
+family; the custom and interest of marriage concern our race much more
+than us; and therefore it is, that I like to have a match carried on by a
+third hand rather than a man's own, and by another man's liking than that
+of the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the
+conventions of love?  And also it is a kind of incest to employ in this
+venerable and sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorous
+licence, as I think I have said elsewhere.  A man, says Aristotle, must
+approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too
+lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of
+reason.  What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say
+upon the account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious,
+voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders
+conception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as
+this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must
+do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:
+
+          "Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."
+
+     ["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in
+     his bosom."--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]
+
+I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
+those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
+there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
+proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
+nothing.
+
+They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
+like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
+virtue.  They are indeed things that have some relation to one another,
+but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names
+and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them.  Nobility is a
+brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a
+quality depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in
+himself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below virtue';
+
+     ["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein
+     not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter."
+     --La Byuyere.]
+
+'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending
+upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living
+and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;
+of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
+Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
+fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,
+and of no use to the service of others.  There was proposed to one of our
+kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was
+a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,
+they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the
+competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect
+to birth: this was justly to give it its rank.  A young man unknown,
+coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man
+lately dead: "Friend," said he, "in such preferments as these, I have not
+so much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess."
+And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings
+of Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always
+succeeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred before
+the most experienced in the trade.  They of Calicut make of nobles a sort
+of superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike
+employments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women as
+many lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital and
+irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions than
+themselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touched
+one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellously
+interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too
+near them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk,
+like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of
+jostling; and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they
+please: by that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy,
+those certain death.  No time, no favour of the prince, no office, or
+virtue, or riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: to
+which this custom contributes, that marriages are interdicted betwixt
+different trades; the daughter of one of the cordwainers' gild is not
+permitted to marry a carpenter; and parents are obliged to train up their
+children precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any other
+trade; by which means the distinction and continuance of their fortunes
+are maintained.
+
+A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditions
+of love, and tries to represent those of friendship.  'Tis a sweet
+society of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of
+useful and solid services and mutual obligations; which any woman who has
+a right taste:
+
+                    "Optato quam junxit lumine taeda"--
+
+     ["Whom the marriage torch has joined with the desired light."
+     --Catullus, lxiv. 79.]
+
+would be loth to serve her husband in quality of a mistress.  If she be
+lodged in his affection as a wife, she is more honourably and securely
+placed.  When he purports to be in love with another, and works all he
+can to obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rather
+a disgrace should fall, his wife or his mistress, which of their
+misfortunes would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes the
+most grandeur, the answer to these questions is out of dispute in a sound
+marriage.
+
+And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and
+value.  If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human
+societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it.
+It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those
+within despair of getting out.  Socrates being asked, whether it was more
+commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will,"
+said he; "he will repent."  'Tis a contract to which the common
+saying:
+
+                    "Homo homini aut deus aut lupus,"
+
+          ["Man to man is either a god or a wolf."--Erasmus, Adag.]
+
+may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualities
+in the construction.  It is found nowadays more convenient for simple and
+plebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do not so much
+disturb it; but extravagant humours, such as mine, that hate all sorts of
+obligation and restraint, are not so proper for it:
+
+               "Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo."
+
+          ["And it is sweet to me to live with a loosened neck."
+          --Pseudo Gallus, i. 61.]
+
+Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if
+she would have had me.  But 'tis to much purpose to evade it; the common
+custom and usance of life will have it so.  The most of my actions are
+guided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my own
+voluntary motion; I was led and drawn to it by extrinsic occasions; for
+not only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also things
+however ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable by
+some condition or accident; so unsteady and vain is all human resolution!
+and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared and less tractable than I
+am at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine as
+I am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws of
+marriage, than I either promised or expected.  'Tis in vain to kick, when
+a man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his
+liberty; but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himself
+within the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it.
+They who engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in it
+with hatred and contempt, do an unjust and inconvenient thing; and the
+fine rule that I hear pass from hand to hand amongst the women, as a
+sacred oracle:
+
+     ["Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as
+     from a traitor."]
+
+which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical,
+and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equally
+injurious and hard.  I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say the
+truth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of
+wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule and
+order that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do
+not presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion.
+
+     (If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion.  D.W.)
+
+If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and
+acknowledge it; 'tis treachery to marry without espousing.
+
+Let us proceed.
+
+Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord wherein
+nevertheless there is not much loyalty.  Does he mean, that it is not
+impossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield
+to the importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage,
+and that it may be hurt, without being totally broken?  A serving man may
+cheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate.  Beauty,
+opportunity, and destiny (for destiny has also a hand in't),
+
+                         "Fatum est in partibus illis
+          Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent,
+          Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;"
+
+     ["There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have
+     endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star
+     fails you in the nick of time."--Juvenal, ix. 32.]
+
+have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but
+that she may have some remains of kindness for her husband.  They are two
+designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being
+confounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no
+means have married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but for
+those also of his person.  Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who
+have not repented it.  And even in the other world, what an unhappy life
+does Jupiter lead with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress!
+'Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one's
+head.  I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and
+dishonestly cured by marriage: the considerations are widely different.
+We love at once, without any tie, two things contrary in themselves.
+
+Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased, as ladies do
+whom men court for love; every one loved to come thither to take a turn,
+and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it,
+that is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence.  I have
+been vexed to see husbands hate their wives only because they themselves
+do them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the less
+for our own faults; they should at least, upon the account of repentance
+and compassion, be dearer to us.
+
+They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible;
+marriage has utility, justice, honour, and constancy for its share;
+a flat, but more universal pleasure: love founds itself wholly upon
+pleasure, and, indeed, has it more full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure
+inflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and smart: 'tis no
+longer love, if without darts and fire.  The bounty of ladies is too
+profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire: to
+evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato
+take in their laws.
+
+Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life that
+are introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men make them without
+their help.  There is naturally contention and brawling betwixt them and
+us; and the strictest friendship we have with them is yet mixed with
+tumult and tempest.  In the opinion of our author, we deal
+inconsiderately with them in this: after we have discovered that they
+are, without comparison, more able and ardent in the practice of love
+than we, and that the old priest testified as much, who had been one
+while a man, and then a woman:
+
+                    "Venus huic erat utraque nota:"
+
+               ["Both aspects of love were known to him,"
+               --Tiresias. Ovid.  Metam., iii. 323.]
+
+and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that,
+in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome,--[Proclus.]
+--both famous for ability in that affair!  for he in one night deflowered
+ten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had five-and-twenty
+bouts in one night, changing her man according to her need and liking;
+
+                    "Adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae
+               Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit:"
+
+          ["Ardent still, she retired, fatigued, but not satisfied."
+          --Juvenal, vi. 128.]
+
+and that upon the dispute which happened in Cataluna, wherein a wife
+complaining of her husband's too frequent addresses to her, not so much,
+as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no miracles
+out of religion) as under this pretence, to curtail and curb in this,
+which is the fundamental act of marriage, the authority of husbands over
+their wives, and to shew that their frowardness and malignity go beyond
+the nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets of
+Venus; the husband, a man truly brutish and unnatural, replied, that even
+on fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses:
+whereupon came out that notable sentence of the Queen of Arragon, by
+which, after mature deliberation of her council, this good queen, to give
+a rule and example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required in
+a just marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessary
+stint; surrendering and quitting a great deal of the needs and desires of
+her sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, a
+permanent and immutable rule.  Hereupon the doctors cry out: what must
+the female appetite and concupiscence be, when their reason, their
+reformation and virtue, are taxed at such a rate, considering the divers
+judgments of our appetites?  for Solon, master of the law school, taxes
+us but at three a month,--that men may not fail in point of conjugal
+frequentation: after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we go
+and enjoin them continency for their particular share, and upon the last
+and extreme penalties.
+
+There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would have
+them only resist, not simply as an ordinary vice, but as an execrable
+abomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; whilst we, at the same
+time, go to't without offence or reproach.  Even those amongst us who
+have tried the experiment have sufficiently confessed what difficulty, or
+rather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to subdue,
+weaken, and cool the body.  We, on the contrary, would have them at once
+sound, vigorous plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and
+cold; for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning,
+is but small refreshment to them, as we order the matter.  If they take
+one whose vigorous age is yet boiling, he will be proud to make it known
+elsewhere;
+
+                   "Sit tandem pudor; aut eamus in jus;
+                    Multis mentula millibus redempta,
+                    Non est haec tua, Basse; vendidisti;"
+
+     ["Let there be some shame, or we shall go to law: your vigour,
+     bought by your wife with many thousands, is no longer yours: thou
+     hast sold it.--"Martial, xii. 90.]
+
+Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judge
+for sowing in a barren field the seed that was due to one that was
+fruitful:  if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in
+a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows.  We think them
+well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans
+concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had
+approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her:
+but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as
+the touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that in
+solitude would be more quiet.  And to the end, 'tis likely, that they
+might render their chastity more meritorious by this circumstance and
+consideration, Boleslas and Kinge his wife, kings of Poland, vowed it by
+mutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, and
+kept their vow in spite of all matrimonial conveniences.
+
+We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace,
+dressing, knowledge, language, and whole instruction tend that way: their
+governesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothing
+else but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distaste
+for it.  My daughter, the only child I have, is now of an age that
+forward young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin,
+and tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her mother
+after a retired and particular manner, so that she but now begins to be
+weaned from her childish simplicity.  She was reading before me in a
+French book where the word 'fouteau', the name of a tree very well known,
+occurred;--[The beech-tree; the name resembles in sound an obscene
+French word.]--the woman, to whose conduct she is committed, stopped her
+short a little roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous step.  I
+let her alone, not to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself in
+that sort of government; feminine polity has a mysterious procedure; we
+must leave it to them; but if I am not mistaken the commerce of twenty
+lacquies could not, in six months' time, have so imprinted in her memory
+the meaning, usage, and all the consequence of the sound of these wicked
+syllables, as this good old woman did by reprimand and interdiction.
+
+                   "Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
+                    Matura virgo, et frangitur artibus;
+                    Jam nunc et incestos amores
+                    De tenero, meditatur ungui."
+
+     ["The maid ripe for marriage delights to learn Ionic dances, and to
+     imitate those lascivious movements.  Nay, already from her infancy
+     she meditates criminal amours."--Horace, Od., iii.  6, 21., the text
+     has 'fingitur'.]
+
+Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter into
+liberty of discourse, we are but children to them in this science.  Hear
+them but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well make
+you understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, and
+digested without our help.
+
+     [This sentence refers to a conversation between some young women in
+     his immediate neighbourhood, which the Essayist just below informs
+     us that he overheard, and which was too shocking for him to repeat.
+     It must have been tolerably bad.--Remark by the editor of a later
+     edition.]
+
+Is it, perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauched
+young fellows?  I happened one day to be in a place where I could hear
+some of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it.
+By'rlady, said I, we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and the
+tales of Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse with them: we
+employ our time to much purpose indeed.  There is neither word, example,
+nor step they are not more perfect in than our books; 'tis a discipline
+that springs with their blood,
+
+                    "Et mentem ipsa Venus dedit,"
+
+               ["Venus herself made them what they are,"
+               --Virg., Georg., iii. 267.]
+
+which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health, are continually
+inspiring them with; they need not learn, they breed it:
+
+              "Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo,
+               Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius,
+               Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro,
+               Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier."
+
+     ["No milk-white dove, or if there be a thing more lascivious,
+     takes so much delight in kissing as woman, wishful for every man
+     she sees."--Catullus, lxvi. 125.]
+
+So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little
+restrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, we
+should be all shamed.  All the motions in the world resolve into and tend
+to this conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a centre to
+which all things are directed.  We yet see the edicts of the old and wise
+Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the
+instruction of courtezans:
+
+                   "Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos
+                    Jacere pulvillos amant:"
+
+          ["There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon
+          silken cushions."--Horace, Epod., viii. 15.]
+
+Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in
+getting a maidenhead.  What was the philosopher Strato's book Of Carnal
+Conjunction?--[ Diogenes Laertius, v.  59.]--And what did Theophrastus
+treat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the other 'Of
+Love?'  Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'?  What do the so
+long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretend
+to?  and the book called 'The Lover', of Demetrius Phalereus? and
+'Clinias', or the 'Ravished Lover', of Heraclides; and that of
+Antisthenes, 'Of Getting Children', or, 'Of Weddings', and the other,
+'Of the Master or the Lover'?  And that of Aristo: 'Of Amorous Exercises'
+What those of Cleanthes: one, 'Of Love', the other, 'Of the Art of
+Loving'?  The amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter
+and Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration?  And his fifty
+so lascivious epistles?  I will let alone the writings of the
+philosophers of the Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness.  Fifty
+deities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have been
+nations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion,
+they kept men and women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with;
+and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:
+
+     "Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est;
+     incendium ignibus extinguitur."
+
+     ["Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency's sake; a
+     conflagration is extinguished by fire."]
+
+In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified;
+in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a
+piece; others offered and consecrated their seed.  In another, the young
+men publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part in
+several places, and thrust pieces of wood into the openings as long and
+thick as they would receive, and of these pieces of wood afterwards made
+a fire as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorous
+nor chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain they seemed to be at all
+dismayed.  Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced and
+acknowledged by that member and in several ceremonies the effigy of it
+was carried in pomp to the honour of various divinities.  The Egyptian
+ladies, in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finely-carved of wood
+about their necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besides
+which, the statue of their god presented one, which in greatness
+surpassed all the rest of his body.--[Herodotus, ii.  48, says "nearly
+as large as the body itself."]--The married women, near the place where
+I live, make of their kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads,
+to glorify themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and coming to be
+widows, they throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths.  The
+most modest matrons of Rome thought it an honour to offer flowers and
+garlands to the god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the time of
+their espousals, sit upon his shameful parts.  And I know not whether I
+have not in my time seen some air of like devotion.  What was the meaning
+of that ridiculous piece of the chaussuye of our forefathers, and that is
+still worn by our Swiss? ["Cod-pieces worn"--Cotton]--To what end do we
+make a show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often,
+which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?
+I have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in
+the better and more conscientious ages, that the world might not be
+deceived, and that every one should give a public account of his
+proportions: the simple nations wear them yet, and near about the real
+size.  In those days, the tailor took measure of it, as the shoemaker
+does now of a man's foot.  That good man, who, when I was young, gelded
+so many noble and ancient statues in his great city, that they might not
+corrupt the sight of the ladies, according to the advice of this other
+ancient worthy:
+
+          "Flagitii principium est, nudare inter gives corpora,"
+
+     ["'Tis the beginning of wickedness to expose their persons among the
+     citizens"--Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]
+
+should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea,
+all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geld
+horses and asses, in short, all nature:
+
+         "Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque,
+          Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,
+          In furias ignemque ruunt."
+
+          ["So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame,
+          and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love."
+          --Virgil, Georg., iii. 244.]
+
+The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member
+that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite,
+to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a
+greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows
+wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops
+the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till,
+having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed
+the bottom of their matrix.  Now my legislator--[The Pope who, as
+Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]--
+should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and
+more fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than
+permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own
+fancy; instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and
+desire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certain
+friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the
+opportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use.  What
+mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys
+make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the
+ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture.  And what do we know
+but that Plato, after other well-instituted republics, ordered that the
+men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view
+of one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account?  The
+Indian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooled
+the sense of seeing.  And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what
+they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth
+slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they
+pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention
+to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that
+nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than
+they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more
+sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes.  Livia was wont to say,
+that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue.  The Lacedaemonian
+women, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the
+young men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves
+little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves,
+says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe.
+But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful
+power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day
+of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours,
+for fear of tempting us again in that holy state.  In brief, we allure
+and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir up
+their imagination, and then we find fault.  Let us confess the truth;
+there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame that
+accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is not
+more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuous
+wife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, and
+that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not be
+more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices.  Both we and
+they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural
+than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to
+our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.
+
+The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this
+vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages
+it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go
+to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation,
+rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so
+difficult a guard.  Do not they very well see that there is neither
+merchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after this
+sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with
+labour and hunger?
+
+                   "Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes,
+                    Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes,
+                    Permutare velis crine Licymnim?
+                    Plenas aut Arabum domos,
+                    Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula
+                    Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat,
+                    Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,
+                    Interdum rapere occupet?"
+
+     ["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had,
+     or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of
+     Licymnia's hair?  or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns
+     her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger
+     denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and
+     sometimes herself snatches one!"--Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]
+
+I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass
+the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in
+the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary
+examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand
+continual and powerful solicitations.  There is no doing more difficult
+than that not doing, nor more active:
+
+I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's life
+than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most
+noble, as being the hardest to keep:
+
+               "Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,"
+
+says St.  Jerome.  We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most
+difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to
+them the glory too.  This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;
+'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain
+pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they
+will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more
+esteemed for it, but also much more beloved.  A gallant man does not give
+over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity,
+and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;
+we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no
+allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed.  'Tis stupidity
+and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a
+virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exercise
+of a noble and generous soul.  They may acknowledge our service to a
+certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us
+not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them,
+and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for
+the difficulty of it.  Why should they not give ear to our offers and
+requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?
+wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be
+worse than they seem?  A queen of our time said with spirit, "that to
+refuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a
+self-accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her
+chastity who was never tempted."
+
+The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a
+little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the
+frontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter.  He that has beaten
+and pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied
+with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the
+difficulty.  Would you know what impression your service and merit have
+made in her heart?  Judge of it by her behaviour.  Such an one may grant
+more, who does not grant so much.  The obligation of a benefit wholly
+relates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincident
+circumstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant
+you that little, than it would do her companion to grant all.  If in
+anything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do not
+consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give;
+the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the
+place.  Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in
+the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all
+the advantage.  I have known some whose reputation has for a great while
+suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world's
+universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;
+every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and
+said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced
+to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour.  Somebody told Plato that
+all the world spoke ill of him.  "Let them talk," said he; "I will live
+so as to make them change their note."  Besides the fear of God, and the
+value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves,
+the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I were
+they, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputation
+in so dangerous hands.  In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasure
+little inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who had
+some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and common
+table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secret
+liberality of ladies.  In earnest, 'tis too abject, too much meanness of
+spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headed
+people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charming
+favours.
+
+This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice
+springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human
+minds, which is jealousy:
+
+              "Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?
+               Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;"
+
+     ["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?
+     Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose."--Ovid, De
+     Arte Amandi, iii. 93.  The measure of the last line is not good;
+     but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled
+     Priapus.]
+
+she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole
+troop.  As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a passion that,
+though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me.  As to
+the other, I know it by sight, and that's all.  Beasts feel it; the
+shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out
+of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and
+crushed it.  We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the
+examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been
+touched with it, and 'tis reason, but not transported:
+
+              "Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter
+               Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas."
+
+               ["Never did adulterer slain by a husband
+               stain with purple blood the Stygian waters."]
+
+Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were
+cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in
+those days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife
+had used him so.
+
+              "Ah! tum te miserum malique fati,
+               Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
+               Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"
+
+     ["Wretched man!  when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be
+     dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment
+     of thy adultery."--Catullus, xv. 17.]
+
+and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his
+wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,
+
+               "Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
+               Sic fieri turpis:"
+
+          ["And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself
+          like to be so disgraced."--Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]
+
+and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him;
+complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his
+affection:
+
+               "Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit
+               Quo tibi, diva, mei?"
+
+     ["Dost thou seek causes from above?  Why, goddess, has your
+     confidence in me ceased?"--Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]
+
+nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers,
+
+                    "Arena rogo genitrix nato."
+
+          ["I, a mother, ask armour for a son."--Idem, ibid., 383.]
+
+which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,
+
+                    "Arma acri facienda viro,"
+
+     ["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."--AEneid, viii. 441.]
+
+with, in truth, a more than human humanity.  And I am willing to leave
+this excess of kindness to the gods:
+
+               "Nec divis homines componier aequum est."
+
+          ["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods."
+          --Catullus, lxviii. 141.]
+
+As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators
+ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where
+this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:
+
+               "Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
+               Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."
+
+     ["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her
+     husband's daily infidelities."--Idem, ibid.]
+
+When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance,
+'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it
+insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it
+has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of
+good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred.  'Tis, of all the
+diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and
+the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the
+husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:
+
+          "Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."
+
+          ["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."
+          (Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"
+          --Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]
+
+This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good
+besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste
+and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and
+wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity
+quite contrary to its cause.  This held good with one Octavius at Rome.
+Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and
+solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this
+excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and
+mortal hatred: he killed her.  In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of
+this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,
+and cabals:
+
+               "Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"
+
+     ["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."
+     --AEneid, V. 21.]
+
+and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to
+excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.
+
+Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it the will that we
+would have them restrain?  This is a very supple and active thing; a
+thing very nimble, to be stayed.  How? if dreams sometimes engage them so
+far that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in
+chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust and
+desire.  If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in,
+then?  Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men in
+pursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes,
+into every woman's arms who would accept them.  The Scythian women put
+out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might
+have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser.  O, the furious
+advantage of opportunity!  Should any one ask me, what was the first
+thing to be considered in love matters, I should answer that it was how
+to take a fitting time; and so the second; and so the third--'tis a point
+that can do everything.  I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have also
+sometimes been wanting to myself in matters of attempt.  God help him,
+who yet makes light of this!  There is greater temerity required in this
+age of ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; but
+should women examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather
+proceeds from contempt.  I was always superstitiously afraid of giving
+offence, and have ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, he
+who in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time
+the lustre.  I would in this affair have a man a little play the child,
+the timorous, and the servant.  If not this, I have in other bashfulness
+whereof altogether in things some air of the foolish Plutarch makes
+mention; and the course of my life has been divers ways hurt and
+blemished with it; a quality very ill suiting my universal form: and,
+indeed, what are we but sedition and discrepancy?  I am as much out of
+countenance to be denied as I am to deny; and it so much troubles me to
+be troublesome to others that on occasion when duty compels me to try the
+good-will of any one in a thing that is doubtful and that will be
+chargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and very much against my will:
+but if it be for my own particular (whatever Homer truly says, that
+modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person), I commonly commit it
+to a third person to blush for me, and deny those who employ me with the
+same difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me to have had a mind
+to deny, when I had not the power to do it.
+
+'Tis folly, then, to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is so
+powerful in them, and so natural to them.  And when I hear them brag of
+having so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retire
+too far back.  If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptive
+thing, though it be not altogether to be believed, at least they say it
+with more similitude of truth.  But they who still move and breathe, talk
+at that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason that
+inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation; like a gentleman, a
+neighbour of mine, suspected to be insufficient:
+
+              "Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta,
+               Numquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam,"
+
+          [Catullus, lxvii. 2, i.--The sense is in the context.]
+
+who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, went
+about boldly swearing that he had ridden twenty stages the night before:
+an oath that was afterwards made use of to convict him of his ignorance
+in that affair, and to divorce him from his wife.  Besides, it signifies
+nothing, for there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no
+opposing desires.  It is true, they may say, but we will not yield;
+saints themselves speak after that manner.  I mean those who boast in
+good gravity of their coldness and insensibility, and who expect to be
+believed with a serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with an
+affected look, when their eyes give the lie to their tongue, and when
+they talk in the cant of their profession, which always goes against the
+hair, 'tis good sport.  I am a great servant of liberty and plainness;
+but there is no remedy; if it be not wholly simple or childish, 'tis
+silly, and unbecoming ladies in this commerce, and presently runs into
+impudence.  Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools; lying
+is there in its seat of honour; 'tis a by-way, that by a back-door leads
+us to truth.  If we cannot curb their imagination, what would we have
+from them.  Effects?  There are enough of them that evade all foreign
+communication, by which chastity may be corrupted:
+
+               "Illud saepe facit, quod sine teste facit;"
+
+          ["He often does that which he does without a witness."
+          --Martial, vii. 62, 6.]
+
+and those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be feared;
+their sins that make the least noise are the worst:
+
+               "Offendor maecha simpliciore minus."
+
+          ["I am less offended with a more professed strumpet."
+          --Idem, vi. 7,6.]
+
+There are ways by which they may lose their virginity without
+prostitution, and, which is more, without their knowledge:
+
+     "Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive
+     malevolentia, sive inscitia, sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit."
+
+     ["By malevolence, or unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife,
+     seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes
+     destroyed it."--St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, i. 18.]
+
+Such a one, by seeking her maidenhead, has lost it; another by playing
+with it has destroyed it.  We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions,
+we interdict them; they must guess at our meaning under general and
+doubtful terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous:
+for, amongst the greatest patterns that I have is Fatua, the wife of
+Faunus: who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any
+man whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband's
+stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men.  They must
+become insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
+
+Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally
+lies in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom,
+not only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but with
+singular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue.
+Such a woman has been, who prized her honour above her life, and yet has
+prostituted it to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her
+husband's life, and who, in so doing, did that for him she would not have
+done for herself!  This is not the place wherein we are to multiply these
+examples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as
+I can give them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for
+examples of ordinary lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us who
+surrender themselves for their husbands sole benefit, and by their
+express order and mediation? and, of old, Phaulius the Argian, who
+offered his to King Philip out of ambition; as Galba did it out of
+civility, who, having entertained Maecenas at supper, and observing that
+his wife and he began to cast glances at one another and to make eyes and
+signs, let himself sink down upon his cushion, like one in a profound
+sleep, to give opportunity to their desires: which he handsomely
+confessed, for thereupon a servant having made bold to lay hands on the
+plate upon the table, he frankly cried, "What, you rogue? do you not see
+that I only sleep for Maecenas?" Such there may be, whose manners may be
+lewd enough, whose will may be more reformed than another, who outwardly
+carries herself after a more regular manner.  As we see some who complain
+of having vowed chastity before they knew what they did; and I have also
+known others really, complain of having been given up to debauchery
+before they were of the years of discretion.  The vice of the parents or
+the impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor, may be the cause.
+
+In the East Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custom
+permitted a married woman to prostitute herself to any one who presented
+her with an elephant, and that with glory, to have been valued at so high
+a rate.  Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of his
+country Elis, made it his trade to prostitute the beauty of his youth, so
+long as it lasted, to any one that would, for money thereby to gain his
+living: and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his laws
+gave liberty to women, at the expense of their chastity, to provide for
+the necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been received
+in many governments before his time.  And besides, what fruit is there of
+this painful solicitude?  For what justice soever there is in this
+passion, we are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: does
+any one think to curb them, with all his industry?
+
+         "Pone seram; cohibe: sed quis custodiet ipsos
+          Custodes?  cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor."
+
+     ["Put on a lock; shut them up under a guard; but who shall guard
+     the guard?  she knows what she is about, and begins with them."
+     --Juvenal, vi. 346.]
+
+What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?
+
+Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here.  'Tis folly to
+examine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflame
+and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more public
+by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it
+heals us.  You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof.  How
+miserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge who have been so
+unhappy as to have found it out?  If the informer does not at the same
+time apply a remedy and bring relief, 'tis an injurious information, and
+that better deserves a stab than the lie.  We no less laugh at him who
+takes pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold and knows it not.
+The character of cuckold is indelible: who once has it carries it to his
+grave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault.  It is to much
+purpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes,
+thence to expose them on tragic scaffolds; and misfortunes that only hurt
+us by being known; for we say a good wife or a happy marriage, not that
+they are really so, but because no one says to the contrary.  Men should
+be so discreet as to evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge:
+and the Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to send
+home before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they might
+not surprise them; and to this purpose it is that a certain nation has
+introduced a custom, that the priest shall on the wedding-day open the
+way to the bride, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity of
+examining in the first assault, whether she comes a virgin to his bed, or
+has been at the trade before.
+
+But the world will be talking.  I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds,
+honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemed
+for it.  Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; that
+good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble
+but to think on't.  And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the
+same rate, from the least even to the greatest?
+
+                    "Tot qui legionibus imperitivit
+          Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus."
+
+     ["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than
+     you, you rascal."--Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041.]
+
+Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;
+believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere.  But, the very ladies
+will be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in this
+virtuous age of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage?  Each
+amongst you has made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel,
+in compensation, and turn for turn.  The frequency of this accident ought
+long since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.
+
+Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable,
+
+          "Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"
+
+          ["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints."
+          --Catullus, lxvii.]
+
+for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not
+laugh at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of the
+quarry?  The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret
+by the wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to a
+prating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered it
+indecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows
+and all that a man feels.  To give women the same counsel against
+jealousy would be so much time lost; their very being is so made up of
+suspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way
+is not to be hoped.  They often recover of this infirmity by a form of
+health much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there are
+enchantments that cannot take away the evil but by throwing it upon
+another, they also willingly transfer this ever to their husbands, when
+they shake it off themselves.  And yet I know not, to speak truth,
+whether a man can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis the
+most dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is of all their
+members.  Pittacus used to say,--[Plutarch, On Contentment, c. II.]--
+that every one had his trouble, and that his was the jealous head of his
+wife; but for which he should think himself perfectly happy.  A mighty
+inconvenience, sure, which could poison the whole life of so just, so
+wise, and so valiant a man; what must we other little fellows do?  The
+senate of Marseilles had reason to grant him his request who begged leave
+to kill himself that he might be delivered from the clamour of his wife;
+for 'tis a mischief that is never removed but by removing the whole
+piece; and that has no remedy but flight or patience, though both of them
+very hard.  He was, methinks, an understanding fellow who said, 'twas a
+happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband.
+
+Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligation
+we enjoin them does not produce two effects contrary to our design
+namely, whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack,
+and the women more easy to yield.  For as to the first, by raising the
+value of the place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest.
+Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her
+merchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight
+it would be that was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve?
+In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' host
+said.  Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend with
+devotion and justice: 'tis his glory that his power mates all powers, and
+that all other rules give place to his:
+
+               "Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae."
+
+               ["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes."
+               --Ovid, Trist., iv. I. 34.]
+
+As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared
+to be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, and
+who are more eager, being forbidden:
+
+              "Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro;
+               Concessa pudet ire via."
+
+     ["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they
+     spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path."
+     --Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v  43]
+
+What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour?  She,
+at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use;
+but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her
+husband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to
+making open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in
+the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him.  This
+animal, not to be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull
+and flat by his too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise and
+make them lawful; what does she?  Being the wife of a living and
+healthful emperor, and at Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face of
+the sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to Silius, who had long before
+enjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband was
+gone out of the city.  Does it not seem as if she was going to become
+chaste by her husband's negligence? or that she sought another husband
+who might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watching
+should incite her?  But the first difficulty she met with was also the
+last: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy, sluggish sort of men are
+often the most dangerous: I have found by experience that this extreme
+toleration, when it comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge;
+for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being combined in one,
+discharge their utmost force at the first onset,
+
+               "Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"
+
+          ["He let loose his whole  fury."--AEneid, xii. 499.]
+
+he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she
+had intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whom
+she had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.
+
+What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a
+stolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:
+
+              "Belli fera moenera Mavors
+               Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se
+               Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris
+                    ............................
+               Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,
+               Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore
+               Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
+               Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
+               Funde."
+
+     ["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often
+     reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes,
+     vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he
+     reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies
+     upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words."
+     --Lucretius, i. 23.]
+
+When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas,
+labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the
+pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that
+have since sprung up.  Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety
+to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of
+natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail,
+but the head, body, and feet.  There is nothing forced, nothing
+languishing, but everything keeps the same pace:
+
+     "Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati."
+
+     ["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with
+     little flowers of rhetoric."--Seneca, Ep., 33.]
+
+'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous and
+solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the
+greatest minds.  When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively,
+so profound, I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought.  'Tis
+the sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:
+
+                    "Pectus est quod disertum Tacit."
+
+          ["The heart makes the man eloquent."--Quintilian, x. 7.]
+
+Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions.
+This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having
+the object more vividly imprinted in the soul.  Gallus speaks simply
+because he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a
+superficial expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and more
+clearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine
+of words and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them
+more than ordinary, because his conception is so.  Plutarch says' that he
+sees the Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same: the sense
+illuminates and produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh
+and bone; they signify more than they say.  Moreover, those who are not
+well skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy I
+said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serious
+talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind
+and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing
+something of my own.
+
+The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;
+not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
+various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them.
+They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight
+and signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwonted
+motions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly.  And how little this
+talent is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of this
+age: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but
+want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in
+their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with
+cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the
+matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they
+care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and
+shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significant
+than the other.
+
+There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting
+out: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of
+hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of
+speaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted.
+I find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable and
+vigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would
+maintain the dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag
+and languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek
+does to others.  Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not
+so easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has
+in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our
+ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be
+met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is
+sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an
+understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient
+authors who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.
+
+The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very
+different from the common and natural, way.  My page makes love, and
+understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus--[Leo the Jew, Ficinus,
+Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]--
+and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he
+understands it not.  I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary
+motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use
+of the schools.  Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much
+naturalise art as they artificialise nature.  Let us let Bembo and
+Equicola alone.
+
+When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance
+of books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the
+best authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of the
+painter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill,
+charged all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into his
+shop; and had rather need to give myself a little lustre, of the
+invention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing or
+play, took care beforehand that the auditory should, either before or
+after, be satiated with some other ill musicians.  But I can hardly be
+without Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon all
+occasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he will
+still be at your elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to be
+exhausted hand of riches and embellishments.  It vexes me that he is so
+exposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can
+scarce cast an eye upon him but I purloin either a leg or a wing.
+
+And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me for me to write
+at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;
+where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster,
+and of French a little less.  I might have made it better elsewhere, but
+then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and
+perfection is to be exactly mine.  I readily correct an accidental error,
+of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and
+constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out.  When
+another tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick of
+figures: this is a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I do
+not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France;
+they who would fight custom with grammar are triflers): this is an
+ignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse: that is going too
+far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest a
+thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest."--"Yes, I know,
+but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom.  Do I not
+talk at the same rate throughout?  Do I not represent myself to the life?
+'Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in
+my book, and my book in me."
+
+Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (and
+I never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I had
+last read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I
+speak something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne.
+Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his upon
+me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a
+disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of
+all, because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold without
+shaking.  I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous
+imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and
+strength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and
+which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they
+afforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever
+they saw done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes in
+their sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their
+heads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their
+eyes with glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to their
+own ruin they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves.
+The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words
+and gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raise
+their admiration, is no more in me than in a stock.  When I swear my own
+oath, 'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct.  They say that
+Socrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection at
+this time in use amongst the Italians, Cappari!  Pythagoras swore By
+water and air.  I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these
+superficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouth
+three days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship
+eight days after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall say
+the same to-morrow seriously.  Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillingly
+undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's
+expense.  Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the
+purpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at
+the recommendation of as flighty a will.  I may begin, with that which
+pleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another.
+
+But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
+most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
+for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
+apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
+where I am most given to think.  My speaking is a little nicely jealous
+of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
+stops me.  In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop
+to discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company
+fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would
+to entertain myself.  It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst
+dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I
+dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what
+complexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they
+were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I
+plunge them in oblivion.  So of thoughts that come accidentally into my
+head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough
+to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.
+
+Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking,
+I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
+the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
+discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
+discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
+become vicious.  According to Socrates, love is the appetite of
+generation by the mediation of beauty.  And when I consider the
+ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild
+motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage,
+the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of
+love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton
+an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously
+shuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as
+in pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato
+says, that the gods made man for their sport:
+
+                        "Quaenam ista jocandi
+                         Saevitia!"
+
+     ["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in
+     jesting!"--Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]
+
+and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
+actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
+men, beasts and us, on a level.  Even the most contemplative and prudent
+man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
+pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet that
+abate his pride:
+
+                         "Ridentem dicere verum
+                         Quid vetat?"
+
+          ["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?"
+          --Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]
+
+They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one,
+like him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with a
+veil.  We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions
+that obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our
+advantage over them; this other action subjects all other thought,
+and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity and
+philosophy; and yet there is no complaint of it.  In everything else a
+man may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules of
+decency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious
+or ridiculous: find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreet
+procedure.  Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by
+this act and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of
+the soul; the familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhausts
+them: doubtless 'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but
+also of our vanity and deformity.
+
+On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble,
+useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on the
+other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent,
+to blush at it, and to recommend abstinence.  Are we not brutes to call
+that work brutish which begets us?  People of so many differing religions
+have concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning
+incense, fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning this
+act: all opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom of
+circumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment.  We have,
+peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish
+a production as man, and to call the act, and the parts that are employed
+in the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful).  The
+Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
+without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
+following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
+being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
+themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
+than to beget one.  'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
+once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
+obstinately to disdain the sex.
+
+     [Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13.--What is there said, however, is that
+     Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
+     misogynist.]
+
+Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
+destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
+to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
+man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
+'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
+we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
+that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
+kill him.  The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,
+having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo,
+interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:
+
+                         "Nostri nosmet paenitet."
+
+          ["We are ashamed of ourselves."--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]
+
+There are some nations that will not be seen to eat.  I know a lady, and
+of the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfigures
+the face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; and
+therefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I
+know a man also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to be
+seen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than when
+putting out.  In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who,
+to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their
+repast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their
+faces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to
+honour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon
+their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse.
+What monstrous animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom his
+delights are grievous, and who weds himself to misfortune?  There are
+people who conceal their life:
+
+               "Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,"
+
+     ["And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes."
+     --Virgil, Georg., ii. 511.]
+
+and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and
+cheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities.  Not only many
+sects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and
+there is a place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored.  We are
+only ingenious in using ourselves ill: 'tis the real quarry our
+intellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!
+
+               "O miseri! quorum gaudia crimen habent!"
+
+          ["O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime!"
+          --Pseudo Gallus, i. 180.]
+
+Alas, poor man!  thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable,
+without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enough
+by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential
+deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary.  Dost thou
+think thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is uneasy?  dost
+thou find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices that
+nature has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost not
+oblige thyself to other and new offices?  Thou dost not stick to infringe
+her universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and
+fantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, and
+contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour in
+them: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and the
+world concern thee not.  Run but a little over the examples of this kind;
+thy life is full of them.
+
+Whilst the verses of these two poets, treat so reservedly and discreetly
+of wantonness as they do, methinks they discover it much more openly.
+Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacred
+things, and painters shadow their pictures to give them greater lustre:
+and 'tis said that the sun and wind strike more violently by reflection
+than in a direct line.  The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked him
+what he had under his cloak, "It is hid under my cloak," said he, "that
+thou mayest not know what it is:" but there are certain other things that
+people hide only to show them.  Hear that one, who speaks plainer,
+
+               "Et nudum pressi corpus ad usque meum:"
+
+          ["And pressed her naked body to mine" (Or:) "My body
+          I applied even to her naked side"--Ovid, Amor., i. 5, 24.]
+
+methinks that he emasculates me.  Let Martial turn up Venus as high as he
+may, he cannot shew her so naked: he who says all that is to be said
+gluts and disgusts us.  He who is afraid to express himself, draws us on
+to guess at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort of
+modesty, and specially when they half open, as these do, so fair a path
+to imagination.  Both the action and description should relish of theft.
+
+The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the
+Spaniards and Italians pleases me.  I know not who of old wished his
+throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he
+swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous
+pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being
+too prompt.  To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things
+--a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense betwixt
+them.  Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine on
+the steam of the roast?  'Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid
+essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay
+it accordingly.  Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteem
+upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the
+first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning
+out their favours, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable old
+age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth
+and merit.  He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing
+unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in
+the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps
+and degrees there are, so much higher and more honourable is the
+uppermost seat: we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in
+magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant
+galleries, and many windings.  This disposition of things would turn to
+our advantage; we should there longer stay and longer love; without hope
+and without desire we proceed not worth a pin.  Our conquest and entire
+possession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they wholly
+surrender themselves up to the mercy of our fidelity and constancy they
+run a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; the
+ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs:
+
+              "Postquam cupidae mentis satiata libido est,
+               Verba nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant;"
+
+          ["When our desires are once satisfied, we care little
+          for oaths and promises."--Catullus, lxiv.  147.]
+
+And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passion
+that, having, gained a mistress's consent, he refused to enjoy her, that
+he might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardour of which
+he was so proud, and with which he so fed himself.  Dearness is a good
+sauce to meat: do but observe how much the manner of salutation,
+particular to our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, which
+Socrates says are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts,
+of no esteem.  It is a displeasing custom and injurious for the ladies,
+that they must be obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who has
+three footmen at his heels, however ill-favoured he may be in himself:
+
+                   "Cujus livida naribus caninis
+                    Dependet glacies, rigetque barba .  .  .
+                    Centum occurrere malo culilingis:"
+                    Martial, vii. 94.
+
+and we ourselves barely gain by it; for as the world is divided, for
+three beautiful women we must kiss fifty ugly ones; and to a tender
+stomach, like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one.
+
+In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sell
+themselves for money, and justify the doing so by saying, "that there are
+degrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure for
+themselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but their
+bodies; the will is too free and too much of its own to be exposed to
+sale."  So that these say, 'tis the will they undertake and they have
+reason.  'Tis indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing.
+I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is,
+methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the
+beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious
+Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming:
+which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of
+beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three
+days before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to take
+care for the interment.  Periander did more wonderfully, who extended his
+conjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of his
+wife Melissa after she was dead.  Does it not seem a lunatic humour in
+the Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to
+lay-him for several months asleep, and to please herself with the
+fruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep?  I likewise say that
+we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without
+its consent and desire.  All enjoyments are not alike: there are some
+that are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besides
+good-will may procure us this favour from the ladies; this is not a
+sufficient testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well as
+elsewhere: they sometimes go to't by halves:
+
+              "Tanquam thura merumque parent
+               Absentem marmoreamve putes:"
+
+     ["As if they are preparing frankincense and wine .  .  . you might
+     think her absent or marble."--Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8.]
+
+I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only
+impart themselves that way.  You are to examine whether your company
+pleases them upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom,
+for that only; in what degree of favour and esteem you are with them:
+
+                              "Tibi si datur uni,
+                    Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat."
+
+     ["Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she
+     marks with a whiter stone."--Catullus, lxviii. 147.]
+
+What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing
+imagination.
+
+               "Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores."
+
+               ["She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with
+               other absent lovers."--Tibullus, i. 6, 35.]
+
+What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act
+for the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill and
+poison, as he did, a worthy lady?
+
+Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek
+not elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent of
+the world in this.  They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly
+women than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as
+they.  I think the same of their intellects: of those of the common sort,
+they have evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there;
+but in individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebted
+to them.  If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touching
+valour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and
+natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a
+degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriages
+of that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so
+rude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant
+acquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most
+intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial,
+and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to
+make; and when they have broken down the fence, we may safely presume
+they get on fire:
+
+          "Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia,
+          irritata, deinde emissa."
+
+     ["Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound,
+     breaks from his chains with greater wildness."--Livy, xxxiv. 4.]
+
+They must give them a little more rein:
+
+         "Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem,
+          Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo":
+
+     ["I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit,
+     rush like a thunderbolt."--Ovid, Amor., iii. 4, 13.]
+
+the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty.  We are
+pretty much in the same case they are extreme in constraint, we in
+licence.  'Tis a good custom we have in France that our sons are received
+into the best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as in
+a school of nobility; and 'tis looked upon as a discourtesy and an
+affront to refuse this to a gentleman.  I have taken notice (for, so many
+families, so many differing forms) that the ladies who have been
+strictest with their maids have had no better luck than those who allowed
+them a greater liberty.  There should be moderation in these things; one
+must leave a great deal of their conduct to their own discretion; for,
+when all comes to all, no discipline can curb them throughout.  But it is
+true withal that she who comes off with flying colours from a school of
+liberty, brings with her whereon to repose more confidence than she who
+comes away sound from a severe and strict school.
+
+Our fathers dressed up their daughters' looks in bashfulness and fear
+(their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence and
+assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the
+Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands
+they have first killed another in battle.  For me, who have no other
+title left me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if,
+according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their
+counsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the
+age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion.  For,
+as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who
+blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said "the vice is in not
+coming out, not in going in," let her who has no care of her conscience
+have yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within,
+let her carry a fair outside at least.
+
+I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato
+'declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness are
+forbidden to the defendant.  'Tis a sign of eagerness which they
+ought to disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and
+hand-over-hand to surrender themselves.  In carrying themselves orderly
+and measuredly in the granting their last favours, they much more allure
+our desires and hide their own.  Let them still fly before us, even those
+who have most mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, as
+the Scythians did.  To say the truth, according to the law that nature
+has imposed upon them, it is not properly for them either to will or
+desire; their part is to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it is
+that nature has given them a perpetual capacity, which in us is but at
+times and uncertain; they are always fit for the encounter, that they may
+be always ready when we are so "Pati natee."-["Born to suffer."-Seneca,
+Ep., 95.]--And whereas she has ordered that our appetites shall be
+manifest by a prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden
+and concealed within, and has furnished them with parts improper for
+ostentation, and simply defensive.  Such proceedings as this that follows
+must be left to the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army
+through Hyrcania, Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three
+hundred light horse of her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left
+the remainder of a very great, army that followed her behind the
+neighbouring mountains to give him a visit; where she publicly and in
+plain terms told him that the fame of his valour and victories had
+brought her thither to see him, and to make him an offer of her forces to
+assist him in the pursuit of his enterprises; and that, finding him so
+handsome, young, and vigorous, she, who was also perfect in all those
+qualities, advised that they might lie together, to the end that from the
+most valiant woman of the world and the bravest man then living, there
+might spring some great and wonderful issue for the time to come.
+Alexander returned her thanks for all the rest; but, to give leisure for
+the accomplishment of her last demand, he detained her thirteen days in
+that place, which were spent in royal feasting and jollity, for the
+welcome of so courageous a princess.
+
+We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are of
+ours.  I confess the truth when it makes against me, as well as when 'tis
+on my side.  'Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so often
+to change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any one
+person whatever; as is evident in that goddess to whom are attributed so
+many changes and so many lovers.  But 'tis true withal that 'tis contrary
+to the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the nature
+of violence if it be constant.  And they who wonder, exclaim, and keep
+such a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as
+unnatural and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not
+discern how often they are themselves guilty of the same, without any
+astonishment or miracle at all?  It would, peradventure, be more strange
+to see the passion fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion.  If there
+be no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire;
+it still lives after satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe either
+constant satisfaction or end; it ever goes beyond its possession.  And by
+that means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable in
+them than in us: they may plead, as well as we, the inclination to
+variety and novelty common to us both; and secondly, without us, that
+they buy a cat in a sack: Joanna, queen of Naples, caused her first
+husband, Andrews, to be hanged at the bars of her window in a halter of
+gold and silk woven with her own hand, because in matrimonial
+performances she neither found his parts nor abilities answer the
+expectation she had conceived from his stature, beauty, youth, and
+activity, by which she had been caught and deceived.  They may say there
+is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are on
+their part always at least provided for necessity, whereas on our part it
+may fall out otherwise.  For this reason it was, that Plato wisely made a
+law that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, the
+judges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped stark naked,
+and the women but to the girdle only.  When they come to try us they do
+not, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:
+
+              "Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro
+               Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu,
+               Deserit imbelles thalamos."
+
+          ["After using every endeavour to arouse him to action,
+          she quits the barren couch."--Martial, vii. 58.]
+
+'Tis not enough that a man's will be good; weakness and insufficiency
+lawfully break a marriage,
+
+               "Et quaerendum aliunde foret nervosius illud,
+               Quod posset zonam solvere virgineam:"
+
+     ["And seeks a more vigorous lover to undo her virgin zone."
+     --Catullus, lxvii. 27.]
+
+why not?  and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence,
+more licentious and active,
+
+               "Si blando nequeat superesse labori."
+
+          ["If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task."
+          --Virgil, Georg., iii. 127.]
+
+But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and
+imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and
+esteem of ourselves?  For the little that I am able to do now:
+
+                                   "Ad unum
+                         Mollis opus."
+
+          ["Fit but for once."--Horace, Epod., xii. 15.]
+
+I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:
+
+                              "Fuge suspicari,
+                    Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas
+                              Claudere lustrum."
+
+          ["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed."
+          --Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.]
+
+Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable,
+without rendering it ridiculous too.  I hate to see it, for one poor inch
+of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set
+itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true
+flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a
+moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain
+only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
+indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for
+it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
+some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
+blushes:
+
+              "Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
+               Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa
+               Alba rosa."
+
+     ["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed
+     with the damask rose."--AEneid, xii. 67.]
+
+Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the
+disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling
+impertinence,
+
+               "Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus,"
+
+          ["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger."
+          --Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.]
+
+has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them
+till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night.
+When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently
+accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to
+complain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and
+unkindly:
+
+         "Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa
+          Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam
+          Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:"
+
+     [The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the
+     Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram
+     in the same collection (Ad Matrones).  They describe untranslatably
+     Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous
+     passage.]
+
+and done me a most enormous injury.  Every member I have, as much one as
+another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man
+than this.
+
+I universally owe my entire picture to the public.  The wisdom of my
+instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to
+introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the
+catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant,
+of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.
+We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those
+of essence: when we have done with these, we run full drive upon the
+others, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancy
+new offices, to excuse our negligence towards the natural ones, and to
+confound them: and to manifest this, is it not seen that in places where
+faults are crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where the laws
+of decency are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of common
+reason are better observed: the innumerable multitude of so many duties
+stifling and dissipating our care.  The application of ourselves to light
+and trivial things diverts us from those that are necessary and just.
+Oh, how these superficial men take an easy and plausible way in
+comparison of ours!  These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay one
+another; but we do not pay, but inflame the reckoning towards that great
+judge, who tucks up our rags and tatters above our shameful parts, and
+suckles not to view us all over, even to our inmost and most secret
+ordures: it were a useful decency of our maidenly modesty, could it keep
+him from this discovery.  In fine, whoever could reclaim man from so
+scrupulous a verbal superstition, would do the world no great disservice.
+Our life is divided betwixt folly and prudence: whoever will write of it
+but what is reverend and canonical, will leave above the one-half behind.
+I do not excuse myself to myself; and if I did, it should rather be for
+my excuses that I would excuse myself than for any other fault; I excuse
+myself of certain humours, which I think more strong in number than those
+that are on my side.  In consideration of which, I will further say this
+(for I desire to please every one, though it will be hard to do):
+
+          "Esse unum hominem accommodatum ad tantam morum
+          ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem,"
+
+     ["For a man to conform to such a variety of manners,
+     discourses, and will."--Q. Cicero, De Pet. Consul, c. 14.]
+
+that they ought not to condemn me for what I make authorities, received
+and approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason that
+for want of rhyme they should refuse me the liberty they allow even to
+churchmen of our nation and time, and these amongst the most notable, of
+which here are two of their brisk verses:
+
+          "Rimula, dispeream, ni monogramma tua est."
+
+          "Un vit d'amy la contente et bien traicte:"
+
+     [St. Gelais, (Euvres Poetiques), p. 99, ed. of Lyons, 1574.]
+
+besides how many others.  I love modesty; and 'tis not out of judgment
+that I have chosen this scandalous way of speaking; 'tis nature that has
+chosen it for me.  I commend it not, no more than other forms that are
+contrary to common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances both
+general and particular, alleviate its accusation.
+
+But to proceed.  Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereign
+authority you take upon you over the women, who favour you at their own
+expense,
+
+               "Si furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,"
+
+     ["If, in the stealthy night, she has made strange gifts."
+     --Catullus, lxviii. 145.]
+
+so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of a
+husband?  'Tis a free contract why do you not then keep to it, as you
+would have them do?  there is no prescription upon voluntary things.
+'Tis against the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time have
+conducted this bargain as much as the nature of it would permit, as
+conscientiously and with as much colour of justice, as any other
+contract; and that I never pretended other affection than what I really
+had, and have truly acquainted them with its birth, vigour, and
+declination, its fits and intermissions: a man does not always hold on
+at the same rate.  I have been so sparing of my promises, that I think
+I have been better than my word.  They have found me faithful even to
+service of their inconstancy, a confessed and sometimes multiplied
+inconstancy.  I never broke with them, whilst I had any hold at all, and
+what occasion soever they have given me, never broke with them to hatred
+or contempt; for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalous
+terms, do yet oblige to some good will: I have sometimes, upon their
+tricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience;
+for I am naturally subject to rash emotions, which, though light and
+short, often spoil my market.  At any time they have consulted my
+judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and to
+pinch them to the quick.  If I have left them any cause to complain of
+me, 'tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the modern use, a
+love foolishly conscientious than anything else.  I have kept my, word in
+things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimes
+surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they were
+willing enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more than once,
+made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of their
+honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself;
+so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules,
+when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have done
+by their own.  I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon myself
+alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have always
+contrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as less
+suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible.  They are
+chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things
+least feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare
+what nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy.  Never
+had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of
+loving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to our
+people, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall not
+repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose:
+
+                        "Me tabula sacer
+                         Votiva paries, indicat uvida
+                         Suspendisse potenti
+                         Vestimenta maris deo:"
+
+     ["The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
+     wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea."
+     --Horace, Od., i.  5, 13.]
+
+'tis now time to speak out.  But as I might, per adventure, say to
+another, "Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little
+commerce with faith and integrity;"
+
+              "Haec si tu postules
+               Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
+               Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:"
+
+     ["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
+     more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses."
+     --Terence, Eun., act i., sc.  i, v. 16.]
+
+on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it
+should be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soever
+it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an
+incommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, I
+approach so much nearer to my own.  As to the rest, in this traffic, I
+did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it,
+but did not forget myself.  I retained the little sense and discretion
+that nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little
+emotion, but no dotage.  My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to
+debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice,
+and cruelty, never.  I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at
+any price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:
+
+                    "Nullum intra se vitium est."
+
+          ["Nothing is a vice in itself."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
+
+I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome
+and painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep.  I like
+wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows.  I found in
+this commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixt
+these extremes.  Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I was
+neither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover,
+disordered; a man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools.  A young
+man asked the philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to be
+in love?  "Let the wise man look to that," answered he, "but let not thou
+and I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an
+affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to
+ourselves."  He said true that we are not to intrust a thing so
+precipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand its
+assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence
+and love cannot live together.  'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true,
+unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner,
+I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to
+rouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would
+prescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any other
+recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced in
+years, and to defer the approaches of age.  Whilst we are but in the
+suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:
+
+         "Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus,
+          Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me
+          Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo,"
+
+     ["Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight
+     shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to
+     spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon."
+     --Juvenal, iii. 26.]
+
+we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation
+as this.  Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the
+good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking
+of an amorous object:
+
+"Leaning," said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as
+we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden
+sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt
+above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart."  So
+that merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a
+soul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind.
+And, pray, why not?  Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem,
+any other thing.  Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures,
+provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a total
+abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that
+are adulterate and strange.  Philosophy says that the appetites of the
+body ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not
+to stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling,
+the belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all
+meats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service of
+love, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the
+body's need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely to
+follow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair.  But have I not
+reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are
+somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in
+a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and
+support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the
+appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.
+
+May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
+that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
+break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should
+carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as
+we do towards that of pain!  Pain was (for example) vehement even to
+perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there
+naturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but little
+part in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barely
+follow and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself with
+grievous and special torments, to the end that by emulation of one
+another the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so much more
+salutiferous as it is more severe.  In like manner, is it not injustice,
+in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it
+must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligation
+and necessity?  'Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to
+present herself, and to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging to
+her; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper
+to her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is
+capable of, and to study how to make them sweet and useful to it.  For it
+is good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue its
+appetites to the prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also the reason
+that the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of the body?
+
+I have no other passion to keep me in breath.  What avarice, ambition,
+quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular
+vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me
+vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure
+my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and
+dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon
+sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and
+esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and
+redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome
+thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill
+posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again,
+in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up
+the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of
+life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin.  But I
+very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness
+and long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask
+most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve
+to be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we 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,
+               Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret."
+
+     ["In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the
+     young tree on the hills."--Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]
+
+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 cineres facem."
+
+     ["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
+     torch worn to ashes."--Horace, Od., iv.  13, 21.]
+
+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,"--["Do good for yourself."]--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 like fortune will render more easy to your desire."  O ridiculous
+and insipid composition!
+
+                                   "Nolo
+                    Barbam vellere mortuo leoni."
+
+          ["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."--Martial]
+
+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 pitiful and imperfect conjunction;
+
+     [Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
+     with a deformed creature."]
+
+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 to cernere possim,
+               Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis,
+               Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"
+
+     [Ovid, who (Ex.  Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the
+     gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to
+     thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]
+
+Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon,
+a young boy 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."
+
+     [Diogenes Laertius, iv.  36.  The question was whether a wise man
+     could love him.  Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios."]
+
+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,
+                    Mille sagaces falleret hospites,
+                    Discrimen obscurum, solutis
+                    Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"
+
+     ["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would
+     require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks
+     and ambiguous countenance."--Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]
+
+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'--[Plutarch, On Love, c.34.]--
+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
+                    Quercus."
+
+               ["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks."
+               --Horace, Od., iv. 13, 9.]
+
+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 their
+ways for insufficiency there novices rule:
+
+                         "Amor ordinem nescit."
+
+          ["Love ignores rules." (Or:) "Love knows no rule."
+          --St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.]
+
+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 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 praelia ventum est,
+               Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis,
+               Incassum furit:"
+
+     ["For when they sometimes engage in love's battle,
+     his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw."
+     --Virgil, Georg., iii.  98.]
+
+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,
+
+              "Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum
+               Procurrit casto virginis a gremio,
+               Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat,
+               Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur,
+               Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu
+               Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor."
+
+     ["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.]
+
+I 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 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,
+
+               "Le fourgon se moque de la paele."
+                  ["The Pot and the Kettle."]
+
+
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused
+     A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted
+     Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes
+     Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age
+     Certain other things that people hide only to show them
+     Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act
+     Dearness is a good sauce to meat
+     Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold
+     Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination
+     Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge
+     Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure
+     Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it
+     First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time
+     Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.
+     Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture
+     Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms
+     Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint
+     Have ever had a great respect for her I loved
+     Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears
+     Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault
+     Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong
+     I am apt to dream that I dream
+     I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought
+     I had much rather die than live upon charity.
+     I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence
+     If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me
+     If they can only be kind to us out of pity
+     In everything else a man may keep some decorum
+     In those days, the tailor took measure of it
+     Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both
+     Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation
+     Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden
+     It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in
+     Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience
+     Judgment of duty principally lies in the will
+     Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs
+     "Let a man take which course he will," said he; "he will repent."
+     Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think
+     Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty
+     Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage
+     Love them the less for our own faults
+     Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty
+     Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance
+     Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love
+     Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help
+     Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known
+     Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer)
+     Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice
+     Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire
+     No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active
+     O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime
+     O, the furious advantage of opportunity!
+     Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect
+     One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare
+     Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune
+     Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport
+     Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing)
+     Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride
+     Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture
+     Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will
+     Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so
+     Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus
+     Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us
+     Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level
+     Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise
+     Sins that make the least noise are the worst
+     Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul
+     Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe
+     The best authors too much humble and discourage me
+     The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor
+     The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age
+     Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools
+     There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude
+     These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous
+     They better conquer us by flying
+     They buy a cat in a sack
+     They err as much who too much forbear Venus
+     They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us
+     They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers
+     Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear
+     Those within (marriage) despair of getting out
+     Tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces
+     To what friend dare you intrust your griefs
+     Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband
+     Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours
+     Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous
+     Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality
+     We ask most when we bring least
+     We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary.
+     When jealousy seizes these poor souls
+     When their eyes give the lie to their tongue
+     Who escapes being talked of at the same rate
+     Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation
+     Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 15
+by Michel de Montaigne
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Essays of Montaigne, V15, by Montaigne
+#15 in our series by Michel de Montaigne
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+Title: The Essays of Montaigne, V15
+
+Author: Michel de Montaigne
+
+Editor:  William Carew Hazlitt, 1877
+
+Translator:  Charles Cotton
+
+Official Release Date: December, 2002 [Etext #3595]
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+
+
+ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
+
+Translated by Charles Cotton
+
+Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
+
+1877
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME 15.
+
+V.  Upon Some verses of Virgil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  V.
+
+By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are
+they also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are
+grave and grievous subjects.  A man should have his soul instructed in
+the means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules of
+living and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this
+noble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with
+moderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon
+it.  I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind and
+solicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say,
+so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present
+in another state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urge
+me to wisdom, and preach to me.  From the excess of sprightliness I am
+fallen into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and for
+that reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run into
+disorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith
+it diverts itself.  I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too
+ripe; years every day read to me lectures of coldness and temperance.
+This body of mine avoids disorder and dreads it; 'tis now my body's turn
+to guide my mind towards reformation; it governs, in turn, and more
+rudely and imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour alone,
+sleeping or waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, and
+repentance.  I now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly done
+from pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity.  Now I
+will be master of myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has its
+excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.  Therefore, lest
+I should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in the
+intervals and truces my infirmities allow me:
+
+               "Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis."
+
+     ["That my mind may not eternally be intent upon my ills."
+     --Ovid., Trist., iv. i, 4.]
+
+I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I
+have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but not
+without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my
+better years:
+
+                          "Animus quo perdidit, optat,
+               Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat."
+
+     ["The mind wishes to have what it has lost, and throws itself
+     wholly into memories of the past."--Petronius, c. 128.]
+
+Let childhood look forward and age backward; was not this the
+signification of Janus' double face?  Let years draw me along if they
+will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the
+pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though
+it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image
+of it out of my memory:
+
+                                        "Hoc est
+                    Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."
+
+     ["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy one's former life again."
+     --Martial, x. 23, 7.]
+
+Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances,
+and sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for the
+activity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to
+mind the grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in
+these recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that young
+man who has most diverted the company.  I was formerly wont to mark
+cloudy and gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days;
+the extraordinary are the clear and bright; I am ready to leap for joy,
+as for an unwonted favour, when nothing happens me.  Let me tickle
+myself, I cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine;
+I am only merry in conceit and in dreaming, by artifice to divert the
+melancholy of age; but, in faith, it requires another remedy than a
+dream.  A weak contest of art against nature.  'Tis great folly to
+lengthen and anticipate human incommodities, as every one does; I had
+rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so.' I seize on
+even the least occasions of pleasure I can meet.  I know very well, by
+hearsay, several sorts of prudent pleasures, effectually so, and glorious
+to boot; but opinion has not power enough over me to give me an appetite
+to them.  I covet not so much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and
+pompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile, and ready:
+
+               "A natura discedimus; populo nos damus,
+               nullius rei bono auctori."
+
+     ["We depart from nature and give ourselves to the people, who
+     understand nothing."--Seneca, Ep., 99.]
+
+My philosophy is in action, in natural and present practice, very little
+in fancy: what if I should take pleasure in playing at cob-nut or to whip
+a top!
+
+               "Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem."
+
+     ["He did not sacrifice his health even to rumours: Ennius, apud
+     Cicero, De Offic., i. 24]
+
+Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition; it thinks itself rich
+enough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleased
+where most retired.  A young man should be whipped who pretends to a
+taste in wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less
+valued or knew: now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on't; but
+what should I do?  I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put
+me upon't.  'Tis for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for young
+men to stand upon their reputation and nice punctilios; they are going
+towards the world and the world's opinion; we are retiring from it:
+
+     "Sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam,
+     sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus, ex lusionibus
+     multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;"
+
+     ["Let them reserve to themselves arms, horses, spears, clubs,
+     tennis, swimming, and races; and of all the sports leave to us old
+     men cards and dice."--Cicero, De Senec., c. 16.]
+
+the laws themselves send us home.  I can do no less in favour of this
+wretched condition into which my age has thrown me than furnish it with
+toys to play withal, as they do children; and, in truth, we become such.
+Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by
+alternate services in this calamity of age:
+
+               "Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem."
+
+          ["Mingle with counsels a brief interval of folly."
+          --Horace, Od., iv. 12, 27.]
+
+I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly would
+not have rippled the skin, now pierce me through and through: my habit of
+body is now so naturally declining to ill:
+
+          "In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;"
+
+          ["In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious."
+          --Cicero, De Senec., c.  18.]
+
+          "Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil."
+
+     ["And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion."
+     --Ovid, De Ponto., i.  5, 18.]
+
+I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more
+tender now, and open throughout.
+
+               "Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent."
+
+     ["And little force suffices to break what was cracked before."
+     --Ovid, De Tris., iii. 11, 22.]
+
+My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the
+inconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take away
+my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be
+merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one
+good year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity.  A melancholic and dull
+tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am
+not contented with it.  If there be any person, any knot of good company
+in country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, who
+can like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistle
+and I will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone:
+
+Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I
+advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue
+green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree.  But I
+fear 'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the
+body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need.  I
+wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from
+this correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and
+ladies and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems to
+have it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its
+own cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied
+and asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be not
+at the same time an equal proportion in the body too.
+
+Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the
+extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine
+ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also
+attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health,
+such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me
+withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes
+that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all
+enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.
+
+It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit,
+and produce a contrary effect:
+
+          "Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;"
+
+     ["When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing."
+     (Or:) "It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body."
+     --Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.
+
+and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out,
+much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men of
+my age.  Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommodities
+and difficulties from our commerce:
+
+          "Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:"
+
+     ["Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow."
+     --Herod., Ep., xiii. 7.]
+
+               "Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus."
+
+     ["Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant."
+     --Sidonius Apollin., Ep., i. 9.]
+
+I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of
+manners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me:
+
+               "Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:"
+
+          ["The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face."--Auctor Incert.]
+
+               "Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos."
+
+          ["And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries." (Or:)
+          "An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind."
+          --Idem.]
+
+I am very much of Plato's opinion, who says that facile or harsh humours
+are great indications of the good or ill disposition of the mind.
+Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly
+austere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh.  Virtue is a
+pleasant and gay quality.
+
+I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings,
+who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts:
+I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their
+eyes.  'Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his
+pretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:
+
+               "Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire."
+
+     ["Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think."]
+
+I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips over all the pleasures of
+life and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stick
+to a smooth and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggy
+and rough places, and like cupping-glasses, that only suck and attract
+bad blood.
+
+As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to
+do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst
+of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it evil
+and base not to dare to own them.  Every one is wary and discreet in
+confession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing ill
+is in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing
+it.  Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do
+nothing that he must be forced to conceal.  I wish that this excessive
+licence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing
+virtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my
+immoderation I may reduce them to reason.  A man must see and study his
+vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it
+from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see
+it: they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences:
+
+     "Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur?  Quia etiam nunc in
+     illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est."
+
+     ["Why does no man confess his vices?  because he is yet in them;
+     'tis for a waking man to tell his dream."--Seneca, Ep., 53.]
+
+The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find
+that to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of
+the soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure;
+the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with an
+unrelenting hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened,
+and torn from the hollow of the heart.  As in doing well, so in doing
+ill, the mere confession is sometimes satisfaction.  Is there any
+deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?
+It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of
+another's secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge.  I can
+keep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violence
+to myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, not
+by obligation.  'Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be
+secret, if a man be not a liar to boot.  If he who asked Thales the
+Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed
+adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he ought
+not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other.
+Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield the
+greater fault by the less;
+
+     [Montaigne's memory here serves him ill, for the question being put
+     to Thales, his answer was: "But is not perjury worse than
+     adultery?"--Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36.]
+
+nevertheless, this counsel was not so much an election as a
+multiplication of vice.  Upon which let us say this in passing, that we
+deal liberally with a man of conscience when we propose to him some
+difficulty in counterpoise of vice; but when we shut him up betwixt two
+vices, he is put to a hard choice as Origen was either to idolatrise or
+to suffer himself to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave they
+brought to him.  He submitted to the first condition, and wrongly, people
+say.  Yet those women of our times are not much out, according to their
+error, who protest they had rather burden their consciences with ten men
+than one mass.
+
+If it be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great
+danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said,  that the
+winds men most fear are those that lay them open.  We must tuck up this
+ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the
+stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins
+espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty.  So that neither
+can injustice complain of incivility, nor malice of indiscretion.  'Tis
+pity but a bad man should be a fool to boot, and that outward decency
+should palliate his vice: this rough-cast only appertains to a good and
+sound wall, that deserves to be preserved and whited.
+
+In favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private
+confession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely: St.
+Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their
+opinions; I, moreover, of my manners.  I am greedy of making myself
+known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or to say
+better, I hunger for nothing; but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those
+who happen to learn my name.  He who does all things for honour and
+glory, what can he think to gain by shewing himself to the world in a
+vizor, and by concealing his true being from the people?  Praise a
+humpback for his stature, he has reason to take it for an affront:
+if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you
+they speak?  They take you for another.  I should like him as well who
+glorifies himself in the compliments and congees that are made him as if
+he were master of the company, when he is one of the least of the train.
+Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw
+water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish:
+"Aye, but," said he, "whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me,
+but upon him whom he took me to be."  Socrates being told that people
+spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he, "there is nothing, in me of what
+they say."
+
+For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being
+very modest or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoever
+should call me traitor, robber, or drunkard, I should be as little
+concerned.  They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselves
+with false approbations; not I, who see myself, and who examine myself
+even to my very bowels, and who very well know what is my due.  I am
+content to be less commended, provided I am better known.  I may be
+reputed a wise man in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.
+I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common piece of
+furniture, and a piece for the hall; this chapter will make me part of
+the water-closet.  I love to traffic with them a little in private;
+public conversation is without favour and without savour.  In farewells,
+we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leave
+of; I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world: these are our
+last embraces.
+
+But let us come to my subject: what has the act of generation, so
+natural, so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not to
+be spoken of without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious and
+moderate discourse?   We boldly pronounce kill, rob, betray, and that we
+dare only to do betwixt the teeth.  Is it to say, the less we expend in
+words, we may pay so much the more in thinking?  For it is certain that
+the words least in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the
+best and most generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them,
+no more than the word bread they imprint themselves in every one without
+being, expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that
+most practises it is bound to say least of it.  'Tis an act that we have
+placed in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime even
+to accuse and judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasis
+and picture.  A great favour to a criminal to be so execrable that
+justice thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free, and safe by the
+benefit of the severity of his condemnation.  Is it not here as in matter
+of books, that sell better and become more public for being suppressed?
+For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that
+"bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age."  These
+verses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much more
+adhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, and
+the vices less:
+
+              "Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent,
+               Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent."
+
+     ["They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too
+     frequent in her rites."--A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A
+     philosopher should converse with princes.]
+
+              "Tu, dea, rerum naturam sola gubernas,
+               Nec sine to quicquam dias in luminis oras
+               Exoritur, neque fit laetum, nec amabile quidquam."
+
+     ["Goddess, still thou alone governest nature, nor without thee
+     anything comes into light; nothing is pleasant, nothing joyful."
+     --Lucretius, i. 22.]
+
+I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, and
+make them cold towards Love; but I see no deities so well met, or that
+are more indebted to one another.  Who will deprive the Muses of amorous
+imaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and of
+the noblest matter of their work: and who will make Love lose the
+communication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons:
+by this means they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and the
+protecting goddesses of humanity and justice, with the vice of
+ingratitude and unthankfulness.  I have not been so long cashiered from
+the state and service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect in
+his force and value:
+
+               "Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae;"
+
+     ["I recognise vestiges of my old flame."--AEneid., iv. 23.]
+
+There are yet some remains of heat and emotion after the fever:
+
+          "Nec mihi deficiat calor hic, hiemantibus annis!"
+
+     ["Nor let this heat of youth fail me in my winter years."]
+
+Withered and drooping as I am, I feel yet some remains of the past
+ardour:
+
+              "Qual l'alto Egeo, per the Aquilone o Noto
+               Cessi, the tutto prima il volse et scosse,
+               Non 's accheta ei pero; ma'l suono e'l moto
+               Ritien del l'onde anco agitate e grosse:"
+
+          ["As Aegean seas, when storms be calmed again,
+          That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blasts,
+          Do yet of tempests passed some show retain,
+          And here and there their swelling billows cast."--Fairfax.]
+
+but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god are
+more lively and animated in the picture of poesy than in their own
+essence:
+
+                    "Et versus digitos habet:"
+
+          ["Verse has fingers."--Altered from Juvenal, iv. 196.]
+
+it has I know not what kind of air, more amorous than love itself.  Venus
+is not so beautiful, naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil:
+
+         "Dixerat; et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis
+          Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet.  Ille repente
+          Accepit solitam flammam; notusque medullas
+          Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit
+          Non secus atque olim tonitru, cum rupta corusco
+          Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.
+          . . . . . .  Ea verba loquutus,
+          Optatos dedit amplexus; placidumque petivit
+          Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem."
+
+     ["The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft
+     embraces, caresses him hesitating.  Suddenly he caught the wonted
+     flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran
+     thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with
+     thunder, a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the
+     skies.  Having spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace,
+     and in the bosom of his spouse sought placid sleep."
+     --AEneid, viii.  387 and 392.]
+
+All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented
+her a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of
+coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.
+Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but
+faintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as
+marriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more
+than grace and beauty.  Men do not marry for themselves, let them say
+what they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity and
+family; the custom and interest of marriage concern our race much more
+than us; and therefore it is, that I like to have a match carried on by a
+third hand rather than a man's own, and by another man's liking than that
+of the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the
+conventions of love?  And also it is a kind of incest to employ in this
+venerable and sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorous
+licence, as I think I have said elsewhere.  A man, says Aristotle, must
+approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too
+lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of
+reason.  What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say
+upon the account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious,
+voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders
+conception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as
+this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must
+do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:
+
+          "Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."
+
+     ["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in
+     his bosom."--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]
+
+I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
+those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
+there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
+proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
+nothing.
+
+They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
+like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
+virtue.  They are indeed things that have some relation to one another,
+but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names
+and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them.  Nobility is a
+brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a
+quality depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in
+himself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below virtue';
+
+     ["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein
+     not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter."
+     --La Byuyere.]
+
+'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending
+upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living
+and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;,
+of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
+Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
+fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,
+and of no use to the service of others.  There was proposed to one of our
+kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was
+a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,
+they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the
+competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect
+to birth: this was justly to give it its rank.  A young man unknown,
+coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man
+lately dead: "Friend," said he," in such preferments as these, I have not
+so much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess."
+And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings
+of Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always
+succeeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred before
+the most experienced in the trade.  They of Calicut make of nobles a sort
+of superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike
+employments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women as
+many lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital and
+irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions than
+themselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touched
+one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellously
+interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too
+near them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk,
+like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of
+jostling; and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they
+please: by that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy,
+those certain death.  No time, no favour of the prince, no office, or
+virtue, or riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: to
+which this custom contributes, that marriages are interdicted betwixt
+different trades; the daughter of one of the cordwainers' gild is not
+permitted to marry a carpenter; and parents are obliged to train up their
+children precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any other
+trade; by which means the distinction and continuance of their fortunes
+are maintained.
+
+A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditions
+of love, and tries to represent those of friendship.  'Tis a sweet
+society of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of
+useful and solid services and mutual obligations; which any woman who has
+a right taste:
+
+                    "Optato quam junxit lumine taeda"--
+
+     ["Whom the marriage torch has joined with the desired light."
+     --Catullus, lxiv. 79.]
+
+would be loth to serve her husband in quality of a mistress.  If she be
+lodged in his affection as a wife, she is more honourably and securely
+placed.  When he purports to be in love with another, and works all he
+can to obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rather
+a disgrace should fall, his wife or his mistress, which of their
+misfortunes would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes the
+most grandeur, the answer to these questions is out of dispute in a sound
+marriage.
+
+And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and
+value.  If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human
+societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it.
+It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those
+within despair of getting out.  Socrates being asked, whether it was more
+commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will,"
+said he; "he will repent."  'Tis a contract to which the common
+saying:
+
+                    "Homo homini aut deus aut lupus,"
+
+          ["Man to man is either a god or a wolf."--Erasmus, Adag.]
+
+may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualities
+in the construction.  It is found nowadays more convenient for simple and
+plebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do not so much
+disturb it; but extravagant humours, such as mine, that hate all sorts of
+obligation and restraint, are not so proper for it:
+
+               "Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo."
+
+          ["And it is sweet to me to live with a loosened neck."
+          --Pseudo Gallus, i. 61.]
+
+Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if
+she would have had me.  But 'tis to much purpose to evade it; the common
+custom and usance of life will have it so.  The most of my actions are
+guided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my own
+voluntary motion; I was led and drawn to it by extrinsic occasions; for
+not only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also things
+however ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable by
+some condition or accident; so unsteady and vain is all human resolution!
+and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared and less tractable than I
+am at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine as
+I am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws of
+marriage, than I either promised or expected.  'Tis in vain to kick, when
+a man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his
+liberty; but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himself
+within the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it.
+They who engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in it
+with hatred and contempt, do an unjust and inconvenient thing; and the
+fine rule that I hear pass from hand to hand amongst the women, as a
+sacred oracle:
+
+     ["Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as
+     from a traitor."]
+
+which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical,
+and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equally
+injurious and hard.  I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say the
+truth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of
+wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule and
+order that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do
+not presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion.
+
+     (If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion.  D.W.)
+
+If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and
+acknowledge it; 'tis treachery to marry without espousing.
+
+Let us proceed.
+
+Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord wherein
+nevertheless there is not much loyalty.  Does he mean, that it is not
+impossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield
+to the importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage,
+and that it may be hurt, without being totally broken?  A serving man may
+cheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate.  Beauty,
+opportunity, and destiny (for destiny has also a hand in't),
+
+                         "Fatum est in partibus illis
+          Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent,
+          Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;"
+
+     ["There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have
+     endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star
+     fails you in the nick of time."--Juvenal, ix. 32.]
+
+have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but
+that she may have some remains of kindness for her husband.  They are two
+designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being
+confounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no
+means have married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but for
+those also of his person.  Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who
+have not repented it.  And even in the other world, what an unhappy life
+does Jupiter lead with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress!
+'Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one's
+head.  I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and
+dishonestly cured by marriage: the considerations are widely different.
+We love at once, without any tie, two things contrary in themselves.
+
+Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased, as ladies do
+whom men court for love; every one loved to come thither to take a turn,
+and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it,
+that is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence.  I have
+been vexed to see husbands hate their wives only because they themselves
+do them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the less
+for our own faults; they should at least, upon the account of repentance
+and compassion, be dearer to us.
+
+They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible;
+marriage has utility, justice, honour, and constancy for its share;
+a flat, but more universal pleasure: love founds itself wholly upon
+pleasure, and, indeed, has it more full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure
+inflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and smart: 'tis no
+longer love, if without darts and fire.  The bounty of ladies is too
+profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire: to
+evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato
+take in their laws.
+
+Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life that
+are introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men make them without
+their help.  There is naturally contention and brawling betwixt them and
+us; and the strictest friendship we have with them is yet mixed with
+tumult and tempest.  In the opinion of our author, we deal
+inconsiderately with them in this: after we have discovered that they
+are, without comparison, more able and ardent in the practice of love
+than we, and that the old priest testified as much, who had been one
+while a man, and then a woman:
+
+                    "Venus huic erat utraque nota:"
+
+               ["Both aspects of love were known to him,"
+               --Tiresias. Ovid.  Metam., iii. 323.]
+
+and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that,
+in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome,--[Proclus.]
+--both famous for ability in that affair!  for he in one night deflowered
+ten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had five-and-twenty
+bouts in one night, changing her man according to her need and liking;
+
+                    "Adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae
+               Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit:"
+
+          ["Ardent still, she retired, fatigued, but not satisfied."
+          --Juvenal, vi. 128.]
+
+and that upon the dispute which happened in Cataluna, wherein a wife
+complaining of her husband's too frequent addresses to her, not so much,
+as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no miracles
+out of religion) as under this pretence, to curtail and curb in this,
+which is the fundamental act of marriage, the authority of husbands over
+their wives, and to shew that their frowardness and malignity go beyond
+the nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets of
+Venus; the husband, a man truly brutish and unnatural, replied, that even
+on fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses:
+whereupon came out that notable sentence of the Queen of Arragon, by
+which, after mature deliberation of her council, this good queen, to give
+a rule and example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required in
+a just marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessary
+stint; surrendering and quitting a great deal of the needs and desires of
+her sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, a
+permanent and immutable rule.  Hereupon the doctors cry out: what must
+the female appetite and concupiscence be, when their reason, their
+reformation and virtue, are taxed at such a rate, considering the divers
+judgments of our appetites?  for Solon, master of the law school, taxes
+us but at three a month,--that men may not fail in point of conjugal
+frequentation: after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we go
+and enjoin them continency for their particular share, and upon the last
+and extreme penalties.
+
+There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would have
+them only resist, not simply as an ordinary vice, but as an execrable
+abomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; whilst we, at the same
+time, go to't without offence or reproach.  Even those amongst us who
+have tried the experiment have sufficiently confessed what difficulty, or
+rather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to subdue,
+weaken, and cool the body.  We, on the contrary, would have them at once
+sound, vigorous plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and
+cold; for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning,
+is but small refreshment to them, as we order the matter.  If they take
+one whose vigorous age is yet boiling, he will be proud to make it known
+elsewhere;
+
+                   "Sit tandem pudor; aut eamus in jus;
+                    Multis mentula millibus redempta,
+                    Non est haec tua, Basse; vendidisti;"
+
+     ["Let there be some shame, or we shall go to law: your vigour,
+     bought by your wife with many thousands, is no longer yours: thou
+     hast sold it.--"Martial, xii. 90.]
+
+Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judge
+for sowing in a barren field the seed that was due to one that was
+fruitful:  if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in
+a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows.  We think them
+well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans
+concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had
+approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her:
+but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as
+the touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that in
+solitude would be more quiet.  And to the end, 'tis likely, that they
+might render their chastity more meritorious by this circumstance and
+consideration, Boleslas and Kinge his wife, kings of Poland, vowed it by
+mutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, and
+kept their vow in spite of all matrimonial conveniences.
+
+We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace,
+dressing, knowledge, language, and whole instruction tend that way: their
+governesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothing
+else but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distaste
+for it.  My daughter, the only child I have, is now of an age that
+forward young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin,
+and tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her mother
+after a retired and particular manner, so that she but now begins to be
+weaned from her childish simplicity.  She was reading before me in a
+French book where the word 'fouteau', the name of a tree very well known,
+occurred; --[The beech-tree; the name resembles in sound an obscene
+French word.]-- the woman, to whose conduct she is committed, stopped her
+short a little roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous step.  I
+let her alone, not to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself in
+that sort of government; feminine polity has a mysterious procedure; we
+must leave it to them; but if I am not mistaken the commerce of twenty
+lacquies could not, in six months' time, have so imprinted in her memory
+the meaning, usage, and all the consequence of the sound of these wicked
+syllables, as this good old woman did by reprimand and interdiction.
+
+                   "Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
+                    Matura virgo, et frangitur artibus;
+                    Jam nunc et incestos amores
+                    De tenero, meditatur ungui."
+
+     ["The maid ripe for marriage delights to learn Ionic dances, and to
+     imitate those lascivious movements.  Nay, already from her infancy
+     she meditates criminal amours."--Horace, Od., iii.  6, 21., the text
+     has 'fingitur'.]
+
+Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter into
+liberty of discourse, we are but children to them in this science.  Hear
+them but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well make
+you understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, and
+digested without our help.
+
+     [This sentence refers to a conversation between some young women in
+     his immediate neighbourhood, which the Essayist just below informs
+     us that he overheard, and which was too shocking for him to repeat.
+     It must have been tolerably bad.--Remark by the editor of a later
+     edition.]
+
+Is it, perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauched
+young fellows?  I happened one day to be in a place where I could hear
+some of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it.
+By'rlady, said I, we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and the
+tales of Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse with them: we
+employ our time to much purpose indeed.  There is neither word, example,
+nor step they are not more perfect in than our books; 'tis a discipline
+that springs with their blood,
+
+                    "Et mentem ipsa Venus dedit,"
+
+               [" Venus herself made them what they are,"
+               --Virg., Georg., iii. 267.]
+
+which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health, are continually
+inspiring them with; they need not learn, they breed it:
+
+              "Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo,
+               Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius,
+               Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro,
+               Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier."
+
+     ["No milk-white dove, or if there be a thing more lascivious,
+     takes so much delight in kissing as woman, wishful for every man
+     she sees."--Catullus, lxvi. 125.]
+
+So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little
+restrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, we
+should be all shamed.  All the motions in the world resolve into and tend
+to this conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a centre to
+which all things are directed.  We yet see the edicts of the old and wise
+Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the
+instruction of courtezans:
+
+                   "Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos
+                    Jacere pulvillos amant:"
+
+          ["There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon
+          silken cushions."--Horace, Epod., viii. 15.]
+
+Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in
+getting a maidenhead.  What was the philosopher Strato's book Of Carnal
+Conjunction?--[ Diogenes Laertius, v.  59.]-- And what did Theophrastus
+treat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the other 'Of
+Love?'  Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'?  What do the so
+long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretend
+to?  and the book called 'The Lover', of Demetrius Phalereus? and
+'Clinias', or the 'Ravished Lover', of Heraclides; and that of
+Antisthenes, 'Of Getting Children', or, 'Of Weddings', and the other,
+'Of the Master or the Lover'?  And that of Aristo: 'Of Amorous Exercises'
+What those of Cleanthes: one, 'Of Love', the other, 'Of the Art of
+Loving'?  The amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter
+and Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration?  And his fifty
+so lascivious epistles?  I will let alone the writings of the
+philosophers of the Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness.  Fifty
+deities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have been
+nations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion,
+they kept men and women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with;
+and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:
+
+     "Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est;
+     incendium ignibus extinguitur."
+
+     ["Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency's sake; a
+     conflagration is extinguished by fire."]
+
+In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified;
+in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a
+piece; others offered and consecrated their seed.  In another, the young
+men publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part in
+several places, and thrust pieces of wood into the openings as long and
+thick as they would receive, and of these pieces of wood afterwards made
+a fire as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorous
+nor chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain they seemed to be at all
+dismayed.  Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced and
+acknowledged by that member and in several ceremonies the effigy of it
+was carried in pomp to the honour of various divinities.  The Egyptian
+ladies, in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finely-carved of wood
+about their necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besides
+which, the statue of their god presented one, which in greatness
+surpassed all the rest of his body. --[Herodotus, ii.  48, says "nearly
+as large as the body itself."]-- The married women, near the place where
+I live, make of their kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads,
+to glorify themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and coming to be
+widows, they throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths.  The
+most modest matrons of Rome thought it an honour to offer flowers and
+garlands to the god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the time of
+their espousals, sit upon his shameful parts.  And I know not whether I
+have not in my time seen some air of like devotion.  What was the meaning
+of that ridiculous piece of the chaussuye of our forefathers, and that is
+still worn by our Swiss? ["Cod-pieces worn"--Cotton}-- To what end do we
+make a show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often,
+which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?
+I have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in
+the better and more conscientious ages, that the world might not be
+deceived, and that every one should give a public account of his
+proportions: the simple nations wear them yet, and near about the real
+size.  In those days, the tailor took measure of it, as the shoemaker
+does now of a man's foot.  That good man, who, when I was young, gelded
+so many noble and ancient statues in his great city, that they might not
+corrupt the sight of the ladies, according to the advice of this other
+ancient worthy:
+
+          "Flagitii principium est, nudare inter gives corpora,"
+
+     ["'Tis the beginning of wickedness to expose their persons among the
+     citizens"--Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]
+
+should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea,
+all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geld
+horses and asses, in short, all nature:
+
+         "Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque,
+          Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,
+          In furias ignemque ruunt."
+
+          ["So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame,
+          and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love."
+          --Virgil, Georg., iii. 244.]
+
+The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member
+that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite,
+to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a
+greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows
+wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops
+the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till,
+having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed
+the bottom of their matrix.  Now my legislator --[The Pope who, as
+Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]--
+should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and
+more fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than
+permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own
+fancy; instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and
+desire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certain
+friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the
+opportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use.  What
+mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys
+make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the
+ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture.  And what do we know
+but that Plato, after other well-instituted republics, ordered that the
+men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view
+of one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account?  The
+Indian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooled
+the sense of seeing.  And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what
+they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth
+slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they
+pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention
+to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that
+nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than
+they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more
+sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes.  Livia was wont to say,
+that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue.  The Lacedaemonian
+women, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the
+young men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves
+little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves,
+says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe.
+But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful
+power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day
+of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours,
+for fear of tempting us again in that holy state.  In brief, we allure
+and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir up
+their imagination, and then we find fault.  Let us confess the truth;
+there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame that
+accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is not
+more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuous
+wife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, and
+that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not be
+more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices.  Both we and
+they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural
+than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to
+our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.
+
+The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this
+vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages
+it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go
+to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation,
+rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so
+difficult a guard.  Do not they very well see that there is neither
+merchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after this
+sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with
+labour and hunger?
+
+                   "Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes,
+                    Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes,
+                    Permutare velis crine Licymnim?
+                    Plenas aut Arabum domos,
+                    Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula
+                    Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat,
+                    Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,
+                    Interdum rapere occupet?"
+
+     ["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had,
+     or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of
+     Licymnia's hair?  or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns
+     her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger
+     denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and
+     sometimes herself snatches one!"--Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]
+
+I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass
+the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in
+the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary
+examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand
+continual and powerful solicitations.  There is no doing more difficult
+than that not doing, nor more active:
+
+I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's life
+than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most
+noble, as being the hardest to keep:
+
+               "Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,"
+
+says St.  Jerome.  We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most
+difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to
+them the glory too.  This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;
+'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain
+pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they
+will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more
+esteemed for it, but also much more beloved.  A gallant man does not give
+over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity,
+and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;
+we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no
+allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed.  'Tis stupidity
+and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a
+virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exercise
+of a noble and generous soul.  They may acknowledge our service to a
+certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us
+not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them,
+and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for
+the difficulty of it.  Why should they not give ear to our offers and
+requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?
+wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be
+worse than they seem?  A queen of our time said with spirit, "that to
+refuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a self-
+accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her chastity
+who was never tempted."
+
+The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a
+little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the
+frontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter.  He that has beaten
+and pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied
+with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the
+difficulty.  Would you know what impression your service and merit have
+made in her heart?  Judge of it by her behaviour.  Such an one may grant
+more, who does not grant so much.  The obligation of a benefit wholly
+relates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincident
+circumstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant
+you that little, than it would do her companion to grant all.  If in
+anything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do not
+consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give;
+the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the
+place.  Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in
+the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all
+the advantage.  I have known some whose reputation has for a great while
+suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world's
+universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;
+every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and
+said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced
+to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour.  Somebody told Plato that
+all the world spoke ill of him.  "Let them talk," said he; "I will live
+so as to make them change their note."  Besides the fear of God, and the
+value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves,
+the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I were
+they, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputation
+in so dangerous hands.  In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasure
+little inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who had
+some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and common
+table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secret
+liberality of ladies.  In earnest, 'tis too abject, too much meanness of
+spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headed
+people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charming
+favours.
+
+This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice
+springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human
+minds, which is jealousy:
+
+              "Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?
+               Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;"
+
+     ["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?
+     Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose."--Ovid, De
+     Arte Amandi, iii. 93.  The measure of the last line is not good;
+     but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled
+     Priapus.]
+
+she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole
+troop.  As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a passion that,
+though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me.  As to
+the other, I know it by sight, and that's all.  Beasts feel it; the
+shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out
+of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and
+crushed it.  We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the
+examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been
+touched with it, and 'tis reason, but not transported:
+
+              "Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter
+               Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas."
+
+               ["Never did adulterer slain by a husband
+               stain with purple blood the Stygian waters."]
+
+Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were
+cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in
+those days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife
+had used him so.
+
+              "Ah! tum te miserum malique fati,
+               Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
+               Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"
+
+     ["Wretched man!  when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be
+     dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment
+     of thy adultery." --Catullus, xv. 17.]
+
+and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his
+wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,
+
+               "Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
+               Sic fieri turpis:"
+
+          ["And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself
+          like to be so disgraced."--Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]
+
+and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him;
+complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his
+affection:
+
+               "Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit
+               Quo tibi, diva, mei?"
+
+     ["Dost thou seek causes from above?  Why, goddess, has your
+     confidence in me ceased?"--Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]
+
+nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers,
+
+                    "Arena rogo genitrix nato."
+
+          ["I, a mother, ask armour for a son."--Idem, ibid., 383.]
+
+which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,
+
+                    "Arma acri facienda viro,"
+
+     ["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."--AEneid, viii. 441.]
+
+with, in truth, a more than human humanity.  And I am willing to leave
+this excess of kindness to the gods:
+
+               "Nec divis homines componier aequum est."
+
+          ["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods."
+          --Catullus, lxviii. 141.]
+
+As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators
+ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where
+this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:
+
+               "Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
+               Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."
+
+     ["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her
+     husband's daily infidelities."--Idem, ibid.]
+
+When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance,
+'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it
+insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it
+has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of
+good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred.  'Tis, of all the
+diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and
+the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the
+husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:
+
+          "Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."
+
+          ["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."
+          (Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"
+          --Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]
+
+This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good
+besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste
+and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and
+wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity
+quite contrary to its cause.  This held good with one Octavius at Rome.
+Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and
+solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this
+excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and
+mortal hatred: he killed her.  In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of
+this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,
+and cabals:
+
+               "Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"
+
+     ["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."
+     --AEneid, V. 21.]
+
+and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to
+excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.
+
+Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it the will that we
+would have them restrain?  This is a very supple and active thing; a
+thing very nimble, to be stayed.  How? if dreams sometimes engage them so
+far that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in
+chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust and
+desire.  If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in,
+then?  Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men in
+pursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes,
+into every woman's arms who would accept them.  The Scythian women put
+out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might
+have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser.  O, the furious
+advantage of opportunity!  Should any one ask me, what was the first
+thing to be considered in love matters, I should answer that it was how
+to take a fitting time; and so the second; and so the third--'tis a point
+that can do everything.  I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have also
+sometimes been wanting to myself in matters of attempt.  God help him,
+who yet makes light of this!  There is greater temerity required in this
+age of ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; but
+should women examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather
+proceeds from contempt.  I was always superstitiously afraid of giving
+offence, and have ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, he
+who in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time
+the lustre.  I would in this affair have a man a little play the child,
+the timorous, and the servant.  If not this, I have in other bashfulness
+whereof altogether in things some air of the foolish Plutarch makes
+mention; and the course of my life has been divers ways hurt and
+blemished with it; a quality very ill suiting my universal form: and,
+indeed, what are we but sedition and discrepancy?  I am as much out of
+countenance to be denied as I am to deny; and it so much troubles me to
+be troublesome to others that on occasion when duty compels me to try the
+good-will of any one in a thing that is doubtful and that will be
+chargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and very much against my will:
+but if it be for my own particular (whatever Homer truly says, that
+modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person), I commonly commit it
+to a third person to blush for me, and deny those who employ me with the
+same difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me to have had a mind
+to deny, when I had not the power to do it.
+
+'Tis folly, then, to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is so
+powerful in them, and so natural to them.  And when I hear them brag of
+having so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retire
+too far back.  If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptive
+thing, though it be not altogether to be believed, at least they say it
+with more similitude of truth.  But they who still move and breathe, talk
+at that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason that
+inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation; like a gentleman, a
+neighbour of mine, suspected to be insufficient:
+
+              "Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta,
+               Numquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam,"
+
+          [Catullus, lxvii. 2, i. --The sense is in the context.]
+
+who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, went
+about boldly swearing that he had ridden twenty stages the night before:
+an oath that was afterwards made use of to convict him of his ignorance
+in that affair, and to divorce him from his wife.  Besides, it signifies
+nothing, for there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no
+opposing desires.  It is true, they may say, but we will not yield;
+saints themselves speak after that manner.  I mean those who boast in
+good gravity of their coldness and insensibility, and who expect to be
+believed with a serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with an
+affected look, when their eyes give the lie to their tongue, and when
+they talk in the cant of their profession, which always goes against the
+hair, 'tis good sport.  I am a great servant of liberty and plainness;
+but there is no remedy; if it be not wholly simple or childish, 'tis
+silly, and unbecoming ladies in this commerce, and presently runs into
+impudence.  Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools; lying
+is there in its seat of honour; 'tis a by-way, that by a back-door leads
+us to truth.  If we cannot curb their imagination, what would we have
+from them.  Effects?  There are enough of them that evade all foreign
+communication, by which chastity may be corrupted:
+
+               "Illud saepe facit, quod sine teste facit;"
+
+          ["He often does that which he does without a witness."
+          --Martial, vii. 62, 6.]
+
+and those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be feared;
+their sins that make the least noise are the worst:
+
+               "Offendor maecha simpliciore minus."
+
+          ["I am less offended with a more professed strumpet."
+          --Idem, vi. 7,6.]
+
+There are ways by which they may lose their virginity without
+prostitution, and, which is more, without their knowledge:
+
+     "Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive
+     malevolentia, sive inscitia, sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit."
+
+     ["By malevolence, or unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife,
+     seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes
+     destroyed it."--St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, i. 18.]
+
+Such a one, by seeking her maidenhead, has lost it; another by playing
+with it has destroyed it.  We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions,
+we interdict them; they must guess at our meaning under general and
+doubtful terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous:
+for, amongst the greatest patterns that I have is Fatua, the wife of
+Faunus: who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any
+man whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband's
+stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men.  They must
+become insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
+
+Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally
+lies in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom,
+not only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but with
+singular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue.
+Such a woman has been, who prized her honour above her life, and yet has
+prostituted it to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her
+husband's life, and who, in so doing, did that for him she would not have
+done for herself!  This is not the place wherein we are to multiply these
+examples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as
+I can give them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for
+examples of ordinary lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us who
+surrender themselves for their husbands sole benefit, and by their
+express order and mediation? and, of old, Phaulius the Argian, who
+offered his to King Philip out of ambition; as Galba did it out of
+civility, who, having entertained Maecenas at supper, and observing that
+his wife and he began to cast glances at one another and to make eyes and
+signs, let himself sink down upon his cushion, like one in a profound
+sleep, to give opportunity to their desires: which he handsomely
+confessed, for thereupon a servant having made bold to lay hands on the
+plate upon the table, he frankly cried, "What, you rogue? do you not see
+that I only sleep for Maecenas?" Such there may be, whose manners may be
+lewd enough, whose will may be more reformed than another, who outwardly
+carries herself after a more regular manner.  As we see some who complain
+of having vowed chastity before they knew what they did; and I have also
+known others really, complain of having been given up to debauchery
+before they were of the years of discretion.  The vice of the parents or
+the impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor, may be the cause.
+
+In the East Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custom
+permitted a married woman to prostitute herself to any one who presented
+her with an elephant, and that with glory, to have been valued at so high
+a rate.  Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of his
+country Elis, made it his trade to prostitute the beauty of his youth, so
+long as it lasted, to any one that would, for money thereby to gain his
+living: and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his laws
+gave liberty to women, at the expense of their chastity, to provide for
+the necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been received
+in many governments before his time.  And besides, what fruit is there of
+this painful solicitude?  For what justice soever there is in this
+passion, we are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: does
+any one think to curb them, with all his industry?
+
+         "Pone seram; cohibe: sed quis custodiet ipsos
+          Custodes?  cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor."
+
+     ["Put on a lock; shut them up under a guard; but who shall guard
+     the guard?  she knows what she is about, and begins with them."
+     --Juvenal, vi. 346.]
+
+What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?
+
+Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here.  'Tis folly to
+examine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflame
+and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more public
+by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it
+heals us.  You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof.  How
+miserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge who have been so
+unhappy as to have found it out?  If the informer does not at the same
+time apply a remedy and bring relief, 'tis an injurious information, and
+that better deserves a stab than the lie.  We no less laugh at him who
+takes pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold and knows it not.
+The character of cuckold is indelible: who once has it carries it to his
+grave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault.  It is to much
+purpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes,
+thence to expose them on tragic scaffolds; and misfortunes that only hurt
+us by being known; for we say a good wife or a happy marriage, not that
+they are really so, but because no one says to the contrary.  Men should
+be so discreet as to evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge:
+and the Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to send
+home before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they might
+not surprise them; and to this purpose it is that a certain nation has
+introduced a custom, that the priest shall on the wedding-day open the
+way to the bride, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity of
+examining in the first assault, whether she comes a virgin to his bed, or
+has been at the trade before.
+
+But the world will be talking.  I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds,
+honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemed
+for it.  Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; that
+good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble
+but to think on't.  And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the
+same rate, from the least even to the greatest?
+
+                    "Tot qui legionibus imperitivit
+          "Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus."
+
+     ["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than
+     you, you rascal."--Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041.]
+
+Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;
+believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere.  But, the very ladies
+will be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in this
+virtuous age of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage?  Each
+amongst you has made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel,
+in compensation, and turn for turn.  The frequency of this accident ought
+long since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.
+
+Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable,
+
+          "Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"
+
+          ["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints."
+          --Catullus, lxvii.]
+
+for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not
+laugh at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of the
+quarry?  The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret
+by the wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to a
+prating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered it
+indecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows
+and all that a man feels.  To give women the same counsel against
+jealousy would be so much time lost; their very being is so made up of
+suspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way
+is not to be hoped.  They often recover of this infirmity by a form of
+health much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there are
+enchantments that cannot take away the evil but by throwing it upon
+another, they also willingly transfer this ever to their husbands, when
+they shake it off themselves.  And yet I know not, to speak truth,
+whether a man can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis the
+most dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is of all their
+members.  Pittacus used to say, --[Plutarch, On Contentment, c. II.]--
+that every one had his trouble, and that his was the jealous head of his
+wife; but for which he should think himself perfectly happy.  A mighty
+inconvenience, sure, which could poison the whole life of so just, so
+wise, and so valiant a man; what must we other little fellows do?  The
+senate of Marseilles had reason to grant him his request who begged leave
+to kill himself that he might be delivered from the clamour of his wife;
+for 'tis a mischief that is never removed but by removing the whole
+piece; and that has no remedy but flight or patience, though both of them
+very hard.  He was, methinks, an understanding fellow who said, 'twas a
+happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband.
+
+Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligation
+we enjoin them does not produce two effects contrary to our design
+namely, whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack,
+and the women more easy to yield.  For as to the first, by raising the
+value of the place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest.
+Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her
+merchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight
+it would be that was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve?
+In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' host
+said.  Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend with
+devotion and justice: 'tis his glory that his power mates all powers, and
+that all other rules give place to his:
+
+               "Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae."
+
+               ["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes."
+               --Ovid, Trist., iv. I. 34.]
+
+As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared
+to be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, and
+who are more eager, being forbidden:
+
+              "Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro;
+               Concessa pudet ire via."
+
+     ["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they
+     spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path."
+     --Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v  43]
+
+What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour?  She,
+at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use;
+but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her
+husband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to
+making open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in
+the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him.  This
+animal, not to be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull
+and flat by his too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise and
+make them lawful; what does she?  Being the wife of a living and
+healthful emperor, and at Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face of
+the sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to Silius, who had long before
+enjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband was
+gone out of the city.  Does it not seem as if she was going to become
+chaste by her husband's negligence? or that she sought another husband
+who might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watching
+should incite her?  But the first difficulty she met with was also the
+last: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy, sluggish sort of men are
+often the most dangerous: I have found by experience that this extreme
+toleration, when it comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge;
+for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being combined in one,
+discharge their utmost force at the first onset,
+
+               "Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"
+
+          ["He let loose his whole  fury."--AEneid, xii. 499.]
+
+he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she
+had intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whom
+she had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.
+
+What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a
+stolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:
+
+              "Belli fera moenera Mavors
+               Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se
+               Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris
+                    ............................
+               Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,
+               Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore
+               Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
+               Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
+               Funde."
+
+     ["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often
+     reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes,
+     vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he
+     reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies
+     upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words."
+     --Lucretius, i. 23.]
+
+When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas,
+labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the
+pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that
+have since sprung up.  Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety
+to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of
+natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail,
+but the head, body, and feet.  There is nothing forced, nothing
+languishing, but everything keeps the same pace:
+
+     "Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati."
+
+     ["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with
+     little flowers of rhetoric."--Seneca, Ep., 33.]
+
+'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous and
+solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the
+greatest minds.  When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively,
+so profound, I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought.  'Tis
+the sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:
+
+                    "Pectus est quod disertum Tacit."
+
+          ["The heart makes the man eloquent."--Quintilian, x. 7.]
+
+Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions.
+This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having
+the object more vividly imprinted in the soul.  Gallus speaks simply
+because he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a
+superficial expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and more
+clearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine
+of words and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them
+more than ordinary, because his conception is so.  Plutarch says' that he
+sees the Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same: the sense
+illuminates and produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh
+and bone; they signify more than they say.  Moreover, those who are not
+well skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy I
+said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serious
+talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind
+and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing
+something of my own.
+
+The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;
+not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
+various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them.
+They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight
+and signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwonted
+motions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly.  And how little this
+talent is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of this
+age: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but
+want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in
+their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with
+cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the
+matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they
+care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and
+shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significant
+than the other.
+
+There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting
+out: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of
+hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of
+speaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted.
+I find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable and
+vigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would
+maintain the dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag
+and languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek
+does to others.  Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not
+so easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has
+in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our
+ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be
+met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is
+sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an
+understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient
+authors who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.
+
+The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very
+different from the common and natural, way.  My page makes love, and
+understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus --[Leo the Jew, Ficinus,
+Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]--
+and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he
+understands it not.  I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary
+motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use
+of the schools.  Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much
+naturalise art as they artificialise nature.  Let us let Bembo and
+Equicola alone.
+
+When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance
+of books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the
+best authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of the
+painter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill,
+charged all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into his
+shop; and had rather need to give myself a little lustre, of the
+invention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing or
+play, took care beforehand that the auditory should, either before or
+after, be satiated with some other ill musicians.  But I can hardly be
+without Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon all
+occasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he will
+still be at your elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to be
+exhausted hand of riches and embellishments.  It vexes me that he is so
+exposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can
+scarce cast an eye upon him but I purloin either a leg or a wing.
+
+And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me for me to write
+at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;
+where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster,
+and of French a little less.  I might have made it better elsewhere, but
+then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and
+perfection is to be exactly mine.  I readily correct an accidental error,
+of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and
+constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out.  When
+another tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick of
+figures: this is a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I do
+not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France;
+they who would fight custom with grammar are triflers): this is an
+ignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse: that is going too
+far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest a
+thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest."--"Yes, I know,
+but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom.  Do I not
+talk at the same rate throughout?  Do I not represent myself to the life?
+'Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in
+my book, and my book in me."
+
+Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (and
+I never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I had
+last read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I
+speak something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne.
+Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his upon
+me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a
+disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of
+all, because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold without
+shaking.  I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous
+imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and
+strength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and
+which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they
+afforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever
+they saw done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes in
+their sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their
+heads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their
+eyes with glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to their
+own ruin they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves.
+The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words
+and gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raise
+their admiration, is no more in me than in a stock.  When I swear my own
+oath, 'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct.  They say that
+Socrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection at
+this time in use amongst the Italians, Cappari!  Pythagoras swore By
+water and air.  I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these
+superficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouth
+three days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship
+eight days after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall say
+the same to-morrow seriously.  Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillingly
+undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's
+expense.  Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the
+purpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at
+the recommendation of as flighty a will.  I may begin, with that which
+pleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another.
+
+But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
+most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
+for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
+apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
+where I am most given to think.  My speaking is a little nicely jealous
+of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
+stops me.  In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop
+to discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company
+fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would
+to entertain myself.  It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst
+dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I
+dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what
+complexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they
+were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I
+plunge them in oblivion.  So of thoughts that come accidentally into my
+head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough
+to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.
+
+Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking,
+I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
+the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
+discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
+discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
+become vicious.  According to Socrates, love is the appetite of
+generation by the mediation of beauty.  And when I consider the
+ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild
+motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage,
+the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of
+love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton
+an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously
+shuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as
+in pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato
+says, that the gods made man for their sport:
+
+                        "Quaenam ista jocandi
+                         Saevitia!"
+
+     ["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in
+     jesting!"--Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]
+
+and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
+actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
+men, beasts and us, on a level.  Even the most contemplative and prudent
+man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
+pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet that
+abate his pride:
+
+                         "Ridentem dicere verum
+                         Quid vetat?"
+
+          ["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?"
+          --Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]
+
+They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one,
+like him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with a
+veil.  We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions
+that obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our
+advantage over them; this other action subjects all other thought,
+and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity and
+philosophy; and yet there is no complaint of it.  In everything else a
+man may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules of
+decency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious
+or ridiculous: find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreet
+procedure.  Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by
+this act and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of
+the soul; the familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhausts
+them: doubtless 'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but
+also of our vanity and deformity.
+
+On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble,
+useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on the
+other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent,
+to blush at it, and to recommend abstinence.  Are we not brutes to call
+that work brutish which begets us?  People of so many differing religions
+have concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning
+incense, fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning this
+act: all opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom of
+circumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment.  We have,
+peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish
+a production as man, and to call the act, and the parts that are employed
+in the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful).  The
+Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
+without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
+following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
+being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
+themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
+than to beget one.  'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
+once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
+obstinately to disdain the sex.
+
+     [Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13. --What is there said, however, is that
+     Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
+     misogynist.]
+
+Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
+destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
+to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
+man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
+'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
+we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
+that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
+kill him.  The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,
+having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo,
+interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:
+
+                         "Nostri nosmet paenitet."
+
+          ["We are ashamed of ourselves."--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]
+
+There are some nations that will not be seen to eat.  I know a lady, and
+of the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfigures
+the face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; and
+therefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I
+know a man also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to be
+seen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than when
+putting out.  In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who,
+to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their
+repast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their
+faces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to
+honour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon
+their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse.
+What monstrous animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom his
+delights are grievous, and who weds himself to misfortune?  There are
+people who conceal their life:
+
+               "Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,"
+
+     ["And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes."
+     --Virgil, Georg., ii. 511.]
+
+and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and
+cheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities.  Not only many
+sects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and
+there is a place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored.  We are
+only ingenious in using ourselves ill: 'tis the real quarry our
+intellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!
+
+               "O miseri! quorum gaudia crimen habent!"
+
+          ["O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime!"
+          --Pseudo Gallus, i. 180.]
+
+Alas, poor man!  thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable,
+without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enough
+by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential
+deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary.  Dost thou
+think thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is uneasy?  dost
+thou find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices that
+nature has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost not
+oblige thyself to other and new offices?  Thou dost not stick to infringe
+her universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and
+fantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, and
+contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour in
+them: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and the
+world concern thee not.  Run but a little over the examples of this kind;
+thy life is full of them.
+
+Whilst the verses of these two poets, treat so reservedly and discreetly
+of wantonness as they do, methinks they discover it much more openly.
+Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacred
+things, and painters shadow their pictures to give them greater lustre:
+and 'tis said that the sun and wind strike more violently by reflection
+than in a direct line.  The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked him
+what he had under his cloak, "It is hid under my cloak," said he, "that
+thou mayest not know what it is:" but there are certain other things that
+people hide only to show them.  Hear that one, who speaks plainer,
+
+               "Et nudum pressi corpus ad usque meum:"
+
+          ["And pressed her naked body to mine" (Or:) "My body
+          I applied even to her naked side"--Ovid, Amor., i. 5, 24.]
+
+methinks that he emasculates me.  Let Martial turn up Venus as high as he
+may, he cannot shew her so naked: he who says all that is to be said
+gluts and disgusts us.  He who is afraid to express himself, draws us on
+to guess at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort of
+modesty, and specially when they half open, as these do, so fair a path
+to imagination.  Both the action and description should relish of theft.
+
+The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the
+Spaniards and Italians pleases me.  I know not who of old wished his
+throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he
+swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous
+pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being
+too prompt.  To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things--
+a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense betwixt
+them.  Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine on
+the steam of the roast?  'Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid
+essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay
+it accordingly.  Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteem
+upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the
+first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning
+out their favours, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable old
+age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth
+and merit.  He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing
+unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in
+the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps
+and degrees there are, so much higher and more honourable is the
+uppermost seat: we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in
+magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant
+galleries, and many windings.  This disposition of things would turn to
+our advantage; we should there longer stay and longer love; without hope
+and without desire we proceed not worth a pin.  Our conquest and entire
+possession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they wholly
+surrender themselves up to the mercy of our fidelity and constancy they
+run a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; the
+ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs:
+
+              "Postquam cupidae mentis satiata libido est,
+               Verba nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant;"
+
+          ["When our desires are once satisfied, we care little
+          for oaths and promises."--Catullus, lxiv.  147.]
+
+And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passion
+that, having, gained a mistress's consent, he refused to enjoy her, that
+he might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardour of which
+he was so proud, and with which he so fed himself.  Dearness is a good
+sauce to meat: do but observe how much the manner of salutation,
+particular to our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, which
+Socrates says are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts,
+of no esteem.  It is a displeasing custom and injurious for the ladies,
+that they must be obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who has
+three footmen at his heels, however ill-favoured he may be in himself:
+
+                   "Cujus livida naribus caninis
+                    Dependet glacies, rigetque barba .  .  .
+                    Centum occurrere malo culilingis:"
+                    Martial, vii. 94.
+
+and we ourselves barely gain by it; for as the world is divided, for
+three beautiful women we must kiss fifty ugly ones; and to a tender
+stomach, like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one.
+
+In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sell
+themselves for money, and justify the doing so by saying, "that there are
+degrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure for
+themselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but their
+bodies; the will is too free and too much of its own to be exposed to
+sale."  So that these say, 'tis the will they undertake and they have
+reason.  'Tis indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing.
+I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is,
+methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the
+beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious
+Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming:
+which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of
+beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three
+days before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to take
+care for the interment.  Periander did more wonderfully, who extended his
+conjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of his
+wife Melissa after she was dead.  Does it not seem a lunatic humour in
+the Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to
+lay-him for several months asleep, and to please herself with the
+fruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep?  I likewise say that
+we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without
+its consent and desire.  All enjoyments are not alike: there are some
+that are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besides good-
+will may procure us this favour from the ladies; this is not a sufficient
+testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well as elsewhere:
+they sometimes go to't by halves:
+
+              "Tanquam thura merumque parent
+               Absentem marmoreamve putes:"
+
+     ["As if they are preparing frankincense and wine .  .  . you might
+     think her absent or marble."--Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8.]
+
+I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only
+impart themselves that way.  You are to examine whether your company
+pleases them upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom,
+for that only; in what degree of favour and esteem you are with them:
+
+                              "Tibi si datur uni,
+                    Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat."
+
+     ["Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she
+     marks with a whiter stone."--Catullus, lxviii. 147.]
+
+What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing
+imagination.
+
+               "Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores."
+
+               ["She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with
+               other absent lovers."--Tibullus, i. 6, 35.]
+
+What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act
+for the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill and
+poison, as he did, a worthy lady?
+
+Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek
+not elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent of
+the world in this.  They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly
+women than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as
+they.  I think the same of their intellects: of those of the common sort,
+they have evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there;
+but in individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebted
+to them.  If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touching
+valour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and
+natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a
+degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriages
+of that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so
+rude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant
+acquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most
+intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial,
+and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to
+make; and when they have broken down the fence, we may safely presume
+they get on fire:
+
+          "Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia,
+          irritata, deinde emissa."
+
+     ["Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound,
+     breaks from his chains with greater wildness."--Livy, xxxiv. 4.]
+
+They must give them a little more rein:
+
+         "Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem,
+          Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo":
+
+     ["I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit,
+     rush like a thunderbolt."--Ovid, Amor., iii. 4, 13.]
+
+the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty.  We are
+pretty much in the same case they are extreme in constraint, we in
+licence.  'Tis a good custom we have in France that our sons are received
+into the best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as in
+a school of nobility; and 'tis looked upon as a discourtesy and an
+affront to refuse this to a gentleman.  I have taken notice (for, so many
+families, so many differing forms) that the ladies who have been
+strictest with their maids have had no better luck than those who allowed
+them a greater liberty.  There should be moderation in these things; one
+must leave a great deal of their conduct to their own discretion; for,
+when all comes to all, no discipline can curb them throughout.  But it is
+true withal that she who comes off with flying colours from a school of
+liberty, brings with her whereon to repose more confidence than she who
+comes away sound from a severe and strict school.
+
+Our fathers dressed up their daughters' looks in bashfulness and fear
+(their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence and
+assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the
+Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands
+they have first killed another in battle.  For me, who have no other
+title left me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if,
+according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their
+counsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the
+age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion.  For,
+as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who
+blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said "the vice is in not
+coming out, not in going in," let her who has no care of her conscience
+have yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within,
+let her carry a fair outside at least.
+
+I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato
+'declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness are
+forbidden to the defendant.  'Tis a sign of eagerness which they ought to
+disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and hand-over-
+hand to surrender themselves.  In carrying themselves orderly and
+measuredly in the granting their last favours, they much more allure our
+desires and hide their own.  Let them still fly before us, even those who
+have most mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, as the
+Scythians did.  To say the truth, according to the law that nature has
+imposed upon them, it is not properly for them either to will or desire;
+their part is to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it is that nature
+has given them a perpetual capacity, which in us is but at times and
+uncertain; they are always fit for the encounter, that they may be always
+ready when we are so "Pati natee."-["Born to suffer."-Seneca, Ep., 95.]--
+And whereas she has ordered that our appetites shall be manifest by a
+prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden and concealed
+within, and has furnished them with parts improper for ostentation, and
+simply defensive.  Such proceedings as this that follows must be left to
+the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army through Hyrcania,
+Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three hundred light horse of
+her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left the remainder of a very
+great, army that followed her behind the neighbouring mountains to give
+him a visit; where she publicly and in plain terms told him that the fame
+of his valour and victories had brought her thither to see him, and to
+make him an offer of her forces to assist him in the pursuit of his
+enterprises; and that, finding him so handsome, young, and vigorous, she,
+who was also perfect in all those qualities, advised that they might lie
+together, to the end that from the most valiant woman of the world and
+the bravest man then living, there might spring some great and wonderful
+issue for the time to come.  Alexander returned her thanks for all the
+rest; but, to give leisure for the accomplishment of her last demand,
+he detained her thirteen days in that place, which were spent in royal
+feasting and jollity, for the welcome of so courageous a princess.
+
+We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are of
+ours.  I confess the truth when it makes against me, as well as when 'tis
+on my side.  'Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so often
+to change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any one
+person whatever; as is evident in that goddess to whom are attributed so
+many changes and so many lovers.  But 'tis true withal that 'tis contrary
+to the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the nature
+of violence if it be constant.  And they who wonder, exclaim, and keep
+such a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as
+unnatural and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not
+discern how often they are themselves guilty of the same, without any
+astonishment or miracle at all?  It would, peradventure, be more strange
+to see the passion fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion.  If there
+be no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire;
+it still lives after satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe either
+constant satisfaction or end; it ever goes beyond its possession.  And by
+that means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable in
+them than in us: they may plead, as well as we, the inclination to
+variety and novelty common to us both; and secondly, without us, that
+they buy a cat in a sack: Joanna, queen of Naples, caused her first
+husband, Andrews, to be hanged at the bars of her window in a halter of
+gold and silk woven with her own hand, because in matrimonial
+performances she neither found his parts nor abilities answer the
+expectation she had conceived from his stature, beauty, youth, and
+activity, by which she had been caught and deceived.  They may say there
+is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are on
+their part always at least provided for necessity, whereas on our part it
+may fall out otherwise.  For this reason it was, that Plato wisely made a
+law that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, the
+judges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped stark naked,
+and the women but to the girdle only.  When they come to try us they do
+not, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:
+
+              "Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro
+               Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu,
+               Deserit imbelles thalamos."
+
+          ["After using every endeavour to arouse him to action,
+          she quits the barren couch."--Martial, vii. 58.]
+
+'Tis not enough that a man's will be good; weakness and insufficiency
+lawfully break a marriage,
+
+               "Et quaerendum aliunde foret nervosius illud,
+               Quod posset zonam solvere virgineam:"
+
+     ["And seeks a more vigorous lover to undo her virgin zone."
+     --Catullus, lxvii. 27.]
+
+why not?  and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence,
+more licentious and active,
+
+               "Si blando nequeat superesse labori."
+
+          ["If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task."
+          --Virgil, Georg., iii. 127.]
+
+But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and
+imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and
+esteem of ourselves?  For the little that I am able to do now:
+
+                                   "Ad unum
+                         Mollis opus."
+
+          ["Fit but for once."--Horace, Epod., xii. 15.]
+
+I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:
+
+                              "Fuge suspicari,
+                    Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas
+                              Claudere lustrum."
+
+          ["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed."
+          --Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.]
+
+Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable,
+without rendering it ridiculous too.  I hate to see it, for one poor inch
+of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set
+itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true
+flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a
+moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain
+only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
+indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for
+it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
+some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
+blushes:
+
+              "Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
+               Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa
+               Alba rosa."
+
+     ["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed
+     with the damask rose."--AEneid, xii. 67.]
+
+Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the
+disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling
+impertinence,
+
+               "Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus,"
+
+          ["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger."
+          --Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.]
+
+has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them
+till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night.
+When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently
+accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to
+complain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and
+unkindly:
+
+         "Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa
+          Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam
+          Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:"
+
+     [The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the
+     Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram
+     in the same collection (Ad Matrones).  They describe untranslatably
+     Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous
+     passage.]
+
+and done me a most enormous injury.  Every member I have, as much one as
+another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man
+than this.
+
+I universally owe my entire picture to the public.  The wisdom of my
+instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to
+introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the
+catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant,
+of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.
+We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those
+of essence: when we have done with these, we run full drive upon the
+others, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancy
+new offices, to excuse our negligence towards the natural ones, and to
+confound them: and to manifest this, is it not seen that in places where
+faults are crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where the laws
+of decency are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of common
+reason are better observed: the innumerable multitude of so many duties
+stifling and dissipating our care.  The application of ourselves to light
+and trivial things diverts us from those that are necessary and just.
+Oh, how these superficial men take an easy and plausible way in
+comparison of ours!  These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay one
+another; but we do not pay, but inflame the reckoning towards that great
+judge, who tucks up our rags and tatters above our shameful parts, and
+suckles not to view us all over, even to our inmost and most secret
+ordures: it were a useful decency of our maidenly modesty, could it keep
+him from this discovery.  In fine, whoever could reclaim man from so
+scrupulous a verbal superstition, would do the world no great disservice.
+Our life is divided betwixt folly and prudence: whoever will write of it
+but what is reverend and canonical, will leave above the one-half behind.
+I do not excuse myself to myself; and if I did, it should rather be for
+my excuses that I would excuse myself than for any other fault; I excuse
+myself of certain humours, which I think more strong in number than those
+that are on my side.  In consideration of which, I will further say this
+(for I desire to please every one, though it will be hard to do):
+
+          "Esse unum hominem accommodatum ad tantam morum
+          ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem,"
+
+     ["For a man to conform to such a variety of manners,
+     discourses, and will."--Q. Cicero, De Pet. Consul, c. 14.]
+
+that they ought not to condemn me for what I make authorities, received
+and approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason that
+for want of rhyme they should refuse me the liberty they allow even to
+churchmen of our nation and time, and these amongst the most notable, of
+which here are two of their brisk verses:
+
+          "Rimula, dispeream, ni monogramma tua est."
+
+          "Un vit d'amy la contente et bien traicte:"
+
+     [St. Gelais, (Euvres Poetiques, p. 99, ed. of Lyons, 1574.]
+
+besides how many others.  I love modesty; and 'tis not out of judgment
+that I have chosen this scandalous way of speaking; 'tis nature that has
+chosen it for me.  I commend it not, no more than other forms that are
+contrary to common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances both
+general and particular, alleviate its accusation.
+
+But to proceed.  Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereign
+authority you take upon you over the women, who favour you at their own
+expense,
+
+               "Si furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,"
+
+     ["If, in the stealthy night, she has made strange gifts."
+     --Catullus, lxviii. 145.]
+
+so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of a
+husband?  'Tis a free contract why do you not then keep to it, as you
+would have them do?  there is no prescription upon voluntary things.
+'Tis against the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time have
+conducted this bargain as much as the nature of it would permit, as
+conscientiously and with as much colour of justice, as any other
+contract; and that I never pretended other affection than what I really
+had, and have truly acquainted them with its birth, vigour, and
+declination, its fits and intermissions: a man does not always hold on
+at the same rate.  I have been so sparing of my promises, that I think
+I have been better than my word.  They have found me faithful even to
+service of their inconstancy, a confessed and sometimes multiplied
+inconstancy.  I never broke with them, whilst I had any hold at all, and
+what occasion soever they have given me, never broke with them to hatred
+or contempt; for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalous
+terms, do yet oblige to some good will: I have sometimes, upon their
+tricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience;
+for I am naturally subject to rash emotions, which, though light and
+short, often spoil my market.  At any time they have consulted my
+judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and to
+pinch them to the quick.  If I have left them any cause to complain of
+me, 'tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the modern use, a
+love foolishly conscientious than anything else.  I have kept my, word in
+things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimes
+surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they were
+willing enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more than once,
+made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of their
+honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself;
+so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules,
+when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have done
+by their own.  I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon myself
+alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have always
+contrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as less
+suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible.  They are
+chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things
+least feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare
+what nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy.  Never
+had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of
+loving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to our
+people, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall not
+repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose:
+
+                        "Me tabula sacer
+                         Votiva paries, indicat uvida
+                         Suspendisse potenti
+                         Vestimenta maris deo:"
+
+     [" The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
+     wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea."
+     --Horace, Od., i.  5, 13.]
+
+'tis now time to speak out.  But as I might, per adventure, say to
+another, " Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little
+commerce with faith and integrity;"
+
+              "Haec si tu postules
+               Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
+               Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:"
+
+     ["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
+     more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses."
+     --Terence, Eun., act i., sc.  i, v. 16.]
+
+on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it
+should be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soever
+it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an
+incommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, I
+approach so much nearer to my own.  As to the rest, in this traffic, I
+did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it,
+but did not forget myself.  I retained the little sense and discretion
+that nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little
+emotion, but no dotage.  My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to
+debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice,
+and cruelty, never.  I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at
+any price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:
+
+                    "Nullum intra se vitium est."
+
+          ["Nothing is a vice in itself."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
+
+I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome
+and painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep.  I like
+wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows.  I found in
+this commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixt
+these extremes.  Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I was
+neither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover,
+disordered; a man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools.  A young
+man asked the philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to be
+in love?  "Let the wise man look to that," answered he, "but let not thou
+and I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an
+affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to
+ourselves."  He said true that we are not to intrust a thing so
+precipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand its
+assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence
+and love cannot live together.  'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true,
+unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner,
+I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to
+rouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would
+prescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any other
+recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced in
+years, and to defer the approaches of age.  Whilst we are but in the
+suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:
+
+         "Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus,
+          Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me
+          Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo,"
+
+     [Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight
+     shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to
+     spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon."
+     --Juvenal, iii. 26.]
+
+we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation
+as this.  Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the
+good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking
+of an amorous object:
+
+"Leaning," said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as
+we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden
+sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt
+above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart."  So
+that merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a
+soul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind.
+And, pray, why not?  Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem,
+any other thing.  Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures,
+provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a total
+abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that
+are adulterate and strange.  Philosophy says that the appetites of the
+body ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not
+to stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling,
+the belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all
+meats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service of
+love, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the
+body's need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely to
+follow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair.  But have I not
+reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are
+somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in
+a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and
+support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the
+appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.
+
+May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
+that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
+break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should
+carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as
+we do towards that of pain!  Pain was (for example) vehement even to
+perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there
+naturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but little
+part in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barely
+follow and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself with
+grievous and special torments, to the end that by emulation of one
+another the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so much more
+salutiferous as it is more severe.  In like manner, is it not injustice,
+in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it
+must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligation
+and necessity?  'Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to
+present herself, and to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging to
+her; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper
+to her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is
+capable of, and to study how to make them sweet and useful to it.  For it
+is good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue its
+appetites to the prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also the reason
+that the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of the body?
+
+I have no other passion to keep me in breath.  What avarice, ambition,
+quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular
+vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me
+vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure
+my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and
+dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon
+sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and
+esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and
+redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome
+thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill
+posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again,
+in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up
+the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of
+life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin.  But I
+very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness
+and long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask
+most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve
+to be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we 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,
+               Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret."
+
+     ["In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the
+     young tree on the hills."--Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]
+
+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 cineres facem."
+
+     ["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
+     torch worn to ashes."--Horace, Od., iv.  13, 21.]
+
+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,"--["Do good for yourself."]-- 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 like fortune will render more easy to your desire."  O ridiculous
+and insipid composition!
+
+                                   "Nolo
+                    Barbam vellere mortuo leoni."
+
+          ["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."--Martial]
+
+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 pitiful and imperfect conjunction;
+
+     [Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
+     with a deformed creature."]
+
+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 to cernere possim,
+               Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis,
+               Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"
+
+     [Ovid, who (Ex.  Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the
+     gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to
+     thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]
+
+Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon,
+a young boy 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."
+
+     [Diogenes Laertius, iv.  3¢.  The question was whether a wise man
+     could love him.  Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios."]
+
+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,
+                    Mille sagaces falleret hospites,
+                    Discrimen obscurum, solutis
+                    Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"
+
+     ["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would
+     require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks
+     and ambiguous countenance."--Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]
+
+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'-[Plutarch, On Love, c.34.]--
+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
+                    Quercus."
+
+               ["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks."
+               --Horace, Od., iv. 13, 9.]
+
+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 their
+ways for insufficiency there novices rule:
+
+                         "Amor ordinem nescit."
+
+          ["Love ignores rules." (Or:) "Love knows no rule."
+          --St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.
+
+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 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 praelia ventum est,
+               Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis,
+               Incassum furit:"
+
+     ["For when they sometimes engage in love's battle,
+     his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw."
+     --Virgil, Georg., iii.  98.]
+
+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,
+
+              "Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum
+               Procurrit casto virginis a gremio,
+               Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat,
+               Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur,
+               Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu
+               Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor."
+
+     ["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.]
+
+I 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 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,
+
+               "Le fourgon se moque de la paele."
+                  ["The Pot and the Kettle."]
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused
+A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted
+Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes
+Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age
+Certain other things that people hide only to show them
+Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act
+Dearness is a good sauce to meat
+Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold
+Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination
+Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge
+Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure
+Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it
+First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time
+Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.
+Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture
+Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms
+Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint
+Have ever had a great respect for her I loved
+Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears
+Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault
+Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong
+I am apt to dream that I dream
+I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought
+I had much rather die than live upon charity.
+I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence
+If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me
+If they can only be kind to us out of pity
+In everything else a man may keep some decorum
+In those days, the tailor took measure of it
+Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both
+Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation
+Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden
+It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in
+Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience
+Judgment of duty principally lies in the will
+Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs
+"Let a man take which course he will," said he; "he will repent."
+Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think
+Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty
+Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage
+Love them the less for our own faults
+Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty
+Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance
+Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love
+Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help
+Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known
+Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer)
+Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice
+Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire
+No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active
+O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime
+O, the furious advantage of opportunity!
+Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect
+One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare
+Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune
+Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport
+Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing
+Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride
+Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture
+Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will
+Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so
+Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus
+Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us
+Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level
+Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise
+Sins that make the least noise are the worst
+Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul
+Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe
+The best authors too much humble and discourage me
+The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor
+The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age
+Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools
+There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude
+These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous
+They better conquer us by flying
+They buy a cat in a sack
+They err as much who too much forbear Venus
+They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us
+They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers
+Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear
+Those within (marriage) despair of getting out
+Tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces
+To what friend dare you intrust your griefs
+Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband
+Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours
+Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous
+Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality
+We ask most when we bring least
+We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary.
+When jealousy seizes these poor souls
+When their eyes give the lie to their tongue
+Who escapes being talked of at the same rate
+Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation
+Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Montaigne, V15
+By Michel de Montaigne
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of  The Essays of Montaigne, V15
+#15 in our series by Michel de Montaigne, Translator: Cotton
+Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, 1877
+
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+Title: The Essays of Montaigne, V15
+
+Author: Michel de Montaigne
+
+Official Release Date: October, 2002 [Etext #3595]
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+[The actual date this file first posted = 05/28/01]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, V15
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+
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
+
+Translated by Charles Cotton
+
+Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
+
+1877
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOLUME 15.
+
+V.  Upon Some verses of Virgil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  V.
+
+By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are
+they also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are
+grave and grievous subjects.  A man should have his soul instructed in
+the means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules of
+living and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this
+noble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with
+moderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon
+it.  I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind and
+solicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say,
+so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present
+in another state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urge
+me to wisdom, and preach to me.  From the excess of sprightliness I am
+fallen into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and for
+that reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run into
+disorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith
+it diverts itself.  I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too
+ripe; years every day read to me lectures of coldness and temperance.
+This body of mine avoids disorder and dreads it; 'tis now my body's turn
+to guide my mind towards reformation; it governs, in turn, and more
+rudely and imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour alone,
+sleeping or waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, and
+repentance.  I now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly done
+from pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity.  Now I
+will be master of myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has its
+excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.  Therefore, lest
+I should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in the
+intervals and truces my infirmities allow me:
+
+               "Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis."
+
+     ["That my mind may not eternally be intent upon my ills."
+     --Ovid., Trist., iv. i, 4.]
+
+I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I
+have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but not
+without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my
+better years:
+
+                          "Animus quo perdidit, optat,
+               Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat."
+
+     ["The mind wishes to have what it has lost, and throws itself
+     wholly into memories of the past."--Petronius, c. 128.]
+
+Let childhood look forward and age backward; was not this the
+signification of Janus' double face?  Let years draw me along if they
+will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the
+pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though
+it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image
+of it out of my memory:
+
+                                        "Hoc est
+                    Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."
+
+     ["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy one's former life again."
+     --Martial, x. 23, 7.]
+
+Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances,
+and sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for the
+activity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to
+mind the grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in
+these recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that young
+man who has most diverted the company.  I was formerly wont to mark
+cloudy and gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days;
+the extraordinary are the clear and bright; I am ready to leap for joy,
+as for an unwonted favour, when nothing happens me.  Let me tickle
+myself, I cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine;
+I am only merry in conceit and in dreaming, by artifice to divert the
+melancholy of age; but, in faith, it requires another remedy than a
+dream.  A weak contest of art against nature.  'Tis great folly to
+lengthen and anticipate human incommodities, as every one does; I had
+rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so.' I seize on
+even the least occasions of pleasure I can meet.  I know very well, by
+hearsay, several sorts of prudent pleasures, effectually so, and glorious
+to boot; but opinion has not power enough over me to give me an appetite
+to them.  I covet not so much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and
+pompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile, and ready:
+
+               "A natura discedimus; populo nos damus,
+               nullius rei bono auctori."
+
+     ["We depart from nature and give ourselves to the people, who
+     understand nothing."--Seneca, Ep., 99.]
+
+My philosophy is in action, in natural and present practice, very little
+in fancy: what if I should take pleasure in playing at cob-nut or to whip
+a top!
+
+               "Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem."
+
+     ["He did not sacrifice his health even to rumours." Ennius, apud
+     Cicero, De Offic., i. 24]
+
+Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition; it thinks itself rich
+enough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleased
+where most retired.  A young man should be whipped who pretends to a
+taste in wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less
+valued or knew: now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on't; but
+what should I do?  I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put
+me upon't.  'Tis for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for young
+men to stand upon their reputation and nice punctilios; they are going
+towards the world and the world's opinion; we are retiring from it:
+
+     "Sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam,
+     sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus, ex lusionibus
+     multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;"
+
+     ["Let them reserve to themselves arms, horses, spears, clubs,
+     tennis, swimming, and races; and of all the sports leave to us old
+     men cards and dice."--Cicero, De Senec., c. 16.]
+
+the laws themselves send us home.  I can do no less in favour of this
+wretched condition into which my age has thrown me than furnish it with
+toys to play withal, as they do children; and, in truth, we become such.
+Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by
+alternate services in this calamity of age:
+
+               "Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem."
+
+          ["Mingle with counsels a brief interval of folly."
+          --Horace, Od., iv. 12, 27.]
+
+I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly would
+not have rippled the skin, now pierce me through and through: my habit of
+body is now so naturally declining to ill:
+
+          "In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;"
+
+          ["In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious."
+          --Cicero, De Senec., c.  18.]
+
+          "Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil."
+
+     ["And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion."
+     --Ovid, De Ponto., i.  5, 18.]
+
+I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more
+tender now, and open throughout.
+
+               "Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent."
+
+     ["And little force suffices to break what was cracked before."
+     --Ovid, De Tris., iii. 11, 22.]
+
+My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the
+inconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take away
+my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be
+merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one
+good year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity.  A melancholic and dull
+tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am
+not contented with it.  If there be any person, any knot of good company
+in country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, who
+can like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistle
+and I will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone:
+
+Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I
+advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue
+green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree.  But I
+fear 'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the
+body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need.  I
+wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from
+this correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and
+ladies and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems to
+have it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its
+own cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied
+and asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be not
+at the same time an equal proportion in the body too.
+
+Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the
+extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine
+ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also
+attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health,
+such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me
+withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes
+that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all
+enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.
+
+It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit,
+and produce a contrary effect:
+
+          "Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;"
+
+     ["When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing."
+     (Or:) "It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body."
+     --Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.]
+
+and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out,
+much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men of
+my age.  Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommodities
+and difficulties from our commerce:
+
+          "Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:"
+
+     ["Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow."
+     --Herod., Ep., xiii. 7.]
+
+               "Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus."
+
+     ["Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant."
+     --Sidonius Apollin., Ep., i. 9.]
+
+I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of
+manners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me:
+
+               "Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:"
+
+          ["The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face."--Auctor Incert.]
+
+               "Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos."
+
+          ["And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries." (Or:)
+          "An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind."
+          --Idem.]
+
+I am very much of Plato's opinion, who says that facile or harsh humours
+are great indications of the good or ill disposition of the mind.
+Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly
+austere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh.  Virtue is a
+pleasant and gay quality.
+
+I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings,
+who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts:
+I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their
+eyes.  'Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his
+pretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:
+
+               "Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire."
+
+     ["Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think."]
+
+I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips over all the pleasures of
+life and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stick
+to a smooth and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggy
+and rough places, and like cupping-glasses, that only suck and attract
+bad blood.
+
+As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to
+do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst
+of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it evil
+and base not to dare to own them.  Every one is wary and discreet in
+confession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing ill
+is in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing
+it.  Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do
+nothing that he must be forced to conceal.  I wish that this excessive
+licence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing
+virtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my
+immoderation I may reduce them to reason.  A man must see and study his
+vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it
+from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see
+it: they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences:
+
+     "Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur?  Quia etiam nunc in
+     illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est."
+
+     ["Why does no man confess his vices?  because he is yet in them;
+     'tis for a waking man to tell his dream."--Seneca, Ep., 53.]
+
+The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find
+that to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of
+the soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure;
+the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with an
+unrelenting hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened,
+and torn from the hollow of the heart.  As in doing well, so in doing
+ill, the mere confession is sometimes satisfaction.  Is there any
+deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?
+It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of
+another's secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge.  I can
+keep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violence
+to myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, not
+by obligation.  'Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be
+secret, if a man be not a liar to boot.  If he who asked Thales the
+Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed
+adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he ought
+not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other.
+Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield the
+greater fault by the less;
+
+     [Montaigne's memory here serves him ill, for the question being put
+     to Thales, his answer was: "But is not perjury worse than
+     adultery?"--Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36.]
+
+nevertheless, this counsel was not so much an election as a
+multiplication of vice.  Upon which let us say this in passing, that we
+deal liberally with a man of conscience when we propose to him some
+difficulty in counterpoise of vice; but when we shut him up betwixt two
+vices, he is put to a hard choice as Origen was either to idolatrise or
+to suffer himself to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave they
+brought to him.  He submitted to the first condition, and wrongly, people
+say.  Yet those women of our times are not much out, according to their
+error, who protest they had rather burden their consciences with ten men
+than one mass.
+
+If it be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great
+danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said,  that the
+winds men most fear are those that lay them open.  We must tuck up this
+ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the
+stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins
+espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty.  So that neither
+can injustice complain of incivility, nor malice of indiscretion.  'Tis
+pity but a bad man should be a fool to boot, and that outward decency
+should palliate his vice: this rough-cast only appertains to a good and
+sound wall, that deserves to be preserved and whited.
+
+In favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private
+confession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely: St.
+Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their
+opinions; I, moreover, of my manners.  I am greedy of making myself
+known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or to say
+better, I hunger for nothing; but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those
+who happen to learn my name.  He who does all things for honour and
+glory, what can he think to gain by shewing himself to the world in a
+vizor, and by concealing his true being from the people?  Praise a
+humpback for his stature, he has reason to take it for an affront:
+if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you
+they speak?  They take you for another.  I should like him as well who
+glorifies himself in the compliments and congees that are made him as if
+he were master of the company, when he is one of the least of the train.
+Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw
+water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish:
+"Aye, but," said he, "whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me,
+but upon him whom he took me to be."  Socrates being told that people
+spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he, "there is nothing, in me of what
+they say."
+
+For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being
+very modest or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoever
+should call me traitor, robber, or drunkard, I should be as little
+concerned.  They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselves
+with false approbations; not I, who see myself, and who examine myself
+even to my very bowels, and who very well know what is my due.  I am
+content to be less commended, provided I am better known.  I may be
+reputed a wise man in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.
+I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common piece of
+furniture, and a piece for the hall; this chapter will make me part of
+the water-closet.  I love to traffic with them a little in private;
+public conversation is without favour and without savour.  In farewells,
+we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leave
+of; I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world: these are our
+last embraces.
+
+But let us come to my subject: what has the act of generation, so
+natural, so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not to
+be spoken of without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious and
+moderate discourse?   We boldly pronounce kill, rob, betray, and that we
+dare only to do betwixt the teeth.  Is it to say, the less we expend in
+words, we may pay so much the more in thinking?  For it is certain that
+the words least in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the
+best and most generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them,
+no more than the word bread they imprint themselves in every one without
+being, expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that
+most practises it is bound to say least of it.  'Tis an act that we have
+placed in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime even
+to accuse and judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasis
+and picture.  A great favour to a criminal to be so execrable that
+justice thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free, and safe by the
+benefit of the severity of his condemnation.  Is it not here as in matter
+of books, that sell better and become more public for being suppressed?
+For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that
+"bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age."  These
+verses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much more
+adhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, and
+the vices less:
+
+              "Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent,
+               Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent."
+
+     ["They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too
+     frequent in her rites."--A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A
+     philosopher should converse with princes.]
+
+              "Tu, dea, rerum naturam sola gubernas,
+               Nec sine to quicquam dias in luminis oras
+               Exoritur, neque fit laetum, nec amabile quidquam."
+
+     ["Goddess, still thou alone governest nature, nor without thee
+     anything comes into light; nothing is pleasant, nothing joyful."
+     --Lucretius, i. 22.]
+
+I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, and
+make them cold towards Love; but I see no deities so well met, or that
+are more indebted to one another.  Who will deprive the Muses of amorous
+imaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and of
+the noblest matter of their work: and who will make Love lose the
+communication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons:
+by this means they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and the
+protecting goddesses of humanity and justice, with the vice of
+ingratitude and unthankfulness.  I have not been so long cashiered from
+the state and service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect in
+his force and value:
+
+               "Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae;"
+
+     ["I recognise vestiges of my old flame."--AEneid., iv. 23.]
+
+There are yet some remains of heat and emotion after the fever:
+
+          "Nec mihi deficiat calor hic, hiemantibus annis!"
+
+     ["Nor let this heat of youth fail me in my winter years."]
+
+Withered and drooping as I am, I feel yet some remains of the past
+ardour:
+
+              "Qual l'alto Egeo, per the Aquilone o Noto
+               Cessi, the tutto prima il volse et scosse,
+               Non 's accheta ei pero; ma'l suono e'l moto
+               Ritien del l'onde anco agitate e grosse:"
+
+          ["As Aegean seas, when storms be calmed again,
+          That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blasts,
+          Do yet of tempests passed some show retain,
+          And here and there their swelling billows cast."--Fairfax.]
+
+but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god are
+more lively and animated in the picture of poesy than in their own
+essence:
+
+                    "Et versus digitos habet:"
+
+          ["Verse has fingers."--Altered from Juvenal, iv. 196.]
+
+it has I know not what kind of air, more amorous than love itself.  Venus
+is not so beautiful, naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil:
+
+         "Dixerat; et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis
+          Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet.  Ille repente
+          Accepit solitam flammam; notusque medullas
+          Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit
+          Non secus atque olim tonitru, cum rupta corusco
+          Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.
+          . . . . . .  Ea verba loquutus,
+          Optatos dedit amplexus; placidumque petivit
+          Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem."
+
+     ["The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft
+     embraces, caresses him hesitating.  Suddenly he caught the wonted
+     flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran
+     thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with
+     thunder, a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the
+     skies.  Having spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace,
+     and in the bosom of his spouse sought placid sleep."
+     --AEneid, viii.  387 and 392.]
+
+All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented
+her a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of
+coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.
+Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but
+faintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as
+marriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more
+than grace and beauty.  Men do not marry for themselves, let them say
+what they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity and
+family; the custom and interest of marriage concern our race much more
+than us; and therefore it is, that I like to have a match carried on by a
+third hand rather than a man's own, and by another man's liking than that
+of the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the
+conventions of love?  And also it is a kind of incest to employ in this
+venerable and sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorous
+licence, as I think I have said elsewhere.  A man, says Aristotle, must
+approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too
+lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of
+reason.  What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say
+upon the account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious,
+voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders
+conception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as
+this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must
+do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:
+
+          "Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."
+
+     ["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in
+     his bosom."--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]
+
+I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
+those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
+there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
+proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
+nothing.
+
+They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
+like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
+virtue.  They are indeed things that have some relation to one another,
+but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names
+and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them.  Nobility is a
+brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a
+quality depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in
+himself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below virtue';
+
+     ["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein
+     not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter."
+     --La Byuyere.]
+
+'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending
+upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living
+and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;
+of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
+Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
+fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,
+and of no use to the service of others.  There was proposed to one of our
+kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was
+a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,
+they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the
+competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect
+to birth: this was justly to give it its rank.  A young man unknown,
+coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man
+lately dead: "Friend," said he," in such preferments as these, I have not
+so much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess."
+And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings
+of Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always
+succeeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred before
+the most experienced in the trade.  They of Calicut make of nobles a sort
+of superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike
+employments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women as
+many lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital and
+irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions than
+themselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touched
+one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellously
+interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too
+near them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk,
+like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of
+jostling; and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they
+please: by that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy,
+those certain death.  No time, no favour of the prince, no office, or
+virtue, or riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: to
+which this custom contributes, that marriages are interdicted betwixt
+different trades; the daughter of one of the cordwainers' gild is not
+permitted to marry a carpenter; and parents are obliged to train up their
+children precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any other
+trade; by which means the distinction and continuance of their fortunes
+are maintained.
+
+A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditions
+of love, and tries to represent those of friendship.  'Tis a sweet
+society of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of
+useful and solid services and mutual obligations; which any woman who has
+a right taste:
+
+                    "Optato quam junxit lumine taeda"--
+
+     ["Whom the marriage torch has joined with the desired light."
+     --Catullus, lxiv. 79.]
+
+would be loth to serve her husband in quality of a mistress.  If she be
+lodged in his affection as a wife, she is more honourably and securely
+placed.  When he purports to be in love with another, and works all he
+can to obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rather
+a disgrace should fall, his wife or his mistress, which of their
+misfortunes would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes the
+most grandeur, the answer to these questions is out of dispute in a sound
+marriage.
+
+And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and
+value.  If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human
+societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it.
+It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those
+within despair of getting out.  Socrates being asked, whether it was more
+commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will,"
+said he; "he will repent."  'Tis a contract to which the common
+saying:
+
+                    "Homo homini aut deus aut lupus,"
+
+          ["Man to man is either a god or a wolf."--Erasmus, Adag.]
+
+may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualities
+in the construction.  It is found nowadays more convenient for simple and
+plebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do not so much
+disturb it; but extravagant humours, such as mine, that hate all sorts of
+obligation and restraint, are not so proper for it:
+
+               "Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo."
+
+          ["And it is sweet to me to live with a loosened neck."
+          --Pseudo Gallus, i. 61.]
+
+Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if
+she would have had me.  But 'tis to much purpose to evade it; the common
+custom and usance of life will have it so.  The most of my actions are
+guided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my own
+voluntary motion; I was led and drawn to it by extrinsic occasions; for
+not only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also things
+however ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable by
+some condition or accident; so unsteady and vain is all human resolution!
+and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared and less tractable than I
+am at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine as
+I am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws of
+marriage, than I either promised or expected.  'Tis in vain to kick, when
+a man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his
+liberty; but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himself
+within the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it.
+They who engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in it
+with hatred and contempt, do an unjust and inconvenient thing; and the
+fine rule that I hear pass from hand to hand amongst the women, as a
+sacred oracle:
+
+     ["Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as
+     from a traitor."]
+
+which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical,
+and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equally
+injurious and hard.  I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say the
+truth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of
+wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule and
+order that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do
+not presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion.
+
+     (If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion.  D.W.)
+
+If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and
+acknowledge it; 'tis treachery to marry without espousing.
+
+Let us proceed.
+
+Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord wherein
+nevertheless there is not much loyalty.  Does he mean, that it is not
+impossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield
+to the importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage,
+and that it may be hurt, without being totally broken?  A serving man may
+cheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate.  Beauty,
+opportunity, and destiny (for destiny has also a hand in't),
+
+                         "Fatum est in partibus illis
+          Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent,
+          Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;"
+
+     ["There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have
+     endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star
+     fails you in the nick of time."--Juvenal, ix. 32.]
+
+have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but
+that she may have some remains of kindness for her husband.  They are two
+designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being
+confounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no
+means have married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but for
+those also of his person.  Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who
+have not repented it.  And even in the other world, what an unhappy life
+does Jupiter lead with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress!
+'Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one's
+head.  I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and
+dishonestly cured by marriage: the considerations are widely different.
+We love at once, without any tie, two things contrary in themselves.
+
+Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased, as ladies do
+whom men court for love; every one loved to come thither to take a turn,
+and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it,
+that is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence.  I have
+been vexed to see husbands hate their wives only because they themselves
+do them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the less
+for our own faults; they should at least, upon the account of repentance
+and compassion, be dearer to us.
+
+They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible;
+marriage has utility, justice, honour, and constancy for its share;
+a flat, but more universal pleasure: love founds itself wholly upon
+pleasure, and, indeed, has it more full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure
+inflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and smart: 'tis no
+longer love, if without darts and fire.  The bounty of ladies is too
+profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire: to
+evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato
+take in their laws.
+
+Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life that
+are introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men make them without
+their help.  There is naturally contention and brawling betwixt them and
+us; and the strictest friendship we have with them is yet mixed with
+tumult and tempest.  In the opinion of our author, we deal
+inconsiderately with them in this: after we have discovered that they
+are, without comparison, more able and ardent in the practice of love
+than we, and that the old priest testified as much, who had been one
+while a man, and then a woman:
+
+                    "Venus huic erat utraque nota:"
+
+               ["Both aspects of love were known to him,"
+               --Tiresias. Ovid.  Metam., iii. 323.]
+
+and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that,
+in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome,--[Proclus.]
+--both famous for ability in that affair!  for he in one night deflowered
+ten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had five-and-twenty
+bouts in one night, changing her man according to her need and liking;
+
+                    "Adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae
+               Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit:"
+
+          ["Ardent still, she retired, fatigued, but not satisfied."
+          --Juvenal, vi. 128.]
+
+and that upon the dispute which happened in Cataluna, wherein a wife
+complaining of her husband's too frequent addresses to her, not so much,
+as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no miracles
+out of religion) as under this pretence, to curtail and curb in this,
+which is the fundamental act of marriage, the authority of husbands over
+their wives, and to shew that their frowardness and malignity go beyond
+the nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets of
+Venus; the husband, a man truly brutish and unnatural, replied, that even
+on fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses:
+whereupon came out that notable sentence of the Queen of Arragon, by
+which, after mature deliberation of her council, this good queen, to give
+a rule and example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required in
+a just marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessary
+stint; surrendering and quitting a great deal of the needs and desires of
+her sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, a
+permanent and immutable rule.  Hereupon the doctors cry out: what must
+the female appetite and concupiscence be, when their reason, their
+reformation and virtue, are taxed at such a rate, considering the divers
+judgments of our appetites?  for Solon, master of the law school, taxes
+us but at three a month,--that men may not fail in point of conjugal
+frequentation: after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we go
+and enjoin them continency for their particular share, and upon the last
+and extreme penalties.
+
+There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would have
+them only resist, not simply as an ordinary vice, but as an execrable
+abomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; whilst we, at the same
+time, go to't without offence or reproach.  Even those amongst us who
+have tried the experiment have sufficiently confessed what difficulty, or
+rather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to subdue,
+weaken, and cool the body.  We, on the contrary, would have them at once
+sound, vigorous plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and
+cold; for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning,
+is but small refreshment to them, as we order the matter.  If they take
+one whose vigorous age is yet boiling, he will be proud to make it known
+elsewhere;
+
+                   "Sit tandem pudor; aut eamus in jus;
+                    Multis mentula millibus redempta,
+                    Non est haec tua, Basse; vendidisti;"
+
+     ["Let there be some shame, or we shall go to law: your vigour,
+     bought by your wife with many thousands, is no longer yours: thou
+     hast sold it.--"Martial, xii. 90.]
+
+Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judge
+for sowing in a barren field the seed that was due to one that was
+fruitful:  if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in
+a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows.  We think them
+well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans
+concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had
+approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her:
+but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as
+the touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that in
+solitude would be more quiet.  And to the end, 'tis likely, that they
+might render their chastity more meritorious by this circumstance and
+consideration, Boleslas and Kinge his wife, kings of Poland, vowed it by
+mutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, and
+kept their vow in spite of all matrimonial conveniences.
+
+We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace,
+dressing, knowledge, language, and whole instruction tend that way: their
+governesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothing
+else but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distaste
+for it.  My daughter, the only child I have, is now of an age that
+forward young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin,
+and tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her mother
+after a retired and particular manner, so that she but now begins to be
+weaned from her childish simplicity.  She was reading before me in a
+French book where the word 'fouteau', the name of a tree very well known,
+occurred;--[The beech-tree; the name resembles in sound an obscene
+French word.]--the woman, to whose conduct she is committed, stopped her
+short a little roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous step.  I
+let her alone, not to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself in
+that sort of government; feminine polity has a mysterious procedure; we
+must leave it to them; but if I am not mistaken the commerce of twenty
+lacquies could not, in six months' time, have so imprinted in her memory
+the meaning, usage, and all the consequence of the sound of these wicked
+syllables, as this good old woman did by reprimand and interdiction.
+
+                   "Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
+                    Matura virgo, et frangitur artibus;
+                    Jam nunc et incestos amores
+                    De tenero, meditatur ungui."
+
+     ["The maid ripe for marriage delights to learn Ionic dances, and to
+     imitate those lascivious movements.  Nay, already from her infancy
+     she meditates criminal amours."--Horace, Od., iii.  6, 21., the text
+     has 'fingitur'.]
+
+Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter into
+liberty of discourse, we are but children to them in this science.  Hear
+them but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well make
+you understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, and
+digested without our help.
+
+     [This sentence refers to a conversation between some young women in
+     his immediate neighbourhood, which the Essayist just below informs
+     us that he overheard, and which was too shocking for him to repeat.
+     It must have been tolerably bad.--Remark by the editor of a later
+     edition.]
+
+Is it, perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauched
+young fellows?  I happened one day to be in a place where I could hear
+some of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it.
+By'rlady, said I, we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and the
+tales of Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse with them: we
+employ our time to much purpose indeed.  There is neither word, example,
+nor step they are not more perfect in than our books; 'tis a discipline
+that springs with their blood,
+
+                    "Et mentem ipsa Venus dedit,"
+
+               [" Venus herself made them what they are,"
+               --Virg., Georg., iii. 267.]
+
+which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health, are continually
+inspiring them with; they need not learn, they breed it:
+
+              "Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo,
+               Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius,
+               Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro,
+               Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier."
+
+     ["No milk-white dove, or if there be a thing more lascivious,
+     takes so much delight in kissing as woman, wishful for every man
+     she sees."--Catullus, lxvi. 125.]
+
+So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little
+restrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, we
+should be all shamed.  All the motions in the world resolve into and tend
+to this conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a centre to
+which all things are directed.  We yet see the edicts of the old and wise
+Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the
+instruction of courtezans:
+
+                   "Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos
+                    Jacere pulvillos amant:"
+
+          ["There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon
+          silken cushions."--Horace, Epod., viii. 15.]
+
+Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in
+getting a maidenhead.  What was the philosopher Strato's book Of Carnal
+Conjunction?--[ Diogenes Laertius, v.  59.]--And what did Theophrastus
+treat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the other 'Of
+Love?'  Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'?  What do the so
+long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretend
+to?  and the book called 'The Lover', of Demetrius Phalereus? and
+'Clinias', or the 'Ravished Lover', of Heraclides; and that of
+Antisthenes, 'Of Getting Children', or, 'Of Weddings', and the other,
+'Of the Master or the Lover'?  And that of Aristo: 'Of Amorous Exercises'
+What those of Cleanthes: one, 'Of Love', the other, 'Of the Art of
+Loving'?  The amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter
+and Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration?  And his fifty
+so lascivious epistles?  I will let alone the writings of the
+philosophers of the Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness.  Fifty
+deities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have been
+nations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion,
+they kept men and women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with;
+and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:
+
+     "Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est;
+     incendium ignibus extinguitur."
+
+     ["Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency's sake; a
+     conflagration is extinguished by fire."]
+
+In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified;
+in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a
+piece; others offered and consecrated their seed.  In another, the young
+men publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part in
+several places, and thrust pieces of wood into the openings as long and
+thick as they would receive, and of these pieces of wood afterwards made
+a fire as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorous
+nor chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain they seemed to be at all
+dismayed.  Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced and
+acknowledged by that member and in several ceremonies the effigy of it
+was carried in pomp to the honour of various divinities.  The Egyptian
+ladies, in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finely-carved of wood
+about their necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besides
+which, the statue of their god presented one, which in greatness
+surpassed all the rest of his body.--[Herodotus, ii.  48, says "nearly
+as large as the body itself."]--The married women, near the place where
+I live, make of their kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads,
+to glorify themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and coming to be
+widows, they throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths.  The
+most modest matrons of Rome thought it an honour to offer flowers and
+garlands to the god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the time of
+their espousals, sit upon his shameful parts.  And I know not whether I
+have not in my time seen some air of like devotion.  What was the meaning
+of that ridiculous piece of the chaussuye of our forefathers, and that is
+still worn by our Swiss? ["Cod-pieces worn"--Cotton]--To what end do we
+make a show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often,
+which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?
+I have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in
+the better and more conscientious ages, that the world might not be
+deceived, and that every one should give a public account of his
+proportions: the simple nations wear them yet, and near about the real
+size.  In those days, the tailor took measure of it, as the shoemaker
+does now of a man's foot.  That good man, who, when I was young, gelded
+so many noble and ancient statues in his great city, that they might not
+corrupt the sight of the ladies, according to the advice of this other
+ancient worthy:
+
+          "Flagitii principium est, nudare inter gives corpora,"
+
+     ["'Tis the beginning of wickedness to expose their persons among the
+     citizens"--Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]
+
+should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea,
+all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geld
+horses and asses, in short, all nature:
+
+         "Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque,
+          Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,
+          In furias ignemque ruunt."
+
+          ["So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame,
+          and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love."
+          --Virgil, Georg., iii. 244.]
+
+The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member
+that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite,
+to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a
+greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows
+wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops
+the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till,
+having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed
+the bottom of their matrix.  Now my legislator--[The Pope who, as
+Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]--
+should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and
+more fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than
+permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own
+fancy; instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and
+desire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certain
+friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the
+opportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use.  What
+mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys
+make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the
+ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture.  And what do we know
+but that Plato, after other well-instituted republics, ordered that the
+men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view
+of one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account?  The
+Indian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooled
+the sense of seeing.  And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what
+they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth
+slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they
+pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention
+to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that
+nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than
+they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more
+sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes.  Livia was wont to say,
+that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue.  The Lacedaemonian
+women, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the
+young men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves
+little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves,
+says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe.
+But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful
+power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day
+of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours,
+for fear of tempting us again in that holy state.  In brief, we allure
+and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir up
+their imagination, and then we find fault.  Let us confess the truth;
+there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame that
+accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is not
+more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuous
+wife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, and
+that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not be
+more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices.  Both we and
+they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural
+than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to
+our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.
+
+The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this
+vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages
+it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go
+to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation,
+rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so
+difficult a guard.  Do not they very well see that there is neither
+merchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after this
+sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with
+labour and hunger?
+
+                   "Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes,
+                    Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes,
+                    Permutare velis crine Licymnim?
+                    Plenas aut Arabum domos,
+                    Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula
+                    Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat,
+                    Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,
+                    Interdum rapere occupet?"
+
+     ["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had,
+     or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of
+     Licymnia's hair?  or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns
+     her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger
+     denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and
+     sometimes herself snatches one!"--Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]
+
+I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass
+the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in
+the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary
+examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand
+continual and powerful solicitations.  There is no doing more difficult
+than that not doing, nor more active:
+
+I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's life
+than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most
+noble, as being the hardest to keep:
+
+               "Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,"
+
+says St.  Jerome.  We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most
+difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to
+them the glory too.  This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;
+'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain
+pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they
+will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more
+esteemed for it, but also much more beloved.  A gallant man does not give
+over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity,
+and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;
+we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no
+allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed.  'Tis stupidity
+and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a
+virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exercise
+of a noble and generous soul.  They may acknowledge our service to a
+certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us
+not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them,
+and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for
+the difficulty of it.  Why should they not give ear to our offers and
+requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?
+wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be
+worse than they seem?  A queen of our time said with spirit, "that to
+refuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a self-
+accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her chastity
+who was never tempted."
+
+The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a
+little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the
+frontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter.  He that has beaten
+and pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied
+with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the
+difficulty.  Would you know what impression your service and merit have
+made in her heart?  Judge of it by her behaviour.  Such an one may grant
+more, who does not grant so much.  The obligation of a benefit wholly
+relates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincident
+circumstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant
+you that little, than it would do her companion to grant all.  If in
+anything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do not
+consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give;
+the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the
+place.  Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in
+the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all
+the advantage.  I have known some whose reputation has for a great while
+suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world's
+universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;
+every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and
+said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced
+to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour.  Somebody told Plato that
+all the world spoke ill of him.  "Let them talk," said he; "I will live
+so as to make them change their note."  Besides the fear of God, and the
+value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves,
+the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I were
+they, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputation
+in so dangerous hands.  In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasure
+little inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who had
+some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and common
+table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secret
+liberality of ladies.  In earnest, 'tis too abject, too much meanness of
+spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headed
+people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charming
+favours.
+
+This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice
+springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human
+minds, which is jealousy:
+
+              "Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?
+               Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;"
+
+     ["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?
+     Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose."--Ovid, De
+     Arte Amandi, iii. 93.  The measure of the last line is not good;
+     but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled
+     Priapus.]
+
+she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole
+troop.  As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a passion that,
+though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me.  As to
+the other, I know it by sight, and that's all.  Beasts feel it; the
+shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out
+of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and
+crushed it.  We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the
+examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been
+touched with it, and 'tis reason, but not transported:
+
+              "Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter
+               Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas."
+
+               ["Never did adulterer slain by a husband
+               stain with purple blood the Stygian waters."]
+
+Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were
+cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in
+those days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife
+had used him so.
+
+              "Ah! tum te miserum malique fati,
+               Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
+               Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"
+
+     ["Wretched man!  when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be
+     dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment
+     of thy adultery."--Catullus, xv. 17.]
+
+and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his
+wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,
+
+               "Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
+               Sic fieri turpis:"
+
+          ["And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself
+          like to be so disgraced."--Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]
+
+and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him;
+complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his
+affection:
+
+               "Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit
+               Quo tibi, diva, mei?"
+
+     ["Dost thou seek causes from above?  Why, goddess, has your
+     confidence in me ceased?"--Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]
+
+nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers,
+
+                    "Arena rogo genitrix nato."
+
+          ["I, a mother, ask armour for a son."--Idem, ibid., 383.]
+
+which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,
+
+                    "Arma acri facienda viro,"
+
+     ["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."--AEneid, viii. 441.]
+
+with, in truth, a more than human humanity.  And I am willing to leave
+this excess of kindness to the gods:
+
+               "Nec divis homines componier aequum est."
+
+          ["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods."
+          --Catullus, lxviii. 141.]
+
+As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators
+ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where
+this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:
+
+               "Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
+               Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."
+
+     ["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her
+     husband's daily infidelities."--Idem, ibid.]
+
+When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance,
+'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it
+insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it
+has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of
+good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred.  'Tis, of all the
+diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and
+the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the
+husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:
+
+          "Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."
+
+          ["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."
+          (Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"
+          --Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]
+
+This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good
+besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste
+and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and
+wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity
+quite contrary to its cause.  This held good with one Octavius at Rome.
+Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and
+solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this
+excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and
+mortal hatred: he killed her.  In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of
+this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,
+and cabals:
+
+               "Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"
+
+     ["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."
+     --AEneid, V. 21.]
+
+and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to
+excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.
+
+Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it the will that we
+would have them restrain?  This is a very supple and active thing; a
+thing very nimble, to be stayed.  How? if dreams sometimes engage them so
+far that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in
+chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust and
+desire.  If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in,
+then?  Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men in
+pursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes,
+into every woman's arms who would accept them.  The Scythian women put
+out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might
+have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser.  O, the furious
+advantage of opportunity!  Should any one ask me, what was the first
+thing to be considered in love matters, I should answer that it was how
+to take a fitting time; and so the second; and so the third--'tis a point
+that can do everything.  I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have also
+sometimes been wanting to myself in matters of attempt.  God help him,
+who yet makes light of this!  There is greater temerity required in this
+age of ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; but
+should women examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather
+proceeds from contempt.  I was always superstitiously afraid of giving
+offence, and have ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, he
+who in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time
+the lustre.  I would in this affair have a man a little play the child,
+the timorous, and the servant.  If not this, I have in other bashfulness
+whereof altogether in things some air of the foolish Plutarch makes
+mention; and the course of my life has been divers ways hurt and
+blemished with it; a quality very ill suiting my universal form: and,
+indeed, what are we but sedition and discrepancy?  I am as much out of
+countenance to be denied as I am to deny; and it so much troubles me to
+be troublesome to others that on occasion when duty compels me to try the
+good-will of any one in a thing that is doubtful and that will be
+chargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and very much against my will:
+but if it be for my own particular (whatever Homer truly says, that
+modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person), I commonly commit it
+to a third person to blush for me, and deny those who employ me with the
+same difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me to have had a mind
+to deny, when I had not the power to do it.
+
+'Tis folly, then, to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is so
+powerful in them, and so natural to them.  And when I hear them brag of
+having so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retire
+too far back.  If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptive
+thing, though it be not altogether to be believed, at least they say it
+with more similitude of truth.  But they who still move and breathe, talk
+at that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason that
+inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation; like a gentleman, a
+neighbour of mine, suspected to be insufficient:
+
+              "Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta,
+               Numquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam,"
+
+          [Catullus, lxvii. 2, i.--The sense is in the context.]
+
+who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, went
+about boldly swearing that he had ridden twenty stages the night before:
+an oath that was afterwards made use of to convict him of his ignorance
+in that affair, and to divorce him from his wife.  Besides, it signifies
+nothing, for there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no
+opposing desires.  It is true, they may say, but we will not yield;
+saints themselves speak after that manner.  I mean those who boast in
+good gravity of their coldness and insensibility, and who expect to be
+believed with a serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with an
+affected look, when their eyes give the lie to their tongue, and when
+they talk in the cant of their profession, which always goes against the
+hair, 'tis good sport.  I am a great servant of liberty and plainness;
+but there is no remedy; if it be not wholly simple or childish, 'tis
+silly, and unbecoming ladies in this commerce, and presently runs into
+impudence.  Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools; lying
+is there in its seat of honour; 'tis a by-way, that by a back-door leads
+us to truth.  If we cannot curb their imagination, what would we have
+from them.  Effects?  There are enough of them that evade all foreign
+communication, by which chastity may be corrupted:
+
+               "Illud saepe facit, quod sine teste facit;"
+
+          ["He often does that which he does without a witness."
+          --Martial, vii. 62, 6.]
+
+and those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be feared;
+their sins that make the least noise are the worst:
+
+               "Offendor maecha simpliciore minus."
+
+          ["I am less offended with a more professed strumpet."
+          --Idem, vi. 7,6.]
+
+There are ways by which they may lose their virginity without
+prostitution, and, which is more, without their knowledge:
+
+     "Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive
+     malevolentia, sive inscitia, sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit."
+
+     ["By malevolence, or unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife,
+     seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes
+     destroyed it."--St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, i. 18.]
+
+Such a one, by seeking her maidenhead, has lost it; another by playing
+with it has destroyed it.  We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions,
+we interdict them; they must guess at our meaning under general and
+doubtful terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous:
+for, amongst the greatest patterns that I have is Fatua, the wife of
+Faunus: who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any
+man whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband's
+stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men.  They must
+become insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
+
+Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally
+lies in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom,
+not only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but with
+singular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue.
+Such a woman has been, who prized her honour above her life, and yet has
+prostituted it to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her
+husband's life, and who, in so doing, did that for him she would not have
+done for herself!  This is not the place wherein we are to multiply these
+examples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as
+I can give them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for
+examples of ordinary lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us who
+surrender themselves for their husbands sole benefit, and by their
+express order and mediation? and, of old, Phaulius the Argian, who
+offered his to King Philip out of ambition; as Galba did it out of
+civility, who, having entertained Maecenas at supper, and observing that
+his wife and he began to cast glances at one another and to make eyes and
+signs, let himself sink down upon his cushion, like one in a profound
+sleep, to give opportunity to their desires: which he handsomely
+confessed, for thereupon a servant having made bold to lay hands on the
+plate upon the table, he frankly cried, "What, you rogue? do you not see
+that I only sleep for Maecenas?" Such there may be, whose manners may be
+lewd enough, whose will may be more reformed than another, who outwardly
+carries herself after a more regular manner.  As we see some who complain
+of having vowed chastity before they knew what they did; and I have also
+known others really, complain of having been given up to debauchery
+before they were of the years of discretion.  The vice of the parents or
+the impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor, may be the cause.
+
+In the East Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custom
+permitted a married woman to prostitute herself to any one who presented
+her with an elephant, and that with glory, to have been valued at so high
+a rate.  Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of his
+country Elis, made it his trade to prostitute the beauty of his youth, so
+long as it lasted, to any one that would, for money thereby to gain his
+living: and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his laws
+gave liberty to women, at the expense of their chastity, to provide for
+the necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been received
+in many governments before his time.  And besides, what fruit is there of
+this painful solicitude?  For what justice soever there is in this
+passion, we are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: does
+any one think to curb them, with all his industry?
+
+         "Pone seram; cohibe: sed quis custodiet ipsos
+          Custodes?  cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor."
+
+     ["Put on a lock; shut them up under a guard; but who shall guard
+     the guard?  she knows what she is about, and begins with them."
+     --Juvenal, vi. 346.]
+
+What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?
+
+Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here.  'Tis folly to
+examine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflame
+and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more public
+by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it
+heals us.  You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof.  How
+miserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge who have been so
+unhappy as to have found it out?  If the informer does not at the same
+time apply a remedy and bring relief, 'tis an injurious information, and
+that better deserves a stab than the lie.  We no less laugh at him who
+takes pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold and knows it not.
+The character of cuckold is indelible: who once has it carries it to his
+grave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault.  It is to much
+purpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes,
+thence to expose them on tragic scaffolds; and misfortunes that only hurt
+us by being known; for we say a good wife or a happy marriage, not that
+they are really so, but because no one says to the contrary.  Men should
+be so discreet as to evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge:
+and the Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to send
+home before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they might
+not surprise them; and to this purpose it is that a certain nation has
+introduced a custom, that the priest shall on the wedding-day open the
+way to the bride, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity of
+examining in the first assault, whether she comes a virgin to his bed, or
+has been at the trade before.
+
+But the world will be talking.  I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds,
+honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemed
+for it.  Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; that
+good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble
+but to think on't.  And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the
+same rate, from the least even to the greatest?
+
+                    "Tot qui legionibus imperitivit
+          Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus."
+
+     ["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than
+     you, you rascal."--Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041.]
+
+Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;
+believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere.  But, the very ladies
+will be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in this
+virtuous age of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage?  Each
+amongst you has made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel,
+in compensation, and turn for turn.  The frequency of this accident ought
+long since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.
+
+Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable,
+
+          "Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"
+
+          ["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints."
+          --Catullus, lxvii.]
+
+for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not
+laugh at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of the
+quarry?  The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret
+by the wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to a
+prating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered it
+indecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows
+and all that a man feels.  To give women the same counsel against
+jealousy would be so much time lost; their very being is so made up of
+suspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way
+is not to be hoped.  They often recover of this infirmity by a form of
+health much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there are
+enchantments that cannot take away the evil but by throwing it upon
+another, they also willingly transfer this ever to their husbands, when
+they shake it off themselves.  And yet I know not, to speak truth,
+whether a man can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis the
+most dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is of all their
+members.  Pittacus used to say,--[Plutarch, On Contentment, c. II.]--
+that every one had his trouble, and that his was the jealous head of his
+wife; but for which he should think himself perfectly happy.  A mighty
+inconvenience, sure, which could poison the whole life of so just, so
+wise, and so valiant a man; what must we other little fellows do?  The
+senate of Marseilles had reason to grant him his request who begged leave
+to kill himself that he might be delivered from the clamour of his wife;
+for 'tis a mischief that is never removed but by removing the whole
+piece; and that has no remedy but flight or patience, though both of them
+very hard.  He was, methinks, an understanding fellow who said, 'twas a
+happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband.
+
+Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligation
+we enjoin them does not produce two effects contrary to our design
+namely, whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack,
+and the women more easy to yield.  For as to the first, by raising the
+value of the place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest.
+Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her
+merchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight
+it would be that was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve?
+In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' host
+said.  Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend with
+devotion and justice: 'tis his glory that his power mates all powers, and
+that all other rules give place to his:
+
+               "Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae."
+
+               ["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes."
+               --Ovid, Trist., iv. I. 34.]
+
+As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared
+to be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, and
+who are more eager, being forbidden:
+
+              "Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro;
+               Concessa pudet ire via."
+
+     ["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they
+     spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path."
+     --Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v  43]
+
+What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour?  She,
+at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use;
+but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her
+husband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to
+making open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in
+the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him.  This
+animal, not to be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull
+and flat by his too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise and
+make them lawful; what does she?  Being the wife of a living and
+healthful emperor, and at Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face of
+the sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to Silius, who had long before
+enjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband was
+gone out of the city.  Does it not seem as if she was going to become
+chaste by her husband's negligence? or that she sought another husband
+who might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watching
+should incite her?  But the first difficulty she met with was also the
+last: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy, sluggish sort of men are
+often the most dangerous: I have found by experience that this extreme
+toleration, when it comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge;
+for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being combined in one,
+discharge their utmost force at the first onset,
+
+               "Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"
+
+          ["He let loose his whole  fury."--AEneid, xii. 499.]
+
+he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she
+had intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whom
+she had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.
+
+What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a
+stolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:
+
+              "Belli fera moenera Mavors
+               Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se
+               Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris
+                    ............................
+               Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,
+               Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore
+               Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
+               Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
+               Funde."
+
+     ["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often
+     reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes,
+     vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he
+     reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies
+     upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words."
+     --Lucretius, i. 23.]
+
+When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas,
+labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the
+pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that
+have since sprung up.  Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety
+to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of
+natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail,
+but the head, body, and feet.  There is nothing forced, nothing
+languishing, but everything keeps the same pace:
+
+     "Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati."
+
+     ["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with
+     little flowers of rhetoric."--Seneca, Ep., 33.]
+
+'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous and
+solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the
+greatest minds.  When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively,
+so profound, I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought.  'Tis
+the sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:
+
+                    "Pectus est quod disertum Tacit."
+
+          ["The heart makes the man eloquent."--Quintilian, x. 7.]
+
+Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions.
+This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having
+the object more vividly imprinted in the soul.  Gallus speaks simply
+because he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a
+superficial expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and more
+clearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine
+of words and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them
+more than ordinary, because his conception is so.  Plutarch says' that he
+sees the Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same: the sense
+illuminates and produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh
+and bone; they signify more than they say.  Moreover, those who are not
+well skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy I
+said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serious
+talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind
+and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing
+something of my own.
+
+The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;
+not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
+various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them.
+They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight
+and signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwonted
+motions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly.  And how little this
+talent is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of this
+age: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but
+want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in
+their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with
+cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the
+matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they
+care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and
+shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significant
+than the other.
+
+There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting
+out: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of
+hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of
+speaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted.
+I find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable and
+vigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would
+maintain the dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag
+and languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek
+does to others.  Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not
+so easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has
+in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our
+ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be
+met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is
+sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an
+understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient
+authors who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.
+
+The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very
+different from the common and natural, way.  My page makes love, and
+understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus--[Leo the Jew, Ficinus,
+Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]--
+and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he
+understands it not.  I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary
+motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use
+of the schools.  Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much
+naturalise art as they artificialise nature.  Let us let Bembo and
+Equicola alone.
+
+When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance
+of books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the
+best authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of the
+painter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill,
+charged all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into his
+shop; and had rather need to give myself a little lustre, of the
+invention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing or
+play, took care beforehand that the auditory should, either before or
+after, be satiated with some other ill musicians.  But I can hardly be
+without Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon all
+occasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he will
+still be at your elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to be
+exhausted hand of riches and embellishments.  It vexes me that he is so
+exposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can
+scarce cast an eye upon him but I purloin either a leg or a wing.
+
+And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me for me to write
+at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;
+where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster,
+and of French a little less.  I might have made it better elsewhere, but
+then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and
+perfection is to be exactly mine.  I readily correct an accidental error,
+of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and
+constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out.  When
+another tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick of
+figures: this is a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I do
+not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France;
+they who would fight custom with grammar are triflers): this is an
+ignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse: that is going too
+far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest a
+thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest."--"Yes, I know,
+but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom.  Do I not
+talk at the same rate throughout?  Do I not represent myself to the life?
+'Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in
+my book, and my book in me."
+
+Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (and
+I never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I had
+last read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I
+speak something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne.
+Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his upon
+me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a
+disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of
+all, because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold without
+shaking.  I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous
+imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and
+strength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and
+which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they
+afforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever
+they saw done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes in
+their sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their
+heads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their
+eyes with glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to their
+own ruin they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves.
+The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words
+and gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raise
+their admiration, is no more in me than in a stock.  When I swear my own
+oath, 'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct.  They say that
+Socrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection at
+this time in use amongst the Italians, Cappari!  Pythagoras swore By
+water and air.  I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these
+superficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouth
+three days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship
+eight days after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall say
+the same to-morrow seriously.  Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillingly
+undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's
+expense.  Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the
+purpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at
+the recommendation of as flighty a will.  I may begin, with that which
+pleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another.
+
+But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
+most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
+for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
+apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
+where I am most given to think.  My speaking is a little nicely jealous
+of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
+stops me.  In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop
+to discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company
+fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would
+to entertain myself.  It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst
+dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I
+dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what
+complexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they
+were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I
+plunge them in oblivion.  So of thoughts that come accidentally into my
+head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough
+to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.
+
+Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking,
+I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
+the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
+discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
+discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
+become vicious.  According to Socrates, love is the appetite of
+generation by the mediation of beauty.  And when I consider the
+ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild
+motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage,
+the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of
+love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton
+an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously
+shuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as
+in pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato
+says, that the gods made man for their sport:
+
+                        "Quaenam ista jocandi
+                         Saevitia!"
+
+     ["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in
+     jesting!"--Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]
+
+and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
+actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
+men, beasts and us, on a level.  Even the most contemplative and prudent
+man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
+pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet that
+abate his pride:
+
+                         "Ridentem dicere verum
+                         Quid vetat?"
+
+          ["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?"
+          --Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]
+
+They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one,
+like him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with a
+veil.  We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions
+that obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our
+advantage over them; this other action subjects all other thought,
+and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity and
+philosophy; and yet there is no complaint of it.  In everything else a
+man may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules of
+decency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious
+or ridiculous: find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreet
+procedure.  Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by
+this act and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of
+the soul; the familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhausts
+them: doubtless 'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but
+also of our vanity and deformity.
+
+On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble,
+useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on the
+other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent,
+to blush at it, and to recommend abstinence.  Are we not brutes to call
+that work brutish which begets us?  People of so many differing religions
+have concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning
+incense, fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning this
+act: all opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom of
+circumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment.  We have,
+peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish
+a production as man, and to call the act, and the parts that are employed
+in the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful).  The
+Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
+without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
+following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
+being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
+themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
+than to beget one.  'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
+once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
+obstinately to disdain the sex.
+
+     [Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13.--What is there said, however, is that
+     Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
+     misogynist.]
+
+Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
+destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
+to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
+man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
+'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
+we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
+that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
+kill him.  The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,
+having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo,
+interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:
+
+                         "Nostri nosmet paenitet."
+
+          ["We are ashamed of ourselves."--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]
+
+There are some nations that will not be seen to eat.  I know a lady, and
+of the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfigures
+the face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; and
+therefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I
+know a man also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to be
+seen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than when
+putting out.  In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who,
+to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their
+repast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their
+faces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to
+honour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon
+their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse.
+What monstrous animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom his
+delights are grievous, and who weds himself to misfortune?  There are
+people who conceal their life:
+
+               "Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,"
+
+     ["And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes."
+     --Virgil, Georg., ii. 511.]
+
+and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and
+cheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities.  Not only many
+sects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and
+there is a place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored.  We are
+only ingenious in using ourselves ill: 'tis the real quarry our
+intellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!
+
+               "O miseri! quorum gaudia crimen habent!"
+
+          ["O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime!"
+          --Pseudo Gallus, i. 180.]
+
+Alas, poor man!  thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable,
+without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enough
+by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential
+deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary.  Dost thou
+think thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is uneasy?  dost
+thou find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices that
+nature has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost not
+oblige thyself to other and new offices?  Thou dost not stick to infringe
+her universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and
+fantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, and
+contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour in
+them: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and the
+world concern thee not.  Run but a little over the examples of this kind;
+thy life is full of them.
+
+Whilst the verses of these two poets, treat so reservedly and discreetly
+of wantonness as they do, methinks they discover it much more openly.
+Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacred
+things, and painters shadow their pictures to give them greater lustre:
+and 'tis said that the sun and wind strike more violently by reflection
+than in a direct line.  The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked him
+what he had under his cloak, "It is hid under my cloak," said he, "that
+thou mayest not know what it is:" but there are certain other things that
+people hide only to show them.  Hear that one, who speaks plainer,
+
+               "Et nudum pressi corpus ad usque meum:"
+
+          ["And pressed her naked body to mine" (Or:) "My body
+          I applied even to her naked side"--Ovid, Amor., i. 5, 24.]
+
+methinks that he emasculates me.  Let Martial turn up Venus as high as he
+may, he cannot shew her so naked: he who says all that is to be said
+gluts and disgusts us.  He who is afraid to express himself, draws us on
+to guess at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort of
+modesty, and specially when they half open, as these do, so fair a path
+to imagination.  Both the action and description should relish of theft.
+
+The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the
+Spaniards and Italians pleases me.  I know not who of old wished his
+throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he
+swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous
+pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being
+too prompt.  To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things--
+a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense betwixt
+them.  Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine on
+the steam of the roast?  'Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid
+essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay
+it accordingly.  Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteem
+upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the
+first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning
+out their favours, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable old
+age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth
+and merit.  He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing
+unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in
+the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps
+and degrees there are, so much higher and more honourable is the
+uppermost seat: we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in
+magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant
+galleries, and many windings.  This disposition of things would turn to
+our advantage; we should there longer stay and longer love; without hope
+and without desire we proceed not worth a pin.  Our conquest and entire
+possession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they wholly
+surrender themselves up to the mercy of our fidelity and constancy they
+run a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; the
+ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs:
+
+              "Postquam cupidae mentis satiata libido est,
+               Verba nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant;"
+
+          ["When our desires are once satisfied, we care little
+          for oaths and promises."--Catullus, lxiv.  147.]
+
+And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passion
+that, having, gained a mistress's consent, he refused to enjoy her, that
+he might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardour of which
+he was so proud, and with which he so fed himself.  Dearness is a good
+sauce to meat: do but observe how much the manner of salutation,
+particular to our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, which
+Socrates says are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts,
+of no esteem.  It is a displeasing custom and injurious for the ladies,
+that they must be obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who has
+three footmen at his heels, however ill-favoured he may be in himself:
+
+                   "Cujus livida naribus caninis
+                    Dependet glacies, rigetque barba .  .  .
+                    Centum occurrere malo culilingis:"
+                    Martial, vii. 94.
+
+and we ourselves barely gain by it; for as the world is divided, for
+three beautiful women we must kiss fifty ugly ones; and to a tender
+stomach, like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one.
+
+In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sell
+themselves for money, and justify the doing so by saying, "that there are
+degrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure for
+themselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but their
+bodies; the will is too free and too much of its own to be exposed to
+sale."  So that these say, 'tis the will they undertake and they have
+reason.  'Tis indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing.
+I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is,
+methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the
+beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious
+Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming:
+which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of
+beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three
+days before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to take
+care for the interment.  Periander did more wonderfully, who extended his
+conjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of his
+wife Melissa after she was dead.  Does it not seem a lunatic humour in
+the Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to
+lay-him for several months asleep, and to please herself with the
+fruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep?  I likewise say that
+we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without
+its consent and desire.  All enjoyments are not alike: there are some
+that are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besides good-
+will may procure us this favour from the ladies; this is not a sufficient
+testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well as elsewhere:
+they sometimes go to't by halves:
+
+              "Tanquam thura merumque parent
+               Absentem marmoreamve putes:"
+
+     ["As if they are preparing frankincense and wine .  .  . you might
+     think her absent or marble."--Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8.]
+
+I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only
+impart themselves that way.  You are to examine whether your company
+pleases them upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom,
+for that only; in what degree of favour and esteem you are with them:
+
+                              "Tibi si datur uni,
+                    Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat."
+
+     ["Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she
+     marks with a whiter stone."--Catullus, lxviii. 147.]
+
+What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing
+imagination.
+
+               "Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores."
+
+               ["She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with
+               other absent lovers."--Tibullus, i. 6, 35.]
+
+What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act
+for the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill and
+poison, as he did, a worthy lady?
+
+Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek
+not elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent of
+the world in this.  They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly
+women than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as
+they.  I think the same of their intellects: of those of the common sort,
+they have evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there;
+but in individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebted
+to them.  If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touching
+valour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and
+natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a
+degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriages
+of that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so
+rude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant
+acquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most
+intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial,
+and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to
+make; and when they have broken down the fence, we may safely presume
+they get on fire:
+
+          "Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia,
+          irritata, deinde emissa."
+
+     ["Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound,
+     breaks from his chains with greater wildness."--Livy, xxxiv. 4.]
+
+They must give them a little more rein:
+
+         "Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem,
+          Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo":
+
+     ["I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit,
+     rush like a thunderbolt."--Ovid, Amor., iii. 4, 13.]
+
+the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty.  We are
+pretty much in the same case they are extreme in constraint, we in
+licence.  'Tis a good custom we have in France that our sons are received
+into the best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as in
+a school of nobility; and 'tis looked upon as a discourtesy and an
+affront to refuse this to a gentleman.  I have taken notice (for, so many
+families, so many differing forms) that the ladies who have been
+strictest with their maids have had no better luck than those who allowed
+them a greater liberty.  There should be moderation in these things; one
+must leave a great deal of their conduct to their own discretion; for,
+when all comes to all, no discipline can curb them throughout.  But it is
+true withal that she who comes off with flying colours from a school of
+liberty, brings with her whereon to repose more confidence than she who
+comes away sound from a severe and strict school.
+
+Our fathers dressed up their daughters' looks in bashfulness and fear
+(their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence and
+assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the
+Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands
+they have first killed another in battle.  For me, who have no other
+title left me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if,
+according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their
+counsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the
+age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion.  For,
+as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who
+blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said "the vice is in not
+coming out, not in going in," let her who has no care of her conscience
+have yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within,
+let her carry a fair outside at least.
+
+I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato
+'declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness are
+forbidden to the defendant.  'Tis a sign of eagerness which they ought to
+disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and hand-over-
+hand to surrender themselves.  In carrying themselves orderly and
+measuredly in the granting their last favours, they much more allure our
+desires and hide their own.  Let them still fly before us, even those who
+have most mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, as the
+Scythians did.  To say the truth, according to the law that nature has
+imposed upon them, it is not properly for them either to will or desire;
+their part is to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it is that nature
+has given them a perpetual capacity, which in us is but at times and
+uncertain; they are always fit for the encounter, that they may be always
+ready when we are so "Pati natee."-["Born to suffer."-Seneca, Ep., 95.]--
+And whereas she has ordered that our appetites shall be manifest by a
+prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden and concealed
+within, and has furnished them with parts improper for ostentation, and
+simply defensive.  Such proceedings as this that follows must be left to
+the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army through Hyrcania,
+Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three hundred light horse of
+her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left the remainder of a very
+great, army that followed her behind the neighbouring mountains to give
+him a visit; where she publicly and in plain terms told him that the fame
+of his valour and victories had brought her thither to see him, and to
+make him an offer of her forces to assist him in the pursuit of his
+enterprises; and that, finding him so handsome, young, and vigorous, she,
+who was also perfect in all those qualities, advised that they might lie
+together, to the end that from the most valiant woman of the world and
+the bravest man then living, there might spring some great and wonderful
+issue for the time to come.  Alexander returned her thanks for all the
+rest; but, to give leisure for the accomplishment of her last demand,
+he detained her thirteen days in that place, which were spent in royal
+feasting and jollity, for the welcome of so courageous a princess.
+
+We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are of
+ours.  I confess the truth when it makes against me, as well as when 'tis
+on my side.  'Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so often
+to change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any one
+person whatever; as is evident in that goddess to whom are attributed so
+many changes and so many lovers.  But 'tis true withal that 'tis contrary
+to the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the nature
+of violence if it be constant.  And they who wonder, exclaim, and keep
+such a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as
+unnatural and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not
+discern how often they are themselves guilty of the same, without any
+astonishment or miracle at all?  It would, peradventure, be more strange
+to see the passion fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion.  If there
+be no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire;
+it still lives after satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe either
+constant satisfaction or end; it ever goes beyond its possession.  And by
+that means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable in
+them than in us: they may plead, as well as we, the inclination to
+variety and novelty common to us both; and secondly, without us, that
+they buy a cat in a sack: Joanna, queen of Naples, caused her first
+husband, Andrews, to be hanged at the bars of her window in a halter of
+gold and silk woven with her own hand, because in matrimonial
+performances she neither found his parts nor abilities answer the
+expectation she had conceived from his stature, beauty, youth, and
+activity, by which she had been caught and deceived.  They may say there
+is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are on
+their part always at least provided for necessity, whereas on our part it
+may fall out otherwise.  For this reason it was, that Plato wisely made a
+law that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, the
+judges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped stark naked,
+and the women but to the girdle only.  When they come to try us they do
+not, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:
+
+              "Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro
+               Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu,
+               Deserit imbelles thalamos."
+
+          ["After using every endeavour to arouse him to action,
+          she quits the barren couch."--Martial, vii. 58.]
+
+'Tis not enough that a man's will be good; weakness and insufficiency
+lawfully break a marriage,
+
+               "Et quaerendum aliunde foret nervosius illud,
+               Quod posset zonam solvere virgineam:"
+
+     ["And seeks a more vigorous lover to undo her virgin zone."
+     --Catullus, lxvii. 27.]
+
+why not?  and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence,
+more licentious and active,
+
+               "Si blando nequeat superesse labori."
+
+          ["If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task."
+          --Virgil, Georg., iii. 127.]
+
+But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and
+imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and
+esteem of ourselves?  For the little that I am able to do now:
+
+                                   "Ad unum
+                         Mollis opus."
+
+          ["Fit but for once."--Horace, Epod., xii. 15.]
+
+I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:
+
+                              "Fuge suspicari,
+                    Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas
+                              Claudere lustrum."
+
+          ["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed."
+          --Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.]
+
+Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable,
+without rendering it ridiculous too.  I hate to see it, for one poor inch
+of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set
+itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true
+flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a
+moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain
+only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
+indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for
+it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
+some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
+blushes:
+
+              "Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
+               Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa
+               Alba rosa."
+
+     ["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed
+     with the damask rose."--AEneid, xii. 67.]
+
+Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the
+disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling
+impertinence,
+
+               "Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus,"
+
+          ["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger."
+          --Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.]
+
+has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them
+till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night.
+When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently
+accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to
+complain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and
+unkindly:
+
+         "Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa
+          Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam
+          Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:"
+
+     [The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the
+     Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram
+     in the same collection (Ad Matrones).  They describe untranslatably
+     Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous
+     passage.]
+
+and done me a most enormous injury.  Every member I have, as much one as
+another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man
+than this.
+
+I universally owe my entire picture to the public.  The wisdom of my
+instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to
+introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the
+catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant,
+of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.
+We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those
+of essence: when we have done with these, we run full drive upon the
+others, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancy
+new offices, to excuse our negligence towards the natural ones, and to
+confound them: and to manifest this, is it not seen that in places where
+faults are crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where the laws
+of decency are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of common
+reason are better observed: the innumerable multitude of so many duties
+stifling and dissipating our care.  The application of ourselves to light
+and trivial things diverts us from those that are necessary and just.
+Oh, how these superficial men take an easy and plausible way in
+comparison of ours!  These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay one
+another; but we do not pay, but inflame the reckoning towards that great
+judge, who tucks up our rags and tatters above our shameful parts, and
+suckles not to view us all over, even to our inmost and most secret
+ordures: it were a useful decency of our maidenly modesty, could it keep
+him from this discovery.  In fine, whoever could reclaim man from so
+scrupulous a verbal superstition, would do the world no great disservice.
+Our life is divided betwixt folly and prudence: whoever will write of it
+but what is reverend and canonical, will leave above the one-half behind.
+I do not excuse myself to myself; and if I did, it should rather be for
+my excuses that I would excuse myself than for any other fault; I excuse
+myself of certain humours, which I think more strong in number than those
+that are on my side.  In consideration of which, I will further say this
+(for I desire to please every one, though it will be hard to do):
+
+          "Esse unum hominem accommodatum ad tantam morum
+          ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem,"
+
+     ["For a man to conform to such a variety of manners,
+     discourses, and will."--Q. Cicero, De Pet. Consul, c. 14.]
+
+that they ought not to condemn me for what I make authorities, received
+and approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason that
+for want of rhyme they should refuse me the liberty they allow even to
+churchmen of our nation and time, and these amongst the most notable, of
+which here are two of their brisk verses:
+
+          "Rimula, dispeream, ni monogramma tua est."
+
+          "Un vit d'amy la contente et bien traicte:"
+
+     [St. Gelais, (Euvres Poetiques), p. 99, ed. of Lyons, 1574.]
+
+besides how many others.  I love modesty; and 'tis not out of judgment
+that I have chosen this scandalous way of speaking; 'tis nature that has
+chosen it for me.  I commend it not, no more than other forms that are
+contrary to common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances both
+general and particular, alleviate its accusation.
+
+But to proceed.  Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereign
+authority you take upon you over the women, who favour you at their own
+expense,
+
+               "Si furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,"
+
+     ["If, in the stealthy night, she has made strange gifts."
+     --Catullus, lxviii. 145.]
+
+so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of a
+husband?  'Tis a free contract why do you not then keep to it, as you
+would have them do?  there is no prescription upon voluntary things.
+'Tis against the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time have
+conducted this bargain as much as the nature of it would permit, as
+conscientiously and with as much colour of justice, as any other
+contract; and that I never pretended other affection than what I really
+had, and have truly acquainted them with its birth, vigour, and
+declination, its fits and intermissions: a man does not always hold on
+at the same rate.  I have been so sparing of my promises, that I think
+I have been better than my word.  They have found me faithful even to
+service of their inconstancy, a confessed and sometimes multiplied
+inconstancy.  I never broke with them, whilst I had any hold at all, and
+what occasion soever they have given me, never broke with them to hatred
+or contempt; for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalous
+terms, do yet oblige to some good will: I have sometimes, upon their
+tricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience;
+for I am naturally subject to rash emotions, which, though light and
+short, often spoil my market.  At any time they have consulted my
+judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and to
+pinch them to the quick.  If I have left them any cause to complain of
+me, 'tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the modern use, a
+love foolishly conscientious than anything else.  I have kept my, word in
+things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimes
+surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they were
+willing enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more than once,
+made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of their
+honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself;
+so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules,
+when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have done
+by their own.  I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon myself
+alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have always
+contrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as less
+suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible.  They are
+chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things
+least feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare
+what nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy.  Never
+had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of
+loving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to our
+people, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall not
+repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose:
+
+                        "Me tabula sacer
+                         Votiva paries, indicat uvida
+                         Suspendisse potenti
+                         Vestimenta maris deo:"
+
+     [" The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
+     wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea."
+     --Horace, Od., i.  5, 13.]
+
+'tis now time to speak out.  But as I might, per adventure, say to
+another, " Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little
+commerce with faith and integrity;"
+
+              "Haec si tu postules
+               Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
+               Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:"
+
+     ["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
+     more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses."
+     --Terence, Eun., act i., sc.  i, v. 16.]
+
+on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it
+should be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soever
+it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an
+incommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, I
+approach so much nearer to my own.  As to the rest, in this traffic, I
+did not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it,
+but did not forget myself.  I retained the little sense and discretion
+that nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little
+emotion, but no dotage.  My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to
+debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice,
+and cruelty, never.  I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at
+any price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:
+
+                    "Nullum intra se vitium est."
+
+          ["Nothing is a vice in itself."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]
+
+I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome
+and painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep.  I like
+wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows.  I found in
+this commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixt
+these extremes.  Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I was
+neither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover,
+disordered; a man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools.  A young
+man asked the philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to be
+in love?  "Let the wise man look to that," answered he, "but let not thou
+and I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an
+affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to
+ourselves."  He said true that we are not to intrust a thing so
+precipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand its
+assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence
+and love cannot live together.  'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true,
+unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner,
+I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to
+rouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I would
+prescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any other
+recipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced in
+years, and to defer the approaches of age.  Whilst we are but in the
+suburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:
+
+         "Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus,
+          Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me
+          Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo,"
+
+     ["Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight
+     shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to
+     spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon."
+     --Juvenal, iii. 26.]
+
+we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation
+as this.  Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the
+good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking
+of an amorous object:
+
+"Leaning," said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as
+we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden
+sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt
+above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart."  So
+that merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a
+soul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind.
+And, pray, why not?  Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem,
+any other thing.  Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures,
+provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a total
+abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that
+are adulterate and strange.  Philosophy says that the appetites of the
+body ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not
+to stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling,
+the belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all
+meats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service of
+love, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the
+body's need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely to
+follow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair.  But have I not
+reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are
+somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in
+a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and
+support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the
+appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.
+
+May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
+that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
+break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should
+carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as
+we do towards that of pain!  Pain was (for example) vehement even to
+perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there
+naturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but little
+part in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barely
+follow and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself with
+grievous and special torments, to the end that by emulation of one
+another the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so much more
+salutiferous as it is more severe.  In like manner, is it not injustice,
+in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it
+must therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligation
+and necessity?  'Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to
+present herself, and to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging to
+her; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper
+to her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is
+capable of, and to study how to make them sweet and useful to it.  For it
+is good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue its
+appetites to the prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also the reason
+that the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of the body?
+
+I have no other passion to keep me in breath.  What avarice, ambition,
+quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular
+vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me
+vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure
+my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and
+dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon
+sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and
+esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and
+redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome
+thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill
+posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again,
+in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up
+the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of
+life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin.  But I
+very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness
+and long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask
+most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve
+to be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we 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,
+               Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret."
+
+     ["In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the
+     young tree on the hills."--Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]
+
+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 cineres facem."
+
+     ["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
+     torch worn to ashes."--Horace, Od., iv.  13, 21.]
+
+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,"--["Do good for yourself."]--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 like fortune will render more easy to your desire."  O ridiculous
+and insipid composition!
+
+                                   "Nolo
+                    Barbam vellere mortuo leoni."
+
+          ["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."--Martial]
+
+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 pitiful and imperfect conjunction;
+
+     [Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
+     with a deformed creature."]
+
+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 to cernere possim,
+               Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis,
+               Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"
+
+     [Ovid, who (Ex.  Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the
+     gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to
+     thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]
+
+Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon,
+a young boy 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."
+
+     [Diogenes Laertius, iv.  36.  The question was whether a wise man
+     could love him.  Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios."]
+
+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,
+                    Mille sagaces falleret hospites,
+                    Discrimen obscurum, solutis
+                    Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"
+
+     ["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would
+     require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks
+     and ambiguous countenance."--Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]
+
+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'-[Plutarch, On Love, c.34.]--
+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
+                    Quercus."
+
+               ["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks."
+               --Horace, Od., iv. 13, 9.]
+
+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 their
+ways for insufficiency there novices rule:
+
+                         "Amor ordinem nescit."
+
+          ["Love ignores rules." (Or:) "Love knows no rule."
+          --St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.]
+
+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 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 praelia ventum est,
+               Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis,
+               Incassum furit:"
+
+     ["For when they sometimes engage in love's battle,
+     his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw."
+     --Virgil, Georg., iii.  98.]
+
+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,
+
+              "Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum
+               Procurrit casto virginis a gremio,
+               Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat,
+               Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur,
+               Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu
+               Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor."
+
+     ["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.]
+
+I 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 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,
+
+               "Le fourgon se moque de la paele."
+                  ["The Pot and the Kettle."]
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused
+A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted
+Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes
+Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age
+Certain other things that people hide only to show them
+Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act
+Dearness is a good sauce to meat
+Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold
+Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination
+Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge
+Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure
+Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it
+First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time
+Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.
+Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture
+Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms
+Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint
+Have ever had a great respect for her I loved
+Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears
+Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault
+Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong
+I am apt to dream that I dream
+I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought
+I had much rather die than live upon charity.
+I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence
+If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me
+If they can only be kind to us out of pity
+In everything else a man may keep some decorum
+In those days, the tailor took measure of it
+Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both
+Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation
+Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden
+It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in
+Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience
+Judgment of duty principally lies in the will
+Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs
+"Let a man take which course he will," said he; "he will repent."
+Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think
+Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty
+Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage
+Love them the less for our own faults
+Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty
+Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance
+Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love
+Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help
+Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known
+Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer)
+Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice
+Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire
+No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active
+O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime
+O, the furious advantage of opportunity!
+Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect
+One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare
+Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune
+Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport
+Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing)
+Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride
+Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture
+Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will
+Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so
+Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus
+Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us
+Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level
+Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise
+Sins that make the least noise are the worst
+Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul
+Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe
+The best authors too much humble and discourage me
+The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor
+The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age
+Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools
+There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude
+These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous
+They better conquer us by flying
+They buy a cat in a sack
+They err as much who too much forbear Venus
+They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us
+They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers
+Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear
+Those within (marriage) despair of getting out
+Tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces
+To what friend dare you intrust your griefs
+Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband
+Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours
+Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous
+Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality
+We ask most when we bring least
+We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary.
+When jealousy seizes these poor souls
+When their eyes give the lie to their tongue
+Who escapes being talked of at the same rate
+Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation
+Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Essays of Montaigne, V15
+By Michel de Montaigne
+
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