Properans amor, me adegit
Violenter ad sequendum.
Love hasty with his purple staff did make
Me follow and the dance to undertake.
But above all the other symptoms of lovers, this is not lightly to be overpassed, that likely of what condition soever, if once they be in love, they turn to their ability, rhymers, ballad makers, and poets. For as Plutarch saith, [5529]“They will be witnesses and trumpeters of their paramours' good parts, bedecking them with verses and commendatory songs, as we do statues with gold, that they may be remembered and admired of all.” Ancient men will dote in this kind sometimes as well as the rest; the heat of love will thaw their frozen affections, dissolve the ice of age, and so far enable them, though they be sixty years of age above the girdle, to be scarce thirty beneath. Jovianus Pontanus makes an old fool rhyme, and turn poetaster to please his mistress.
[5530]Ne ringas Mariana, meos me dispice canos,
De sene nam juvenem dia referre potes, &c.
Sweet Marian do not mine age disdain,
For thou canst make an old man young again.
Equitabat homo per sylvam frondosam,