but searching the very
veins of my heart I could find nothing but a broad scar where I
left a deep wound: and loose strings where I tied hard knots: and
a table of steel where I framed a plot of wax.

"Whereby I noted that young swans are grey, and the old white,
young trees tender and the old tough, young men amorous, and,
growing in years, either wiser or warier. The coral plant in the
water is a soft weed, on the land a hard stone: a sword frieth in
the fire like a black eel; but laid in earth like white snow:
the heart in love is altogether passionate; but free from desire
altogether careless.

"But it is not my intent to inveigh against love, which women
account but a bare word and men reverence as the best God. Only
this I would add without offence to gentlewomen, that were not
men more superstitious in their praises than women are constant
in their passions love would either be worn out of use, or men
out of love, or women out of lightness. I can condemn none but by
conjecture, nor commend any but by lying, yet suspicion is as
free as thought, and as far as I can see as necessary as
credulity.

"Touching your mistress I must needs think well, seeing you have
written so well, but as false glasses shew the fairest faces so
fine gloses amend the baddest fancies. Appelles painted the
phoenix by hearsay not by sight, and Lysippus engraved Vulcan
with a straight leg whom nature framed with a poult foot, which
proveth men to be of greater affection their [then? = than]
judgment. But in that so aptly you have varied upon women I will
not vary from you, so confess I must, and if I should not, yet
mought I be compelled, that to love would be the sweetest thing
in the earth if women were the faithfulest, and that women would
be more constant if men were more wise.

"And seeing you have used me so friendly as to make me acquainted
with your passions, I will shortly make you privy to mine which I
would be loth the printer should see, for that my fancies being
never so crooked he would put them into straight lines unfit for
my humour, necessary for his art, who setteth down blind in as
many letters as seeing.[16]--Farewell."

[16] "Blinde" with the _e_ according to the old spelling having six
letters, the same number as seeing. This curious ep