Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/190

Rh birth robbed of all power of vision, he can never desire the gift so strongly as he that hath sweetly enjoyed the same a while and then been deprived thereof." To which she did presently add this further remark: Con menos pena se abstiene d' una cosa la persona que nunca supo, que aquella que vive enamorada del gusto pasado—"How that one could with a lesser ado refrain from a thing one had never tried, than from one already known and loved." Such were the reasons this lady did adduce on this moot point.

Again the respected and learned Boccaccio, among the questions discussed in his Filicopo, doth in the ninth treat of this same problem: Which of these three, wife, widow or maid, a man should rather fall in love with, in order the more happily to carry his desire into effect? The author doth answer by the mouth of the Queen he doth there introduce speaking, that although 'tis of course very ill done and against God and one's own conscience to covet a married woman, which is in no sense another's, but subject to her husband, it is natheless far easier to come to the point with her than ever with maid or widow, albeit such love is dangerous,—seeing the more a man doth blow the fire, the more he rouseth it, whereas otherwise it dieth down. Indeed all things do wane in the using, except only wantonness, which doth rather wax. But the widow, which hath been long without such exercise, doth scarce feel it at all, and doth take no more account of love than if she had never been married, and is more heated by memory of the past than by present concupiscence. Also the maid, which hath no knowledge nor experience of what it is, save by imagination, hath but a lukewarm longing therefor. On the other hand