Chapter LOVE to Loves of the Angels of L by Brewer's Readers Handbook

LOVE to Loves of the Angels

LOVE, a drama by S. Knowles (1840). The countess Catherine is taught by a serf named Huon, who is her secretary, and falls in love with him; but her pride struggles against such an unequal match. The duke, her father, hearing of his daughter’s love, commands Huon, on pain of death, to marry Catherine a freed serf. He refuses; but the countess herself bids him obey. He plights his troth to Catherine, supposing it to be Catherine the quondam serf, rushes to the wars, obtains great honours, becomes a prince, and then learns that the Catherine he has wed is the duke’s daughter.

Love, or rather affection, according to Plato, is disposed in the liver.

Within, some say, Love hath his habitation;
Not Cupid’s self, but Cupid’s better brother;
For Cupid’s self dwells with a lower nation,
But this, more sure, much chaster than the other.
   —Phin. Fletcher: The Purple Island (1633).

Love. “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole existence.”—Byron: Don Juan, i. 194 (1819).

Love.

It is better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.
   —Tennyson: In Memoriam, xxvii.

Thomas Moore, in his Irish Melodies, expresses an opposite opinion—

Better far to be
In endless darkness lying,
Than be in light and see
That light for ever flying.
   —Moore: All that’s Bright must Fade.

Love. All for Love or the World Well Lost, a tragedy by Dryden, on the same subject as Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1679).

Love à-la-Mode, by C. Macklin (1779). The “love à-la-mode” is that of fortune-hunters. Charlotte Goodchild is courted by a Scotchman “of ponderous descent,” an Italian Jew broker of great fortune, and an Irishman in the Prussian army. It is given out that Charlotte has lost her money through the bankruptcy of sir Theodore Goodchild, her guardian. Upon this, the à-la-mode suitors withdraw, and leave sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan, the true lover, master of the situation. The tale about the bankruptcy is of course a mere myth.

Love Cannot Die.

They sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly…
They perish where they have their birth
But love is indestructible.
Its holy flame for ever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth…
It soweth here in toil and care;
But the harvest-time of Love is there.
   —Southey: Curse of Kehama, x (1809).

Love-Chase (The), a drama by S. Knowles (1837). Three lovers chased three beloved ones with a view to marriage. (1) Waller loves Lydia, lady’s-maid to Widow Green, but in reality the sister of Trueworth. She quitted home to avoid a hateful marriage, and took service for the nonce with Widow Green. (2) Wildrake loves Constance, daughter of sir William Fondlove. (3) Sir William Fondlove, aged 60, loves Widow Green, aged 40. The difficulties to be overcome were these: The social position of Lydia galled the aristocratic pride of Waller, but love won the day. Wildrake and Constance sparred with each other, and hardly knew they loved till it dawned upon each that the other might prefer some one else, and then they felt that the loss would be irreparable. Widow Green set her heart on marrying Waller; but as Waller preferred Lydia, she accepted sir William for better for worse.

Love Doctor (The), L’Amour Médecin, a comedy by Molière (1665). Lucinde, the daughter of Sganarelle, is in love, and the father calls in four doctors to consult upon the nature of her malady. They see the patient, and retire to consult together, but talk about Paris, about their visits, about the topics of the day; and when the father enters to know what opinion they have formed, they all prescribe different remedies,