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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

Reading language

By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men And…

Because he had seen the private parts of the naked body, The love that had been racing came to a halt.

The love that ran at full speed stood still Once it saw those parts that should stay hidden.

It is reported that Seleucus, king of Syria, happened to see his wife Stratonice’s bald head as she undressed and could never love her afterwards. The physician Raymond Lull, discovering an ulcer or cancer in the breast of the mistress he loved so dearly, abhorred the sight of her from that day on.

Philip, king of France, as William of Newburgh relates in book 4, chapter 24, married the king of Denmark’s daughter; after sleeping with her as his wife for one night, he sent her back to her father, they say, because her breath stank or because of some other hidden defect.

Pierre Matthieu, in his life of Louis XI, criticizes our English chronicles for saying that Margaret, daughter of the king of Scots and wife of Louis XI of France, was rejected by her husband “because of the foul smell of her breath.”

Many such marriages are made for ulterior considerations or some outward beauty; after the honeymoon is past they turn to bitterness. Burning lust is only a flash, a gunpowder passion; intense hatred often follows, along with dislike and contempt.

When the dry skin sags And the teeth grow dark:

when women grow old and unattractive, their lovers commonly cannot bear them any longer.

“Now you are a burden to us”—be gone! They grow stale, disgusting, repulsive, hateful: you are a beastly, filthy slut,

You have the face of Phoebus taking a shit,

you are “Saturn’s arse,” withered and dried up, “insipid and old,”

Because wrinkles and the snow upon your head disfigure you,

be gone, I say: “The gates are open; depart.”

Yes, but you will argue that your mistress is perfect, with a faultless figure in everyone’s opinion. No objection can be made to her: nothing can be added to her appearance or taken away. In beauty, comeliness and pleasing grace she is the model of womanhood, beyond imitation, “sheer delight, sheer charm”; she is “Venus’s perfume box, the casket of the Graces,” a complete storehouse of natural perfections. She has all the charms of Venus and all the Graces,

A thousand torches and a thousand forms,

perfect and complete in every part,

Radiant in her cheeks, radiant in her rosy mouth, radiant in her roving eyes:

admirable in her appearance, an utterly incomparable, matchless creature, “a golden offspring, fashioned in the likeness of some divinity, a phoenix, a little Venus in the bloom of youth,” a nymph, a fairy, like Venus herself when she was a maiden, “second to none,” perfection distilled, “breathing flowers and marjoram, a wonder of a woman.” Suppose she is: how long will she remain so?

Each passing day plucks away the flower of beauty.

Every day takes something from her appearance; this beauty is “a fragile good,” a mere flash, a Venetian glass, quickly broken,

Beauty is a doubtful blessing for mortals, A brief gift of a little time.

It will not last. As that beautiful flower of Adonis, which we call an anemone, blooms for only a month, so this graceful, all-commanding beauty fades in an instant. It is a jewel soon lost, the painter’s goddess, “a false truth,” a mere picture. “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting,” Proverbs 31:30.

Fair beauty is a little glass jewel, a passing bubble, Snow, a rose, dew, smoke, wind and a breeze—nothing.

Pale beauty is a brittle gem, a bubble, A rose, dew, snow, smoke, wind, air—nothing at all.

If she is beautiful, as the saying goes, she is commonly a fool; if proud, she is scornful, “and pride follows beauty”; or she is unchaste, for “beauty and chastity seldom agree.” Can she be beautiful and chaste too? Ariston, son of Agesicles, married a Spartan girl, the most beautiful woman in all Greece after Helen, but in character the most abominable, beastly creature in the world.

So I would have you follow Seneca in valuing her qualities rather than her appearance. Will you call a blade good because it has a gilded scabbard, decorated with gold and jewels? No: call it good if it has a good edge and point, well-tempered metal and the strength to withstand resistance.

This beauty belongs to the body alone; and what is it but, as Gregory Nazianzen tells us, “the plaything of time and sickness”? Or, as Boethius says, “as changeable as a flower”; it is not nature that makes us seem so, but chiefly the weakness of the beholder.

Ask someone else: he sees nothing of the sort. “Please tell me what you think of him”—tell me, I beg you, how you like my sweetheart, as the woman in Aristaenetus asked her sister: “I admire him so much; I think he is the sweetest gentleman, the handsomest man I ever saw. But I am in love, I confess”—“and I am not ashamed to admit it”—“so I cannot judge properly.”

But suppose she is truly beautiful, golden-haired like Anacreon’s Bathyllus; to examine the details, suppose she has

Little fiery eyes and a milk-white neck,

a clear, rosy complexion, a little mouth, coral lips, white teeth, a soft, plump neck, body, hands and feet, all beautiful and lovely to look at, made up of every grace and elegance, a perfect creation,

10742.Ovid, Remedies for Love 429–430. The quoted two-line sentence is retained, followed by Burton’s own separate English version. “Cariere” in that version is a rapid course or gallop.

10743.“Affect” means love or desire. “Canker” may denote a cancerous sore. These are reported anecdotes about Seleucus and Raymond Lull, not verified medical or biographical accounts; their sources and historical identities require collation.

10745.The consulted William of Newburgh places this episode at 4.26, not 4.24, and calls the woman the Danish king’s sister, not daughter. He reports several alleged causes, says the actual reason was unknown, and condemns the repudiation. Burton’s different kinship, numbering and return-to-father detail are preserved as his account.

10747.Peter Mattheus is Pierre Matthieu. “Belike” in Burton’s margin means probably: he tentatively names Edward Hall and Richard Grafton. The sentence reports Matthieu’s objection to a story, not the editor’s acceptance of that story. Its precise historical sources remain uncollated.

10748.“By-respects” are subsidiary or ulterior motives. “Gunpowder passion” makes desire an intense but short-lived flash. Burton moves from particular stories to a general warning about marriages founded on appearance.

10750.Juvenal, Satire 6.144–148, supplies the sagging skin, dark teeth and subsequent iam gravis es nobis. Burton changes the conditional laxet and fiant of the consulted text to laxat and fiunt and excerpts the surrounding dismissal. The implied agents of “abide them” are the women’s lovers or husbands.

10752.Martial 3.89.2 addresses a man: nam faciem durum, Phoebe, cacantis habes, “Phoebus, you have the face of someone passing hard stool.” Burton omits durum and prints Phœbi, a genitive, producing “the face of Phoebus defecating.” The modern column follows that printed construction and retains the vulgarity. The following “Saturn’s arse” is another insult, not a verified continuation of Martial.

10754.Horace, Odes 4.13.11–12. The “snow” is white hair. Burton excerpts and joins the clauses within his catalogue of insults; the modern wording follows that arrangement.

10756.Cicero, Against Catiline 1.10, has patent portae; proficiscere. Burton reverses the first two words and transfers the political command to his imagined rejection of an ageing lover. The margin appears above the Horace entry but belongs to this final phrase.

10757.“Mirror” means model or exemplar; “magazine” means storehouse. Myrothetium is a perfume container and pixis a small box. The extravagant praise prepares Burton’s answer that even supposedly perfect beauty cannot endure.

10758.Faces is the Latin plural of fax, a torch or flame, not the English “faces.” The fragment combines the imagery of kindled desire and manifold forms. It is left without a verified attribution.

10760.The Latin uses accusatives of respect: radiant as to cheeks, mouth and eyes. “Lochæus” is preserved as the marginal attribution; the name and exact poem remain unresolved.

10762.“Quintessence” means the purest concentrated essence; Venerilla is a diminutive of Venus, and ætatula a tender or youthful age. Nulli secunda means second to none. The short marginal comparison with the maiden Venus has no named source.

10764.The line occurs at Octavia 550, in the character Seneca’s reply to Nero. Burton’s margin simply says “Seneca”; the work is transmitted in the Senecan dramatic corpus. Attribution and textual history should be distinguished from the speaker’s name.

10766.Seneca, Phaedra 761–762, also called Hippolytus. Anceps means uncertain, two-sided or perilous: beauty is a doubtful blessing. Venetian glass supplies a separate image of fragility in Burton’s surrounding prose.

10768.“Favour” means pleasing appearance or charm; “vanity” transience or emptiness. The flower and one-month claim belong to Burton’s emblematic comparison. Camerarius’s marginal reference is retained for collation; it is not a modern botanical finding.

10770.Candida forma is fair or radiant beauty, while Burton’s English version says “beauty pale.” Gemmula and bullula are diminutives, rendered “little jewel” and “bubble.” The abbreviated Bauhusius attribution and numbering are reproduced without claiming the poem has been independently located.

10772.Pausanias 3.7.7 says that Ariston’s wife had been the ugliest girl in Sparta and became the most beautiful through Helen’s intervention. It does not make Burton’s allegation about her character. His body text and Latin margin are both retained, but this discrepancy is material. “Honest” here means chaste; “conditions” character or disposition.

10774.Seneca, Letter 76.14, compares a good sword’s practical edge and point with its decorated belt and scabbard. Burton’s English compresses the equipment into a scabbard; his Latin margin retains baltheus, belt. The consulted Latin has auratus and an explicit est after acies. His adaptation remains visible in both columns.

10777.Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 3, prose 8, compares beauty’s transience with spring flowers and attributes its appearance to the weakness of the observer’s eyes. Burton’s margin compresses and recasts that passage. Gregory’s attribution and oration number remain to be collated.

10779.“Properest” means most handsome or well-formed. Burton juxtaposes a Latin request, its English gloss, a longer speech and an additional Latin aside. All are retained in sequence. The Aristaenetus letter and the relation between its text and Burton’s version remain for collation.

10780.Bathyllus is the beloved named in the Anacreontic tradition. The named comparison is retained without treating the catalogue of features as a continuous quotation from one poem. The following Luc. Brugensis abbreviation remains unexpanded pending exact identification.