that we both despise and respect." "Love," says Sir Thomas Overbury,
wittily, "is a superstition that doth fear the idol which itself hath
made." "To reveal its complacence by gifts," says Mrs. Sigourney, "is
one of the native dialects of love." "Love is never so blind as when it
is to spy faults," says South. "Love reckons days for years," says
Dryden, "and every little absence is an age." "Where love has once
obtained an influence," observes Plautus dryly, "any flavoring, I
believe, will please." "That is the true reason of love," says Goethe,
"when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could either have
loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us."
"NO CORD OR CABLE CAN DRAW
so forcibly or bind so fast," says melancholy Burton, "as love can do
with only a single thread." "Where there exists the most ardent and true
love," says Valerius Maximus, "it is often better to be united in death
than separated in life." "A man of sense may love like a madman," says
Rochefoucauld, "but not like a fool." Says Addison, who was a bachelor,
and knew little about the heart: "Ridicule, perhaps, is a better
expedient against love than sober advice; and I am of the opinion that
Hudibras and Don Quixote may be as effectual to cure the extravagance of
this passion as any one of the old philosophers." "Love lessens woman's
delicacy and increases man's," says Richter. This accords with common
observation. "It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is
returned," says Hazlitt, in a rambling manner; "it ought to make us
prouder still when we can love her for herself alone, without the aid of
any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love." All such
argument proceeds on the theory that love is a sawing of wood, a digging
of potatoes, or some such "emotion," to be entirely controlled by the
will and regulated by the decencies. "Loving," says Shakspeare, "goes by
haps; some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps." "The accepted and
betrothed lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden, in her
acceptance of him," says Emerson, again; "she was heaven whilst he
pursued her as a star--she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one
as he." I do not think Emerson has got exactly the right idea of the way
a lover feels just there. Here it is and nearer the truth--I do not know
the author's name:
I've thought, if those dumb, heathen gods could breathe,
As shapeless, strengthless, wooden things they stand,
And feel the holy incense round them wreathe,
And see before them offerings of the land;
And know that unto them is worship paid
From pure hearts, kneeling on the verdant sod,
Looking to helplessness, for light and aid
Because by fate they know no higher god:
How their dull hearts must ache with constant pain,
And sense of shame, and fear to be flung down
When all their weakness must one day be plain,
And fire avenge the undeserved crown.
And reading my love's letter, sad and sweet, I sigh,
Knowing that such a helpless, wooden god am I.
"The comparison of love to fire holds good in one respect," says Henry
Home, "that the fiercer it burns the sooner it is extinguished." "Love
me little love me long" says Marlowe. "The plainest man, that can
convince a woman," says Colton, "that he is really in love with her, has
done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he
can produce there is a silence in it that suspends the foot; and the
folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects." "Love is
but another name for that inscrutable presence by which the soul is
connected with humanity," says Simms. "The beings who appear cold," says
Madame Swetchine, "adore where they dare to love." "Man, while he loves,
is never quite depraved," says Charles Lamb. "It is possible," says
Terence, referring to the unquestionable temporary insanity of the
passion, "that a man can be so changed by love that one could not
recognize him to be the same person." "Solid love, whose root is virtue,
can no more die, than virtue itself," says Erasmus, who was probably
talking about a requited affection.