If we are to credit the French poet Chamfort, who says he has seen women of all countries, an Italian woman does not believe that she is loved by her lover unless he is capable of committing a crime for her, an Englishwoman an extravagance, and a Frenchwoman a folly. Let us hope that worthier performances than these are sometimes demanded in token of love’s sincerity—acts of self-denial, of merit, of generosity, and of faithfulness. Richter is of opinion, however, that ‘love requires not so much proofs as expressions of love—it demands little else than the power to feel and to requite love.’ Dryden gives expression to the same idea, when he says:
All other debts may compensation find,
But Love is strict, and must be paid in kind.
How often has love spurned riches, power, enjoyment, the good opinion of the world, and everything else, in order to meet responsive love amid poverty, suffering, deprivation, and even dishonour! True love will sacrifice everything to be requited; for ‘Lovers all but love disdain.’
Whatever form its manifestations may take, it may be assumed that the fickle god will not fail to show itself. ‘There are two things not to be hidden,’ says the proverb—‘Love and a cough.’ It may be expressed by sighs and tears, by a dejected and distracted mien, and by what Shakspeare calls ‘the pale complexion of true love.’ It may be discovered in tell-tale blushes—‘celestial rosy red, Love’s proper hue,’ as Milton puts it—in bashful awkwardness, and in a distressing self-consciousness in the presence of the adored object. And it may be shown no less plainly and emphatically in quiet self-devotion, dutifulness, and self-sacrifice. It often identifies itself with various kinds of manias, such as a mania for composing amatory epistles or writing verses, a mania for going to church, for haunting a particular street, or for buying kid gloves, patent-leather boots, and eau-de-Cologne. These, with many other similar and equally harmless symptoms, are quite familiar.
Then there is a more extravagant class of manifestations that the hard unfeeling world would describe as folly. When love reaches what Bacon calls ‘the mad degree,’ there is absolutely no limit to the excesses that may be perpetrated in its name. But of the comparatively harmless kinds of folly there is usually a considerable admixture in even the sedatest loves. Thomson describes the lover as ‘the very fool of nature.’ It is not, of course, to be supposed that he is ever conscious of his folly—when he is engaged in it, at all events—for
Love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
Yet it cannot be denied that the folly in love is, to the lovers, by no means the least agreeable part of it.
I could not love, I’m sure,