The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

-- -- -- -And a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too -- so look to yourselves.

'Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, or Xenophon, or Epictetus, or Theophrastus, or Lucian -- or someone perhaps of later date -- either Cardan, or Budeus, or Petrarch, or Stella -- or possibly it may be some divine or father of the church, St. Austin, or St. Cyprian, or Barnard, who affirms that it is an irresistible and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children -- and Seneca (I'm positive) tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel -- And accordingly we find, that David wept for his son Absalom -- Adrian for his Antinous -- Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.