Generally thus much we may conclude of melancholy: that it is most
pleasant at first, I say, _mentis gratissimus error_, a most delightsome
humor, to be alone, dwell alone, walk alone, meditate, lie in bed whole
days, dreaming awake as it were, and frame a thousand phantastical
imaginations unto themselves. They are never better pleased than when
they are so doing; they are in Paradise for the time, and cannot well
endure to be interrupt; with him in the Poet:--
"--pol! me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait:"
you have undone him, he complains, if you trouble him: tell him what
inconvenience will follow, what will be the event, all is one, _canis ad
vomitum_, 'tis so pleasant he cannot refrain. He may thus continue
peradventure many years by reason of a strong temperature, or some
mixture of business, which may divert his cogitations: but at the last
_laesa imaginatio_, his phantasy is crazed, & now habituated to such
toys, cannot but work still like a fate; the Scene alters upon a sudden;
Fear and Sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspicion, discontent,
and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places; so little by little, by
that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, Melancholy
this feral fiend is drawn on, _et quantum vertice ad auras AEthereas,
tantum radice in Tartara tendit_; "extending up, by its branches, so far
towards Heaven, as, by its roots, it does down towards Tartarus;" it was
not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh: a cankered
soul macerated with cares and discontents, _taedium vitae_, impatience,
agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable
miseries. They cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit
for action, and the like. Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered,
ugly; their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they
are more or less entangled, as the humor hath been intended, or
according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.
To discern all which symptoms the better, _Rhasis_ the _Arabian_ makes
three degrees of them. The first is _falsa cogitatio_, false conceits
and idle thoughts: to misconstrue and amplify, aggravating everything
they conceive or fear: the second is _falso cogitatio loqui_, to talk to
themselves, or to use inarticulate incondite voices, speeches, obsolete
gestures, and plainly to utter their minds and conceits of their hearts,
by their words and actions, as to laugh, weep, to be silent, not to
sleep, eat their meat, &c.; the third is to put in practice that which
they think or speak. _Savanarola, Rub. II, Tract. 8, cap. 1, de
aegritudine_, confirms as much: _when he begins to express that in words,
which he conceives in his heart, or talks idly, or goes from one thing
to another_, which _Gordonius_ calls _nec caput habentia nec caudam_
[having neither head nor tail], he is in the middle way: _but when he
begins to act it likewise, and to put his fopperies in execution, he is
then in the extent of melancholy, or madness itself._ This progress of
melancholy you shall easily observe in them that have been so affected,
they go smiling to themselves at first, at length they laugh out; at
first solitary, at last they can endure no company, or if they do, they
are now dizzards, past sense and shame, quite moped, they care not what
they say or do; all their actions, words, gestures, are furious or
ridiculous. At first his mind is troubled, he doth not attend what is
said, if you tell him a tale, he cries at last, What said you? but in
the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men
when they sit alone; upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run
away, and swear they see or hear Players, Devils, Hobgoblins, Ghosts,
strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end: like him in the Poet,
_saepe ducentos saepe decem servos_ [he often keeps two hundred slaves,
often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last,
grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog,
and raves like _Ajax_ and _Orestes_, hears Music and outcries which no
man else hears....
Who can sufficiently speak of these symptoms, or prescribe rules to
comprehend them? As _Echo_ to the painter in _Ausonius_, _vane_, _quid
affectas_, &c.--foolish fellow, what wilt? if you must needs paint me,
paint a voice, _et similem si vis pingere, pinge sonum_; if you will
describe melancholy, describe a phantastical conceit, a corrupt
imagination, vain thoughts and different, which who can do? The
four-and-twenty letters make no more variety of words in divers
languages, than melancholy conceits produce diversity of symptoms in
several persons. They are irregular, obscure, various, so infinite,
_Proteus_ himself is not so diverse; you may as well make the Moon a new
coat, as a true character of a melancholy man; as soon find the motion
of a bird in the air, as the heart of man, a melancholy man. They are so
confused, I say, diverse, intermixt with other diseases. As the species
be confounded (which I have shewed) so are the symptoms; sometimes with
headache, _cachexia_, dropsy, stone, (as you may perceive by those
several examples and illustrations, collected by _Hildesheim, spicel.
2_,_ Mercurialis, consil. 118, cap. 6 et 11_), with headache, epilepsy,
_priapismus_ (_Trincavellius, consil. 12, lib. I, consil. 49_), with
gout, _caninus appetitus_ (_Montanus, consil. 26, &c., 23, 234, 249_),
with falling-sickness, headache, _vertigo_, _lycanthropia_, _&c._ (_J.
Caesar Claudinus, consult. 4, consult. 89 et 116_), with gout, agues,
haemrods, stone, &c. Who can distinguish these melancholy symptoms so
intermixt with others, or apply them to their several kinds, confine
them into method? 'Tis hard I confess, yet I have disposed of them as I
could, and will descend to particularize them according to their
species. For hitherto I have expatiated in more general lists or terms,
speaking promiscuously of such ordinary signs, which occur amongst
writers. Not that they are all to be found in one man, for that were to
paint a Monster or Chimaera, not a man; but some in one, some in another,
and that successively, or at several times.
Which I have been the more curious to express and report, not to upbraid
any miserable man, or by way of derision (I rather pity them), but the
better to discern, to apply remedies unto them; and to shew that the
best and soundest of us all is in great danger; how much we ought to
fear our own fickle estates, remember our miseries and vanities, examine
and humiliate ourselves, seek to God, and call to him for mercy, that
needs not look for any rods to scourge ourselves, since we carry them in
our bowels; and that our souls are in a miserable captivity, if the
light of grace and heavenly truth doth not shine continually upon us;
and by our discretion to moderate ourselves, to be more circumspect and
wary in the midst of these dangers.