Now is the
reader exceeding curious to learn from whence this vapour took its
rise, which had so long set the nations at a gaze? What secret
wheel, what hidden spring, could put into motion so wonderful an
engine? It was afterwards discovered that the movement of this
whole machine had been directed by an absent female, who was removed
into an enemy's country. What should an unhappy prince do in such
ticklish circumstances as these? He tried in vain the poet's never-
failing receipt of corpora quaeque, for
"Idque petit corpus mens unde est saucia amore;
Unde feritur, eo tendit, gestitque coire."--Lucr.
Having to no purpose used all peaceable endeavours, the collected
part of the semen, raised and inflamed, became adust, converted to
choler, turned head upon the spinal duct, and ascended to the brain.
The very same principle that influences a bully to break the windows
of a woman who has jilted him naturally stirs up a great prince to
raise mighty armies and dream of nothing but sieges, battles, and
victories.
The other instance is what I have read somewhere in a very ancient
author of a mighty king {127a}, who, for the space of above thirty
years, amused himself to take and lose towns, beat armies and be
beaten, drive princes out of their dominions, fright children from
their bread and butter, burn, lay waste, plunder, dragoon, massacre
subject and stranger, friend and foe, male and female.
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