Prognosticks of Love Melancholy.

What Fires, Torments, Cares, Jealousies, Suspicions, Fears, Griefs, Anxieties, accompany such as are in love, I have sufficiently said: the next question is what will be the event of such miseries, what they foretell. Some are of opinion that this love cannot be cured, Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis, it accompanies them to the last,

Idem amor exitio est pecori pecorisque magistro,

and is so continue, that by no perswasion almost it may be relieved. Bid me not love, said Eurialus, bid the Mountains come down into the plains, bid the Rivers run back to their fountains; I can as soon leave to love, as the Sun leave his course;

Et prius æquoribus pisces, & montibus umbræ, Et volucres deerunt sylvis, & murmura ventis, Quam mihi discedent formosæ Amaryllidis ignes.

First Seas shall want their Fish, the mountains shade, Woods singing birds, the winds murmur shall fade, Then my fair Amaryllis love allaid.

Bid me not love, bid a deaf man hear, a blind man see, a dumb speak, a lame run, counsel can do no good, a sick man cannot relish, No Physick can ease me.

Non prosunt domino quæ prosunt omnibus artes.

As Apollo confessed, and Iupiter himself could not be cured.

Omnes humanos curat medicina dolores, Solus amor morbi non habet artificem.

Physick can soon cure every disease, Excepting love that can it not appease.

But whether Love may be cured or no, and by what means, shall be explained in his place; in the mean time, if it take his course, and be not otherwise eased or amended, it breaks out into outragious often and prodigious events. Amor & Liber violenti dii sunt, as Tatius observes, & eousque animum incendunt, ut pudoris oblivisci cogant, Love and Bacchus are so violent Gods, so furiously rage in our minds, that they make us forget all honesty, shame and common civility.

For such men ordinarily as are throughly possessed with this humor, become insensati & insani, for it is amor insanus, as the Poet calls it, beside themselves, and as I have proved, no better then beasts, irrational, stupid, head-strong, void of fear of God or men, they frequently forswear themselves, spend, steal, commit incests, rapes, adulteries, murders, depopulate Towns, Cities, Countries, to satisfie their lust.

A Divel ’tis, and mischief such doth work, As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk.

The wars of Troy may be a sufficient witness; and as Appian lib. 5. hist. saith of Anthony and Cleopatra, Their Love brought themselves, and all Egypt into extream and miserable calamities, the end of her is as bitter as worm-wood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword. Prov. 5. 4, 5. Her feet go down to death, her steps lead on to hell. She is more bitter then death (Eccles. 7.28.) and the sinner shall be taken by her.

Qui in amore præcipitavit, pejus perit, quàm qui saxo salit. He that runs headlong from the top of a rock, is not in so bad a case, as he that falls into this gulf of love. For hence, saith Platina, comes Repentance, Dotage, they loose themselves, their wits, and make shipwrack of their fortunes altogether: Madness, to make away themselves and others, violent death.

Prognosticatio est talis, saith Gordonius, si non succurratur iis, aut in maniam cadunt, aut moriuntur, the prognostication is, they will either run mad, or dye. For if this passion continue, saith Ælian Montaltus, it makes the blood hot, thick, and black; and if the inflammation get into the brain, with continual meditation and waking, it so dries it up, that madness followes, or else they make away themselves,

Coridon, Coridon, quæ te dementia cepit?

Now as Arnoldus adds, it will speedily work these effects, if it be not presently helped; They will pine away, run mad, and dye upon a sudden; Facilè incidunt in maniam, saith Valescus, quickly mad; nisi succurratur, if good order be not taken,

Eheu triste jugum quisquis amoris habet, Is prius ac norit se periisse perit.

Oh heavy yoke of love, which who so bears, Is quite undone, and that at unawares.

So she confessed of her self in the Poet.

—— Insaniam priusquam quis sentiat, Vix pili intervallo à furore absum.

I shall be mad before it be perceived, An hair breadth off scarce am I, now distracted.

As mad as Orlando for his Angelica, or Hercules for his Hylas,

At ille ruebat quò pedes ducebant, furibundus, Nam illi sævus Deus intus jecur laniabat,

He went he car’d not whether, mad he was, The cruel God so tortur’d him, alas.

At the sight of Hero I cannot tell how many ran mad,

Alius vulnus celans insanit pulchritudine puellæ.

And whilst he doth conceal his grief, Madness comes on him like a thief.

Go to Bedlam for examples. It is so well known in every village, how many have either dyed for love, or voluntarily made away themselves, that I need not much labour to prove it; Nec modus aut requies nisi mors reperitur amoris: Death is the common Catastrophe of such persons.

Mori mihi contingat, non enim alia Liberatio ab ærumnis fuerit ullo pacto istis.

Would I were dead, for nought God knows, But death can rid me of these woes.

As soon as Eurialus departed from Senes, Lucretia his Paramour never looked up, no jests could exhilarate her sad mind, no joys comfort her wounded and distressed soul, but a little after she fell sick and died. But this is a gentle end, a natural death, such persons commonly make away themselves.

—— proprioque in sanguine lætus, Indignantem animam vacuas effudit in auras;

so did Dido; Sed moriamur ait, sic sic juvat ire per umbras; Piramus and Thysbe, Medea, Coresus and Callyrhoe, Theagines the Philosopher and many Myriads besides, and so will ever do,

—— & mihi fortis Est manus, est & amor, dabit hic in vulnera vires,

Who ever heard a story of more woe, Then that of Juliet and her Romeo?

Read Parthenium in Eroticis, and Plutarchs amatorias narrationes or loves stories, all ending almost to this purpose: Valleriola lib. 2. observ. 7. hath a lamentable narration of a Merchant his patient, that raving through impatience of love, had he not been watched, would every while have offered violence to himself.

Amatus Lucitanus cent. 3. car. 56. hath such another story, and Fælix Plater. med. observ. lib. 1. a third of a yong Gentleman that studied Physick, and for the love of a Doctors daughter, having no hope to compass his desire, poisoned himself, Anno 1615. A barber in Francfort, because his wench was betrothed to another, cut his own throat.

At Neoburge the same year a yong man, because he could not get her Parents consent, killed his sweet-heart, and afterward himself, desiring this of the magistrate, as he gave up the Ghost, that they might be buried in one grave,

Quodque rogis superest una requiescat in urnâ,

which Gismunda besought of Tancredus her father, that she might be in like sort buried with Guiscardus her lover, that so their bodies might lye together in the grave, as their souls wander about Campos lugentes in the Elysian fields, —— quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit, in a mirtle grove

—— & myrtea circum Sylva tegit: curæ non ipsâ in morte relinquunt.

You have not yet heard the worst, they do not offer violence to themselves in this rage of lust but unto others, their nearest and dearest friends. Cataline killed his only son, misitque ad orci pallida, lethi obnubila, obsita tenebris loca, for the love of Aurelia Orestilla, quod ejus nuptias vivo filio recusaret.