Torva leoena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam;
Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella.
.... Trahit sua quemque voluptas. (Virgil, Eclogue II.)
XCII
To have firmness of character means to have experienced the influence of others on oneself. Therefore others are necessary.
XCIII
Ancient Love
No posthumous love-letters of Roman ladies have been printed. Petronius has written a charming book, but it is only debauch that he has painted.
For love at Rome, apart from Virgil's story of Dido[1] and his second Eclogue, we have no evidence more precise than the writings of the three great poets, Ovid, Tibullus and Propertius.
Now, Parny's Elegies or Colardeau's Letter of Héloïse to Abelard are pictures of a very imperfect and vague kind, if you compare them to some of the letters in the Nouvelle Héloïse, to those of the Portuguese Nun, of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, of Mirabeau's Sophie, of Werther, etc., etc.
Poetry, with its obligatory comparisons, its mythology in which the poet doesn't believe, its dignity of style à la Louis XIV, and all its superfluous stock of ornaments called poetical, is very inferior to prose when it comes to a question of giving a clear and precise idea of the working of the heart. And, in this class of writing, clearness alone is effective.