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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities

Member 3 Against poverty and want and other such adversities

One of the greatest miseries that can befall a man, in the world’s estimation, is poverty or want. It makes men steal, bear false witness, swear, perjure themselves, quarrel, murder, and rebel; it breaks their sleep and causes death itself. “No burden is heavier than poverty”: no burden, says Menander, is so intolerable as poverty. It makes men desperate; it raises and casts down. “Wealth brings honours, wealth brings friendships”: money makes, but poverty mars, and so on—and all this in the world’s estimation.

Yet rightly considered, poverty is a great blessing in itself, a happy condition. It gives no such cause for discontent, or for people to reckon themselves worthless, hated by God, abandoned, miserable, or unfortunate. Christ himself was poor, born in a manger, and had no house to shelter his head throughout his life, lest anyone regard poverty as a judgement of God or a hateful condition.

And as he was himself, so he shaped his apostles and disciples: they were all poor, prophets poor, apostles poor—“Silver and gold have I none,” Acts 3. “As sorrowing,” says Paul, “and yet always rejoicing; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things,” 1 Corinthians 6:10.

Great philosophers have chosen poverty, not only Christians but many others. Crates of Thebes was revered as a god in Athens. Noble by birth, he had many servants, a distinguished retinue, great wealth, many estates, and fine clothes. But when he saw that all the world’s wealth was fragile, uncertain, and of no help in living well, he flung his burden into the sea and renounced his property.

Those Curii and Fabricii will always be renowned for despising these foolish trifles with which the world is so taken. Among Christians I could list many kings and queens who have abandoned their crowns and fortunes, and willingly relinquished these highly prized toys; many who have refused honours, titles, and all this empty pomp and happiness, which others seek so ambitiously and scheme so anxiously to obtain.

I do not deny that riches are God’s good gifts and blessings, and “honour lies in the one who confers it”: honours come from God. Both are rewards of virtue, fit to be sought and petitioned for, and may rightly be possessed. Yet there is no such great happiness in having them, or misery in lacking them.

“They are given to the good,” says Augustine, “so that no one should think them evil; and to the bad, so that no one should think them too good.” Good men have wealth so that we should not think it evil, and bad men so that they should not rely on it or esteem it so highly. As rain falls on both sorts, riches are given to good and bad, “but to the good for good”: they are good only to the godly.

But compare the two conditions: in natural abilities they are not unlike. A beggar’s child, as Cardano aptly observes, is in no way inferior to a prince’s, and is usually better. As for those accidents of fortune, it will readily appear that there is no such great difference, no extraordinary happiness in one condition or misery in the other.

He is rich, wealthy, fat: what does he gain by it? Pride, insolence, lust, ambition, cares, fears, suspicion, trouble, anger, rivalry, and many foul diseases of body and mind. He certainly has a variety of dishes, better food, sweet wine, pleasant sauces, exquisite music, splendid clothes, and struts about magnificently as a lord, with all that Micillus admired in Lucian. But along with these he has gout, dropsy, apoplexy, palsy, stones, the pox, rheums, catarrhs, indigestion, obstructions, melancholy, and so on. Lust enters, anger, ambition; according to Chrysostom, the consequences of riches are pride, dissipation, excess, arrogance, fury, and every irrational course.

Softening riches have broken the age With shameful luxury.

With their variety of dishes, many such maladies of body and mind slip in, of which the poor man knows nothing. As Saturn in Lucian answered the discontented common people, who complained bitterly and cried out against the rich because their Saturnalian feasts in Rome had been neglected: they were much mistaken in supposing riches brought such happiness.

You see the best of it, he said, but you do not know their various pains and discontents. They are like painted walls, fine outside and rotten within: diseased, filthy, infirm, full of the effects of excess. And who can reckon half of them? If you only knew the fears, cares, mental anguish, and vexation to which they are subject, you would renounce all riches from then on.

Oh, if the hearts of the rich lay open, What fears does lofty Fortune stir within? The Bruttian sea, when the northwest wind Beats upon it, has gentler waves.

Oh, if only their hearts could be seen, How full of fear within, how furious! The narrow seas are not so stormy.

Yes, but the rich man has the world at his command, the good things of the earth: “It is pleasant to draw from a great heap.” He is a happy man, revered like a god or a prince; everyone courts him, applauds, honours, and admires him.

He has honours indeed, and an abundance of everything; but, as I said, pride, lust, anger, faction, rivalry, fears, cares, and suspicion enter with his wealth. For his excesses he has aches, indigestion, and gout; and as the fruits of his idleness, overindulgence, lust, gluttony, and drunkenness, every kind of disease. “Wickedness increases with money”: the wealthier, the more dishonest.

He is exposed to hatred, envy, danger, and treachery, to fear of death, of losing his rank, and so on. It is “a slippery station on the edge of a precipice”; the higher he climbs, the greater his fall.

Tall towers fall with a heavier crash, And lightning strikes The highest mountains.

Lightning commonly sets the highest towers on fire; the more exalted his position, the more liable he is to fall.

The most fruitful tree breaks under its countless apples, And excessive wealth suddenly comes crashing down.

6612.The Greek maxim attributed to Menander means “No burden is heavier than poverty”; its exact textual source remains uncollated. The Latin fragment recalls Ovid, Fasti 1.217–218. Burton repeatedly qualifies this account of poverty as the world’s judgement before reversing it in the next paragraph.

6614.Burton is making a Christian consolatory argument about poverty, drawing on Christ’s birth and lack of a settled home. The original’s sweeping formulation is preserved. The marginal Gualther reference, including the printed Luke 2:18, needs comparison with the commentary.

6615.“Informed” means formed or instructed. The first quotation is Acts 3:6. The second is 2 Corinthians 6:10, although Burton prints 1 Corinthians; his citation is retained in the modern column and corrected here.

6617.Apuleius, Florida 22, describes Crates’s former wealth and the reverence paid to him at Athens. The consulted passage breaks off after declaring wealth useless for living well; it does not contain the act of throwing his possessions into the sea. That added tradition remains to be traced.

6619.The Curii and Fabricii are exemplary Roman names invoked for austere conduct. “Fopperies” and “toys” belittle wealth and honours; “wilfully” means deliberately or willingly. The Peter of Blois quotation is retained, including its awkward final clause, pending comparison with the cited letters.

6620.Honor est in honorante means honour resides in the person who gives it. Burton joins this maxim to the claim that honours come from God. His concession is that wealth and rank can be legitimate goods, while their possession does not guarantee happiness.

6621.Compare Augustine, Sermon 105/A.1: riches are given to good people so they will not be thought evil, and to bad people so they will not be thought a great good. Burton’s Latin and his separate English explanation are both preserved.

6624.“Confer” means compare; “parts” means abilities or endowments; “accidents” are outward circumstances rather than inherent qualities. The Cardano margin says beggars’ children are generally healthier, while Burton’s body says generally better. The difference is retained; the abbreviated title remains unresolved.

6628.These are Burton’s traditional disease categories and moral associations. “Crasie” below means infirm. Lucian’s The Cock features Micillus, usually called Micyllus. The Seneca marginal quotation adapts Letter 102.27, not the printed 103: there the soul’s departure is compared with release from the body, not a diagnosis of melancholy.

6630.Juvenal, Satires 6.299–300, on the destructive effects of luxury. Molles suggests softness or enervation. The modern lines give a fresh translation of Burton’s quotation and preserve its two-line display.

6632.Lucian’s Saturnalian Letters 25–30 supplies Saturn’s consolatory reply to the poor, describing the anxieties, illness, and dependence of the rich. Burton compresses and adapts the dialogue. His wall image is retained; the consulted translation instead compares wealthy people to theatrical costumes, splendid outside and wretched within.

6636.Hercules Oetaeus 648–651, transmitted among Seneca’s tragedies with disputed authorship. Burton prints divitum for ditum and mitior for the consulted lenior. Corus is the northwest wind; the Bruttian sea is off southern Italy. Burton’s three-line English rendering follows the fresh translation as a separate verse unit.

6638.Horace, Satires 1.1.51: it is pleasant to draw from a large stockpile. Burton prints de where the consulted text has ex. The apparent advantage of wealth is voiced as an objection before the catalogue of its accompanying troubles resumes.

6640.The passage links luxury with moral and bodily disorders within Burton’s consolatory argument. “Crudities” means imperfect digestion or undigested matter; “emulation” means rivalry. The Chrysostom passages are quoted without an exact work or section and remain to be collated.

6643.Horace, Odes 2.10.10–12. Burton prints the irregular graviora for graviore; the modern rendering gives the clear comparative sense, “with a heavier crash.” The Latin has lightning striking high mountains; Burton’s following English gloss transfers the lightning to towers.

6645.Direct inspection of Camerarius’s first century, emblem XIII, confirms this couplet beneath the fruit tree and its fallen branches. The wording agrees with Burton apart from spelling and punctuation. Excessive abundance causes collapse; Burton’s separate prose gloss follows. This comparison verifies the consulted printed witness, without identifying Burton’s particular copy or edition.