is possible," says
Terence, referring to the unquestionable temporary insanity of the
passion, "that a man can be so changed by love that one could not
recognize him to be the same person." "Solid love, whose root is virtue,
can no more die, than virtue itself," says Erasmus, who was probably
talking about a requited affection.

THE CASE OF THE POET PETRARCH,

who loved another man's wife all his life, simply because he fell in
love with her before she married the other fellow, does not strike me as
exactly the proper thing, or exactly the manly thing. I like better the
Sensible Shepherd of George Wither, who sang jauntily:

Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,

If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Kill off your love if it be not returned, as though it were a condemned
felon. The execution is a painful scene, but the effect on your manhood
is good. "True love were very unlovely," says Sir Philip Sidney, "if it
were half so deadly as lovers term it!" "There are few people," says
Rochefoucauld, "who are not ashamed of their loves when the fit is
over." "In love we are all fools alike," says Gay. "We that are true
lovers" says Shakspeare, "run into strange capers; but as all is mortal
in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly." "O love," cries
LaFontaine, "when thou gettest dominion over us,

WE MAY BID GOOD-BY TO PRUDENCE."

"Love can hope where reason would despair," says Lyttleton. "O love, the
beautiful, the brief!" exclaims Schiller. "Love at two-and-twenty is a
terribly intoxicating draught," says Ruffini. "At lovers' perjuries they
say Jove laughs," smiles Shakspeare. "Where love and wisdom drink out of
the same cup, in this everyday world, it is the exception," said Madame
Neckar. "The poets, the moralists, the painters, in all their
descriptions, allegories, and pictures," says Addison, "have
represented love as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a pleasing pain, or
an agreeable distress." "O how this spring of love resembleth the
uncertain glory of an April day!

ADIEU, VALOR! RUST, RAPIER!

be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth!" says
Shakspeare. "I do much wonder," says the King of Thought, again, "that
one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his
favor to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in
others, became the argument of his own scorn, by falling in love."