"Est quaedam flere voluptas;"
["'Tis a certain kind of pleasure to weep."
—Ovid, Trist., iv. 3, 27.]
and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is as grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too old, is to the palate:
"Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni
Inger' mi calices amariores"—
["Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put
into my bowl."—Catullus, xxvii. I.]
and as apples that have a sweet tartness.
Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold that the same motions and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping; serve for laughter too; and indeed, before the one or the other be finished, do but observe the painter's manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to which of the two the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does at last bring tears:
"Nullum sine auctoramento malum est."
["No evil is without its compensation."—Seneca, Ep., 69.]
When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be desired (let us put the case that all his members were always seized with a pleasure like that of generation, in its most excessive height) I feel him melting under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly unable to support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. Indeed, he is running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste to escape, as from a place where he cannot stand firm, and where he is afraid of sinking.