The Essays, vol 11 | Page 9

serve those great bastion farthingales, with
which our ladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to
draw us on by removing them farther from us?
"Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri."
["She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going."
--Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.]
"Interdum tunica duxit operta moram."

["The hidden robe has sometimes checked love." --Propertius, ii. 15, 6.]
To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this grave
coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant of
things that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but to
increase in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot at
pleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is not only
pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that soft
sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce a cold and
matronlike gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: 'tis a glory, say
they, to triumph over modesty, chastity, and temperance; and whoever
dissuades ladies from those qualities, betrays both them and himself.
We are to believe that their hearts tremble with affright, that the very
sound of our words offends the purity of their ears, that they hate us for
talking so, and only yield to our importunity by a compulsive force.
Beauty, all powerful as it is, has not wherewithal to make itself relished
without the mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy, where there is
the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is necessitated to have
recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to render itself charming,
and yet, in truth, whatever it may do, being venal and public, it remains
feeble and languishing. Even so in virtue itself, of two like effects, we
notwithstanding look upon that as the fairest and most worthy, wherein
the most trouble and hazard are set before us.
'Tis an effect of the divine Providence to suffer the holy Church to be
afflicted, as we see it, with so many storms and troubles, by this
opposition to rouse pious souls, and to awaken them from that drowsy
lethargy wherein, by so long tranquillity, they had been immerged. If
we should lay the loss we have sustained in the number of those who
have gone astray, in the balance against the benefit we have had by
being again put in breath, and by having our zeal and strength revived
by reason of this opposition, I know not whether the utility would not
surmount the damage.
We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast and
firm by having taken away all means of dissolving it, but the knot of
the will and affection is so much the more slackened and made loose,

by how much that of constraint is drawn closer; and, on the contrary,
that which kept the marriages at Rome so long in honour and inviolate,
was the liberty every one who so desired had to break them; they kept
their wives the better, because they might part with them, if they would;
and, in the full liberty of divorce, five hundred years and more passed
away before any one made use on't.
"Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius urit."
["What you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets the
appetite.--"Ovid, Amor., ii. 19.]
We might here introduce the opinion of an ancient upon this occasion,
"that executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices: that they do not
beget the care of doing well, that being the work of reason and
discipline, but only a care not to be taken in doing ill:"
"Latius excisae pestis contagia serpunt."
["The plague-sore being lanced, the infection spreads all the more."
--Rutilius, Itinerar. 1, 397.]
I do not know that this is true; but I experimentally know, that never
civil government was by that means reformed; the order and regimen of
manners depend upon some other expedient.
The Greek histories make mention of the Argippians, neighbours to
Scythia, who live without either rod or stick for offence; where not
only no one attempts to attack them, but whoever can fly thither is safe,
by reason of their virtue and sanctity of life, and no one is so bold as to
lay hands upon them; and they have applications made to them to
determine the controversies that arise betwixt men of other countries.
There is a certain nation, where the enclosures of gardens and fields
they would preserve, are made only of a string of cotton; and, so fenced,
is more firm and secure than by our hedges and ditches.
"Furem signata sollicitant . . . aperta effractarius praeterit."

["Things sealed, up invite a thief: the housebreaker passes by open
doors."--Seneca, Epist., 68.]