“That they do not rightly wot, whether it be pain or not.” That is the
keynote of Modern Love.
To a superficial Anakreon, who knows but its rapturous phase, Love is
all honey and moonshine. The celibate Spinoza, too, ignorant of the
agonies of Love, defined it as _lætitia concomitante idea causæ
externæ_—a pleasure accompanied by the idea of its external cause.
Burton, on the other hand, claims Love as “a species of melancholy”; and
Cowley sings—
“A mighty pain to love it is,
And ’tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.”
The poets generally have taken a less one-sided view of the matter by
depicting Love under a thousand images, as a mysterious _mixture_ of joy
and sadness, of agony and delight.