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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Subsection 5 How Loss of Liberty, Servitude and Imprisonment Cause Melancholy

SUBSECTION 5 How loss of liberty, servitude and imprisonment cause melancholy

To this catalogue of causes I may well add loss of liberty, servitude or imprisonment, which for some people is as great a torture as any of the others. Although they have every comfort—splendid houses at their disposal, fine walks and gardens, delightful bowers, galleries, good food and everything to match—they are not content. They are confined: they cannot come and go as they please, have what they want or do as they wish, but live “at another’s table,” at another person’s table and under their command.

As with food, so with everything else: places, company and amusements. However pleasant, convenient, wholesome or good they may be, “one grows tired of everything”: there is a surfeit of everything that ends in disgust. The children of Israel tired of manna. Such people find this way of living irksome; like a bird in a cage or a dog in its kennel, they grow weary of it.

They are happy, it is true, and in another person’s judgement have everything the heart could wish for or they themselves could desire, “if only they knew their own blessings.” Yet they loathe it and tire of their present condition. “Human nature is eager for novelty”: people’s nature always desires new things, variety and pleasures. Our wandering desires are so unruly in this respect that they must have change, even for the worse.

Bachelors must marry, and married men wish they were bachelors. They do not love their own wives, though otherwise beautiful, wise, virtuous and accomplished, because they are their own. Our present condition is always the worst. We cannot long endure one way of life, “and he hates what he lately prayed for”; one occupation, “it pleases him to hold honour, then displeases him”; or one place, “at Rome I love Tibur; fickle as the wind, at Tibur I love Rome.” What we once eagerly sought, we now despise.

“This drives some to death,” says Seneca: “by often changing their plans they come round to the same things again and leave no room for novelty. Life and the world itself have begun to disgust them, and that cry of their headlong pleasures arises: ‘How long must it be the same?’”

This alone kills many people: they are always tied to the same thing. Like a horse turning a mill or a dog in a wheel, they go round without change or novelty. Their life becomes hateful, the world loathsome, thwarting their frantic pursuit of pleasure. What? Still the same? Marcus Aurelius and Solomon, who had experienced every worldly delight and pleasure, confessed as much of themselves: what they most desired became tedious at last, their desires could never be satisfied, and all was vanity and distress of mind.

Now, if it is death itself, another hell, to be surfeited with one amusement, fed on one dish and tied to one place, even when people otherwise have everything they could desire and are in heaven in another person’s opinion, what misery and discontent must those endure who live in slavery or an actual prison? “To live in bondage is worse than death,” as Hermolaus told Alexander in Curtius: bondage is worse than death. “Know that all brave men are of this mind: they prefer death to slavery.” All brave soldiers, Cicero holds, feel this way. “For my part, I am one who considers slavery the greatest of all evils”: I am one, says Botero, who regards servitude as the extremity of misery.

And what suffering do those endure who live under such harsh taskmasters, in gold mines—like those thirty thousand Indigenous slaves at Potosa in Peru—tin mines, lead mines, stone quarries and coal pits, like so many moles underground; or who are condemned to the galleys, to endless drudgery, hunger, thirst and beatings, without any hope of release?

How do those women in Turkey feel who do not go out for most of the year; or those Italian and Spanish ladies who are shut up like hawks and locked away by their jealous husbands? How wearying is life for those who spend six months at a time in heated rooms and caves, as in Iceland, Muscovy or beneath the Pole itself, where there are six months of continuous night?

Indeed, what misery and discontent do prisoners endure? They lack all those six non-natural things at once: good air, good food, exercise, company, sleep, rest, comfort and so on. Bound in chains all day and suffering hunger, they must endure, as Lucian describes it, the filthy stench, the rattling of chains, the howling and pitiful cries prisoners usually make. These things are not merely distressing but intolerable.

They lie in filth among toads and frogs in a dark dungeon, in their own excrement, suffering in body and soul, as Joseph did in Psalm 105:18: “They hurt his feet in the stocks; the iron entered his soul.” They live in solitude, alone, cut off from every companion except heart-consuming melancholy. For lack of food, they must eat the bread of affliction and feed upon themselves.

Arculanus had good reason to count long imprisonment among the causes, especially for those who have lived merrily, indulging every sensual pleasure and desire, and are suddenly cut off and excluded from every kind of pleasure: as were Huniades, Edward and Richard II, the emperor Valerian, and Bayezid the Turk.

If it is painful to miss our usual companions and meal for a day, or an hour, what must it be to lose them for ever? If it is so great a delight to live freely and enjoy the variety the world offers, what misery and discontent must befall someone suddenly thrown headlong into the Spanish Inquisition, falling from heaven to hell, abruptly penned up? How distressed will he be? What will become of him?

Robert, duke of Normandy, imprisoned by his youngest brother, Henry I, “from that day wasted away in prison with inconsolable grief,” says Matthew Paris: from that day onwards he pined away with grief. Jugurtha, that noble commander, was brought to Rome in triumph and then imprisoned; through anguish of soul and melancholy, he died.

Roger, bishop of Salisbury, second only to King Stephen—the man who built the famous castle at Devizes in Wiltshire—was so tormented in prison by hunger and all the sufferings of such people “that he did not wish to live and did not know how to die”: he would not live and could not die, caught between fear of death and the torments of life. Francis, king of France, was taken prisoner by Charles V and became “melancholy almost to death,” says Guicciardini: melancholy almost to death, and in an instant. But this is as clear as the sun and needs no further illustration.

3799.Convenient means suitable or comfortable; fear is the printed spelling here for fare, food. Galleries are long rooms or passages used for walking. Juvenal, Satire 5.2, supplies aliena vivere quadra, living at another’s table or expense; the marginal sentence adds a judgement rather than quoting that line verbatim.

3801.Meats means food. Crambe bis cocta, twice-cooked cabbage, is a proverbial image of tiresome repetition. Vitæ me redde priori recalls Horace, Epistles 1.7.95. The Israelites complain of the unvarying manna in Numbers 11:4–6. Burton’s comparison concerns confinement and monotony despite material provision.

3802.Bona si sua norint echoes Virgil, Georgics 2.458, sua si bona norint. News means novelty. The maxim Est natura hominum novitatis avida occurs in Pliny, Natural History 12.5.11, in an account of propagating an evergreen plane tree. Burton applies the observation about a taste for novelty to dissatisfaction with one’s condition.

3804.Estate is one’s condition; calling, an occupation. Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.128, has quae modo voverat, odit: Midas hates his wished-for golden touch. Burton prints quod. Ausonius, Idyll 15, Pythagoricon de ambiguitate eligendae vitae, has Esse in honore placet, mox poenitet; Burton substitutes juvat and displicet. Horace, Epistles 1.8.12, has Romæ Tibur amem, ventosus Tibure Romam; Burton prints amo. His Latin forms remain; the marriage remarks belong to his generalization about discontent.

3806.Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 2.15. Burton’s wording differs from the consulted Latin in tense and phrasing, including the printed forms cæpit and ipsus, and rapidissimarum deliciarum where it has tabidarum deliciarum. The translation follows Burton’s printed headlong or impetuous pleasures, rather than silently substituting Seneca’s text. His following English is retained as a separate, expanded restatement.

3807.The horse drives a mill by walking in a circle; the dog similarly turns a wheel. Lust here is appetite or desire more broadly than sexual desire. Ecclesiastes 2:10–11 supplies the judgement on pleasure and vanity; the specific Marcus Aurelius passage remains unidentified.

3811.Curtius is Quintus Curtius Rufus; Burton locates Hermolaus’s speech in book 8. The letter to Lepidus is Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.27.1; a consulted historical Latin edition reads omnes sanos, all sensible people, rather than Burton’s omnes fortes, all brave people. Botero is Giovanni Botero. The Latin quotations and Burton’s own English glosses are both retained; exact Curtius and Botero collation remains pending.

3813.Mouldwarps are moles; stripes are blows or lashes. Potosa is Burton’s form for Potosí, within the historical Spanish viceroyalty of Peru. The number thirty thousand and the classification as slaves are his report, attributed to Johannes de Laet; they have not been independently established here. His reference to gold mines is retained, rather than silently revised from a modern account of Potosí.

3815.Mewed means confined, as hawks are kept in a mews. Stoves means heated rooms, not cooking appliances. Island is Iceland; Muscovy is the historical designation used for Russia. Burton’s six months of continuous night belongs to the polar example; the sentence should not be read as an accurate description of every place in his list. His claims about women’s confinement are retained as his generalisations.

3817.The six non-naturals are the historical medical categories discussed earlier: air; food and drink; movement and rest; sleep and waking; retention and evacuation; and the passions. Burton here gives an illustrative list rather than enumerating six exact headings. Lucian, Toxaris 29, describes Antiphilus’s confinement, stench and interrupted sleep. Burton’s Latin intermediary and its exact wording remain for collation.

3818.Psalm 105:18 describes Joseph’s fetters. Burton’s iron entred his soul reflects a historical translation of the phrase, rather than the wording of every English Bible. Meat means food. Prey upon themselves continues the image of consuming grief.

3820.Arculanus is the physician Giovanni Arcolano, commenting on Rhazes. Huniades is retained without silently selecting a member of the Hunyadi family; Edward is likewise left as printed rather than assigned a number. These names and the captivity anecdotes require individual historical collation.

3821.Repast is a meal. Cubbed up means confined or penned in. The Spanish Inquisition serves as Burton’s example of a sudden reversal from freedom and pleasure to imprisonment; his language is forcefully polemical.

3824.Robert is Robert Curthose, William the Conqueror’s eldest son, as Burton’s marginal note states. The Matthew Paris passage remains for exact collation. Burton attributes Jugurtha’s fate to Sallust, whose surviving Jugurthine War ends with his capture and Marius’s consulship; compare Plutarch, Marius 12.3–4, which recounts mental collapse and death after six days of hunger.

3828.Devices and the marginal Vies name Devizes. Camden means William Camden’s Britannia; the precise passage and the added Seneca attribution remain for collation. Francis is Francis I of France, and Guicciardine is Francesco Guicciardini. The Latin and Burton’s repeated English near the end are deliberately both preserved.