Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
(2) Iffida, the water standing in her eyes, clasping my hand in hers, with a sad countenance answered me thus:
“My good Fidus, if the increasing of my sorrows, might mitigate the extremity of thy sickness, I could be content to resolve myself into tears to rid thee of trouble: but the making of a fresh wound in my body is nothing to the healing of a festered sore in thy bowels: for that such diseases are to be cured in the end, by the names of their original. For as by basil the scorpion is engendered and by the means of the same herb destroyed: so love which by time and fancy is bred in an idle head, is by time and fancy banished from the heart: or as the salamander which, being a long space nourished in the fire, at the last quencheth it, so affection having taken hold of the fancy, and living as it were in the mind of the lover, in tract of time altereth and changeth the heat, and turneth it to chillness.
Lyly, Euphues and his England
(3) Cozen german to idleness, and a concomitant cause which goes hand in hand with it, is nimia solitudo, too much solitariness—by the testimony of all physicians, cause and symptom both; but as it is here put for a cause, it is either coact, enforced, or else voluntary. Enforced solitariness is commonly seen in students, monks, friars, anchorites, that, by their order and course of life, must abandon all company, society of other men, and betake themselves to a private cell; otio superstitioso seclusi (as Bale and Hospinian well term it), such as are the Carthusians of our time, that eat no flesh (by their order), keep perpetual silence, never go abroad; such as live in prison, or some desert place, and cannot have company, as many of our country gentlemen do in solitary houses; they must either be alone without companions, or live beyond their means, and entertain all comers as so many hosts, or else converse with their servants and hinds, such as are unequal, inferior to them, and of a contrary disposition; or else, as some do, to avoid solitariness, spend their time with lewd fellows in taverns, and in ale-houses, and thence addict themselves to some unlawful disports, or dissolute courses.
Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
(4) Mr Peter, as one somewhat severe of nature, said plainly, that the rod only was the sword that must keep the school in obedience, and the scholar in good order. Mr Wotton, a man of mild nature, with soft voice, and few words, inclined to Mr Secretary’s judgment, and said, “In mine opinion the school-house should be in deed, as it is called by name, the house of play and pleasure, and not of fear and bondage; and as I do remember, so saith Socrates in one place of Plato. And therefore, if a rod carry the fear of a sword it is no marvel if those that be fearful of nature choose rather to forsake the play, than to stand always within the fear of a sword in a fond man’s handling.”
Ascham, The Scholemaster