to give counsel, as to comfort parents when their children are in that instant departed; to no purpose to prescribe narcotics, cordials, nectarines, potions, Homer’s nepenthes, or Helen’s bowl, &c. Non cessabit pectus tundere, she will lament and howl for a season:  let passion have his course awhile, and then he may proceed, by foreshowing the miserable events and dangers which will surely happen, the pains of hell, joys of Paradise, and the like, which by their preposterous courses they shall forfeit or incur; and ’tis a fit method, a very good means; for what [5699]Seneca said of vice, I say of love, Sine magistro discitur, vix sine magistro deseritur, ’tis learned of itself, but [5700]hardly left without a tutor.  ’Tis not amiss therefore to have some such overseer, to expostulate and show them such absurdities, inconveniences, imperfections, discontents, as usually follow; which their blindness, fury, madness, cannot apply unto themselves, or will not apprehend through weakness; and good for them to disclose themselves, to give ear to friendly admonitions.  “Tell me, sweetheart (saith Tryphena to a lovesick Charmides in [5701]Lucian), what is it that troubles thee? peradventure I can ease thy mind, and further thee in thy suit;” and so, without question, she might, and so mayst thou, if the patient be capable of good counsel, and will hear at least what may be said.

If he love at all, she is either an honest woman or a whore.  If dishonest, let him read or inculcate to him that 5. of Solomon’s Proverbs, Ecclus. 26.  Ambros. lib. 1. cap. 4. in his book of Abel and Cain, Philo Judeus de mercede mer.  Platina’s dial. in Amores, Espencaeus, and those three books of Pet.  Haedus de contem. amoribus, Aeneas Sylvius’ tart Epistle, which he wrote to his friend Nicholas of Warthurge, which he calls medelam illiciti amoris &c. [5702]"For what’s a whore,” as he saith, “but a poller of youth, a [5703]ruin of men, a destruction, a devourer of patrimonies, a downfall of honour, fodder for the devil, the gate of death, and supplement of hell?” [5704]_Talis amor est laqueus animae_, &c., a bitter honey, sweet poison, delicate destruction, a voluntary mischief, commixtum coenum, sterquilinium.  And as [5705]Pet.  Aretine’s Lucretia, a notable quean, confesseth:  “Gluttony, anger, envy, pride, sacrilege, theft, slaughter, were all born that day that a whore began her profession; for,” as she follows it, “her pride is greater than a rich churl’s, she is more envious than the pox, as malicious as melancholy, as covetous as hell.  If from the beginning of the world any were mala, pejor, pessima, bad in the superlative degree, ’tis a whore; how many have I undone, caused to be wounded, slain!  O Antonia, thou seest [5706]what I am without, but within, God knows, a puddle of iniquity, a sink of sin, a pocky quean.”  Let him now that so dotes meditate on this; let him see the event and success