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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Section 3 Member 1. Subsection 1 a Digression on Consolation, Containing…

So it is, so it was, and so it always will be. Whoever refuses to see, hear, and endure this is unfit to live in the world and does not understand the common human condition: throughout our lives, joys and sorrows are linked and succeed one another in turn. It is inevitable; it cannot be avoided. Why, then, should you be so troubled? “Nothing that necessity brings is burdensome to a human being,” as Cicero judges, quoting an old poet: what is necessary cannot be grievous.

If so, take comfort in this: whether you wish it or not, it must be endured. Make a virtue of necessity and reconcile yourself to bearing it. “If it is long, it is light; if it is severe, it is brief.” If it lasts, it is light; if grievous, it cannot last. It will pass: “Time lessens grief.” If nothing else helps, time will wear it away; habit will ease it. Forgetfulness is a universal medicine for losses, injuries, griefs, and harms of every kind.

Once they have passed, misfortune brings this benefit: it makes the rest of our life sweeter. “One day it will be pleasant to remember even these things.” Being deprived of something, and missing it, often makes it more pleasant and delightful than it was before. We must not expect even the happiest among us to pass through this life without some misfortunes:

So true it is that no pleasure is unmixed: Something troubling intrudes upon our joys.

Heaven and earth are very different. The heavenly bodies travel freely in their spheres, without hindrance or interruption, continuing their courses and revolutions for countless ages. Human beings, however, are beset by difficulties, with obstacles and opposition continually crossing and interrupting their efforts and desires; no mortal is exempt from this law of nature. We must therefore not expect everything to meet our expectations, or our success and good fortune to continue unbroken: “Fortune is never favourable forever.”

As Minutius Felix, the Roman consul, told the arrogant Coriolanus, drunk on his good fortune: do not expect the success you have enjoyed so far to continue. Never since the beginning of the world has anyone had everything go as he wished, with Fortune never opposing him; nor will anyone ever do so. And things happened to him just as he had been warned.

The same befell others, even the fortunate Augustus. Had he been Jupiter’s distributor of gifts, Pluto’s treasurer, and Neptune’s admiral, it could not have made him safe. Such was the fortune of Alcibiades, Narses, the great Gonzalo, and most famous men. As Giovio concludes, it is almost the destiny of great princes, whether through their own fault or because envy and malice ensnare them, to lose their honours and die in disgrace. So it is, always has been, and always will be: “Nothing is happy in every respect.”

No perfection is so complete That some impurity does not taint it.

Everything beneath the moon is subject to decay and change; as long as you live on earth, expect nothing else. You will not find peaceful, cheerful days and quiet times here, but rather clouds, storms, and slander: such is our fate. Those wandering planets in their separate spheres have their various motions: sometimes direct, stationary, or retrograde; at apogee or perigee; eastern or western; combust, feral, or free. According to our astrologers, they have their strengths and weaknesses, arising from favourable or unfavourable rays in relation to one another’s positions in the heavens—in their terms, houses, condition, detriments, and so on. In the same way we rise and fall in this world, ebb and flow, come in and go out, are raised up and cast down. We lead troubled lives, subject to many accidents and turns of fortune, to changing passions and weaknesses arising both from ourselves and from others.

Yes, but you think you are more miserable than everyone else. Other people are happy compared with you; their troubles are mere flea-bites beside yours. You alone are unhappy; no one is as badly off. Yet suppose, as Socrates said, everyone in the world brought their troubles together—troubles of body, mind, and fortune; sores, ulcers, madness, epilepsy, fevers, and the common calamities of poverty, want, servitude, and imprisonment—and laid them in a heap to be divided equally. Would you take an equal share, or stay as you are? Without question you would stay as you are. Suppose some Jupiter said, to satisfy us all:

“I shall now do what you want: you who were a soldier Shall be a merchant; you, just now a lawyer, a farmer. Exchange your roles and go, you this way, you that! Come, why are you standing still?” They refuse.

Well, let it be so then: you, Master Soldier, Shall be a merchant; you, Sir Lawyer, A country gentleman. You go this way, You that: why stand still? Things are well as they are.

Everyone knows his own failings and miseries, but not those of others. It is human nature to dwell continually on ourselves and our own misfortunes, without examining or considering other people’s, or comparing ourselves with them. We count our miseries, but not the gifts, good fortune, and benefits we possess; brood on adversity, but never think of prosperity; consider what we lack, not what we have; and look continually at those ahead of us, but not at the countless people behind us.

6415.Burton offers necessity as consolation. Compare the close parallel in the Consolation to Apollonius attributed to Plutarch, section 16: Amphiaraus consoles Archemorus’s mother with verses from Euripides’ Hypsipyle, ending that what necessity brings need not be grievous. This locates a parallel in English translation, not Burton’s Latin wording or the marginal attribution to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which remains unresolved.

6419.The maxim about pain is attributed here to Seneca; compare Letter 78.7, which argues that pain is either bearable or brief. Burton’s formula is not a literal quotation of that passage. Both the fresh Latin rendering and Burton’s own English gloss are represented.

6422.Compare Virgil, Aeneid 1.203. Burton’s Atque hæc, “and these things,” replaces Virgil’s forsan et haec, “perhaps even these things.” His more certain wording remains in the original and is reflected in the translation.

6424.Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.453–454, in the account of Aegeus’s joy at recognizing Theseus, before war interrupts the celebration. Burton’s two lines are kept as verse.

6426.The contrast assumes the orderly celestial spheres of older cosmology. Burton opposes their uninterrupted revolutions to human uncertainty; the marginal Latin’s opening is textually awkward and has not been silently repaired.

6428.Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 8.27, gives the warning in an embassy to Coriolanus. The speaker is Minucius, identified earlier as Marcus Minucius, a former consul. Burton’s added Felix appears to conflate him with another name; it is retained rather than silently removed.

6430.Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune supply imaginary offices of boundless power and wealth. “Gonsalvus” is Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba; “Jovius” is Paolo Giovio. The concluding Latin is Horace, Odes 2.16.27–28. Burton’s separate English couplet follows its fresh translation.

6432.“Under the Moon” denotes the changeable terrestrial realm. Direct, stationary, and retrograde describe apparent planetary motion; apogee and perigee are greatest and least distance from Earth in the model used here. Oriental and occidental describe a planet’s relation to the Sun; combust means obscured by proximity to it, and feral means lacking an aspect to another planet. Terms and houses are astrological divisions; detriment is an unfavourable placement. Printed “case” is rendered in the general sense “condition”; its precise astrological force remains uncertain. These technical terms form Burton’s analogy with fluctuating human fortunes, rather than an astronomical explanation of them.

6434.The shared heap of troubles is a consolatory anecdote attributed to Socrates; compare the treatment of common suffering in Plutarch’s Consolation to Apollonius. The precise wording and transmission of Burton’s anecdote remain for collation. “Agues” are fevers, especially recurring fevers.

6436.Horace, Satires 1.1.16–19. The speakers complain of their lives but refuse a god’s offer to exchange occupations. The 1651 text has nolunt, “they refuse,” where the consulted Latin has nolint. Burton’s English verse gives “country Gentleman” for rusticus, here freshly rendered “farmer.” Both versions are retained.