to take leave of her sweetheart now going to wars, ut desiderio ejus minus tabesceret, to comfort herself in his absence, she took his picture with coal upon a wall, as the candle gave the shadow, which her father admiring, perfected afterwards, and it was the first picture by report that ever was made.  And long after, Sycion for painting, carving, statuary, music, and philosophy, was preferred before all the cities in Greece. [5541]Apollo was the first inventor of physic, divination, oracles; Minerva found out weaving, Vulcan curious ironwork, Mercury letters, but who prompted all this into their heads?  Love, Nunquam talia invenissent, nisi talia adamassent, they loved such things, or some party, for whose sake they were undertaken at first.  ’Tis true, Vulcan made a most admirable brooch or necklace, which long after Axion and Temenus, Phegius’ sons, for the singular worth of it, consecrated to Apollo at Delphos, but Pharyllus the tyrant stole it away, and presented it to Ariston’s wife, on whom he miserably doted (Parthenius tells the story out of Phylarchus); but why did Vulcan make this excellent Ouch? to give Hermione Cadmus’ wife, whom he dearly loved.  All our tilts and tournaments, orders of the garter, golden fleece, &c.—­Nobilitas sub amore jacet—­owe their beginnings to love, and many of our histories.  By this means, saith Jovius, they would express their loving minds to their mistress, and to the beholders.  ’Tis the sole subject almost of poetry, all our invention tends to it, all our songs, whatever those old Anacreons:  (and therefore Hesiod makes the Muses and Graces still follow Cupid, and as Plutarch holds, Menander and the rest of the poets were love’s priests,) all our Greek and Latin epigrammatists, love writers.  Antony Diogenes the most ancient, whose epitome we find in Phocius Bibliotheca, Longus Sophista, Eustathius, Achilles, Tatius, Aristaenetus, Heliodorus, Plato, Plutarch, Lucian, Parthenius, Theodorus, Prodromus, Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, &c.  Our new Ariostoes, Boyards, Authors of Arcadia, Urania, Faerie Queen, &c.  Marullus, Leotichius, Angerianus, Stroza, Secundus, Capellanus, &c. with the rest of those facete modern poets, have written in this kind, are but as so many symptoms of love.  Their whole books are a synopsis or breviary of love, the portuous of love, legends of lovers’ lives and deaths, and of their memorable adventures, nay more, quod leguntur, quod laudantur amori debent, as [5542]Nevisanus the lawyer holds, “there never was any excellent poet that invented good fables, or made laudable verses, which was not in love himself;” had he not taken a quill from Cupid’s wings, he could never have written so amorously as he did.

[5543] “Cynthia te vatem fecit lascive Properti,
          Ingenium Galli pulchra Lycoris habet. 
        Fama est arguti Nemesis formosa Tibulli,
          Lesbia dictavit docte Catulle tibi. 
        Non me Pelignus, nec spernet Mantua vatem,
          Si qua Corinna mihi, si quis Alexis erit.”