characters, Helena and Olivia; and who had sung his paean of love,
'Romeo and Juliet'--when he read the ideas of the French nobleman
about love and women! Nowhere, and on no occasion, does Shakspere in
his dramas, in spite of phrases which to-day we qualify as obscene ones,
lower the ideal of the womanly character--of the _ewig Weibliche_.

But let us read Montaigne's view: [72]--

'I find that love is nothing else than a thirst of enjoying a desired
subject; nor that Venus is anything else but the pleasure of emptying
one's seminary vessels, similar to the pleasure which Nature has given
us in discharging other parts.'

Now, this significant quality also, of saying indecencies without shame,
Hamlet has in common with Montaigne. No character in Shakspere's dramas
uses such language as Hamlet; and in this case, let it be observed, it
is not used between men, but towards the beloved one! We shall remark
upon his relations with Ophelia later on.

The frivolous Montaigne speaks of love as one might do of a good dish to
be enjoyed at every degree of age, according to taste and inclination.
In Essay III.(4) we learn how, in his youth, 'standing in need of a
vehement diversion for the sake of distraction, he made himself
amorous by art and study.' Elsewhere he tells what great things he was
able, as a young man, to achieve in this line. [73] He, therefore,
does not agree with the sage who praises age because it frees us from
voluptuousness. [74]

He, on the contrary, says:--'I shall never take kindly to impotence,
whatever good it may do me.'