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Hence ’tis they grieve and fear, avoiding light, And shut themselves in prison dark from sight.
Qui miser in sylvis mærens errabat opacis, Ipse suum cor edens, hominum vestigia vitans.
That wandred in the woods sad all alone, Forsaking mens society, making great moan.
They delight in flouds & waters, desert places, to walk alone in orchards, gardens, private walks, back-lanes, averse from company, as Diogenes in his tub, or Timon Misanthropus, they abhor all companions at last, even their neerest acquaintance, & most familiar friends, for they have a conceit (I say) every man observes them, will deride, laugh to scorn, or misuse them, confining of themselves therefore wholly to their private houses or chambers, fugiunt homines sine causa (saith Rhasis) & odio habent, cont. l. 1. c. 9. they will dye themselves, feed and live alone.
It was one of the chiefest reasons, why the Citizens of Abdera suspected Democritus to be melancholy and mad; because that as Hippocrates related in his Epistle to Philopœmenes; he forsook the City, lived in groves & hollow trees, upon a green bank by a brook side, or confluence of waters all day long, and all night. Quæ quidem (saith he) plurimum atra bile vexatis & melancholicis eveniunt, deserta frequentant, hominumque congressum aversantur.
Which is an ordinary thing with melancholy men. The Ægyptians therefore in their Hieroglyph. expressed a melancholy man by an Hare sitting in her form, as being a most timorous and solitary creature, Pierius Hieroglyph. l. 12. But this, and all precedent symptomes, are more or less apparent, as the humour is intended or remitted, hardly perceived in some, or not at all, most manifest in others.
Childish in some, terrible in others; to be derided in one, pitied or admired in another; to him by fits, to a second continuate: and howsoever these symptomes be common and incident to all persons, yet they are the more remarkable, frequent, furious and violent in melancholy men.
To speak in a word, there is nothing so vain, absurd, ridiculous, extravagant, impossible, incredible, so monstrous a Chimæra, so prodigious and strange, such as Painters and Poets durst not attempt, which they will not really fear, fain, suspect & imagine unto themselves: And that which Lod. Viv. said in jest of a silly country fellow, that killd his Ass for drinking up the Moon, ut lunam mundo redderet, you may truly say of them in earnest.
They will act, conceive all extreams, contrarieties, and contradictions, and that in infinite varieties. Melancholici planè incredibilia sibi persuadent, ut vix omnibus sæculis duo reperti sint, qui idem imaginati sint (Erastus de Lamiis) scarce two of 2000. that concur in the same symptomes.
The Tower of Babel never yielded such confusion of tongues, as this Chaos of melancholy doth variety of symptomes. There is in all melancholy similitudo dissimilis, like mens faces, a disagreeing likeness still; And as in a river we swim in the same place, though not in the same numericall water; as the same instrument affords severall lessons, so the same disease yields diversity of symptomes. Which howsoever they be diverse, intricate, and hard to be confined, I will adventure yet in such a vast confusion and generality, to bring them into some order; and so descend to particulars.