Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus; very little in Horace, but a great
deal of it in Ovid, and scarce anything else in Martial.

Out of the innumerable branches of mixed wit, I shall choose one
instance which may be met with in all the writers of this class.
The passion of love in its nature has been thought to resemble fire,
for which reason the words "fire" and "flame" are made use of to
signify love. The witty poets, therefore, have taken an advantage,
from the doubtful meaning of the word "fire," to make an infinite
number of witticisms. Cowley observing the cold regard of his
mistress's eyes, and at the same time the power of producing love in
him, considers them as burning-glasses made of ice; and, finding
himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, concludes
the torrid zone to be habitable. When his mistress has read his
letter written in juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he
desires her to read it over a second time by love's flames. When
she weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops
from the limbec. When she is absent, he is beyond eighty, that is,
thirty degrees nearer the pole than when she is with him. His
ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts upwards; his happy
love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy love flames of hell.
When it does not let him sleep, it is a flame that sends up no
smoke; when it is opposed by counsel and advice, it is a fire that
rages the more by the winds blowing upon it. Upon the dying of a
tree, in which he had cut his loves, he observes that his written
flames had burnt up and withered the tree. When he resolves to give
over his passion, he tells us that one burnt like him for ever
dreads the fire. His heart is an AEtna, that, instead of Vulcan's
shop, encloses Cupid's forge in it. His endeavouring to drown his
love in wine is throwing oil upon the fire. He would insinuate to