SECOND DISCOURSE
On the question which doth give the more content in
love, whether touching, seeing, or speaking.
INTRODUCTION
HIS is a question as concerning love that might well deserve a more profound and deeper writer to solve than I, to wit: which doth afford the more contentment in the fruition of love, whether contact or attouchment, speech, or sight. Mr. Pasquier,[1] a great authority of a surety in jurisprudence the which is his especial profession, as well as in the polite and humane sciences, doth give a disquisition thereon in his letters, the which he hath left us in writing. Yet hath he been by far too brief, and seeing how distinguished a man he is, he should not in this matter have shown himself so niggard of his wise words as he hath been. For if only he had seen good to enlarge somewhat thereon, and frankly to declare what he might well have told us, his letter which he hath indited on this point had been an hundred times more delightsome and agreeable.
He doth base his main discourse on sundry ancient rhymes of the Comte Thibaut de Champagne,[1] the which verses I have never set eyes on, save only the small frag-
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