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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

Reading language

Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated

Now to catch wild beasts in a snare, now to trick them with birdlime, And even surround the great woodland glades with dogs, Lay traps for birds, and set the thorn bushes alight.

Sometimes trick them with traps, with line and string Catch wild birds and beasts, surround The grove with dogs, and drive them from bushes with fire.

… And search out birds’ nests, and so forth.

Giocondo, in his preface to the works of Cato, Varro, Columella, and others that he edited, admits that he was immensely delighted by these agricultural studies and took extraordinary pleasure in them. If theory or contemplation can move us so much, what must the place and the activity itself, the practical part, do? I find the same admission in Herberstein, Porta, Camerarius, and many others who have written on the subject.

If my testimony were worth anything, I could say as much of myself: I am “truly Saturn.” No one ever took greater delight in springs, woods, groves, gardens, walks, fishponds, rivers, and the like. But—

Thirsty Tantalus reaches for the waters fleeing From his lips; And so do I. I may desire them, but I may not possess them.

Almost every palace and every city has its own walks, cloisters, terraces, groves, theatres, pageants, games, and other recreations; every country has established sports to cheer people’s minds and exercise their bodies. The Greeks had their Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean games in honour of Neptune, Jupiter, and Apollo; Athens had its own. Some competed for honour, garlands, or crowns, in beauty, dancing, running, and leaping, like our games for silver prizes.

The Romans had their feasts, as the Athenians and Spartans had their public banquets in the Prytaneum, at the Panathenaea, Thesperia, and Phiditia; plays; naumachiae, places for naval battles; theatres; and amphitheatres capable of holding seventy thousand people. There they presented various entertaining spectacles to cheer the people: gladiators; fights between men, between men and wild beasts, and between beasts themselves, like our bull-baiting and bear-baiting, which many country people and townspeople among us enjoy so much and so often attend; rope-dancers, jugglers, wrestlers, comedies, and tragedies, publicly presented at the emperor’s and the city’s expense, with incredible cost and magnificence.

In the Low Countries, as Van Meteren relates, before these wars they had many ceremonial feasts, plays, challenges, grounds for shooting practice, and associations of versifiers, rhetoricians, and poets. Such institutions are still carefully maintained in Amsterdam, as appears from Isaac Pontanus’s description in his History of Amsterdam, book 2, chapter 25. Likewise, not long ago at Friburg in Germany, as Neander’s account shows, they had “seven-year games,” ceremonial performances every seven years, which Bocerus, one of their own poets, elegantly described:

But why should I now recount the spectacles mounted with magnificent preparations, The splendour of games that would not yield To ancient Quirinus? And so forth.

In Italy they have formal declamations by selected young gentlemen in Florence, like those reciters in ancient Rome, and public theatres in most of their cities, where actors and others can practise and enjoy themselves.

Almost every season and every place has its own pastimes: some in summer, some in winter; some outdoors, some indoors; some for the body, some for the mind. Different people have different recreations and exercises.

The emperor Domitian took great delight in catching flies; Augustus in playing games with nuts among children; Alexander Severus was often pleased to play with puppies and piglets. Hadrian was so thoroughly devoted to dogs and horses that he gave them monuments and tombs and buried them in graves.

In bad weather, or when the season prevents other suitable sports, we use cock-fighting, I suppose to avoid idleness, though some take it more seriously, spend much time and money on it, and become too absorbed in it. Severus used partridges and quails, as many Frenchmen still do, and kept caged birds, which pleased him greatly whenever he had leisure from public cares and business. He had, says Lampridius, tame pheasants, ducks, partridges, peacocks, and some twenty thousand ringdoves and pigeons.

Busbecq, the emperor’s ambassador, while staying in Constantinople and unable to go out much, kept almost every kind of exotic bird and beast for recreation, occupying himself by watching them being fed. This served some purpose: though it did not exercise his body, it refreshed his mind. Conrad Gesner at Zurich in Switzerland likewise kept many wild animals for his pleasure and, as he says, greatly enjoyed watching them eat their food.

Turkish gentlewomen, who are perpetual prisoners, always shut away according to the country’s custom, have little besides household business or playing with their children to pass the time, except to play with their cats, which they keep “as favourites,” just as many of our ladies and gentlewomen keep monkeys and little dogs.

Our usual winter recreations, with which we occupy our minds in our most solitary hours, are cards, backgammon, dice, shove-board, chess, the Philosophers’ Game, small trunks, shuttlecock, billiards, music, masques, singing, dancing, Christmas games, frolics, jokes, riddles, catches, games of purposes, questions and commands, and merry tales of wandering kings, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, swindlers, witches, fairies, goblins, friars, and so forth.

Such are the stories the old woman told Psyche in Apuleius, Boccaccio’s tales, and the rest, “which children enjoy hearing and old people telling”: some delight in hearing them, others in telling them; everyone is pleased with them.

5832.Burton combines and adapts material from Georgics 1.139–140 and 1.271. The first two lines rework Virgil’s account of the invention of trapping and hunting; the third comes from permitted holiday work. Birdlime is adhesive used to catch birds. His following English version and the additional Latin fragment about nests are retained separately; the nest fragment’s exact source is unresolved.

5833.“Theorick” and “speculation” mean theoretical study or contemplation, opposed here to practice. Jucundus is Giocondo, the editor named by Burton. The prefatory passage and the references to Herberstein, Porta and Camerarius remain uncollated; “Herbastein” is preserved on the left.

5834.Saturn evokes agriculture as well as the planetary temperament associated with melancholy. The allusion suits both Burton’s love of gardens and his recurring self-portrait. “Springs” may mean water sources or young woodland; the context does not settle the sense, so the word is retained.

5835.The Tantalus lines are Horace, Satires 1.1.68–69: water recedes when the thirsty figure tries to drink. Burton turns the image into his own frustrated desire for these pleasures. “And so do I” and the final Latin maxim are distinct parts of his comment, not additional lines by Horace; the maxim’s source remains unresolved.

5838.“Gymnicks” are organized athletic exercises; “silver games” appears to mean contests for silver prizes. The list of gods is not a one-to-one pairing with the preceding list of festivals. The exact Botero and Athenaeus passages remain uncollated.

5842.The passage compresses civic dining places, festivals and communal meals into one list. The uncertain printed “Thesperiis” is retained in the modern form Thesperia rather than silently replaced. “Naumachies” are staged naval combats and their venues. The seventy-thousand capacity and fifteen-hundred combatants are Burton’s reported figures. Rosinus, Lipsius and Meursius are cited as authorities, but their exact passages have not been collated.

5845.The Low Countries’ “wars” are left in Burton’s historical frame. “Artillery Gardens” are grounds for weapons practice; the “colleges” are associations, not modern universities. The long Van Meteren margin supplies the civic and dramatic setting, but its Latin is compressed. The exact Pontanus passage, the identification of Friburg and the Neander/Bocerus festival account remain unresolved.

5846.Quirinus is the name of the deified Romulus, here evoking ancient Rome. The Latin compares the modern festivities with Roman magnificence. Burton’s source and the verse’s wider context have not been collated.

5849.Suetonius, Domitian 3, reports catching flies and piercing them with a sharpened stylus; Burton omits the piercing. Augustus 83 describes games with small children, including nuts, for mental relaxation. Both Latin passages have been compared. The Historia Augusta, Hadrian 20.12, reports tombs for horses and dogs; Alexander Severus 41.5 describes watching puppies play with piglets, not necessarily playing with them himself. Those biographies are transmitted under the names Spartianus and Lampridius.

5851.The same Life of Alexander Severus 41.5–7 describes partridge fights, birds flying, aviaries and twenty thousand doves. Burton adds quails in his body text. The margin reads solitudines publicas, literally “public solitudes,” where the sense of the source is relief from public cares; that form is retained and flagged. “Severus” here continues to mean Alexander Severus.

5852.“Orator” means ambassador: Busbecq represents the emperor at Constantinople. “Meat” means food generally. The exact Busbecq and Gesner passages remain uncollated; the point of Burton’s distinction is mental refreshment without bodily exertion.

5853.The printed “prisones” is retained on the left and rendered “prisoners.” The sweeping portrayal of Turkish women is Burton’s culturally situated assertion, not an independently established account of all Ottoman households. “Mewed up” means confined; the Latin means pets or favourites.

5855.“Tables” is a backgammon-related game; shovelboard is an early form of shove-board. The Philosophers’ Game is rithmomachia, a numerical board game, identified through the Folger catalogue. “Ulegames” means Yule or Christmas games. “Catches” may include rounds or verbal tricks; “purposes” and “questions and commands” are social word games. Their detailed rules and the exact form of “small trunks” remain unresolved.

5857.In Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4.27–28, the old woman tells the story of Cupid and Psyche to a captive young woman; Psyche is the subject, not the listener. The frame is checked in Adlington’s historical translation. Boccaccio’s tales are named without particular titles. Burton’s Latin and its less age-specific English gloss are both retained.