The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.

The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.
so many gentlemen and gentlewomen would not be so well qualified in this kind, if love did not incite them. [5516]"Who,” saith Castilio, “would learn to play, or give his mind to music, learn to dance, or make so many rhymes, love-songs, as most do, but for women’s sake, because they hope by that means to purchase their good wills, and win their favour?” We see this daily verified in our young women and wives, they that being maids took so much pains to sing, play, and dance, with such cost and charge to their parents, to get those graceful qualities, now being married will scarce touch an instrument, they care not for it.  Constantine agricult. lib. 11. cap. 18, makes Cupid himself to be a great dancer; by the same token as he was capering amongst the gods, [5517]"he flung down a bowl of nectar, which distilling upon the white rose, ever since made it red:”  and Calistratus, by the help of Dedalus, about Cupid’s statue [5518]made a many of young wenches still a dancing, to signify belike that Cupid was much affected with it, as without all doubt he was.  For at his and Psyche’s wedding, the gods being present to grace the feast, Ganymede filled nectar in abundance (as [5519]Apuleius describes it), Vulcan was the cook, the Hours made all fine with roses and flowers, Apollo played on the harp, the Muses sang to it, sed suavi Musicae super ingressa Venus saltavit, but his mother Venus danced to his and their sweet content.  Witty [5520]Lucian in that pathetical love passage, or pleasant description of Jupiter’s stealing of Europa, and swimming from Phoenicia to Crete, makes the sea calm, the winds hush, Neptune and Amphitrite riding in their chariot to break the waves before them, the tritons dancing round about, with every one a torch, the sea-nymphs half naked, keeping time on dolphins’ backs, and singing Hymeneus, Cupid nimbly tripping on the top of the waters, and Venus herself coming after in a shell, strewing roses and flowers on their heads.  Praxiteles, in all his pictures of love, feigns Cupid ever smiling, and looking upon dancers; and in St. Mark’s in Rome (whose work I know not), one of the most delicious pieces, is a many of [5521]satyrs dancing about a wench asleep.  So that dancing still is as it were a necessary appendix to love matters.  Young lasses are never better pleased than when as upon a holiday, after evensong, they may meet their sweethearts, and dance about a maypole, or in a town-green under a shady elm.  Nothing so familiar in. [5522]France, as for citizens’ wives and maids to dance a round in the streets, and often too, for want of better instruments, to make good music of their own voices, and dance after it.  Yea many times this love will make old men and women that have more toes than teeth, dance,—­“John, come kiss me now,” mask and mum; for Comus and Hymen love masks, and all such merriments above measure, will allow men to put on women’s apparel in some cases, and promiscuously to dance, young and old, rich and poor, generous and base, of all sorts.  Paulus Jovius taxeth Augustine Niphus the philosopher, [5523]"for that being an old man, and a public professor, a father of many children, he was so mad for the love of a young maid (that which many of his friends were ashamed to see), an old gouty fellow, yet would dance after fiddlers.”  Many laughed him to scorn for it, but this omnipotent love would have it so.

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The Anatomy of Melancholy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.