CHAPTER LXXVI.

A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES.

                                               They do lie,
Lie grossly who say Love is blind,—by him
And Heaven they lie! he has a sight can pierce
Thro' ivory, as clear as it were horn,
And reach his object.
                                       BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

The Stoics who called our good affections eupathies, did not manage those affections as well as they understood them. They kept them under too severe a discipline, and erroneously believed that the best way to strengthen the heart was by hardening it. The Monks carried this error to its utmost extent, falling indeed into the impious absurdity that our eupathies are sinful in themselves. The Monks have been called the Stoics of Christianity; but the philosophy of the Cloister can no more bear comparison with that of the Porch, than Stoicism itself with Christianity pure and undefiled. Van Helmont compares even the Franciscans with the Stoics, “paucis mutatis,” he says, “videbam Capucinum esse Stoicum Christianum.” He might have found a closer parallel for them in the Cynics both for their filth and their extravagance. And here I will relate a Rabbinical tradition.

On a time the chiefs of the Synagogue, being mighty in prayer, obtained of the Lord that the Evil Spirit who had seduced the Jews to commit idolatry, and had brought other nations against them to overthrow their city and destroy the Temple, should be delivered into their hands for punishment; when by advice of Zachariah the prophet they put him in a leaden vessel, and secured him there with a weight of lead upon his face. By this sort of peine forte et dure, they laid him so effectually that he has never appeared since. Pursuing then their supplications while the ear of Heaven was open, they entreated that another Evil Spirit by whom the people had continually been led astray, might in like manner be put into their power. This prayer also was granted; and the Demon with whom Poets, Lovers and Ladies are familiar, by his heathen name of Cupid, was delivered up to them.

        ————folle per lui
Tutto il mondo si fa. Perisca Amore,
E saggio ognun sarà. 1

The prophet Zachariah warned them not to be too hasty in putting him to death, for fear of the consequences;

                 ——You shall see
A fine confusion in the country; mark it!

But the prophet's counsel was as vain as the wise courtier's in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy, who remonstrated against the decree for demolishing Cupid's altars. They disregarded his advice; because they were determined upon destroying the enemy now that they had him in their power; and they bound their prisoner fast in chains, while they deliberated by what death he should die. These deliberations lasted three days; on the third day it happened that a new-laid egg was wanted for a sick person, and behold! no such thing was to be found throughout the kingdom of Israel, for since this Evil Spirit was in durance not an egg had been laid; and it appeared upon enquiry, that the whole course of kind was suspended. The chiefs of the Synagogue perceived then that not without reason Zachariah had warned them; they saw that if they put their prisoner to death, the world must come to an end; and therefore they contented themselves with putting out his eyes, that he might not see to do so much mischief, and let him go.

1 METASTASIO.

Thus it was that Cupid became blind,—a fact unknown to the Greek and Roman Poets and to all the rhymesters who have succeeded them.

The Rabbis are coarse fablers. Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied;

This is the salt unto Humanity
And keeps it sweet.2

                 Senza di lui
Che diverrian le sfere,
Il mar, la terra? Alla sua chiara face
Si coloran le stelle; ordine e lume
Ei lor ministra; egli mantiene in pace
Gli' elemente discordi; unisce insieme
Gli opposti eccessi; e con eterno giro,
Che sembra caso, ed è saper profondo,
Forma, scompone, e riproduce il mondo. 3

2 BEAUMONT & FLETCHER.

3 METASTASIO.

It is with this passion as with the Amreeta in Southey's Hindoo tale, the most original of his poems; its effects are beneficial or malignant according to the subject on which it acts. In this respect Love may also be likened to the Sun, under whose influence one plant elaborates nutriment for man, and another poison; and which while it draws up pestilence from the marsh and jungle, and sets the simoom in motion over the desert, diffuses light, life, and happiness over the healthy and cultivated regions of the earth.

It acts terribly upon Poets. Poor creatures, nothing in the whole details of the Ten Persecutions, or the history of the Spanish Inquisition, is more shocking than what they have suffered from Love, according to the statements which they have given of their own sufferings. They have endured scorching, frying, roasting, burning, sometimes by a slow fire, sometimes by a quick one; and melting,—and this too from a fire, which while it thus affects the heart and liver, raises not a blister upon the skin; resembling in this respect that penal fire which certain theological writers describe as being more intense because it is invisible,—existing not in form, but in essence, and acting therefore upon spirit as material and visible fire acts upon the body. Sometimes they have undergone from the same cause all the horrors of freezing and petrifaction. Very frequently the brain is affected; and one peculiar symptom of the insanity arising from this cause, is that the patients are sensible of it, and appear to boast of their misfortune.

Hear how it operated upon Lord Brooke, who is called the most thoughtful of poets, by the most bookful of Laureates. The said Lord Brooke in his love, and in his thoughtfulness, confesseth thus;

I sigh; I sorrow; I do play the fool!

Hear how the grave—the learned Pasquier describes its terrible effects upon himself!

Ja je sens en mes os une flamme nouvelle
Qui me mine, qui m'ard, qui brusle ma möuelle.

Hear its worse moral consequences, which Euphues avowed in his wicked days! “He that cannot dissemble in love is not worthy to live. I am of this mind, that both might and malice, deceit and treachery, all perjury and impiety, may lawfully be committed in love, which is lawless.”

Hear too how Ben Jonson makes the Lady Frampul express her feelings!

My fires and fears are met: I burn and freeze;
My liver's one great coal, my heart shrunk up
With all the fibres; and the mass of blood
Within me, is a standing lake of fire,
Curl'd with the cold wind of my gelid sighs,
That drive a drift of sleet through all my body,
And shoot a February through my veins.

And hear how Artemidorus, not the oneirologist, but the great philosopher at the Court of the Emperor Sferamond, describes the appearances which he had observed in dissecting some of those unfortunate persons, who had died of love. “Quant à mon regard,” says he, “j'en ay veu faire anatomie de quelques uns qui estoient morts de cette maladie, qui avoient leurs entrailles toutes retirées, leur pauvre cœur tout bruslé, leur foye toute enfumé, leurs poulmons tout rostis, les ventricules de leurs cerveaux tous endommagez; et je croy que leur pauvre ame etoit cuite et arse à petite feu, pour la vehemence et excessif chaleur et ardeur inextinguible qu'ils enduroient lors que la fievre d'amour les avoit surprins.”4

3 AMADIS DE GAULE. Liv. 23.

But the most awful description of its dangerous operation upon persons of his own class is given by the Prince of the French Poets, not undeservedly so called in his own times. Describing the effect of love upon himself when he is in the presence of his mistress, Ronsard says,

Tant s'en faut que je sois alors maistre de moy,
Que je ni'rois les Dieux, et trahirois mon Roy,
Je vendrois mon pay, je meurtrirois mon pere;
Telle rage me tient après que j'ay tasté
A longs traits amoureux de la poison amère
Qui sort de ces beaux yeux dont je suis enchanté.

Mercy on us! neither Petrarch, nor poor Abel Shufflebottom himself was so far gone as this!

In a diseased heart it loses its nature, and combining with the morbid affection which it finds produces a new disease.

When it gets into an empty heart, it works there like quicksilver in an apple dumpling, while the astonished cook ignorant of the roguery which has been played her, thinks that there is not Death, but the Devil in the pot.

In a full heart, which is tantamount to saying a virtuous one, (for in every other, conscience keeps a void place for itself, and the hollow is always felt;) it is sedative, sanative, and preservative: a drop of the true elixir, no mithridate so effectual against the infection of vice.

How then did this passion act upon Leonard and Margaret? In a manner which you will not find described in any of Mr. Thomas Moore's poems; and which Lord Byron is as incapable of understanding, or even believing in another, as he is of feeling it in himself.