of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratuitously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled _Eros and Anteros,_ or _Love and Its Reciprocation_. The passage is characteristic and may be quoted:-- Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists, not in a forced cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and peace. And of matrimonial love no doubt but that was chiefly meant which by the ancient sages was thus parabled: That Love, if he be not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whom while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false and feigning desires that wander singly up and down in his likeness. By them in their borrowed garb Love, though not wholly blind as poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being born an archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark region here below, which is not Love's proper sphere, partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is native to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they were his Mother's own sons, for so he thinks them while they subtly keep themselves most on his blind side. But, after a while, as his manner is, when, soaring up into the high tower of his Apogæum, above the shadows of the Earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not his genuine brother, as he imagined, he has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such a personated mate. For straight his arrows loose their golden heads and shed their purple feathers; his silken braids untwine and slip their knots; and that original and fiery virtue given him by Fate all on a sudden goes out and leaves him undeified and despoiled of all his force; till, finding Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his Deity by the reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me; and, by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters men heretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands); but this is a serious and deep verity, showing us that Love in Marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual.