Un mal que se entra por medio los ojos,
Y va se derecho hasta el corazon;
Alli en ser llegado se torna aficion,
Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos:
Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos;
Haze llorar, y haze reir,
Haze cantar, y haze plañir;
Da pensamientos dos mil a manojos.
QUESTION DE AMOR.
“Nobs,” said the Doctor, as he mounted and rode away from Mr. Bacon's garden gate, “when I alighted and fastened thee to that wicket, I thought as little of what was to befal me then, and what I was about to do, as thou knowest of it now.”
Man has an inward voice as well as an “inward eye,”1 a voice distinct from that of conscience. It is the companion, if not “the bliss of solitude;”1 and though he sometimes employs it to deceive himself, it gives him good counsel perhaps quite as often, calls him to account, reproves him for having left unsaid what he ought to have said, or for having said what he ought not to have said, reprehends or approves, admonishes or encourages. On this occasion it was a joyful and gratulatory voice, with which the Doctor spake mentally, first to Nobs and afterwards to himself, as he rode back to Doncaster.
1 WORDSWORTH.
By this unuttered address the reader would perceive, if he should haply have forgotten what was intimated in some of the ante-initial chapters, and in the first post-initial one, that the Doctor had a horse, named Nobs; and the question Who was Nobs, would not be necessary, if this were all that was to be said concerning him. There is much to be said; the tongue that could worthily express his merits, had need be like the pen of a ready writer; though I will not say of him as Berni or Boiardo has said of
quel valeroso e bel destriero,
Argalia's horse, Rubicano, that
Un che volesse dir lodando il vero,
Bisogno aria di parlar piu ch' umano.