L.S. Popovich’s Reviews > The Anatomy of Melancholy > Status Update

Nice. Looking forward to possibly getting to this one next year. Enjoying it so far?

Yes, highly recommended. I have to be in the mood for it, though

You won’t regret it, just wait until you get to the third partition where he starts talking about love and you read some of the best passages on that subject that have ever been written - )

All the bombast epithets, pathetical adjuncts, incomparably fair, curiously neat, divine, sweet, dainty, delicious, &c., pretty diminutives, corculum, suaviolum, &c. [little heart, little kiss, etc.] pleasant names may be invented, bird, mouse, lamb, puss, pigeon, pigsney, kid, honey, love, dove, chicken, &c. he puts on her.
Meum mel, mea suavitas, meum cor,
Meum suaviolum, mei lepores,
[My honey, my lovely, my heart,
My little kiss, my sweets,] —Marullus ad Neaeram epig. 1. lib
my life, my light, my jewel, my glory, Margareta speciosa, cujus respectu omnia mundi pretiosa sordent [my beautiful Margaret, all the riches of the world seem worthless compared to her, my sweet Margaret, my sole delight and darling. And as Rhodomant courted Isabella:
By all kind words and gestures that he might,
He calls her his dear heart, his sole beloved,
His joyful comfort, and his sweet delight, His mistress, and his goddess, and such names,
As loving knights apply to lovely dames.
Every cloth she wears, every fashion pleaseth him above measure; her hand,
O quales digitos, quos habet illa manus!
Oh, such fingers, what a hand she has
pretty foot, pretty coronets, her sweet carriage, sweet voice, tone, O that pretty tone, her divine and lovely looks, her every thing, lovely, sweet, amiable, and pretty, pretty, pretty. Her very name (let it be what it will) is a most pretty, pleasing name; I believe now there is some secret power and virtue in names, every action, sight, habit, gesture; he admires, whether she play, sing, or dance, in what tires soever she goeth, how excellent it was, how well it became her, never the like seen or heard.
Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.
She has a thousand costumes, and wears a thousand gracefully] —Tibullus
Let her wear what she will, do what she will, say what she will,
Quicquid enim dicit, seu facit, omne decet. —Marull. Lib. 2
He applauds and admires everything she wears, saith or doth. (3.2.3.1)