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How shall I find words to convey a just idea of the matchless power and folly of this little blind urchin? what kingdoms has he not overthrown, what mighty men have not been subjugated to his will! Alexander for his Thais burned the famed city of Persepolis. Marc Antony for Cleopatra, bartered the dominion of the world. Love can transform wisdom into folly, and turn reason into madness: it will make the hundred eyes of Argus as blind as their resemblance on the peacock's tail; or lead in rosy bands the fierce and strong Cyclops famed workmen of the Lemnian Isle; it will burn as fierce in Friezeland as under the line, and animate the breast of stone: it is the unquenchable furnace of the brain, a firebrand in the blood—Woe be unto the man that cherisheth it: for it will engender naught but folly.

As to the whims of lovers, they are innumerable, being as capricious in fancy as the winds of March, or the showers of April; their bickerings, however, prove of no very serious consequence, for Terence has emphatically said,

In the above line, and throughout the following stanza, the poet very suddenly humiliates the celestial properties of love, and makes him but a dependent on carnal gratification: but as there seems a degree of impiety in his remark, I beg leave to be excused from venturing any opinions upon the subject.

Speaking of the power of this divinity over all humankind, Voltaire thus expressed himself in two lines to be graven under the Statue of Love.

And Butler makes his Hudibras conclude the heroieal Epistle to his Lady in these words.

In order to cool a little this connubial phrenzy, we will quote an anecdote of Rosso the Italian Poet, who in the memoirs of his life, written by himself, states, that he was extremely happy in two marriages: for his first wife was dumb, and his second blind; but, adds the bard, my third is neither one nor t'other!

Neither should be omitted the following remark of a very observant and clever man.

Louis XIV. one day asked the Marshal Uxelles why he did not marry? “Why,” said the blunt soldier, “Sire, I have not yet found the woman of whom I would wish to be the husband, nor the child of whom I would wish to be the father.”

There is most assuredly, infinite force in this line of the poet, which obviously alludes to the third stanza of the present section, and if indeed, we consider the point minutely, and measure the whole by the standard of the conduct of married people in general, there certainly appears something like reason in the conclusion drawn by the poetaster, who seems to indicate, that love is no other than desire, notwithstanding all its votaries swear to their mistresses point blank to the contrary.

At length our son of Apollo has let the cat out of the bag, for, if he turns platonic love into ridicule, he doubtless means to aver, that without sexual intercourse, nothing can exist but friendship and esteem, thereby rendering love a gross desire instead of an heavenly emanation, and treating it with as much nonchalance as if he was speaking of eating, drinking, sleeping, &c &c. yet what is to be said of Heloise, who was to be content with nothing, and “to dream the rest;” surely our poet must allow himself in error, if a lady of such a temperament as we are given to understand she possessed, could be satisfied in this easy manner; though I must confess, that he would confound me, did he ask what damsels of the present period, would think of such a namby pamby system.