and chickens, all of a knot: every crow
thinks her own bird fairest. Many memorable examples are in this kind, and
'tis _portenti simile_, if they do not: [4539]"a mother cannot forget her
child:" Solomon so found out the true owner; love of parents may not be
concealed, 'tis natural, descends, and they that are inhuman in this kind,
are unworthy of that air they breathe, and of the four elements; yet many
unnatural examples we have in this rank, of hard-hearted parents,
disobedient children, of [4540]disagreeing brothers, nothing so common. The
love of kinsmen is grown cold, [4541]"many kinsmen" (as the saying is) "few
friends;" if thine estate be good, and thou able, _par pari referre_, to
requite their kindness, there will be mutual correspondence, otherwise thou
art a burden, most odious to them above all others. The last object that
ties man and man, is comeliness of person, and beauty alone, as men love
women with a wanton eye: which [Greek: kat' exochaen] is termed heroical,
or love-melancholy. Other loves (saith Picolomineus) are so called with
some contraction, as the love of wine, gold, &c., but this of women is
predominant in a higher strain, whose part affected is the liver, and this
love deserves a longer explication, and shall be dilated apart in the next
section.

SUBSECT. III.--_Honest Objects of Love_.

Beauty is the common object of all love, [4542]"as jet draws a straw, so
doth beauty love:" virtue and honesty are great motives, and give as fair a
lustre as the rest, especially if they be sincere and right, not fucate,
but proceeding from true form, and an incorrupt judgment; those two Venus'
twins, Eros and Anteros, are then most firm and fast. For many times
otherwise men are deceived by their flattering gnathos, dissembling
camelions, outsides, hypocrites that make a show of great love, learning,
pretend honesty, virtue, zeal, modesty, with affected looks and counterfeit
gestures: feigned protestations often steal away the hearts and favours of
men, and deceive them, _specie virtutis et umbra_, when as _revera_ and
indeed, there is no worth or honesty at all in them, no truth, but mere
hypocrisy, subtlety, knavery, and the like. As true friends they are, as he
that Caelius Secundus met by the highway side; and hard it is in this
temporising age to distinguish such companions, or to find them out. Such
gnathos as these for the most part belong to great men, and by this glozing
flattery, affabilit