Tactus_. [4806]Sight, of all other, is the first step of this unruly love,
though sometime it be prevented by relation or hearing, or rather incensed.
For there be those so apt, credulous, and facile to love, that if they hear
of a proper man, or woman, they are in love before they see them, and that
merely by relation, as Achilles Tatius observes. [4807]"Such is their
intemperance and lust, that they are as much maimed by report, as if they
saw them. Callisthenes a rich young gentleman of Byzance in Thrace, hearing
of [4808]Leucippe, Sostratus' fair daughter, was far in love with her, and,
out of fame and common rumour, so much incensed, that he would needs have
her to be his wife." And sometimes by reading they are so affected, as he
in [4809]Lucian confesseth of himself, "I never read that place of Panthea
in Xenophon, but I am as much affected as if I were present with her." Such
persons commonly [4810]feign a kind of beauty to themselves; and so did
those three gentlewomen in [4811]Balthazar Castilio fall in love with a
young man whom they never knew, but only heard him commended: or by reading
of a letter; for there is a grace cometh from hearing, [4812] as a moral
philosopher informeth us, "as well from sight; and the species of love are
received into the fantasy by relation alone:" [4813]_ut cupere ab aspectu,
sic velle ab auditu_, both senses affect. _Interdum et absentes amamus_,
sometimes we love those that are absent, saith Philostratus, and gives
instance in his friend Athenodorus, that loved a maid at Corinth whom he
never saw; _non oculi sed mens videt_, we see with the eyes of our
understanding.

But the most familiar and usual cause of love is that which comes by sight,
which conveys those admirable rays of beauty and pleasing graces to the
heart. Plotinus derives love from sight, [Greek: eros] quasi [Greek:
horasis]. [4814]_Si nescis, oculi sunt in amore duces_, "the eyes are the
harbingers of love," and the first step of love is sight, as [4815]Lilius
Giraldus proves at large, _hist. deor. syntag. 13._ they as two sluices let
in the influences of that divine, powerful, soul-ravishing, and captivating
beauty, which, as [4816]one saith, "is sharper than any dart or needle,
wounds deeper into the heart; and opens a gap through our eyes to that
lovely wound, which pierceth the soul itself" (Ecclus. 18.) Through it love
is kindled like a fire. This amazing, confounding, admirable, amiable
beauty, [4817]"th