I would for these causes wish him that is melancholy, to use both humane and divine authors, voluntarily to impose some task upon himself, to divert his melancholy thoughts: To study the art of memory, Cosmus Rosselius, Pet. Ravennas, Scenkelius detectus, or practice Brachygraphy, &c. that will ask a great deal of attention: or let him demonstrate a proposition in Euclide in his five last books, extract a square root, or studie Algebra:

Then which as Clavius holds, in all humane disciplines nothing can be more excellent and pleasant, so abstruse and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easie withall and full of delight, omnem humanum captum superare videtur.

By this means you may define ex ungue leonem, as the diverbe is, by his thumb alone the bigness of Hercules, or the true dimensions of the great Colossus, Solomons temple, and Domitians Amphitheater out of a little part.

By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters, which may be so infinitely varied, that the words complicated and deduced thence will not be contained within the compass of the firmament; ten words may be varied 40320 severall wayes:

by this art you may examine how many men may stand one by another, in the whole superficies of the earth, some say 148456800000000 assignando singulis passum quadratum, how many men, supposing all the world as habitable as France, as fruitfull and so long lived, may be born in 60000 years, and so may you demonstrate with Archimedes how many Sands the mass of the whole world might contain if all sandy, if you did but first know how much a small cube as big as a Mustard-seed might hold, with infinite such.

But in all nature what is there so stupend as to examine and calculate the motion of the planets, their magnitudes, apogeums, perigeums, excentricities, how far distant from the earth; the bigness, thickness, compass of the Firmament, each star, with her diameters and circumference, apparent area, superficies, by those curious helps of glasses, astrolabes, sextants, quadrants, of which Tycho Brahe in his mechanicks, opticks (divine opticks) Arithmetick, Geometry, and such like arts and instruments?

What so intricate and pleasing, withall as to peruse and practise Heron Alexandrinus works, de spiritalibus, de machinis bellicis, de machinâ se movente, Iordani Nemorarii de ponderibus proposit. 13. that pleasant tract of Machometes Bragdedinus de superficierum divisionibus, Apollonius Conicks, or Commandinus labours in that kinde, de centro gravitatis, with many such Geometrical Theorems, and Problems?

Those rare instruments and mechanical inventions of Iac. Bessonus, and Cardan to this purpose, with many such experiments intimated long since by Roger Bacon in his Tract de Secretis artis & naturæ, as to make a chariot to move sine animali, diving boats, to walk on the water by art and to fly in the air, to make several cranes and pullies, quibus homo trahat ad se mille homines, lift up and remove great weights, Mils to move themselves, Architas Dove, Albertus Brasen head, and such Thaumaturgical works.

But especially to do strange miracles by glasses, of which Proclus and Bacon writ of old, burning glasses, multiplying glasses, perspectives, ut unus homo appareat exercitus, to see afar off, to represent solid bodies, by Cylinders and Concaves, to walk in the air, ut veraciter videant (saith Bacon) aurum & argentum & quicquid aliud volunt, & quum veniant ad locum visionis, nihil inveniant, which glasses are much perfected of late by Baptista Porta and Galilæus, and much more is promised by Maginus and Midorgius, to be performed in this kinde.

Otocousticons some speak of to intend hearing as the other do sight; Marcellus Vrencken an Hollander in his epistle to Burgravius, makes mention of a friend of his that is about an instrument, quo videbit quæ in altero Horizonte sint.

But our Alchymists me thinks, and Rosie-Cross men afford most rarities, and are fuller of experiments: they can make gold, separate and alter metals, extract oyls, salts, lees, and do more strange works then Geber, Lullius, Bacon, or any of those Ancients.

Crollius hath made after his master Paracelsus, aurum fulminans, or aurum volatile, which shall imitate thunder and lightning, and crack lowder then any gunpowder; Cornelius Drible a perpetual motion, inextinguible lights, linum non ardens, with many such feats; see his book de naturâ elementorum, besides hail, wind, snow, thunder, lightning, &c. those strange fire-works, divilish petards and such like warlike machinations derived hence, of which read Tartalea and others.

Ernestus Burgravius a disciple of Paracelsus hath published a discourse, in which he specifies a lamp to be made of mans blood, Lucerna vitæ & mortis index, so he terms it, which Chymically prepared 40 dayes and afterward kept in a glasse, shall shew all the accidents of this life, si lampas hic clarus, tunc homo hilaris & sanus corpore & animo; si nebulosus & depressus, male afficitur, & sic pro statu hominis variatur, unde sumptus sanguis; and which is most wonderful, it dies with the party, cum homine perit, & evanescit, the lamp and the man whence the blood was taken, are extinguished together.

The same Author hath another Tract of Mumia (all out as vain and prodigious as the first) by which he will cure most diseases, and transfer them from a man to a beast, by drawing blood from one, and applying it to the other, vel in plantam derivare, and an Alexipharmacum, of which Roger Bacon of old in his Tract. de retardanda senectute, to make a man young again, live three or foure hundred years. Besides Panaceas, Martial Amulets, unguentum armarium, balsomes, strange extracts, elixars, and such like magico-magnetical cures.

Now what so pleasing can there be as the speculation of these things, to read and examine such experiments, or if a man be more mathematically given, to calculate, or peruse Napiers Logarithmes, or those tables of artificial Sines and Tangents, not long since set out by mine old Collegiate, good friend, and late fellow-Student of Christ-Church in Oxford, M. Edmund Gunter, which will perform that by addition and subtraction only, which heretofore Regiomontanus Tables did by multiplication and division, or those elaborate conclusions of his Sector, Quadrant and Crosse-staffe.

Or let him that is melancholy calculate Spherical Triangles, square a Circle, cast a Nativity, which howsoever some taxe, I say with Garceus, dabimus hoc petulantibus ingeniis, we will in some cases allow: or let him make an Ephemerides, read Suisset the Calculators works, Scaliger de emendatione temporum, and Petavius his adversary, till he understand them, peruse subtile Scotus and Suarez Metaphysicks, or school Divinity, Occam, Thomas, Entisberus, Durand, &c.

If those other do not affect him, and his means be great, to imploy his purse and fill his head, he may go find the Philosophers-stone; he may apply his mind I say to Heraldry, Antiquity, invent Impresses, Emblems; make Epithalamiums, Epitaphs, Elegies, Epigrams, Palindroma Epigrammata, Anagrams, Chronograms, Acrosticks, upon his friends names; or write a Comment on Martianus Capella, Tertullian de pallio, the Nubian Geography, or upon Ælia Lælia Crispis, as many idle fellowes have assayed;

and rather then do nothing, vary a verse a thousand wayes with Putean, so torturing his wits, or as Rainnerius of Luneburge, 2150 times in his Proteus Poeticus, or Scaliger, Chrysolithus, Cleppisius, and others have in like sort done.

If such voluntary tasks, pleasure and delight, or crabbednesse of these studies, will not divert their idle thoughts, and alienate their imaginations, they must be compelled, saith Christophorus à Vega, cogi debent, l. 5. c. 14. upon some mulct, if they perform it not, quod ex officio incumbat, loss of credit or disgrace, such as are our publike University exercises.