Note 39 — ON MEANS AND ENDS

Dr. Johnson has observed, that ‘strong passion deprives the lover of that easiness of address, which is so great a recommendation to most women.’ Is then indifference or coldness the surest passport to the female heart? A man who is much in love has not his wits properly about him: he can think only of her whose image is engraven on his heart; he can talk only of her; he can only repeat the same vows, and protestations, and expressions of rapture or despair. He may, by this means, become importunate and troublesome—but does he deserve to lose his mistress for the only cause that gives him a title to her—the sincerity of his passion? We may perhaps answer this question by another—Is a woman to accept of a madman, merely because he happens to fall in love with her? ‘The lunatic, the lover and the poet,’ as Shakspeare has said, ‘are of imagination all compact,’ and must, in most cases, be contented with imagination as their reward. Realities are out of their reach, as well as beneath their notice.