Love leaves nothing entire or sound in man; it impedes his sleep; he
cannot rest either day or night; it takes off his appetite that he
hath no disposition either to meat or drink by reason of the
continual torments of his heart and mind. It deprives him of all
Providence, hence he neglects his affairs, vocation and business. He
minds neither study, labor nor prayer; casts away all thoughts of
anything but the body beloved; this is his study, this his most vain
occupation. If to lovers the success be not answerable to their
wish, or so soon {70} and prosperously as they desire, how many
melancholies henceforth arise, with griefs and sadnesses, with which
they pine away and wax so lean as they have scarcely any flesh
cleaving to the bones Yea, at last they lose the life itself, as may
be proved by many examples! for such men, (which is an horrible
thing to think of) slight and neglect all perils and detriments,
both of the body and life, and of the soul and eternal salvation

It is evident that human nature is not different in our sophisticated
twentieth century from that which this observant old monk saw around
him in the fifteenth. He continues:--

How many testimonies of this violence which is in love, are daily
found? for it not only inflames the younger sort, but it so far
exaggerates some persons far gone in years as through the burning
heat thereof, they are almost mad Natural diseases are for the most
part governed by the complexion of man and therefore invade some
more fiercely, others more gently; but Love, without distinction of
poor or rich, young or old, seizeth all, and having seized so blinds
them as forgetting all rules of reason, they neither see nor hear
any snare.

But then the old monk thinks that he has said enough about this
subject and apologizes for his digression in another paragraph that
should remove any lingering doubt there may be with regard to the
genuineness of his monastic character. The personal element in his
confession is so naive and so simply straightforward that instead of
seeming to be the result of conceit, and so repelling the reader, it
rather attracts his {71} kindly feeling for its author. The paragraph
would remind one in certain ways of that personal element that was to
become more popular in literature after Montaigne had made such
extensive use of it.

But of these enough; for it becomes not a religious man to insist