“Tanquam thura merumque parent
               Absentem marmoreamve putes:” 

["As if they are preparing frankincense and wine . . . you might
think her absent or marble.”—­Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8.]

I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only impart themselves that way.  You are to examine whether your company pleases them upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom, for that only; in what degree of favour and esteem you are with them: 

                              “Tibi si datur uni,
                    Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat.”

     ["Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she
     marks with a whiter stone.”—­Catullus, lxviii. 147.]

What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination.

“Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores.”

               ["She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with
               other absent lovers.”—­Tibullus, i. 6, 35.]

What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act for the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill and poison, as he did, a worthy lady?

Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek not elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent of the world in this.  They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly women than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as they.  I think the same of their intellects:  of those of the common sort, they have evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there; but in individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebted to them.  If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touching valour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce:  The marriages of that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so rude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant acquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most intimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial, and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice to make; and when they have broken down the fence, we may safely presume they get on fire: 

“Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia,
irritata, deinde emissa.”

["Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound,
breaks from his chains with greater wildness.”—­Livy, xxxiv. 4.]

They must give them a little more rein: 

         “Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem,
          Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo”: 

["I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit,
rush like a thunderbolt.”—­Ovid, Amor., iii. 4, 13.]