Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

''Virginibus Puerisqitc " 57
look of happy love or an unexpected caress.
To make one's self beautiful, to dress the hair,
to excel in talk, to do anything and all
things that puff out the character and attri-
butes and make them imposing in the eyes
of others, is not only to magnify one's self,
but to offer the most delicate homage at the
same time. And it is in this latter intention
that they are done by lovers ; for the essence
of love is kindness ; and indeed it may be
best defined as passionate kindness : kind-
ness, so to speak, run mad and become
importunate and violent. Vanity in a merely
personal sense exists no longer. The lover
takes a perilous pleasure in privately dis-
playing his weak points and having them,
one after another, accepted and condoned.
He wishes to be assured that he is not loved
for this or that good quality, but for himself,
or something as like himself as he can
contrive to set forward. For, although it
may have been a very difficult thing to paint
the marriage of Cana, or write the fourth act
of Antony and Cleopatra, there is a more