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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities

Hannah wept bitterly and, troubled in mind, could not eat. “But why are you weeping?” said Elkanah, her husband. “Why do you not eat? Why is your heart troubled? Am I not better to you than ten sons?” And she was quiet. You are troubled here in this world; but say to yourself, “Why are you troubled, my soul?” Is God not better to you than all worldly possessions and the world’s fleeting pleasures? Then be at peace.

Though you may now be in extreme want, perhaps it is for your further good: to test your patience, as Job’s was tested, and train you in this life. Trust in God and rely on him, and you will be crowned in the end. What is this life beside eternity? The world has forsaken you; your friends and fortunes are all gone. Yet know this: the very hairs of your head are numbered. God witnesses all your miseries; he sees your injuries, sorrows and needs. It is his good will and pleasure that things should be so, and he knows better than you do yourself what is good for you.

His providence watches over everything at all times. He has set a guard of angels over us and keeps us as the apple of his eye, Psalm 17:8. Some he raises up, advances and blesses with worldly riches, honours, offices and promotions, making them shine above the rest like glittering stars. Some he miraculously protects from thieves, raids, sword, fire and every violent calamity.

As the poet tells of the Lycian Pandarus, Lycaon’s son: when he shot a deadly arrow with a strong arm at Menelaus the Greek, Pallas turned the shaft aside—as a good mother keeps flies from her sleeping child’s face—and made it strike his belt’s buckle. In this way God carefully defends some; others he exposes to danger, poverty, sickness, want and misery. He chastens and corrects them as seems best to his profound, unfathomable and hidden judgement, all for our good.

“The tyrant took the city,” says Chrysostom; “God did not prevent it. He led them away captive: God allowed it. He bound them: God consented. He threw them into the furnace: God permitted it. He heated the oven hotter: it was granted. And when the tyrant had done his worst, God revealed his power and the young men’s patience, and set them free.” He can do the same for you, and can help in an instant whenever he sees fit.

“Do not rejoice over me, my enemy. Though I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will give me light.” Remember all that the martyrs endured, the worst that human rage and fury could invent: how patiently they bore it, how willingly they embraced it. “Though he kill me,” says Job, “I will trust in him.” “The righteous man is impregnable,” as Chrysostom maintains: he cannot be overcome. Gout may hurt his hands, lameness his feet; convulsions may torture his joints, but not “an upright mind.” His soul is free.

Cattle, property, Beds and silver—you may take them away; You may hold me in handcuffs and fetters under a cruel guard.

Take away his money: his treasure is in heaven. Banish him from his country: he is a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem. Put him in chains: his conscience is free. Kill his body: it will rise again. Whoever fights an upright man fights a shadow. He will not be shaken.

If the shattered world should fall, Its ruins will strike him unafraid.

Though heaven itself should fall on his head, he will not be shaken. He is impenetrable, hard as an anvil, as steadfast as Job.

God himself, as soon as he wishes, will release me, I believe.

Be such a person yourself. Whatever your misery is, however great it may be, endure it patiently; you may be restored as Job was. “Banished from earth, hasten to heaven; deserted by men, flee to God.” “The poor will not always be forgotten; the patient waiting of the meek will not perish for ever,” Psalm 10:18. Verse 9: “The Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed, a defence in times of trouble.”

Epictetus was a slave, his body maimed, Poor as Irus; yet amid these hardships the gods loved him.

Epictetus was lame, and Irus poor, Yet God was kind to them both.

Ludovico di Varthema, the famous traveller, endured much misery. Yet surely, says Scaliger, he was “a man dear to God,” since he escaped so many dangers. God protected him especially; he was dear to him. “Now in want, affliction, the valley of lamentation, and so on.” You are now in the valley of misery, in poverty, agony and temptation; rest, eternity, happiness and immortality will be your reward, as Chrysostom argues, if you trust in God and preserve your innocence. “If things are bad now, they will not always be so in future.” A favourable hour may come suddenly; wait a little.

“Yes, but this waiting is what tortures me meanwhile. While I await the future, the present torments me. While the grass grows, the horse starves.” Do not despair; keep hoping for better.

Hope, Battus: tomorrow’s light will bring you something better. While you breathe, hope.

6856.1 Samuel 1:8 records Elkanah’s questions. Hannah’s renewed eating and changed expression are reported later, in 1:18, after her prayer and Eli’s response; Burton compresses the sequence. “Why are you troubled, my soul?” recalls Psalms 42–43. Temporalities are worldly possessions or advantages.

6860.The margin combines scriptural-sounding maxims with Seneca. Compare Hebrews 12:6 and Seneca, On Providence 4.8, which asks why God afflicts the best with illness, grief or other troubles. The separate citation to On Providence 2 supports the general discipline-of-adversity theme, but its exact quoted wording has not been located. The numbered hairs recall Matthew 10:30 and Luke 12:7.

6861.Psalm 17:8 supplies the apple-of-the-eye image; the guard of angels recalls Psalm 91:11. Burton combines these promises rather than quoting one continuous biblical passage. Prefer and preferments concern advancement, office and patronage.

6863.Homer, Iliad 4.127–140: Athena diverts Pandarus’s arrow toward the meeting of Menelaus’s belt-clasps and armour. The arrow still penetrates and wounds him; the divine intervention prevents a fatal wound. Burton compresses the episode. Pallas is Athena; Mars in the earlier comparison is Ares.

6866.The tyrant is Nebuchadnezzar; the “children” are the three Hebrew youths in Daniel 3. Chrysostom’s On the Statues 6.11 repeats the sequence: city destroyed, captives taken, bonds, furnace, fiercer heat, then divine rescue. This comparison is in English translation. Burton’s “Hom. 9” and his Latin wording still require an identified edition. The Psalm 113 margin begins the next printed page and belongs to this sentence.

6870.Micah 7:8 is printed as 8.7; “Though he kill me” is Job 13:15. Gloss-e calls the Hic ure prayer pseudo-Augustinian, comparing Augustine’s medical metaphor in Psalm 6.3, not the exact prayer. The compound margin illustrates endurance, not bodily invulnerability. Its immediate sources, Lipsius’s passage and the marked provisional Greek remain unresolved.

6872.Horace, Epistles 1.16.75–77, not 1.18 as the margin states. The original is an exchange between a virtuous man and a ruler threatening confiscation and imprisonment. Burton condenses the threat into teneas, “you may hold,” and omits te sub before custode. The modern text follows Burton’s wording.

6874.Chrysostom, On the Statues 5.3, closely supplies this sequence of confiscation, exile, chains, death and the opponent who fights a shadow. Burton makes the heavenly city explicitly Jerusalem. Bands means bonds or fetters.

6875.Horace, Odes 3.3.7–8, on the steadfast just man. Burton’s following English gloss replaces the falling world with heaven falling on his head; both layers remain.

6877.Horace, Epistles 1.16.78, but altered. The consulted text has “as soon as I wish,” whereas Burton prints volet, “he wishes,” and moves opinor, “I think,” into the verse. Horace’s next line explains release as death; Burton applies the line to providential deliverance. The nearby marginal “Leonides” is not a secure attribution of this Horatian line.

6878.Both quotations correspond to Psalm 9 in common modern English numbering: verses 18 and 9 respectively. Burton prints “Psal. 10.18. ver. 9.” The Latin transition urges turning from earthly exile to heaven; it is not part of those psalm verses.

6879.The Latin describes one man: Epictetus, enslaved, physically impaired and as poor as Irus, the proverbial beggar. Burton’s English makes Epictetus and Irus two recipients of divine favour. Compare Greek Anthology 7.676, the epigram quoted in Oldfather’s introduction to Epictetus. Its precise relationship to the nearby marginal attribution “Leonides” requires further collation.

6882.Vertomannus is the traveller Ludovico di Varthema. Burton’s Scaliger quotation and the precise Chrysostom excerpt remain unlocated. The line Non si malè nunc adapts Horace, Odes 2.10.17–18, adding semper, “always”; the margin Dabit Deus is from Virgil, Aeneid 1.199. These different sources support the appeal to wait.

6885.The proverb makes the objection concrete: promised future relief does not meet present hunger. Burton attributes the Latin complaint to Seneca without a work reference. The marginal reply resembles Thyestes 616; the different reading is recorded in the Burton note.

6887.The address to Battus and the counsel to hope while alive correspond to Theocritus, Idyll 4.41–43. Burton condenses the latter into the Latin proverb Dum spiras spera, “While you breathe, hope.” His particular Latin wording and its translator remain untraced.