“borrow language of dislike; And instead of ‘dearest Miss,’ Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss, And those forms of old admiring. Call her cockatrice and siren, Basilisk and all that’s evil, Witch, hyena, mermaid, devil, Ethiop, wench, and blackamoor, Monkey, ape, and twenty more; Friendly traitress, loving foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, _Borders so upon excess_, That they do not rightly wot, _Whether it be pain or not_.” MIXED MOODS AND PARADOXES “That they do not rightly wot, whether it be pain or not.” That is the keynote of Modern Love. To a superficial Anakreon, who knows but its rapturous phase, Love is all honey and moonshine. The celibate Spinoza, too, ignorant of the agonies of Love, defined it as _lætitia concomitante idea causæ externæ_—a pleasure accompanied by the idea of its external cause. Burton, on the other hand, claims Love as “a species of melancholy”; and Cowley sings— “A mighty pain to love it is, And ’tis a pain that pain to miss; But of all pains the greatest pain It is to love, but love in vain.” The poets generally have taken a less one-sided view of the matter by depicting Love under a thousand images, as a mysterious _mixture_ of joy and sadness, of agony and delight. So Bailey— “The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.” DRYDEN— “Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.” FLETCHER— “Thou bitter sweet, easing disease How dost thou by displeasing please?” MIDDLETON— “Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying; Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying; Love does doat in liking, and is mad in loathing, Love, indeed, is anything, yet indeed is nothing.” DRAYTON— “Amidst an ocean of delight For pleasure to be starved.” “’Tis nothing to be plagued in hell But thus in heaven tormented.” CONSTABLE— “To live in hell, and heaven to behold, To welcome life, and die a living death, To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold, To grasp at stars, and lie the earth beneath.” SOUTHWELL— “She offereth joy, but bringeth grief; A kiss——where she doth kill.” “Tears kindle sparks.” “Her loving looks are murdering darts.” “Like winter rose and summer ice.”