Essays of Montaigne

—Petrarca, Sonetto 137.]

say the Innamoratos, when they would represent an 'insupportable passion.

"Misero quod omneis

Eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,

Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi,

Quod loquar amens.

Lingua sed torpet: tenuis sub artus

Flamma dimanat; sonitu suopte

Tintinant aures; gemina teguntur

Lumina nocte."

["Love deprives me of all my faculties: Lesbia, when once in thy

presence, I have not left the power to tell my distracting passion:

my tongue becomes torpid; a subtle flame creeps through my veins; my

ears tingle in deafness; my eyes are veiled with darkness."

Catullus, Epig. li. 5]

Neither is it in the height and greatest fury of the fit that we are in a condition to pour out our complaints or our amorous persuasions, the soul being at that time over-burdened, and labouring with profound thoughts; and the body dejected and languishing with desire; and thence it is that sometimes proceed those accidental impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover, and that frigidity which by the force of an immoderate ardour seizes him even in the very lap of fruition. —[The edition of 1588 has here, "An accident not unknown to myself."]— For all passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate:

"Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent."

["Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb."

—Seneca, Hippolytus, act ii. scene 3.]

A surprise of unexpected joy does likewise often produce the same effect:

"Ut me conspexit venientem, et Troja circum

Arma amens vidit, magnis exterrita monstris,

Diriguit visu in medio, calor ossa reliquit,

Labitur, et longo vix tandem tempore fatur."

["When she beheld me advancing, and saw, with stupefaction, the

Trojan arms around me, terrified with so great a prodigy, she

fainted away at the very sight: vital warmth forsook her limbs: she

sinks down, and, after a long interval, with difficulty speaks."—

AEneid, iii. 306.]

Besides the examples of the Roman lady, who died for joy to see her son safe returned from the defeat of Cannae; and of Sophocles and of Dionysius the Tyrant,—[Pliny, vii. 53. Diodorus Siculus, however (xv. c. 20), tells us that Dionysius "was so overjoyed at the news that he made a great sacrifice upon it to the gods, prepared sumptuous feasts, to which he invited all his friends, and therein drank so excessively that it threw him into a very bad distemper."]—who died of joy; and of Thalna, who died in Corsica, reading news of the honours the Roman Senate had decreed in his favour, we have, moreover, one in our time, of Pope Leo X., who upon news of the taking of Milan, a thing he had so ardently desired, was rapt with so sudden an excess of joy that he immediately fell into a fever and died.—[Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, vol. xiv.]—And for a more notable testimony of the imbecility of human nature, it is recorded by the ancients—[Pliny, 'ut supra']—that Diodorus the dialectician died upon the spot, out of an extreme passion of shame, for not having been able in his own school, and in the presence of a great auditory, to disengage himself from a nice argument that was propounded to him. I, for my part, am very little subject to these violent passions; I am naturally of a stubborn apprehension, which also, by reasoning, I every day harden and fortify.

CHAPTER III. THAT OUR AFFECTIONS CARRY THEMSELVES BEYOND US.