Once more, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 1), Pistol alludes to the liver as being the inspirer of amorous passions, for, speaking of Falstaff, he refers to his loving Ford’s wife “with liver burning hot.”[921] Douce says, “there is some reason for thinking that this superstition was borrowed from the Arabian physicians, or at least adopted by them; for, in the Turkish tales, an amorous tailor is made to address his wife by the titles of ‘thou corner of my liver, and soul of my love;’ and, in another place, the King of Syria, who had sustained a temporary privation of his mistress, is said to have had ‘his liver, which had been burnt up by the loss of her, cooled and refreshed at the sight of her.’”[922] According to an old Latin distich:
“Cor sapit, pulmo loquitur, fel commoret iras
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur.”
Bartholomæus, in his “De Proprietatibus Rerum” (lib. v. 39), informs us that “the liver is the place of voluptuousness and lyking of the flesh.”
Moles. These have, from time immemorial, been regarded as ominous, and special attention has been paid by the superstitious to their position on the body.[923] In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), a mole on a child is spoken of by Oberon as a bad omen, who, speaking of the three couples who had lately been married, says:
“And the blots of Nature’s hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.”
Iachimo (“Cymbeline,” ii. 2) represents Imogen as having
“On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I’ the bottom of a cowslip.”
And we may also compare the words of Cymbeline (v. 5):
“Guiderius had
Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star;
It was a mark of wonder.”
Spleen. This was once supposed to be the cause of laughter, a notion probably referred to by Isabella in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 2), where, telling how the angels weep over the follies of men, she adds: