CHAPTER XXII.
FASCINATION; OR, THE ART OF PLEASING.
No individual of the human race, but at the bottom of his heart is ambitious to please! But the charm is not more unequal in distribution than the means are various. So various, indeed, and so uncertain, that in our attempts to please we frequently produce the contrary effect.
This universal propensity has given rise to absurd prejudices and ridiculous efforts; and to a thousand arts, and trickeries, affording an amusing subject for consideration.
The desire of pleasing tended greatly to enhance, in the earlier stages of society, the reputation and influence of sorcerers, fairies, and supernatural beings; whose power was often invoked to increase the personal attractions of their votaries. The wild efforts of Medea to secure the affections of her faithless Jason are sufficiently known. Love potions and philtres were a favourite resource of the ancients, never weary of consulting sorcerers and enchantresses concerning their aptitude to please. Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, all allude to the love charms which could be procured at the hands of different magicians. Ovid, who has so poetically described the delicate mysteries of the art of love, laughs, it is true, at these incentives.
“Had magicians,” says he, “the power of inflaming lovers’ hearts, would Circe have allowed Ulysses to abandon her?”
Horace accuses Canidia of killing children for the purpose of composing love-potions; ignorant, apparently, that animal substances were inadmissible in their composition. Vervain and rue, with a few other mystic plants, gathered by the light of the moon, formed their chief ingredients. According to some, a sovereign charm consists of enula campana, or St. John’s wort, plucked on the eve of that Saint, before sunrise, ambergris, and other substances, of which the virtue would be forfeited unless superscribed with the word “Scheva.”
One of the most ingenious authors of antiquity, Apuleius, has given, in his work of the Golden Ass, a recipe for a love-charm composed of different fishes; the claws of crayfish, crabs, and oyster shells. He was accused of having tried its influence in obtaining the affections of his wife to induce her to make a will in his favour. This recipe is the only one of the kind not limited to the vegetable kingdom.
Pudentilla, a rich dowager, who had been a widow for fifteen years, chose for her future husband, the young, handsome, and clever Apuleius, who, according to the account of the “Golden Ass,” pleaded his cause as follows before the tribunal.