nd Galias his two sons of her. That
seas and waters are enamoured with this our beauty, is all out as likely as
that of the air and winds; for when Leander swam in the Hellespont, Neptune
with his trident did beat down the waves, but

"They still mounted up intending to have kiss'd him.
And fell in drops like tears because they missed him."

The [4852]river Alpheus was in love with Arethusa, as she tells the tale
herself,

[4853] ------"viridesque manu siccata capillos,
Fluminis Alphei veteres recitavit amores;
Pars ego Nympharum," &c.

When our Thame and Isis meet

[4854] "Oscula mille sonant, connexu brachia pallent,
Mutuaque explicitis connectunt colla lacertis."

Inachus and Pineus, and how many loving rivers can I reckon up, whom beauty
hath enthralled! I say nothing all this while of idols themselves that have
committed idolatry in this kind, of looking-glasses, that have been rapt in
love (if you will believe [4855]poets), when their ladies and mistresses
looked on to dress them.

"Et si non habeo sensum, tua gratia sensum
Exhibet, et calidi sentio amoris onus.
Dirigis huc quoties spectantia lumina, flamma
Succendunt inopi saucia membra mihi."

"Though I no sense at all of feeling have.
Yet your sweet looks do animate and save;
And when your speaking eyes do this way turn,
Methinks my wounded members live and burn."

I could tell you such another story of a spindle that was fired by a fair
lady's [4856]looks, or fingers, some say, I know not well whether, but
fired it was by report, and of a cold bath that suddenly smoked, and was
very hot when naked Coelia came into it, _Miramur quis sit tantus et unde
vapor_, [4857]&c. But of all the tales in this kind, that is the most
memorable of [4858]Death himself, when he should have strucken a sweet
young virgin with his dart, he fell in love with the object. Many more such
could I relate which are to be believed with a poetical faith. So dumb and
dead creatures dote, but men are mad, stupefied many times at the first
sight of beauty, amazed, [4859]as that fisherman in Aristaenetus that spied
a maid bathing herself by the seaside,

[4860] "Soluta mihi sunt omnia membra--
A capite ad calcem. sensusque omnis periit
De pectore, tam immensus stupor animam invasit mihi."

And as [4861]Lucian, in his images, confesses of himself, that he was at