We see this confirmed all too often in everyday experience. Choresus dearly loved the maiden Callyrrhoe, but the more he loved her, the more she hated him. Oenone loved Paris, but he rejected her. They are unyielding on every side, as if beauty had been created to ruin others or be ruined itself.

I wait on her, pay her every attention, beg and plead: “Gracious one, I pray you, pity me”; fair mistress, pity me. I spend myself, my time, my friends and my fortune to win her favour—as he complains in the eclogue. I lament, sigh, weep and pour out my grief to her, but she is hard as flint:

More unmoving than the rocks of Ismarus.

As beautiful and hard as a diamond, she will neither regard me—“You despise me”—nor hear me:

She flees from me as I call, Pitying none of my tears, unmoved by my complaints.

What shall I do?

I wooed her as a young man should, But “Sir,” she said, “I do not love you.”

But my Caelia is harder than crags, marble, iron, Oak, rock, cave, horn, adamant or ice.

Rock, marble, heart of oak barred with iron, Frost, flint or adamant are not so hard.

I give, I bribe, I send presents, but they are refused.

Corydon is a country bumpkin, and Alexis cares nothing for gifts.

I declare my love, I swear, I weep: “She repays love with hatred”; “She laughed at my tears.” Despite all this, she ignores me, mocks me, despises me, hates me. Phillida scoffs at me: “Eurydice, harder than rock, wild beasts or oak”—unyielding, harsh, stony still.

And it is quite true: many gentlewomen are so fastidious that they scorn all suitors, torment their poor lovers and think nobody good enough for them, as hard to please as Daphne herself:

Many sought her; she scorned those who sought her, And cared nothing for Hymen, love or marriage.

Many wooed her, but she always scorned them, And said she would not marry of her own will.

At one time they will not marry—so they say, at least, though that is the last thing they intend; at another, not yet, when it is their sole desire and they are mad for it. She will marry eventually, but not him: he is certainly a handsome, accomplished man, but he lacks means. Another suitor has ample means, but lacks sense. One is too old; another too young, too ugly; she dislikes his manner. A third is too dissolute; he is rich, but low-born.

She will be a gentlewoman, a lady, as her sister is, as her mother is. She is every bit as beautiful, as well brought up, has as good a marriage portion, and expects as good a match as Matilda or Dorinda. Otherwise, she is resolved to wait for the present. Young maidens are so ready to shy at every object, so easily won or lost by every trifle, so quickly turned aside, so hard to please.

Meanwhile, “How many lovers has she tormented?” One suitor pines away, languishing in love: “How many, in the end, does she drive to death!” Another sighs and grieves; she does not care. And there is what Strozzi reproached Ariadne with:

You are no more moved by Euryalus’s groans and tears Than the face of the troubled sea is softened by prayer. You scorn a youth, the handsomest in the city, And drive him to die of maddening love.

She is no more moved by her sweetheart’s Sad sighs and tears than the raging sea by prayers. You scorn the handsomest youth in all our city, And drive him almost mad, to die for love.

They take pride in dressing themselves up to make young men fall in love—“to capture men and scorn them once captured”—to make them dote on them and go mad for their sakes.

But she is moved by no tears, Nor will she listen to any plea with a yielding heart.

While they grant their favours grudgingly, They love to be loved, yet scorn the lover.

All courtship and service are too little for them, presents too paltry:

She delights in her lover’s torments—and in the spoils.

Like Atalanta, they must be outrun or cannot be won. On the other side, many young men are just as obstinate and particular in their choice, just as tyrannically proud, overbearing, deceitful and false-hearted, just as unyielding and perverse, like Narcissus:

Many young men and many maidens sought him; But such fierce pride dwelt in his youthful beauty That no young men, no maidens sought him.

Young men and maidens courted him, But in his youth he was so proud, so aloof, That young men and maidens bade him farewell.

More than all the rest, Echo wept and tried every means of wooing him: love me out of pity, or pity me for love. But he was obstinate:

“I would sooner die,” he says, “than let you possess me.”

He would rather die than consent. Psyche ran after Cupid, pleading:

Your beautiful Psyche seeks you, beautiful one; A goddess asks for you, a god; a girl for you, a boy.

Fair Cupid, your fair Psyche pleads with you; A lovely lass woos a handsome young gallant.

But he rejected her nevertheless. In this way many lovers hold out so long, doting on themselves and standing in their own way, that in the end they come to be scorned and rejected, as Strozzi’s Gargiliana was:

Young men hate you, old men hate you; abandoned, you languish, You who were once the common concern of noblemen.

Both young and old now hate and scorn you, Who once were all their joy and comfort too.

As Narcissus himself was:

Who, despising many, Died before he could enjoy the love of any.

They in turn begin to be despised by others, as he was by his reflection, and finally settle for a poor curate or an old servant, though in their youth they might have had their choice of excellent matches. They resemble that well-bred mare in Plutarch who would admit only fine stallions; but when her tail was cut off and her mane shorn close, and she saw herself so disfigured in the water as she came to drink, “she allowed an ass to mount her”: at last she was content to be mated with an ass. Yet this is a common disposition; people will not abandon it, and it cannot be helped.