For that which is but a flea-biting to one, causeth insufferable torment to another; & which one by his singular moderation, and well composed carriage can happily overcome, a second is no whit able to sustaine; but upon every small occasion of misconceived abuse, injury, grief, disgrace, loss, cross, rumor, &c. (if solitary, or idle) yeelds so far to passion, that his complexion is altered, his digestion hindred, his sleepe gone, his spirits obscured, and his heart heavy, his Hypocondries misaffected; winde, crudity, on a sudden overtake him, and he himself overcome with Melancholy.

As it is with a man imprisoned for debt, if once in the goale, every Creditor will bring his action against him, and there likely hold him: If any discontent seize upon a patient, in an instant all other perturbations (for — qua data porta ruunt) will set upon him, and then like a lame dog or broken winged goose he droops and pines away, and is brought at last to that ill habit or malady of melancholy it self.

So that as the Philosophers make eight degrees of heat and cold: we may make 88. of Melancholy; as the parts affected are diversly seized with it, or have been plunged more or less into this infernal gulf, or waded deeper into it.

But all these Melancholy fits, howsoever pleasing at first, or displeasing, violent & tyrannizing over those whom they seize on for the time; yet these fits I say, or men affected, are but improperly so called, because they continue not, but come and go, as by some objects they are moved. This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is an habit, morbus sonticus, or Chronicus, a Chronick or continuate disease, a setled humor, as Aurelianus, and others call it, not errant, but fixed; and as it was long increasing, so now being (pleasant, or painful) grown to an habit, it will hardly be removed.