The Anatomy of Melancholy

But few men are free of love, few lovers so prudent or able to restrain themselves and govern their passions, to curb their senses enough not to see the beloved, not to look lustfully or converse with them. Such is the fury of this headstrong passion of raging lust, and such their weakness: “that fierce ardour implanted by nature,” as he calls it, such furious desire has nature inscribed in us, such indescribable delight—

So does divine Venus’s frenzy Brood over minds so mad.

—from which neither reason, advice, poverty, pain, misery, drudgery, “the pain of childbirth,” nor anything else can deter them. We must use some swift means to correct and prevent this and all the other troubles that arise from conversation and the like. The best, readiest and surest way, approved by all, is “a change of place”: send them in different directions, so that they can neither hear of nor see each other, have another opportunity to send messages, or live together, “men alone with a woman,” like so many Gilbertines.

“Removal from one’s country” is Savonarola’s fourth rule, and Gordonius’s precept: “let him be sent away to distant regions”—send him travelling. This is what most pursue, like so many hounds in full cry: poets, theologians, philosophers, physicians, all say, “let him change his country.”

Valesius: “like a sick man, he must be cured by a change of air.” Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book 4: the best remedy is to go away. Jason Pratensis and Laurentius: change your air and country.

Flee the beloved shore.

Virgil: It helps to avoid neighbouring places.

Ovid: Go far away, and keep travelling long roads. But flee, and you will be safe.

Travelling is an antidote to love:

I must journey far to learned Athens, So a long road may free me from oppressive love.

For this purpose, says Propertius, my parents sent me to Athens. Time and absence wear away pain and grief, as fire goes out for lack of fuel.

As far as love goes from the eyes, so far it will go from the mind.

But they must stay away long enough. Xenophon prescribes a whole year for Critobulus: “for you can scarcely be cured of love within that time.” Some can hardly be weaned from it any sooner.

Heinsius playfully presses all this in a letter to his friend Primerius: first fast; then wait; third, change your place; fourth, think of a noose. If a change of place, the passage of time and absence, together with the preceding remedies, will not wear it out, it will scarcely be removed. But these usually work.