e ancients, also, the heart was considered the seat of
courage, to which Shakespeare refers in "Julius Caesar" (ii. 2):

"_Servant._ Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,
They could not find a heart within the beast.

_Caesar._ The gods do this in shame of cowardice:
Caesar should be a beast without a heart,
If he should stay at home to-day for fear."

_Liver._ By a popular notion, the liver was anciently supposed to be the
seat of love, a superstition to which Shakespeare frequently alludes.
Thus, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 3), Biron, after listening to
Longaville's sonnet, remarks:

"This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity,
A green goose, a goddess; pure, pure idolatry."

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iv. 1), Friar Francis says:

"If ever love had interest in his liver."

Again, in "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Rosalind, professing to be able to
cure love, which, he says, is "merely a madness," says to Orlando, "will
I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart,
that there shall not be one spot of love in't." In "Twelfth Night" (ii.
4), the Duke, speaking of women's love, says:

"Their love may be call'd appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate," etc.

And Fabian (ii. 5), alluding to Olivia's supposed letter to Malvolio,
says: "This wins him, liver and all."

Once more, in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 1), Pistol alludes to the
liver as being the inspirer of amorous passions, for, speaking of
Falstaff, he refers to his loving Ford's wife "with liver burning
hot."[921] Douce says, "there is some reason for thinking that this
superstition was borrowed from the Arabian physicians, or at least
adopted by them; for, in the Turkish tales, an amorous tailor is made to
address his wife by the titles of 'thou corner of my liver, and soul of
my love;' and, in another place, the King of Syria, who had sustained a
temporary privation of his mistress, is said to have had 'his liver,
which had been burnt up by the loss of her, cooled and refreshed at the
sight of her.'"[922] According to an old Latin distich:

"Cor sapit, pulmo loquitur, fel commoret iras
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur."

[921] Cf. "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 2):

"_Soothsayer._ You shall be more beloving, than belov'd.

_Charmian._ I had rather heat my liver with drinking."

[922] "Illustrations of Shakespeare,"