"Atlantic" and the conclusion of the "Iliad," and how we hanker and
gape after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or
theatre is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the
truth herself is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very
life and being were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and
grimmest things in death are its oblivion, ignorance, and
obscurity. Whence, by Jove, it is that almost all mankind
encounter with those that would destroy the sense of the departed,
as placing the very whole of their life, being, and satisfaction
solely in the sensible and knowing part of the mind. For even the
things that grieve and afflict us yet afford us a sort of pleasure
in the hearing. And it is often seen that those that are
disordered by what is told them, even to the degree of weeping,
notwithstanding require the telling of it. So he in the tragedy
who is told,

Alas I now the very worst must tell,
replies,
I dread to hear it too, but I must hear.
(Sophocles, "Pedipus Tyrannus," 1169, 1170.)

But this may seem perhaps a sort of intemperateness of delight in
knowing everything, and as it were a stream violently bearing down
the reasoning faculty. But now, when a story that hath in it
nothing that is troubling and afflictive treats of great and
heroic enterprises with a potency and grace of style such as we
find in Herodotus's Grecian and in Xenophon's Persian history, or
in what,

Inspired by heavenly gods, sage Homer sung,