one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shews that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion. You must except nevertheless Marcus Antonius,[1] the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius,[2] the decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus:[3] as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye; which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature and value of things, by this; that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said that the arch-flatterer, with whom
- ↑ Marcus Antonius, 83–30 B.C., Roman triumvir and general. Antony's love story is best told by Shakspere in The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.
- ↑ Appius Crassus Claudius was one of the decemvirs, 451-449 B.C. The tragical story of Appius and Virginia, first told by Livy, reappears, in English, in The Doctor's Tale of Chaucer, in Gower's Confessio Amantis, and in three different tragedies, one written by John Webster in Bacon's time.
- ↑ We are to one another a spectacle great enough. Epicurus, 342-270 B.C., was the founder of the Epicurean philosophy which took pleasure to be the highest good. Bacon quotes the saying of Epicurus from L. Annaei Senecae ad Lucilium Epistularum Moralium Liber I. Epistula VII. 11. The quotation occurs again in the Advancement of Learning. I. iii. 7.
