icity, unless it moderate itself, oppresses?"
--Seneca, Ep. 74.]

Pleasure chews and grinds us; according to the old Greek verse, which
says that the gods sell us all the goods they give us; that is to say,
that they give us nothing pure and perfect, and that we do not purchase
but at the price of some evil.

Labour and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate, nevertheless,
by I know not what natural conjunction. Socrates says, that some god
tried to mix in one mass and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being
able to do it; he bethought him at least to couple them by the tail.
Metrodorus said, that in sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure. I
know not whether or no he intended anything else by that saying; but for
my part, I am of opinion that there is design, consent, and complacency
in giving a man's self up to melancholy. I say, that besides ambition,
which may also have a stroke in the business, there is some shadow of
delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very
lap of melancholy. Are there not some constitutions that feed upon it?

"Est quaedam flere voluptas;"

["'Tis a certain kind of pleasure to weep."
--Ovid, Trist., iv. 3, 27.]

and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is as
grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too old, is to the palate:

"Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni
Inger' mi calices amariores"--

["Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put
into my bowl."--Catullus, xxvii. I.]

and as apples that have a sweet tartness.

Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold that the same
motions and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping; serve for
laughter too; and indeed, before the one or the other be finished, do but
observe the painter's manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to
which of the two the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does at
last bring tears:

"Nullum sine auctoramento malum est."

["No evil is without its compensation."--Seneca, Ep., 69.]

When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be
desired (let us put the case that all his members were always seized with
a pleasure like that of generation, in its most excessive height) I feel
him melting under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly unable
to su