early foretaste of a more mature Love so it may seem the last effort of a decay'd heat either out of Complaisance to accommodate their dotage to the scandal of youth or to Cough in consort with those of the same Age and to enjoy at once the Remembrance and Envy of their past Amours For they have nothing now to do having with much regret receiv'd their Mittimus but to be present at others Loves to minister to others the Philtres of Advice and to sigh to teach them soft Embraces and to languish for the desire of them For these Mortify'd Skeletons still miserably pant with the Relicts of their Flames as of their Lives which do not inspirit them with any present vivacity but rather shew they did once live and so apply the Marriage-Torch of Cupid to the Pomp of a Funeral But O Cupid O Hymen What Women also as Animals of a different kind from Man unequal Torches do you kindle A Man with a Woman This is not to unite but to destroy These are a couple more unhappily match'd than the Soul with the Body whose Fellowship while it gratifies her degrades and dishonours her and in a pretence to serve cheats and prejudices her There 's so much disproportion that a Woman can't fill the other Scale of the Ballance without additionary Gold There 's need of a Dowry and stipend to these Embraces these Caresses This is a Felicity to be bought we don't admit you to it gratis Neither is a Woman to be esteem'd a Consort to a man but belongs to the Inventory of his Goods and Chattels the furniture of his Bed-Chamber and the Ornament of his Table She serves instead of a little Shock to divert ones self withal not to employ any part of ones life about She should be regarded only at those dull hours which nature has allotted for grief and sleep My Mistress is welcome at Supper-time or at Night that time I 'll throw away on her which would be lost otherwise She can scarce fill up these Intervals of life these parenthesis's of respite and little blanks of action She is added to the tasks of rigorous nature and helps on the loss of our time more than eating and sleeping Shall I call this a Wife By the leave of the Female Academy I 'll tell you plainly what I think I believe these Expletive Particles of mankind were put into the world for no other end than flyes only to prevent a vacancy I ever took this frivolous Impertinent to be a certain middle Animal which like a Centaur compounds a man with a Beast and detains him as it were within the Confines of both natures and a Metamorphosis Will you call this Society whereby a man gains this one thing not to be alone 'T is more than enough for them if they can but own the force of reason and submit to it though they never use any and like Creatures naturally Wild and Savage can be made tame and civiliz'd by familiarity There 's nothing in them deserves so much Caution as lest they should grow wise or know any thing beyond bare silence and the simplicity of pleasing Friendship is too Sacred a thing to admit of any Embraces though innocent Friendship is a work of reason as well as affection which it ought to blush at if observ'd 'T is a flame too Noble to be attended with any levity nay 't is a Marriage too strait to a dmit any difference of Sex This is the highest Which only agrees with it self and makes two live by one rule work of reason to make choice of such a person whose conduct you would rather use than your own to whose will you would always conform or even to know how to wait so long till you can choose a fit object for your Love and after that so to Love as one that 's hurri'd with bare Passion not steer'd with judgment as one that 's so far from Apostasie that he is always beginning his Love This is to joyn impatience with constancy This is to receive the belov'd Idea imprinted in the mind with more exactness and to retain it with more faithfulness than Wax Besides 't is also the work of vertue to state one It is a work of vertue measure of desires to preserve an exact uniformity of manners through all the various scenes of fortune and lastly so to Harmonize two that what one can hardly perform they may act one man These must of necessity always will the same because they will only the best things There must Whose Communion is without deteriment needs be also between them the greatest freedom of Communion because they communicate what without envy they possess their Vertues and so with greediness they Covet an effusion of these goods of their mind till the Candor of their Souls like the light of Heaven improve it self by an incessant Emanation Add to this that the League of this rational friendship will be firmer than the Stoical Chain of Destiny since the perpetual alliance of Souls is not here founded upon having the same Parents but the same principle of living reason and what has a more Vital influence the being endued with the desire of the same excellency rather than with the same blood The having the breast rather pant with the same desires than the Arteries beat with the same spirits The having a share in the same good and bad fortune a more indearing instance than a common off-spring You come short of the mystery if you think the same soul or the samedivided resides in two bodies 't is more they have the same Soul in two bodies one and uniform You 'd think even the envy of thought could not abstract them since there is nothing left to distinguish them For whatever distinguishes would at length divide them nay 't wou'd make them conceive a greater disgust against each other like Half-brothers from the very nearness In vain are friendships and alliances as all other Vertues pretended to An ill man is not a sociable Creature by Vicious men Who are provok'd to mutual hatred and animosity by having the same pleasures as much as by having the same Mistresses To have the same thing commodious to both though this be somewhat more Divine than to have the same common parents breeds envy from their unlucky fellowship and quarrels greater than those of mutual Pillagers birds of prey or Coheirs No third person will envy but wonder at their conjunction nay and will hardly grant He disagrees with himself avoids himself them joyn'd any otherwise than fellow sailers in the same bottom recommended to each other by fears and dangers whom assoon as Landed the success of the voyage will disingage whose society will suffer Shipwrack He is Inclined to Society not out of benevolence but self-disdain from the Land-tempest of Interest and Traffick and be dissipated into various Climes by the greater Love of Countries than of men With what
pleasure in And of forming it in something Beautiful enjoying than in forming of Beauty There 's a natural energy which priviledges the mind as well as face with the art of imaging it self where-ever it fixes its aspect Hence 't is that all Beauty delights in a Looking-glass and rather than want a spectator applies it self to its own image looking back on it self I appeal to you Socrates the Master both of Love and Morality whose employment was the same when a Philosopher and when heretofore a Statuary You still continue your old trade of carving and pollishing men but you seek out more excellent materials whereby to dignifie your Mechanism And for this reason you stock your School like a Seraglio with such handsome pupils as Phaedrus Nothing is lov'd but under the notion of Beatiful and Alcibiades who might easily imbibe your soul and return you your image with advantage as being more clear than a Looking-glass more tender than wax Whatsoever that is which like the Stars with its heavenly light transcends the envy of Mortals invites a Religious awe and with a specious lure intices Souls to it self does indeed so wholely possess them as not to suffer them to turn aside to another object Nothing can dazle and inflame our minds but what is presented to us under the tincture of these Raies but what moves and strikes upon the senses Our very vices impose upon us under the amiable mask of Vertues And as often as we are pleas'd to err with nature and with a Cross grain'd Love to delight in such Children which their Parents behold with horror as often as we seek among herds and Monsters for something to be adopted into humane society as well as into a Constellation we have this pleasant priviledge to boast of that we need not fear a rival and to pretend an incongruous diversion in the jarrings of nature and lastly to be able to shew something to the beholders more ugly than our selves Unless Because nothing is deform'd in Nature some will maintain that there is nothing deform'd in nature since those Creatures which the Author of them has doom'd to obscurity as the shame of the Creation lest they should defile the light have a decency from their very horror and set off the face of the universe like Moles and shades For we ought not presently to conclude that which is less grateful to the sight to be down-right ugly but a rare and unusual spectacle and such as the nice and curious use to procure at any Cost What may not there be Sacred where owls and the most vile Creatures have been deified and ador'd by men Where since there is no deformity neither is there any hatred There is nothing also of hatred or Antipathy in things nor the name of Antipathy used but among the Sects of Philosophers why do you tell me among your lectures of sobriety how much the Colewort declines the Vine Even as much as the abstemious patient upon the advice of a Physician not because he loaths the wine or for the sake of temperance but merely to consult his health So the Wolf preys upon the Lamb and the fire upon the water not out of any haterd but for self-preservation Neither do they avenge injuries but endeavour by the most close embrace to convert another into themselves So neither does one man abhor the person of another but only his inhumanity as a vice and so is concern'd for himself Neither do we envy other men their endowments for any spite we have at them but are only too sollicitous for our selves either because we think anothers credit a diminution of our own or else because willing to become cheaply good we would adopt the Vertues of others to our selves with the sole labour of a wish If there be any contention in nature sure 't is a loving one such as constitutes and increases common-wealths a Social robbery a consulting our welfare by alternate losses neither are these to be call'd spoils but gifts indulg'd by course Ah cruel Love if these Wars were managed by your darts if Helen must be still obtain'd through Rapin and Slaughter and Venus must belong only to Mars And yet 't is worth the while to die that we may indear her to us Neither do I wonder since an ambitious vying for Beauty bred a quarrel among Goddesses if poor Paris and the rest of Mortals with rival ambition should put in for the fair prize From the time that Love the parent of the world wrought out a Symphony from the discord of things and wedded together Vulcan and Venus in a mutual Embrace that is flames and waters and cemented Love the Artificer of things and their Beauty was like other Artificers the first admirer of its own work the most disagreeing things in a sort of checquer-work From the time I say that he hung out this great frame of the Universe like a rich Map adorn'd with Beauty and order he stood himself like other Artificers the first Judge and admirer of his own work made the first experiment of those Charms of Beauty which he himself imparted This is if you would know that order of beauty from which things derive not softness and infirmity but at once Ornament and Compactness I take Beauty to be nothing else but the Consummation Quintessence and maturity of every thing I think that That is Beautiful which is all that it should be Beauty is not softness but the vigour and ripeness of every thing The same innate vigour gives decency strength and Ornament Beautiful and splendid which is all that which it should be Observe how the same innate vigour gives strength and Beauty to the Arm how jewels throughly imbued with it send forth soft Raies among their rigid sparklings How the lively moisture at the root makes fertil and adorns with the Verdure of an Emerald Thus we find all by experience and yet cease not from wonder that a mind composed within smooths out the forehead an ingenuous Texture of thoughts recommends the face beyond the greatest Artifice of dress and that a refined mind serenes more than the blood The Soul shines through her Native Veil as a Ladie 's face through that of Silk or as the Beauty is a certain sublimate of the body the Flower of internal Vertue An eflux of the soul All Beauty consists of Proportion of the knowledge of the soul and the manners of the body obscurer Sun dispenses his Raies here and there and Strains day-light through a cloud I am apt to believe that the Divine guest does choose out a fit habitation for it self or according to its proportion like Snails forms a house contemporary and equal to its owner So graphically does the body express the lineaments of the soul that no Garment seems more distinctly to decypher those of the body This this is that brightness of the unsullied soul which illustrates every feature and moulds the
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
and then on his own benefits 'T is necessary that Love be immortal It is a death either because 't is vow'd to eternity or because it always undergoes the changes of death For who is there that does not know that the last Will and death of a Lover must be dated from the time when he breathes out his soul in his last sigh to be received by the mouth of another makes him compleat Heir of himself dispenses his goods sending them before as harbingers whither he is prepared to follow He has the Divine priviledge of Prophets to be rapt out of himself to enjoy a perpetual ecstasie of life and to be emptied of his own Soul that he may be more happily replenish'd This is the Pythagorical Transmigration with anothers I believe the Transmigration of Pythagoras may be thus verifi'd not by his Philosophy but by his Love For then his desultorious and quicksilver soul shifting it self at pleasure of the bodily case as of Cloths repairs hastily to its pleasanter retreat and more fair receptacle as to the groves of Elysium No person can be happy before this death which is occasion'd by Love and Philosophy The latter does it by disengaging the soul from the body now all-dissolving in the Contemplation of amiableness The former by sending it forth to the imbraces of its fair Object Thence arises a loathing hence a flight and riddance of himself On each hand there is an aspiring to a Fate Noble and void of all necessity and Phoenix-like an ambitious longing for death At the sight of a more Elegant Structure like a delicate and nice Lady he nauseates his own apartment with a proud uneasiness and then wanders out into those florid regions where since it was not his happiness to be born he will sojourn till he grow old in them or by repeating the rudiments of his life be re-born Whoever you are who will not admit these excursions of fugitive souls do but observe more narrowly how the soul collects it self all to that place where she approaches nearest to her dearest If they joyn hands you 'd swear their palpable souls distributed themselves into the fingers on purpose to take fast hold of each other If their sides be contiguous you 'l perceive an exultation of their hearts and their spirits mutually trooping thither in an hurry violently beating and like Rusticks saluting one another with strokes striving for vent till they almost break Prison to get forth By what Charm is the suddain and Extemporary Whence blushing proceeds from the sight of the person lov'd blood fummon'd up into the Cheeks at the sight of that dear Creature and as the hand of a wounded heart points at the striker no otherwise than as the revengeful blood of a stain man vents it self upon the Murtherer With this only difference that one of these Crimson souls by I know no what instinct hastens after Revenge and the other after a Cure Observe again how greedily their souls keeping Sentinel in the ears lie at catch for words and by and by turn themselves into them interchange Spirits while they hold Conference and inform the very desires which they utter Observe again how their Souls in a perpetual Emanation gliding from Whence a deliquium their eyes waste themselves in Passionate glances and suffer many a faint swoon with gazing 'T is one and the same thing with Lovers to speak and expire to see and dart themselves out to gaze and be transform'd into the Spectacle So impatient is the whole man of departure that sometimes he shifts himself into the eye sometimes into the ear and lives only in that part where he enjoys his Consort Thus Love teaches men a more Compendious knack of living and makes them content like some Insects with one only sense Yet this is not to maim the man but to render him more Divine by the fewness of Organs required to the Function of life But that which occasions a sweet It is an extension of the soul detriment in the body gives inlargement to the Soul Which though formed for one breast now diffusing it self by a kind of expansion informs another redoubling its life She knows not in this confused Miscellany of bodies for which she was at first made so that in all Love there is improvement Whoever Loves becomes forthwith a number by himself Like Antipheron he carrys about with him his He diffuses â—one into many daily Company and enjoys his other self as his mate if that may be call'd a number which is computed with the same counter which one only man distinguishes placed here and there by turns It happens by a fruitful errour to Lovers as well as Drinkers that all things appear double to them but withall so double as the eyes are which have but one motion one vision Here you may see two running into so Out of many it makes one close an Embrace that they incorporate and become one and so lose their Embraces in the undistinguishable foldings of their arms While after the lot of Salmacis 't is the same that does desire and is desired he knows not whether he more truly Loves or is belov'd neither does he enjoy but is changed into his wish Pish you put a trick upon me now Cupid with your excess of Munificence while you hide that within my breast which I seek to embrace You are too propitious do something of a contrary nature that we may be two that we may perceive our selves to be what we wish 'T is prejudicial to a Lover to enjoy too much 'T is prejudicial that he whom I would have my partner should be all one with my self Always thus to will and nill the same has no society in 't but much of a Ridiculous tediousness When we would consult we do but assent by course and instead of being mutually officious we are ridiculous to one another Methinks I embrace a shadow instead of a friend which always presses me close at the heels and imitates all my motions Withdraw a little from me O my friend nearer to me than my self wish as well to me as you can but prithee Love me a little less But O what a profitable bill of exchange has this Cupid the Vsurer of hearts Whence the same Plastic vertue of Cementing Souls which out of many makes one diffuses also one into many So 't is the same Unite which uncapable by it self of Computation is yet the principle of number So Multiplication and Addition belong to the same art Neither do we think this a damage but an advantage and perhaps a greater to have our strength collected than extended at large The more simple every thing is the more perfect To transcend the bounds of all space and number is the property of God Whatever is the best and chiefest must be one And as Love is honour'd with the perfection of chiefest Unity so is it with another that of self-communication For whatever
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
limbs into legible Characters that by the likeness of souls others may be allured till the Original form being observ'd and the Deity within discover'd the earthy mould be disregarded For alas what an inconsiderable thing is that Beauty of a face which entertains our eyes with the daily spring of fresh graces which we shew one to another in a rapture and although possess'd with a Rival concern yet call in Auxiliary votaries to share in our admiration We are taken only with a superficies a Colour a reflexion of light yea a most empty shadow which if we gaze long upon it wears away and disappears before our eyes And what a poor little thing is that frame and Structure of Limbs delineated as with a Rule and Compass If that be all Beauty is consummated in the consonancy and symmetry of the complexion and lines or frame of motions Statues may boast of a neater outside than man and the house of a more elegant model than the inhabitant What an inconsiderable thing is that motion which lends such a graceful mean to bodies imitable by no Painters Suppose it more soft and uniform than the Downy glidings of the Celestial Orbs or of time Careless loose and unaffected it has this only Apology for its meanness that while it pleases lest it should also prove tedious it passes away extinct even while it begins But all this while I seem too partial to the errors of Lovers and the Encomiums of Beauty by supposing all that which All the grace of the body is either imaginary or the paint of opinion is thought handsome in bodies to be the shadows and imitations of a real decency and not rather the dreams of imagination and the paint of our own opinion For 't is not that which we behold but what we imagin to our selves that we are in Love with Tell me if you can whence it comes to pass that the same face is of so mutable a Beauty as to cause an aversation in others when they meet it which to you transcends the Beauty of the Stars Whence is it that some are mightily inamour'd with the soft and hypocritical resemblance of the other sex and others again are more taken with the somewhat more than masculin horror of an unpolish'd countenance Whence is it that to some what is so little as almost to escape the sight is the more acceptable under the notion of delicacy and prettiness and to others again that which is ample and fills the eyes seems the only comely and Majestick object Why the changeable colour of a pretty face like Pigeons necks borrows an imaginary Beauty which it has not from various aspects and diversity of postures I 'll deliver my thoughts with freedom What ever that appearance is which feeds the eyes 't is either imaginary and of such a nature that we must needs lose it when awaken'd Or if real 't is unworthy to detain the soul out of our sweet dream or if real 't is unworthy to terminate our souls and should only provoke inform and send them farther How can that strike so gratefully on the mind which the eye only enjoys and knows not how to communicate For the contagion of no Beauty except that of the mind is so great as to transcribe it self on the beholder as on Water or a looking-glass It must someway resemble God and our own souls that is be incorporeal whatsoever It must be of kin to God and our own Souls that is incorporeal what ever lodges in the mind Even that Beauty of the body is immaterial does but sojourn in our minds much less is adopted by the affections Although even that very air of the body of how little force soever be also something immaterial and like the soul rules at large all in all and all in every part 'T is easily to be seen there is some efflux Ray and I know not what vigor either of the soul or of an Idea which running through all the actions diffuses it self throughout ever member and assimulating all things to it self collects the Systeme of graces into the face where they settle as in their center Here the Boy Cupid keeps his Court But because the shadow of Beauty breeds only a shadow of Love enthroned in the Metropolis of Beauty here he plays with the beholders kindrles his darts from the wanton flashes of eyes and hurles living flames Here indeed Love plaies in his minority but when grown to maturity he changes both his Camp and Artillery first seating himself in the middle region between the mind and the body the Aspect he sports innocently in the confines of both But by and by he advances up to the Soul and enjoys a pure and seraphick flame or descends to the body and like a Meteor deceives with a gross and fallacious blaze And to use no more undervaluing invectives this one thing abundantly confirms the infelicity of this Passion that it always has more influence on the absent than the present and that the sight or Embrace of a body does always drive us either to loathing or madness What God is this which The error of this Passion is punish'd with selfdisdain Chastises the madness of erring Cupid with his own desires Who is' t compels him still to languish for what he enjoys most of all and so Passionately to refuse what just now he more passionately long'd for He protests these were not the joys he sought for but that while he stood unresolv'd what he should desire and follow'd the conduct rather of his eyes than judgement he lighted upon them by a blind and unthinking tendency But because these are the shadows of that which the mind hankers after she wings away presently to them like a bird deceiv'd with painted Grapes but with them as with phantastick food she 's rather In the body we adore the shadow of divine Beauty in the soul the likenss of â—…d in both a deity under a 〈◊〉 Type tormented than fed I must nevertheless acknowledge since they who haâ— rangue most sharply against it feel the influence more vehemently than they deny it that these shadows of Beauty will beget also shadows of Love And as in the Soul we adore the similitude of God so do we a certain shadow of him in the body in both we worship a Deity under a Type and by an ignorant devotion become Courters of Divinity For there 's Beauty whether a Ray o God or a reflexion of an Idea or an efflux of the soul is always something divine because 't is the property of man to love Beauty the same proportion between the mind and God as between the eye and the Sun from whose light it gains thus much that it sees and that it neither delights nor is able to see any thing else without the sight of him and yet can't endure to behold the fulness of his lustre and therefore loves to receive his Raies at second hand to
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
What 'T is torment not society to be under a constant fear of displeasing to compose all things to the worst of Looking glasses that of a face since we can't to the others mind to order our Commerce with reverential concern to weigh our words like gold before we deliver them to present our selves at a set meeting with premeditate gesture and then there to behave our selves as in a Theatre But Why do I mention those consimilar Also under the name of similitude Love species which either nature art or Custom slightly imprints on our minds When 't is Love which gives all these a lively stamp by whose power alone the soul having long since took her leave they are actuated and enliven'd Happy is it for Lovers that persons may Love even against their wills Since your Lover is not only like but the same with your self he has stoln away you from your self unawares and without your leave There is no need that he demand returns of kindness and Debts of Love If this be nothing available with you that he is your Image your slave your proper goods that for your sake he parted with his soul and liberty If you nothing dread the Crime of cruelty and Murder yet by the necessity of nature Love kindles Love flame kindles flame Yet nature would not grant Love the power to counterfeit or if counterfeit to burn any otherwise than painted fire For though the face aspect and gesture feign never so industriously yet the simulation will betray it self as all painted things do either by a too emulous or a too remiss endeavour of imitation If you don 't yet acknowledge that Love is the price of a man yet at least that you may admit it to be so under the sordid Name of benefit know that it comprises in it self all the benefits which it bestows and which it cannot bestow and in wish more than all Without which I shall ascribe the benefits themselves to fortune and fate not to the man and shall think them rather found than receiv'd By which alone the poor man acts liberally as often as he gives nothing but wishes munificently Than which nothing greater is either expected from or render'd to Mortals by the Gods Here 's a Philtre of more influence than any herb If you will be lov'd Love But as it betrays meanness of soul to require and render reasons why we Love so that Love is more ingenuous which like some flowers springs up without any seed and has this of Eternity to exist without a cause and like Heaven to be mov'd by an invisible Intelligence We find now that that similitude whether manifest Similitude whether manifest or occult which is call'd sympathy is all Love or occult which goes under the name of Sympathy is all nothing else but Love Whence without any nearness or familiarity the near and familiar soul closes fast and squares exactly to another Just as Mathematicians say one plain body adheres to another inseparably united only by the Cement of conformity Nature seems to bring forth Twin-minds and to assign mates to souls as shadows and Genius's to bodies or as Nymphs Co-eval to their Trees Hence men in spight of their Ascendent undergo the same Stars and Fates and in all respects are Twins O the unparallel'd generosity of these well match'd Lovers a more Noble spectacle than a couple of Gladiators Where the Duel of liberality is all fought in Offices of mutual kindness In this one thing there is discord in their affections that both being over solicitous for each other are disquieted with hatred and fears Both as if tinctur'd with each others Choler see and judge the same Both as if touch'd with the same Load-stone tend to the same point in all their designs and endeavours The one represents the others face more faithfully than a Looking-glass The one imitates the others manners more punctually than a Parasite So that even he himself is not so much like himself While I was Scribling at this rate Cupid snatch'd my pen out of my hand and flew away with it THE END A Postscript SInce the Commission of this Book to the Press there came to my hand a Translation if it deserve that name of Effigies Amoris upon the perusal of which I was so far from being induced to recal mine that I found I had now a greater reason than ever to make it publick viz. the vindication of the excellent and much abused Author The Sacrilegious Translator is as much a stranger to me as he is to the Idiom of the Latine Tongue and therefore I shall deal more civilly with him than to give any particular instances of his failures and shall only say in general That between Omissions and mistakes the Author is utterly lost I had not said thus much had I not thought my self obliged to consult the Authors Credit more than the Translators lest any should judge the Original Beauty by the injurious representation of a false Glass FINIS ERRATA PAG. 15. l. 22. for polish r. pollish p. 19. for never r. even p. 67. l. 8. for one self r. ones self What other literal faults there are or false pointings the Reader is desired to give himself the trouble of correcting Books Printed for Tho. Sawbridge at the Three Flower de Luces in Little-Britain BP Sandersons Sermons Folio Bakers Chronicle Folio Guillim's Heraldry Folio Cooks Reports Eng. Folio Wilson's Christian Dictionary Folio Wanly Wonders of the Little World Caussin's Holy Court Folio Bacon's Advancement of Learning Folio