The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous Prose — John Shaqi
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous ProseLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous Prose
Lamb, Charles
English literature
ready to jump at once into his mouth_, her he hateth, feels disgust when
she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesabeel, Alecto,
Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only
not handsome; that which he affecteth so much, that which drives him
mad, distracted, phrenetic, beside himself, is no beauty which lives,
nothing in _rerum naturâ_, (so he might entertain a hope of a cure) but
something which is not, can never be, a certain _fantastic opinion_ or
_notional image_ of his mistresse, _that which she was_, and that which
hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him,
frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.
This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel
marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method,
together with milk diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such
cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals,
widgeons, becca ficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a
passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic,
moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be
patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages, I think this man must
fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.
EXTRACT II
* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in
logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either
side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as
_Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet
mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they
flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwile the world thinks
him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * * * * * Philosophy
running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned enquiries, what
truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are
written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's
chair, we marvel how they got there, being _homines intellectûs
pulverulenti_, as _Trincauellius_ notes; they care not so they may raise
a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_ as
_Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs,
minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but
they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble
and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship,
_libant_, they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in
their sacrificials, _Cerealia, May-games_: Truth is the game all these
hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures,
_humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsels to one oft
these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * and for all this
_nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry,
shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth
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