know not whether or no he intended anything else by that saying; but for
my part, I am of opinion that there is design, consent, and complacency
in giving a man's self up to melancholy. I say, that besides ambition,
which may also have a stroke in the business, there is some shadow of
delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very
lap of melancholy. Are there not some constitutions that feed upon it?

"Est quaedam flere voluptas;"

["'Tis a certain kind of pleasure to weep."
--Ovid, Trist., iv. 3, 27.]

and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is as
grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too old, is to the palate:

"Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni
Inger' mi calices amariores"--

["Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put
into my bowl."--Catullus, xxvii. I.]

and as apples that have a sweet tartness.

Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold that the same
motions and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping; serve for
laughter too; and indeed, before the one or the other be finished, do but
observe the painter's manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to
which of the two the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does at
last bring tears: