-[Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.]

"Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem
Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis . . .
Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere ad ipsum,
Quodcunque est, rabies unde illae germina surgunt."

["What they have sought they dress closely, and cause pain; on the
lips fix the teeth, and every kiss indents: urged by latent stimulus
the part to wound"--Lucretius, i. 4.]

And so it is in everything: difficulty gives all things their estimation;
the people of the march of Ancona more readily make their vows to St.
James, and those of Galicia to Our Lady of Loreto; they make wonderful
to-do at Liege about the baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany about those of
Aspa: there are few Romans seen in the fencing school of Rome, which is
full of French. That great Cato also, as much as us, nauseated his wife
whilst she was his, and longed for her when in the possession of another.
I was fain to turn out into the paddock an old horse, as he was not to be
governed when he smelt a mare: the facility presently sated him as
towards his own, but towards strange mares, and the first that passed by
the pale of his pasture, he would again fall to his importunate neighings
and his furious heats as before. Our appetite contemns and passes by
what it has in possession, to run after that it has not:

"Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat."

["He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her
who flees from him."--Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.]

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't:

"Nisi to servare puellam
Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:"

["Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin
to be no longer mine."--Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.]

to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt. Want and
abundance fall into the same inconvenience:

"Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet."

["Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want
troubles me.--"Terence, Phoym., i. 3, 9.]

Desire and fruition equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses are
troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as
discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired,
heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; 'tis a blunt, dull,
stupid, tired, and slothfu