Masochism Hath No Century

Robert Burton, vicar of St. Thomas Church in Oxford and perhaps literature’s most spectacular depressive, reviews the classical poets on the subject of men in love in The Anatomy of Melancholy(1621):

Another, he sighs and sobs, swears he hath Cor scissum, a heart bruised to powder, dissolved and melted within him, or quite gone from him, to his mistress’ bosom belike, he is in an oven, a salamander in the fire, so scorched with love’s heat; he wisheth himself a saddle for her to sit on, a posy for her to smell to, and it would not grieve him to be hanged, if he might be strangled in her garters: he would willingly die tomorrow, so that she might kill him with her own hands.

Yikes!