It is the unreasoning, unquestioning love of a man for a woman or a woman for a man, just as they are, for themselves only; “because it was you and me,” as Montaigne says.  Not a respect for good qualities, a mere admiration for beauty, a perception of strength or delicacy, but a sort of predestined unity of spirit and body, an inner and instinctive congeniality, a sense of supreme need and nearness, which has no consciousness of raising or helping or forgiving about it, but is rather an imperative desire for surrender, for sharing, for serving.  Thus, in love, faults and weaknesses are not things to be mended or overlooked, but opportunities of lavish generosity.  Sacrifice is not only not a pain, but the deepest and acutest pleasure possible.  Love of this kind has nothing of the tolerance of friendship about it, the process of addition and subtraction, the weighing of net results, though that can provide a sensible and happy partnership enough.  And thus when an author has grace and power to perceive such a situation, no further motive or purpose is needed; indeed the addition of any such motive merely defames and tarnishes the quality of the divine gift.

It is not to be pretended that all human beings have the gift of loving so.  To love perfectly is a matter of genius; it may be worth while to depict other sorts of love, for it has infinite gradations and nuances.  One of the grievous mistakes that the prophets and prophetesses of love make is that they tend to speak as if only some coldness and hardness of nature, which could be dispensed with at will or by effort, holds men and women back from the innermost relationship.  It is the same mistake as that made by many preachers who speak as if the moral sense was equally developed in all, or required only a little effort of the will.  But a man or a woman may be quite able to perceive the nobility, the solemn splendour of a perfect love, and yet be incapable of either feeling or inspiring it.  The possession of such a gift is a thing to thank God for; the absence of it is not a thing to be shrewishly condemned.  The power is not often to be found in combination with high intellectual or artistic gifts.  There is a law of compensation in human nature, but there is also a law of limitations; and this it is both foolish and cowardly to ignore.

When one comes to form such a list as I have tried to do of great lovers in literature and life, it is surprising and rather distressing to find, after all, how difficult it is to make such a list at all.  It is easier to make a list of women who have loved perfectly than a list of men.  Two rather painful considerations arise.  Is it because, after all, it is so rare, so almost abnormal an experience for one to love purely, passionately, and permanently, that the difficulty of making such a list arises?  There are plenty of books, both imaginative and biographical, to choose from, and yet the perfect companionship seems very rare.  Or is it that we nowadays exaggerate