ithet of ox-eyed, in describing Juno, because a round black
eye is the best, the son of beauty, and farthest from black the worse:
which [4950]Polydore Virgil taxeth in our nation: _Angli ut plurimum
caesiis oculis_, we have grey eyes for the most part. Baptisma Porta,
_Physiognom. lib. 3._ puts grey colour upon children, they be childish
eyes, dull and heavy. Many commend on the other side Spanish ladies, and
those [4951]Greek dames at this day, for the blackness of their eyes, as
Porta doth his Neapolitan young wives. Suetonius describes Julius Caesar to
have been _nigris vegetisque oculis micantibus_, of a black quick sparkling
eye: and although Averroes in his Colliget will have such persons timorous,
yet without question they are most amorous.

Now last of all, I will show you by what means beauty doth fascinate,
bewitch, as some hold, and work upon the soul of a man by the eye. For
certainly I am of the poet's mind, love doth bewitch and strangely change
us.

[4952] "Ludit amor sensus, oculos perstringit, et aufert
Libertatem animi, mira nos fascinat arte.
Credo aliquis daemon subiens praecordia flammam
Concitat, et raptam tollit de cardine mentem."

"Love mocks our senses, curbs our liberties,
And doth bewitch us with his art and rings,
I think some devil gets into our entrails,
And kindles coals, and heaves our souls from th'hinges."

Heliodorus _lib. 3._ proves at large, [4953]that love is witchcraft, "it
gets in at our eyes, pores, nostrils, engenders the same qualities and
affections in us, as were in the party whence it came." The manner of the
fascination, as Ficinus _10. cap. com. in Plat._ declares it, is thus:
"Mortal men are then especially bewitched, when as by often gazing one on
the other, they direct sight to sight, join eye to eye, and so drink and
suck in love between them; for the beginning of this disease is the eye.
And therefore he that hath a clear eye, though he be otherwise deformed, by
often looking upon him, will make one mad, and tie him fast to him by the
eye." Leonard. Varius, _lib. 1. cap. 2. de fascinat._ telleth us, that by
this interview, [4954]"the purer spirits are infected," the one eye
pierceth through the other with his rays, which he sends forth, and many
men have those excellent piercing eyes, that, which Suetonius relates of
Augustus, their brightness is such, they compel their spectators to look
off, and can no mor