thereby to express that melancholic, dumb, and deaf stupefaction, which benumbs all our faculties, when oppressed with accidents greater than we are able to bear.  And, indeed, the violence and impression of an excessive grief must of necessity astonish the soul, and wholly deprive her of her ordinary functions:  as it happens to every one of us, who, upon any sudden alarm of very ill news, find ourselves surprised, stupefied, and in a manner deprived of all power of motion, so that the soul, beginning to vent itself in tears and lamentations, seems to free and disengage itself from the sudden oppression, and to have obtained some room to work itself out at greater liberty.

          “Et via vix tandem voci laxata dolore est.”

     ["And at length and with difficulty is a passage opened by grief for
     utterance.”—­AEneid, xi. 151.]

In the war that Ferdinand made upon the widow of King John of Hungary, about Buda, a man-at-arms was particularly taken notice of by every one for his singular gallant behaviour in a certain encounter; and, unknown, highly commended, and lamented, being left dead upon the place:  but by none so much as by Raisciac, a German lord, who was infinitely enamoured of so rare a valour.  The body being brought off, and the count, with the common curiosity coming to view it, the armour was no sooner taken off but he immediately knew him to be his own son, a thing that added a second blow to the compassion of all the beholders; only he, without uttering a word, or turning away his eyes from the woeful object, stood fixedly contemplating the body of his son, till the vehemency of sorrow having overcome his vital spirits, made him sink down stone-dead to the ground.

          “Chi puo dir com’ egli arde, a in picciol fuoco,”

     ["He who can say how he burns with love, has little fire”
     —­Petrarca, Sonetto 137.]

say the Innamoratos, when they would represent an ’insupportable passion.

                         “Misero quod omneis
               Eripit sensus mihi:  nam simul te,
               Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi,
                         Quod loquar amens. 
               Lingua sed torpet:  tenuis sub artus
               Flamma dimanat; sonitu suopte
               Tintinant aures; gemina teguntur
                         Lumina nocte.”

["Love deprives me of all my faculties:  Lesbia, when once in thy presence, I have not left the power to tell my distracting passion:  my tongue becomes torpid; a subtle flame creeps through my veins; my ears tingle in deafness; my eyes are veiled with darkness.”  Catullus, Epig. li. 5]

Neither is it in the height and greatest fury of the fit that we are in a condition to pour out our complaints or our amorous persuasions, the soul being at that time over-burdened, and labouring with profound thoughts; and the body dejected and languishing with desire; and thence it is that sometimes proceed those accidental impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover, and that frigidity which by the force of an immoderate ardour seizes him even in the very lap of fruition. —­[The edition of 1588 has here, “An accident not unknown to myself."]—­ For all passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate: