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