第218章

Therein sometimes are engendered certain humours so saltish, brackish, clammy, sharp, nipping, tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that by their stinging acrimony, rending nitrosity, figging itch, wriggling mordicancy, and smarting salsitude (for the said member is altogether sinewy and of a most quick and lively feeling), their whole body is shaken and ebrangled, their senses totally ravished and transported, the operations of their judgment and understanding utterly confounded, and all disordinate passions and perturbations of the mind thoroughly and absolutely allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort that if nature had not been so favourable unto them as to have sprinkled their forehead with a little tincture of bashfulness and modesty, you should see them in a so frantic mood run mad after lechery, and hie apace up and down with haste and lust, in quest of and to fix some chamber-standard in their Paphian ground, that never did the Proetides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean Thyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more shamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because this terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and most principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident. Let it not here be thought strange that I should call it an animal, seeing therein Ido no otherwise than follow and adhere to the doctrine of the academic and peripatetic philosophers. For if a proper motion be a certain mark and infallible token of the life and animation of the mover, as Aristotle writeth, and that any such thing as moveth of itself ought to be held animated and of a living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason did give it the denomination of an animal, for that he perceived and observed in it the proper and self-stirring motions of suffocation, precipitation, corrugation, and of indignation so extremely violent, that oftentimes by them is taken and removed from the woman all other sense and moving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding lipothymy, benumbing syncope, epileptic, apoplectic palsy, and true resemblance of a pale-faced death.

Furthermore, in the said member there is a manifest discerning faculty of scents and odours very perceptible to women, who feel it fly from what is rank and unsavoury, and follow fragrant and aromatic smells. It is not unknown to me how Cl. Galen striveth with might and main to prove that these are not proper and particular notions proceeding intrinsically from the thing itself, but accidentally and by chance. Nor hath it escaped my notice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of their abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or perception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the solid truth.

I will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this dispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean and slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living chastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range, and subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient, submissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason. Therefore here will Imake an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the said animal being once satiated--if it be possible that it can be contented or satisfied--by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the epididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered motions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly longings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging lusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished.

For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual danger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not wherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious animal. Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your medicinal art for hindering one's head to be horny-graffed at home whilst his feet are plodding abroad? Yes, that I have, my gallant friend, answered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof Ifrequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set down and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a standing of two thousand years. Hearken and take good heed. You are, quoth Panurge, by cockshobby, a right honest man, and I love you with all my heart. Eat a little of this quince-pie; it is very proper and convenient for the shutting up of the orifice of the ventricle of the stomach, because of a kind of astringent stypticity which is in that sort of fruit, and is helpful to the first concoction. But what? I think Ispeak Latin before clerks. Stay till I give you somewhat to drink out of this Nestorian goblet. Will you have another draught of white hippocras?

Be not afraid of the squinzy, no. There is neither squinant, ginger, nor grains in it; only a little choice cinnamon, and some of the best refined sugar, with the delicious white wine of the growth of that vine which was set in the slips of the great sorbapple above the walnut-tree.