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,