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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, lye in bed whole daies, dreaming awake as it were, and frame a thousand phantastical imaginations unto themselves. They are never better pleased then 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 læsa Imaginatio, his phantasie is crased, & now habituated to such toyes, cannot but work still like a fate, the Scene alters upon a sudden, Fear and Sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspition, discontent, and perpetuall anxiety succeed in their places;
so by little and little, by that shooing horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, Melancholy this ferall fiend is drawn on, & quantum vertice ad auras Æthereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit, it was not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh: a cankerd soul macerated with cares and discontents, tædium vitæ, impatience, agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries.
They cannot endure company, light, or life it self, some of them; unfit for action, and the like. Their bodies are lean and dryed up, withered, ugly, their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less intangled, as the humour hath been intended, or according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.
To discern all which symptomes the better, Rhasis the Arabian makes three degrees of them. The first is, falsa cogitatio, false conceits and idle thoughts: to misconstrue and amplifie, aggravating every thing they conceive or fear: the second is, falsò cogitata 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.
Savonarola Rub. 11. tract. 8. cap. 1. de ægritudine, 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 cals nec caput habentia, nec caudam, 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 it self.
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 dizards, 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 minde 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 doe many times, or old men when they sit alone, upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, hollow, 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, sæpe ducentos, sæpe decem servos, he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, growes insensible, stupid or mad. He howles like a wolf, barks like a dog, and raves like Ajax and Orestes, hears Musick and outcries, which no man else hears.
As he did whom Amatus Lusitanus mentioneth cent. 3. cura. 55. or that woman in Springer, that spake many languages, and said she was possessed: That Farmer in Prosper Calenius, that disputed and discoursed learnedly in Philosophy and Astronomy, with Alexander Achilles his master, at Boloigne in Italy. But of these I have already spoken.
Who can sufficiently speak of these symptomes, 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, & similem si vis pingere, pinge sonum; if you will describe melancholy, describe a phantasticall conceipt, 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, then melancholy conceipts produce diversity of symptomes in several persons. They are irregular, obscure, various, so infinite, Proteus himself is not so divers, you may aswell make the Moon a new coat, as a true charecter of a melancholy man; as soon finde the motion of a bird in the aire, as the heart of man, a melancholy man. They are so confused, I say, divers, intermixt with other diseases.
As the species be confounded (which I have shewed) so are the symptomes; Sometimes with headache, Cacexia, dropsie, stone; as you may perceive by those severall examples and illustrations, collected by Hildesheim spicel. 2. Mercurialis consil. 118. cap. 6 & 11. with head-ach, Epilepsie, Priapismus. Trincavelius consil. 12. lib. 1. consil. 49. with gout: caninus appetitus. Montanus consil. 26. &c. 23. 234. 249. with falling sickness, headach, Vertigo, Lycanthropia, &c. 1. Cæsar Claudinus consult. 4. consult. 89. & 116. with gout, agues, Hemrods, stone, &c. who can distinguish these melancholy symptomes so intermixt with others, or apply them to their severall kinds, confine them into method?
’Tis hard I confesse, 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 generall lists or terms, speaking promiscuously of such ordinary signes, which occur amongst writers. Not that they are all to be found in one man, for that were to paint a monster or Chimæra, not a man; but some in one, some in another, and that successively or at severall times.
Which I have been the more curious to expresse and report, not to upbraid any miserable man, or by way of derision (I rather pitty 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 our selves, seek to God, and call to him for mercy, that needs not look for any rods to scourge our selves, 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 our selves, to be more circumspect and wary in the midst of these dangers.