mind above it self and makes the man commence a Deity So that he deserves not the name Lovers can do all things even beyond their strength of a Lover who does not act beyond the Sphere of All and rise up to his wishes by Heroical undertakings No he is but a Novice in Love who does not act somewhat above himself in obedience to his Passion But you my friend with equity re-demand a draught of those affections which you Every one is the most pleasing spectacle to himself Whatever by shewing us to our selves doubles our embraces is highly dear to us But if it render us maim'd it becomes dearer by deformity it self your self first taught me though divested of your own grace and Elegancy Is it because it will be so delightsome to you to Contemplate the reflected Image of your self which is as lively engraven on my Devoted breast as on an Adamantine Table and will so please you to take a nice and Critical survey of me as far as I may appear the workmanship of your own Art Or is it because your image can receive no disadvantage from any blemish of the matter but like the Sun gilds even the spots themselves with its Luster that you will not like a peevish Lady be displeas'd at your Looking-glass for presenting you with deformities which are none of your own and as it were Burlesquing your face I know not how it comes to pass but we have a kind of Love for the very decrepit shadows which are the reproach of our own bodies and are apt to pay a more awful Veneration to maimed Statues So parents are commonly more tenderly affected toward their mis-shapen Children as if Nature had so order'd it as a Solace to Or from this very shew of injury or antiquiry misfortune and treat these Monsters of the Womb with greater reverence as if they were the presages of something extraordinary Whereas all others deride the transposed Mass of a distorted body the Anagram of a Deformity is a Sacred thing man Certainly there is something Sacred in deformity The Prophets thought it more Divine than any beauty more fit to represent the Grandeur of a Deity and render an Oracle Majestick It does at once scare Mortals and lecture them and challenges not so much our Love as our adoration Every one is the most pleasing object and Charming spectacle to himself and the eye seems to be priviledged with the pleasure of the mind while it reflects its sight upon it self being at once the object and the beholder Whatever that is which by shewing us to our selves doubles our embraces must needs be highly pretious But if it represent us maim'd and defective it acquires a new value from the very shew of injury or antiquity I am not therefore a little indebted to nature for making my mind a blank Table 'T is the Mystery of Love which cannot be express'd unless it be its own interpreter though for no other reason than this that it might receive so much of your Image whereby it might delight both it self and you But 't is a prodigy they say when Images once begin to speak And indeed I find it far easier to love than to express that which delights only to be perceived not to be shewn and because lodged in the recesses of the heart disdains to admit the Tongue to be its consort That which none of us have learnt from The Idioms of Lovers like those of Embassadors are delivered in inverted Characters precedents and instructions but then only begin to know when we we have all experimented it You would say Cupid were not only blind but Dumb since he renders every member of the body vocal except the Tongue Hence 't is that Lovers with more Eloquence communicate sighs than words as so many internunciary particles of vital Air and like Doves of Venus mourn sorth animated letters Hence They convese like Angels by intuition the will not the intellect explaining it self 't is that they keep a silent intercourse with their fingers now eloquent without a Pen and weave Dialogues in little Posies They hear one anothers mutual wishes and read one anothers visible souls by those vocal messengers of the affections affable Nods and darting Smiles Sometimes their significant gestures composed as it were of so many rhetorical figures court in a various and Mysterious Dialect Sometimes their ranging aspects are earnestly fix'd on one another as on strangers and while they seem to disown all acquaintance grow familiar by stealth Sometimes their contracted brows pretend a passion yet they do but all the while industriously fawne and designedly wait for delicate pleasures Sometimes their souls interchangeably gliding from their eyes take a Cursory taste of Bride-kisses at a distance and bring home their stollen sweets with Triumph 'T is at once their greatest boast and pleasure to remain undiscover'd Thus that which has so often appear'd in Theatres does still decline spectators and acts its plaies in its own disguise Methinks these Divine conversers enjoy a priviledge above the Laws of humane Commerce thus to hit one anothers meanings by most infallible tokens to pry into the very inward parts and to entertain themselves with a Divination rather than a Conference For they are mutually discern'd by the clearer vision of thought before they deliver themselves in words or know how to counterfeit and their wishes become visible like Phantoms but withall like some Pictures cannot be understood with less art than was used in the making They uncase themselves of their bodies like gods quitting their Shrines and not only expose themselves to view but intermix and infuse a soul into each other with every accent Their wandring and ecstatic souls freely pass to and fro as 't were within the same body and converse as softly as if in a Soliloquy This one passion cannot possibly be express'd but is as a mystery to be adored whose Rites like some of greatest antiquity among the gods are shrowded no less than Crimes with a bashful secrecy All Love has its veil and the Votaries of Venus All Love has its veil like Aeneas go surrounded with a Cloud and in the most popular concourse enjoy a concealment Neither does Cupid content himself with a single veil but loves to view wounded hearts in Masquerade and to secure himself invisible So that Love to whose friendly influence the orderly System of the Universe owes its composure has left it self in confusion bury'd in the Old Chaos and primitive obscurity Venus has hitherto avoided the Sun Love is an unexpressible mysterie as a betrayer of her secresie and to prevent discovery some god or other has shut up all kind of Love as well as that of Pasiphae in a Labyrinth where if it chance to be taken it appears all over intangled with Nets and Toiles or confusedly warpped up like a Monster Indeed every Lover is a Riddle and a blind Problem to It is
view the Image of his corrected splendor and to refresh it self with feeble delights and shadows Whatever that is whether a Ray of God or a reflection of an Idea or an efflux of the Soul which under the shew of Beauty captivates the eyes and mind must be something Divine since 't is the priviledge of man alone to contemplate and be affected with Beauty Pardon me if I also ravish'd with the Love of Beauty am carried beyond all bounds and leave even my self behind through the extravagance of transport I am willing to abide here where I find Love inthroned in the most Beautiful part of the world in Heaven And now I can't forbear venting my anger on those mortifi'd and Cynical Ghosts whose Sage Morals license them to dislike every thing who condemn all the Erratas of humanity as the intemperance of solid benevolence who inveigh against this god Cupid as the ringleader to all luxury and voluptuousness and the Ingineer of all Tragick intreagues and vallainies whom we find our Proxy to gain us immortality and the Author of a Divine nature This is the reward of all Simple and mutua Love simple and barren Love which it receives from its own luxurious bounty for where there is no return of gratitude Love has the same revenue with liberality it has repay'd it self 'T is an abundant reward to have well deserv'd And yet there 's a Love and Love for Love are Twins born and growing up together greater reward than all this sought after by Love to be paid in kind when souls growing warm together intermingle flames and light awakened by mutual allision as one piece of Iron whets another and cherish their ardours by a reciprocal propagation They live to one another mutually by an exchange of spirits and in the bottom of their hearts just as in that of transparent water their faces answer each other by repercussion Certainly nothing is more sweet than to Love or to be lov'd except this to Love and to be lov'd For when our Love is unhappily misplaced and such creatures are betroth'd to our Embraces which either by a certain necessity of Nature or by their own fault are ingrateful When with nuptial solemnity Xerxes embraces Plato Polydorus a Statue and Lesbia a Sparrow not more wishing for than undergoing a Metamorphosis and find the Poetical fables verifi'd in themselves being all over animated with the Deity of Love and by the plastick power and assimulating affinity of affection converted into trees stones and Birds 't is not the least of all felicity when there is no other way of Society but that the same person personate a Companion to himself to feign dialogues answers and delights proper to ones self and so to model our happiness to our own not anothers liking Methinks it pleases me to see the not altogether fruitless affection return upon its Author where that is the refuge of delight which in Amours is esteem'd the chiefest to Love again our own Love and like the Sun enjoy our own heat by reflexion at least Neither does less pleasure but more honour attend that other lot to be belov'd Whence men more liberally court others affections than they impart their own For this is like gods to extend their Dominions in mens hearts without the Pageantry of a Sceptre This displaies the greatness of our fortunes and Vertues and makes us oftener receive the officious services of others than perform any our selves Thus the Trophies of your excellencies become conspicuous according to the number of Captive Clients which follow your triumph But when on both sides there is an equal contention of officiousness when there is a Duel of Courtesie not with complemental Ostentation but with the highest shame of yielding and fear Mutual Love is a parity of reciprocal benevolence Aristotle of less obliging then arises that parity of reciprocal benevolence which Aristotle honours with that well known name though of rare instance friendship Venus felt these reciprocal tides at her birth and so still continues a flux and reflux of affection That equality which that Leveller justice has been a long time to no purpose endeavouring with her Sword and ballance Love with ease introduces into the world sâ—â—ce it always finds equals or makes them so Sometimes the distances of fortune and merit cut off the bands of friendship oftner than those of place Jupiter must descend to the earth and put off the Raies of his Divinity if he be minded to enjoy the Embraces of Mortals And so he did nay for fear lest he should not be familiar and despicable enough he degraded himself below a man into a Brute Deity and so procured himself easie admission sooner by contemtibleness than majestick horrour If you will be reverenced Sextus I sh'ant Love you The story of Semele sufficiently informs what a great and proud punishment 't is to endure the Society of a God The Moral 's good An officious cringing Officiousness to great persons is flattery and ambirion not Love and fidelity to great personages sweet only to the unexperienced comes nearer to flattery than benevolence and is always suspected as an insinuating Art of bespeaking more than we offer 'T was your ambition which brought you hither not your sincerity so that you deserve a place among my servants not among my friends Now therefore we are at an equal pitch when I disappoint you of your hoped for dignity as you would have brought me down from mine Yet sometimes 'T is servitude not friendship we find humble Superiors ambitious of condescension choosing a reflection upon their Scutcheon before a diminution of their Courtesie Alexander acts no longer the Emperours part and loses those titles in Love which he had won in Conquest But he loses them with greater glory to Hephestion content that Hephestion might be King so that himself might be a part of his Kingdom He makes over all those honourable courtships which he received from others to Hephestion while he serves his Hephestion he seems to enlarge his territories and to enjoy another world We all acknowledge Love to be a sweet and restless desire of pleasing them who either by accident or their own Vertues or lastly our own mistake have any way gratifi'd us It matters not much as in life so in friendship what e'r is the Origin of the heat It inlivens the heart with a never the less durable and daily motion The importunate votary resolving to tire or overcome you or indear Barclay's Icon Anim. and please you heaps one good turn upon an other and when there is no more room for his officiousness he serves with empty endeavours and looking still like one doing good obliges by his very Well meaning countenance He cautiously fathoms the inclinations of his friend by heedful experiments and for the very sollicitous fear of displeasing deserves to please He thinks it of great use sometimes to have displeas'd that so he may either hate
also a riddle himself He lives Amphibiously and is made up of contradictory passions wafted up and down by those alternate tides of his breast so that from him you may learn that contrary winds and Seditious Waters gave birth to Venus Is it so that the same person is Love-Problems enslaved and yet acts with all freedom is master of his own will yet at the same time subject to anothers and like the manumiss'd Slaves of Emperors purchases his power over his Mistress by a long Apprentiship of servitude and compliance Is it so that the same person by an happy contradiction is at once both dead and alive and Phoenix like makes himself a vital funeral-pile that he may revive more Nobly from his Flames Is it so that there is so much madness and maliciousness in the desires of Lovers as to wish them miserable who are At once malicious and benevolous most dear to them only that they may have an opportunity to relieve their misfortune First to inflict a wound that they may be the authors of its Cure To wish them deserted of their friends and fortune that they may succeed in their Room So that necessity rather than Courtship and merit may allure them into their embraces 'T is hard to know whether you have to deal with a friend or an enemy since the same part is thus enviously acted by hatred and too ardent affection 'T is somewhat unkindly done to deprecate the Love of others that he himself may engross all and to forbid and implead all other companions as encroaching on his peculiar nay more studiously to contrive how to prevent the growing wisdom of his dearest lest it should occasion a contempt of himself For 't is expedient No Love without some indignation that the person lov'd as well as the Lover be blind How also does the feverish and love-sick breast labour under the alternate Paroxysms of heat and cold Neither is there any Love without a mixture of indignation He curses and that deservedly too his pleasing tormentor that scorches him in these flames and snatches him from Himself but still like the fly he loves to sport about the dazling brightness and from so divine an Author to enjoy a Noble ruin The unhappy Lover seeks for himself out of himself and lingers on purpose to be caught that he may have the happiness of redeeming himself and knows no better way to be next to himself than to approach as nigh as he can to the possessour of his heart He finds it a difficult thing to Love and much more not to Love but the greatest difficulty of all is to acquiesce in the fruition of his Love He cannot be otherwise than miserable since the issue of his desires is as uneasie to him as the desires themselves So that should auspicious Heaven favour him with a succesful Love he presently wishes again for his former disquiets and seems to miss that pleasing Torment to sigh and languish So much more pleasant is it to be alwaies advancing toward an enjoyment ' than to be lock'd up in the Chains of an embrace And truly every one thinks more highly of his desires than of the accomplishment of them No condition certainly can make him happy who pines at fruition it self as depriving him of his sighs and pensive pleasures And this is the hard misfortune of all Lovers who though never so much the favourites of fortune yet can never be happy through the conspiracy of their own minds How strange is it that he should shun He loves and fears the sight of his belov'd the presence of that person as some boding object whose aspect is yet the very Manna of his soul and the raies of whose face he thinks more pleasant than those which saluted him at his Nativity What a Paradox of unhappiness is this to be master of ones wish and yet not be able to enjoy it Why 't is that majestic beauty which does at once invite and discourage 't is the brightness of that Serene face which like that of the Sun does at once refresh and dazle the beholder The poor Votary stands astonish'd with the dread of so great divinity which his own fancy has clothed with an awful horror thunderstruck like a Cyclops with bolts of his own forging His passion has Deifi'd his Mistress so that now the enjoyment seems too great and excellent to be made use of and he begins with a kind of envy to beome his own rival A Religious concern aws him from Embraces and the superstition of his Love whispers him in the ear that what he takes for his Deity must not be approach'd with Corporal Addresses but only by the Sallies of thought Certainly this passion is favour'd with the peculiar care of Heaven since it has mingled a melancholy trembling with its joys only to enhance and refine the pleasure Hence 't is that the desires so torment as He rejoyces and sighs by course that they also please and the sweets are so beset with prickles that they also allay our complacencies They are sparingly imparted to us yet so as Ladies faces which are only more openly hid through their thin silken veils So that 't is their fortune at once to have and want since they aspire at greater bliss than can possibly be enjoy'd all at once These little antepasts of Love to sit by to walk with to gaze upon and to speak to her are permitted only one at a time And after all this the languishing and restless mind satisfi'd neither with gazing nor conversing aspires unto something more divine which is both out of her reach and knowledge This is I know not by what destiny this is the proper infelicity of Lovers that because they never use to lay hold on any happiness but in a dream they Sceptically distrust their most real delights treat them as tenderly as if they were dreams and shadows refuse to be imposed upon again and are afraid even to enjoy This very passion which composes all other commotions of the Mind which civilizes Men Brutes and Philosophers is at variance only with it self and weds together things of an unlike nature in a jarring and untunable union Do you upbraid our He is at once effeminate and manly Lover with Effeminacy whose arms are fretted only with embraces who always breathes out either perfumes or sighs who is struck down with the menace of a sleight frown and the glance of an eye Know that he is also hardy and masculine who can endure his careful Vigils patiently expecting at the door all night for the day-break of his Mistresses eyes and exercising his mind with such an unwearied repetition of customary hardship till he become greedy of fresh encounters He delights to supply the dearth of fears and troubles by his fruitful imagination to turn the hazards of his health into so many arguments for his Love the paleness of his complexion into a mode of Courtship and
now look like gems and dart forth glimmerings as well in a Rock as in a Lovers Ring With this sweet art while the Sea partakes as clearly of the motion as the image of the Moon it enjoys the intelligence of the Celestial Orb as its own With this lovely envy while the Steel is drawn with admiration of the Load stone and by and by with mutual breathings and Nuptial Embraces exhales its pretious Soul as if 't were now it self become a Load-stone exercises Charms of its own and draws other things as much as 't is drawn it self There is indeed in nature as well as in common life an ambitious indigency and cringing to Superiours Neither is there any thing more regarded in another than the eminency of its order Had we no such thing as a Philosopher yet we have Philomathematical Waves which shew the wain of the Moon with more certainty than Almanacks and Ephemerides We have Astronomical Flowers which teach us the motion of the Sun and instead of striking watches give an Articular notice of the declining day Had this Theater of the World no Philosophical spectator to consider its rarities with Scrutiny and Inspection yet all Nature her self is inamour'd to admiration with her own Beauty and as both the eyes of the World so both Worlds speculate each other by course and feed themselves with mutual interviews And this lower seems to aspire to the dignity of the higher with the same ambition as is used by the commonalty of Spain when they Emulate the Grandieur of the Nobility and with the same art which the Commons of Rome used when the Plebeians were admitted to match among the Patricians The Author of Nature has made the welfare of things too much his concern by committing Besides these there is a farther end of desire in man divinity and Eternity the world to the Tuition of Love so that now an idle and unactive Deity will either not be own'd or contemn'd But whereas other things are of such a composure that they can only receive and want man alone knows how to Love Nature has shadow'd forth in them a rude semblance of affection only that she might make a prelusory specimen of that in viler materials which she intended to compleat in man with Elaborate Accuracy Although I must also acknowledge that the affections of men leisurely improve according to the same degrees and proportions as they themselves do and as if they had several births are first endow'd with life then with sense and at last with reason and that Love which is at first callow and creeps by the instinct of Occult sympathy by and by is Fledged with desire and at last improves into humanity and reason which was before only Brute tendency or the predominant bias of an Element For when the as yet tender warmth only broods on the breast much less has hatch'd the glowing sparks the desire scarce gives credit to it self When the The various degrees and ages of all Loves mind is newly smitten and is hardly yet Conscious either of the wound or the Author of it she feels just such innocent prickings as Children do from the Rupture of their Gums when they breed Teeth Then you may see a pretty specimen of Infant simplicity those who have been born scarce long enough to view one another a little beginning to sigh together as one Myrle-tree whispers to another For in these early expresses of Passion these Infant Lovers don't understand the Air which they ventilate in the groves of Venus while they wind Embraces insensibly and like those who lazily stretch themselves naturally seek out for something to rest their extended arms on You may now if you will call these the insinuating arms of an Ivy or the winding branches of a Vine But assoon as they improve their Love so far as to imprint and devour smacking Embraces you don't see men but Ring-Doves When they breath out their querulous Amours in wanton chidings you hear Turtles as being now a little more by Nature disposed to benevolence so that they affect others with sweet and innocent fondness and imitate the kindness of the Dolphin or Lizard But men of an adult Flame are seiz'd with a more generous impulse though blind By this blind impulse we are carried upwards like Doves of Venus with seal'd eyes and with a most vigorous endeavour ignorantly aspire to Heaven as to a Nest Thus the very defects of Lovers The kinds of Bastard Love and errors of Lovers shew a disposition greedy of Divinity and the errours of this one Passion aspire to something immortal So that even that more impure itch which derides the Barren marriages of Vertues and Copulations of Souls which seeks something to fill its Embraces and adores the Planet Venus though threatning its birth-day with Storms and Shipwracks of life seems yet to be inflamed not so much with the Torches of Hymen as with the desire of Eternity While with such Ardency it longs to out-live it self and by a long series of posterity to patch up as well as it can a successive immortality Even he whose friendship is purchas'd with a a supper whom like a Brute Creature a bit does befriend to you who is in Love with your Kitchin not your self though he Loves to the proportion of his stomach And he who values a Even they who Negotiate in the Merchandise of affection aspire to something divine man after the same rate as he does a farm attending on him with the same sordid expectation as he does on his field who uses his friendship as a thing of profit with a mercenary mind and still reckons himself among his friendships Why this latter well skill'd in the value of Love uses it as money but as a Divine Coin wherewith we men Negotiate with the Gods and enrich our selves with a Deity And the former enjoys his Love to Luxury and Banquet for he thinks it the Nectar of his Supreme Deity as well as of Venus Both of them truly with less Covetousness consult their own profit either he that seeks a Patrimony They are more liberal who do good of their own accord by his affection or he that diets upon it than he who hastily discharges his sinking Ship of her perishing fraught and by a free disbursement of his goods transfers them out of the reach of Chance or Fate before they perish Who although he expects no returns nor sells his gifts yet has already receiv'd a most ample recompence the very Collation of a kindness and although he has given never so much yet has laid up a greater Treasure for himself the Vertue of beneficence So that to give great largesses and such as modesty oftentimes forbids to receive does the most advantage to the Author either by rendring him awful that nothing mean will be expected from him or by representing the benefit more necessary and natural than either Rain or Sun-shine So that from him as
from the Sun benefits will be exacted as Debts and he will seem to do only according to Custom and Duty as often as he acts generously so that all gratitude will be taken away through the frequency and ampleness of his Collations What shall I think of him who seeks to please not to Love me Whom I repair to as a Summer-bower that may afford me shade and security but which is of no use to me in the rage of Winter Whom as many of us as have any severity mixt with our Loves are wont to Alarm with this grave Apothegm A friend as a Wife is a word of Dignity not of pleasure You have Friend and Wife are names of honour found out a new way of being Libidinous without Embraces you have deflowred your Love with this kind of Lasciviousness worse than that of the stews Industriously to please is the trick of wheedlers and the luscious venom of a Pander To treat too daintily is a kind of angling To fawn with emulous officiousness is like a Wooer and belongs rather to the rudiments of Love than the life of Lovers Far be 't that you should take that Creature for a friend who is a torment to you while you desire him and a tediousness when you possess him And yet you are not much out if you think that all Lovers wander in the fields of Elysium and that Flowers spring up where ever they tread No other are the joys of Heaven than to Love and to be lov'd no other are the joys of Earth That Divine Ardor which makes the Empyreal Heaven to be what it is and wherein will consist the happiness of the future life must be the only Solace of this In all other things we are Passive these we only enjoy and delight in which are the Issues of our desire and choice and which in those There is no pleasure anywhere but from Love other uneasinesses divert our pain Thus have we seen in a Tempest the two Brothers rejoyce in a greedy concourse bringing as much joy to them selves as to the Mariners Congratulating their united beams whereby they lose each other in a mutual embrace and thence become two again Thus have we known the Votaries of Venus surrounded with a Cloud brought like Brides under a Veil of silk with more secret triumph to their joys We confess there is something in Love more powerful than calamities more magnificent than honour more splendid than Riches more charming than pleasures for whose sake we contemn all these yea for whose sake we do not contemn them but have them in the greater veneration It does so solely please that by it all things else though never so vile please exceedingly It has such a priviledge of Majesty that nothing can disparage it that it clears from infamy and sooner reflects a lustre on the greatest reproaches of life than it can be sullied from any thing else Hence 't was that this was added a thirteenth to the labours of Hercules and serv'd as an ingredient to make up his praises that he not only brandish'd his Club but held a Distaff with which though he had tam'd all other Wild Beasts yet one Monster still remain'd to be subdued whom only the instruments of her own Arts can Conquer a Woman Why do you wonder so much at the inviolable Rays of the Sun since Cupids Torch can also enlighten even the most sordid things and yet remain untainted Why then does the hunger bitten mind so eagerly and to no purpose hunt after something Divine in other things since it has it at home For indeed whatsoever we Love is to us a Deity Whatsoever you desire that 's Jupiter Is it so What does that sordid Lover who admits no consort without a Dowry kiss buy and count Jupiter imprinted on his Money Yes but 't is Jupiter shining under a covert of Gold What and does the Libidinous voluptuary itch after Jupiter Yes but 't is Jupiter turn'd Stallion under the form of a Satyr and converted into the Semeleian flames Yes and so does that delicate Trencher-friend sup upon Jupiter but in the shape of a Swan and lurking under the soft Down of Luxury He lusts also after Jupiter but 't is that of Ganymedes steep'd in Nectar and Ambrosia Now I sound the depth of the business neither am I quite deceiv'd by those Rhetoricians of the Gods the Poets Now I perceive that they were not the Loves of Jupiter but our own which clothed the Deity in such unworthy forms But because slippery and wandring Love never rests till 't is arrived to the Pinnacle of perfection or by a pleasing delusion thinks so at least being always a Companion of the best and Love is only of one greatest or what appears so to this it must always adhere in this always acquiesce as the Heaven of its soul the Center of its fire The Lover will not I presume be at leisure to entertain the Charms if there can be any of a new felicity neither will he find in his heart to Love another no nor himself He will ever complain of the disproportion between his power and his desires and that he is wanting to him whom he surfeits and wearies with excess of fondness And after he has thus made over all his affection to one and still thinks he has not done enough he must needs have as little Courtesie left for all others as a Monk or Stoick Begon thou Monster of Syracuse who hast invented a new Tyranny to thy other cruelties a Pair-Royal in friendship Who wouldest not kill a pair of friends but divide them and corrupt their fidelity by interception of it from a Tyrant converted into a Rival But tell me Tyrant suppose you were assumed a third Lover into the League of this pair tell me which would you prefer in kindness You must needs incense the other now on the same score jealous of your self But if you will distribute your kindness equally suppose one of them brought to execution will you die for this or live for the sake of the other You stand like a dubious needle between two Loadstones by the neighborhood of two resolutions detain'd from both The distraction of your wish prompts you at once to live and die Thus the Pendulous Lover about to adhere to neither and to both is undone by this equality of affection One exacts tears from you the other an effusion of laughter The partiality of your officiousness to one makes you injurious to the other So that your mind distracted several ways like Metius between the contrary draughts of Horses seems deservedly to suffer the punishment of his perfidiousness Thus it happens as often as you undertake to be a Pluralist in affection and at once to Love whom you can hardly see at the same time unless you were squint-eyed or double-faced Do but consider the dominion and compliance which is in Love Here the new Eteocles and Polynices must duly command and serve by
prescribe any other measure The measure of benevolence should be to know none to benevolence besides this one to know none at all or circumscribe any other limits than those which are mark'd out by the desires of Lovers Let him not Love at all and I am sure I cannot imprecate a heavier Curse who tempers his affection and is not rather ruled by it who warily Loves to such a set degree as if ready to hate or who deals out his affection in proportions giving and receiving favours with a pair of scales He may perhaps return Love but not Love directly who answers his Lover just as he pledges his Companion precisely so much And now I stand amused with a long veneration like a sweetly confused Inamorato who has wasted all his eye-sight upon a Divine form and is uncertain even after the greatest Criticism of interview which part of the Soveraign Beauty first deserves his admiration and is arrived only thus far to admire his own astonishment and to pay equal adoration to all the excellencies as if every one were supreme and variously to assent to the praises of parties differently affected I hear Dionysius defining Love to be a The definitions of Love It is a Circle returning from good through good to good Dionysius Circle returning from good through good to good And I confess 't is comprehended in this ingenious Emblem Hence I look upon a Ring not only as a pledge but an Hieroglyphick of Love Cupid represents to me this Circle while he is bending his bow together with the semicircle of his own body This Circle is decypher'd to me by the continual heat of Lovers which with the blood is carried round according to the modern Tenet of Physicians in a Circular motion 'T is like the Elementary fire where the immortal flame feeds it self and is its own fuel whoever loves that which he hath lov'd retreats by a spherical motion in his own track and he that loves only that he may Love the same returns upon himself closes up himself Aristophanes tells me and I easily The whole Mystery of Love consists in being reduced to that from whence we were Aristophanes believe him that the whole mystery of Love consists in being reduced to that from whence we were For I see all things by a natural motion retire into their principles And perhaps those Magnetick Charms which they fansie to be lodg'd in the whole earth are found by Philosphers Mariners and ships to be only in the Native Country The Law of nature obliges us to bestow our lives upon those from whom we receiv'd them and by a certain series of piety and Scale of alliance to adore those three names dearer than our lives our Country Parents ' and God I know not whether I may call man like Oedipus a blind and incestuous Lover or rather provident and pious who is always inamor'd with something of his original and is as cordially affected toward it as to his Parent Neither is he much mistaken who takes that for his Parent whence he dates the rudiments of a new life and by a kind of revival renews his Nativity at the expence of an extraordinary Love Thus to resign up our souls is to retrieve and remake them But you O Thales by leaping into the water and you Empedocles into the fire the one by chance and the other out of design made too much hast to resolve not only Philosophy but the Philosophers themselves into their principles and to plunge the vital particles of your souls into their Elements But yet so the errors of this Philosophy excuse those of the affections and since our hungry Souls as well as bodies are nourish'd with those things whereof they consist you 'd swear the Drunkard had a liquid Soul and the Tyrant a bloody one infused into them you 'd swear the fordid misers were just inlivened out of the mud and that the Stoical and barbarous were hewn out of a Cragged Rock and so still continue the Statues of men But if we fansie with Aristophanes in Plato that from Plato's Conviv the common seminary of souls or from the joynt Society of a man heretofore double-body'd the familiar and Colleague-Souls were sent into the world methinks this they render probable while like the parts of a divided insect they seek out for th' other half or when they run into embraces at first sight as persons mindful of their former intimacy So that the Platonick man is now all over memory whose Love as well as Philosophy is nothing else but Reminiscence Yea rather whose Love is the very The first Philosophy is the desire of Eternity Diotima exercise of Philosophy for I willingly and deservedly ascribe both to you Diotima that is to elevate our heaven-born Souls together with their bodies to a perpetual intuition of Heaven just as the bird of the Sun is fed only with his Raies and to vegetate them with a desire of Eternity This is that Mysterious ardour which makes us Mortals always emulous of Divine perfection out of Love with the meanness of our condition and for a remedy hastens to strip the man of the part which is frail Hence as if we had a Legion of eyes we take a prospect which is more than the Sun himself can do of both ends of the earth at once Hence Amphitryo could at once discharge the affairs of his House and of the Camp and though remote accompany his Wife and that not as the Poets will have it in the fiction of disguise Hence circumscribed with no bounds either of time or space we live another life after the first either in our friends the Guardians of our now alienated souls or in our Children the Heirs of our transmitted life both lending and borrowing breath While I muse on these thoughts The desire of enjoying Beauty Plato Plato offers me a nearer experiment And I presently turn'd Platonick swear that this Cupid though never so blind and content only with thought wherewith he persues Divine Objects and yet born from the sight is nothing but a desire of enjoying and forming Beauty in something Beautiful The truth is we are willing to enjoy not being able always to content our selves with the barren delight of Contemplation and Courtship that from the conflux of associated splendor as from the Conjunction of Stars the Glory and influence may encrease and our Star improve into a Constellation And as Pictures so faces of too Majestick Beauty whose blandishments are above our fortune and hopes affect the spectators with some pleasure no desire And that portion of Beauty which recreates the sight with the sweetness of Symmetry and Complexion only will find more spectators than lovers as setting forth the prettiness and graces of a delightsome prospect such as are better represented in painted than living faces Nothing that 's barren and dead excites vital affections nothing that 's inanimate influences the Soul Neither is there greater
or correct his behaviour For to be as much like him as is possible is all one he thinks with being good and happy Wherefore he feels his pulse more scrupulously than a Physician examines the most inward motions of his breast serves him upon strong presumptions and executes his wishes scarce yet known to himself before they discompose him with the first qualms of a breeding desire Neither will he ever satisfie himself though he has the other abundantly that it may appear he indulges his officious instinct not with a design of insinuation but for the bare pleasure of serving as if by the predestination of nature he were mark'd out for a slave to this one person You shall know since you are so inquisitive that there is a pedigree and origin of Love as well as life There is an order and mutual respect between some either instituted by nature Simplicius upon Epictâ—tus or voluntarily undertaken and this again is either among persons of like or unlike dispositions which occasions the union of some and the dissociation of others But as for that ty of blood 't is a mere Contingent thing such as argues no merit of benevolence which because obtruded upon our unconsenting breasts we did not admit but unknowingly sustain And now it brings as much of burthen with it as of necessity and what is worse this Lottery of birth imposes upon as a necessity of honouring even the most wicked and vile persons and what 's more against the hair yet it exacts every where an equal and common rate of affection according to the custom of Countrys such as must not be diminished and yet can't well be improv'd higher Pardon me ye Ghosts The name of friend more Sacred than that of Parent of my kindred if I adore the name of Friend as far more Sacred than that of Parent We indeed owe all that to Love which by the hereditary error of an easie piety we ascribe to our Parents For it happens from their own mutual Love not from any kindness to us whom they knew not they should produce but from the Oracle that we enjoy the benefit of this light And we with as little natural kindness for them rejoice to see the light not our parents and being as ignorant of them as they were before of us are apt to bestow our unprejudic'd Embraces on any else as if they were our Parents or might as well have been with a fond innocency So much Philosophy we may learn from that little age that we are not so much the off-spring of a man as of mankind and born to all in common and that nature should share in our filial gratitude Neither are domestick friendships kindled and cherish'd by nearness of blood but conversation and the sweet Society in calamities and errors together with Congratulations arising from common miseries I am much The union of will as far exceeds that of blood as reason does nature mistaken if Lovers be not nearer of kin to one another and engaged in so much the straiter bond by how much reason exceeds nature and the force of my own choice is more prevalent than that of Consanguinity For 't is the sweetness of conforming to ones own Laws which makes every man so constantly Loyal to himself But when nature and choice shall both conspire with how prone and easie instinct does that affection move the mind which flows from nature and will link'd together in a silent consent If it be our lot to be born and educated to the Love of any person nature and studious care contributing to fashion us after his pattern if the Stars of any mingled their lights before in sociable and friendly conjunctions if the species of any be congenial and innate to us from our Nativity for nature does sometimes either for knowledge or defence like breeding mothers imprint some marks on the members how greedily do we imbibe their aspects as familiar to us from the Cradle and more certainly known than by a long conversation How do we redemand this image as a piece snatch'd from our own Souls How do we swallow down the breath and voice of this person like vital air How do we run together with an indeliberate propension without the Ceremony of kind salutations like Lovers after absence or divorce renewing their Caresses Thus these souls involv'd all over in a Voluntary Slavery engage in a mutual league not tarrying who shall give the first Love-stroke Just like those who swear to and sign bonds without ever reading them and yet can never dissolve the Sacred ty nor cancel their solemn though inconsiderate engagement 'T is anothers consent and not their own which ratifi'd these engagements so that they have made over the liberty of consenting nay the whole right of themselves to the power and pleasure of another But O Cupid the least of gods and greatest of Deities I should think it less than your deserts if yet there Love is a God could be any thing greater that you are Deifi'd by those bold Philosophers the Poets You have this property of a god to be unknown and to receive homage from men You have this also of a god to govern men with a silent influence that they may yield to your motions though not understood by them or else to draw them by compulsion To the beck of whose Majesty all contrary Passions pay Allegiance and attendance As often as you are disposed to divert your self the most high flown Pride strikes Sail the most daring courage trembles at the lucid Darts of an Eye Covetousness it self turns Prodigal in a Voluntary Oblation of rich presents and the suddainly Eloquent illiterate Heir now no longer buys Poems with their Poets but himself becomes inspired and composes And to pass over with religious silence your other Divine attributes that you are a Circle Eternal immense and that you engross all that Office of Providence to preside over and to preserve this one thing confirms in me the belief of your Divinity that your only Religion strikes an awe into the most profane They so manage their Courtship as if they were performing some Religious Rite They look passionately view their habit curiously and compose themselves to all the solemnity of reverence And to what end all this That they may address themselves to their Mistress as to an Altar Nay more that they may be decent even when absent For whom we love we fansie always present the Judge of our actions the supplier of vertuous and ingenious thoughts the prosperer of all our Heroick undertakings Whom the Sailer supplicates for a calm the Travailer for a safe return the Souldier for Victory and booty out of which he may make her a present Well henceforth let it be permitted to Lovers to Complement one another with Metaphors fetch'd from Heaven to Court in the Sacred Dialect of Religion Neither do I think any one can envy at the Divinity of so mild a god whose
anger may be appeas'd without slaughter who does not like other gods require beasts but only chearful Votaries for Sacrifice and that he may not want Temples erects flaming Altars in humane breasts Nay the little god himself being converted into It is fire fire by a continual supply of flames takes care for his worship 'T is certainly so as often as I see the pensive Inamorato venting his Passion in deep-fetch'd sighs he minds me of the fire which is immured in a Cloud redoubling murmurs and thunders and at last expiring in a fume As often as I see him bedew'd with the sweat of tears and boiling over with groans I call to mind the flames of Aetna and Vesuvius breaking out among the flames of Snow and Ashes or methinks I see the great Chasms in the mid-sea occasion'd by the eruption of fire As often as the short-liv'd fire of a counterfeit passion displays it self in imaginary and Scenical flames I then consider in man fictitious blazes fires resembling those of the Celestial Lamps Meteors of affection Again Love in this respect resembles fire in that it serves only to the benefit of men and the worship of the gods Again in that it heats and inlightens our fancies insomuch that Apollo as well as Bacchus owes his rise to the flames of Love Again in that it rages against the Bars of opposition gathers new strength from allaies and impediments and is fomented by injuries and provocations as fire by the aspersions of Water Then as to the properties of the Ethereal fire it burns and refreshes is immortal without fuel self sufficient for Love is content with it self being it s own reward it is inviolable not to be polluted by the Contagion of filthiness expiating and purging the Crimes which it cannot admit equalling the Virginexcellency of the Vestal flames Lastly it has this one quality more of the Celestial fire that for the security of the Universe it has obtain'd a supremacy of Station that 't is seated in the top of all guarding and enclosing the inferiour Passions In this one thing the parallel halts that it extends its vital influence beyond its Sphere to the production and Conservation of Animals Thus is Love parallel'd with the two purest and most powerful things either above or under the Celestial Arch God and fire But among all the Miracles of Mysterious Love this is the most confounding Occult Love like a subterraneous fire burns but gives no light outwards that often times in the interior parts of men as well as of the earth there glows a Subteraneous fire which spreads its Contagious Fever without the least outward Symptom of a blaze So that when we feel it burn and yet can't give an account how it came to be kindled unless any of us are of opinion that the flame was congenial to the breast and upon the conviction of this experiment grant the soul to be fire we deny it burns at all So loth are we to own our ignorance by admiring at the unaccountable harmony of souls equal to that of the Spheres when every one has contrary motions of its own and yet partakes of the same as if govern'd by a certain common Intelligence 'T is our daily wonder whence the strings of hearts as well as those of Lutes mutually sympathize with such consent that the trepidations of the one are seconded with the correspondent Tremor of the other We stand amazed at the surprising symphony unknown even to the Musician and swear these strings were heretofore Motion is consent as in bodies so in Souls taken out of or now skrew'd to a unison in the same entrails Wee 'l grant the Physicians their Paradox that motion is only a certain consent in bodies a no small advantage to their art being well assured it holds true in souls Neither let us any longer doubt to Hence Love is a Magician affirm with Plato's guest that Love is a Magician For how do souls kindle and conceive seeds of Love with a secret touch How do Lovers like Inchanters burn and melt the dissolving hearts of men by Images and representations How do Beautiful eyes like those of the Basilisk inchant the greedy beholder insinuating and interweaving their Raies with his till they knit Love knots and manacle him looking backwards with chains of Embraces What else were those soft allurements by which Endymion charm'd the Moon out of her Orb What else are those enticing groans but Magick murmurs Philtres of discourse and Amorous numbers What else but Charms of horrour which with a blast of air strike astonishment into the hearers What else are Love-tokens but Spells which instill a sweet Poison into those who wear them I know not whether the powerful attractions of the person lov'd deserve my admiration more than the Magick figures of the Lovers obsequious postures and inchanting blandishments against which there isnot as in other inchantments the remedy of a Countercharm neither indeed would we unbewitch our selves if we could or resist the pleasing methods of our ruin Truly all the force of Magick is in Love which is said to have the miraculous power of attracting things mutually together and changing their Natures because the parts of the world like the members of a great Animal depending on the fame Author and the Communion of the same Nature are joyn'd together by one spirit informing the whole and which is the most certain sign of union are collected into a Globe so that one part returns upon the other in a continual round 'T is by reason of this confederacy and secret Commerce of things that by the mutual attractition of Souls Love like a disease contracted by Contagion invades chiefly the healthy who yet by and by most willingly yield to the sweet evil And then the voluntary Captive more straitly hugs his soft and silken fetters then he is held by them and does as little understand the Embraces which he enjoys as the chain it self Methinks I feel the restless Calentures of Lovers more clearly than I describe them and seem to act my own argument The argument of the work is summ'd up by the by There is the same method of procedure in Philosophy and Courtship From kisses to Embraces from a shadow and obscure aspect to intimate Visions from affection to nature and thence to the cause of nature before I deliver it I remember heretofore when I was slightly deluded with dreams and Images and scarce knew what I sought after I more truely endured the various tides of my but newly raging Pason than I decyhper'd them How did the first glance of my Mistress not with a rude Image but only the shadow of it colour my blood fashion my thoughts fix an impression on my Soul print my mind with her own Characters lastly seize the whole man and assimulate me to her self And yet there appear'd in my distemper'd breast no otherwise than in a troubled fountain only an obscure and uncertain form