A nice state we are in, according to the _Medical Times_. If the secrets
of our "casebooks"--that is, we suppose, our medical _dossiers_, doctors'
records of the condition of their patients--could be revealed, it would
be shown that many clever people have a fancy skeleton in their
cupboards. By a fancy skeleton we mean, not some dismal secret of crime
or shame, but a melancholy and apprehensiveness without any ground in
outward facts. With the real skeleton doctors have nothing to do. He
rather belongs to the province of Scotland Yard. If a man has
compromised himself in some way, if he has been found out by some
scoundrel, if he is compelled to "sing," as the French say, or to pay
"blackmail," then the doctor is not concerned in the business. A
detective, a revolver, or a well-planned secret flight may be prescribed
to the victim. Other real skeletons men possess which do not come of
their own misdeeds. One of their friends or one of their family may be
the skeleton, or the consciousness of coming and veritable misfortune,
pecuniary or what-not. But the _Medical Times_, which no doubt ought to
know, refers purely to cases of vague melancholy and hypochondriac
foreboding. Apparently "The Spleen," the "English Disease," is as bad
now as when Green wrote in verse and Dr. Cheyne in prose. Prosperous
business men, literary gents in active employment, artists, students,
tradesmen, "are all visited by melancholy, revealed only to their
doctors, and sometimes to their domestic circle."
Unhappy domestic circle, brooded over by a gloomy parent, who thinks that
life is too short, or faith too much a matter of speculation, or that the
country is going to the dogs! Then the doctor, it seems, hears his
patient, and recommends him only to drink a very little whisky and potash
water, or to take two bottles of port every day, or to take to angling,
or to give up smoking, or to work less or to work more, or to go to bed
early or to get up late, or to ride, or to fence, or to play golf, or to
go to Upper Egypt or the Engadine, or anything that fancy may dictate and
opportunity suggest. So the kind physician advises his mournful self-
tormentor, and then he himself flies round the corner and consults some
brother-healer about his own subjective gloom.
Old ladies, in speaking of the misdeeds of youth, are apt to recommend "a
good shaking" as a panacea. Really those victims of whom our
contemporary speaks, appear to be persons on whom "a good shaking,"
mental or physical, would produce a salutary effect. Cowardice, vanity,
overweening self-consciousness, are the causes of most melancholy. No
doubt it has physical causes too. Dr. Johnson suffered,--one of the best
and bravest of men. But most of us suffer--if suffer we do--because we
over-estimate ourselves and our own importance. Mr. Matthew Arnold has
tried to enforce this lesson. After a horrible murder in a railway
carriage, Mr. Arnold observed, with pain, the "almost bloodthirsty
clinging to life" of his fellow-passengers. In vain he pointed out to
them that even if they were to depart, "the great mundane movement" would
go on as usual. But they refused to be comforted. Every man was afraid
of meeting his own Muller; and as to the great mundane movement, no one
cared a pin. This selfishness is among the chief causes of melancholy. A
man persuades himself that he will not live long, or that his prospects
in this world or the next are gloomy; or he takes views as absurdly far-
reaching as those of the spinsters in the old tale, who wept over the
hypothetical fate of the child one of them might have had if she had been
married. Now, there is a certain melancholy not unbecoming a man;
indeed, to be without it is hardly to be human. Here we do find
ourselves, indeed, like the shipwrecked mariner on the isle of Pascal's
apologue; all around us are the unknown seas, all about us are the
indomitable and eternal processes of generation and corruption. "We come
like water, and like wind we go." Life is, indeed, as the great Persian
says--
"A moment's halt, a momentary taste
Of being from the well beside the waste."
These just causes of melancholy and of awe have presented themselves to
all reflective men at all times. They deeply affect the thought, so
wholesome and so human, of Homer. They express themselves in that old
English pagan's allegory of the bird that flies from the dark into the
warm and lighted hall, and from the hall into the dark again. Not to be
capable of these reflections is to be incapable of tasting the noblest
poetry. Such thoughts actually give zest to our days, and sharpen our
enjoyment of that which we have only a brief moment to enjoy. Such
thoughts add their own sweetness and sadness to the song of the
nightingale, to the fall of the leaves, to the coming of the spring. Were
we "exempt from eld and age," this noble melancholy could never be ours,
and we, like the ancient classical gods, would be incapable of tears.
What Prometheus says in Mr. Bridge's poem is true--
"Not in heaven,
Among our easy gods, hath facile time
A touch so keen to wake such love of life
As stirs the frail and careful being of Man."
Such are the benefits of Melancholy, when she is only an occasional
guest, and is not pampered or made the object of devotion. But
Melancholy, though an excellent companion for an hour, is the most
exacting and depressing of mistresses. The man who gives himself up to
her, who always takes too long views, who broods on the future of this
planet when the sun has burned out, is on the high-way to madness. The
odds are that he does not travel all the way. He remains a
self-tormented wretch, highly profitable to his medical man, and a
frightful nuisance to his family. Now, there are, of course, cases in
which this melancholy has physical causes. It may come of indigestion,
and then the remedy is known. Less dining out (indeed, no one will ask
the abjectly melancholy man out) and more exercise may be recommended.
The melancholy man had better take to angling; it is a contemplative
pastime, but he will find it far from a gloomy one. The sounds and
sights of nature will revive and relieve him, and, if he is only
successful, the weight of a few pounds of fish on his back will make him
toss off that burden which poor Christian carried out of the City of
Destruction. No man can be melancholy when the south wind blows in
spring, when the soft, feathery March-browns flit from the alders and
fall in the water, while the surface boils with the heads and tails of
trout.
Perhaps, on the other hand, the melancholy one lives too much in the
country. Then let him go to Paris or Vienna; let him try the Palais
Royal, and spend a good deal of money in the shops. A course of this
might have cured even Obermann, whom there was nothing to check or divert
while he kept philandering on the mountains with the snows and his woes.
There are plenty of such cures for a melancholy not yet incurable; change
of air, scene, food, amusement, and occupation being the best. True, the
Romans tried this, as Seneca and Lucretius tells us, and found themselves
as much bored as ever. "No easier nor no quicker passed th'
impracticable hours." But the Romans were very extreme cases.
When the cause of melancholy is religious or moral, there is little to be
done with the victim. In "Sartor Resartus" he will read how Mr. Carlyle
cured himself, if ever he was cured. To be brief, he said, "What then,
who cares?" and indeed, in more reverent form of expression, it is all
that can be said. When Nicias addressed the doomed and wasted remnant of
the Athenian expedition to Syracuse, he told them that "others, too,
being men, had borne things which had to be endured." That is the whole
philosophy of the matter.