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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults…

Gentleness might have achieved much more in this case. However perverse your adversary, you may win him by that means: “kindness and goodwill tame even a savage spirit.” Gentle words calm anger, and this is the quickest way to overcome the fiercest spirits.

A noble lion will not hurt a prostrate beast, nor an elephant a harmless creature: it is “hostile to the hostile,” a terror and scourge only to those that stubbornly resist. This was the emblem of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, and he was not mistaken in choosing it, for

The greater a man, the more readily his anger is appeased; A noble mind admits gentle impulses.

A greater man is soonest pacified; A noble spirit quickly satisfied.

Walter Map, an old historian of ours who lived four hundred years ago, reports that King Edward the Elder and Llywelyn, Prince of Wales, were to meet near Aust on the Severn in Gloucestershire. The prince, when summoned, refused to come to the king, who insisted on crossing to him instead. Seeing this, Llywelyn waded into the water up to his arms and clasped the king’s boat, offering to carry him ashore on his shoulders. He added that the king’s humility and wisdom had triumphed over his pride and folly. He was then reconciled to him and did him homage.

If you cannot win him in this way, bear the injury. If you are a true Christian, a good theologian and an imitator of Christ—who endured insults, was whipped and sought no revenge—you will pray for your enemies and bless those who persecute you. Be patient, meek, humble, and so on.

An honest man will not injure you: “a good man has no wish to.” If he is a quarrelsome scoundrel, that is simply his way. Where there is least courage, there is most talk; “the more foolish a man, the more insolent he grows”: the greater his folly, the greater his insolence. “Do not answer a fool according to his folly.”

If he is your superior, bear it at all costs; do not grieve over it, but let him take his course. “Anytus and Meletus may kill me; they cannot harm me,” as noble Socrates answered in a similar case. “The mind remains unmoved.” Though the body is torn apart by wild horses, broken on the wheel or pinched with red-hot tongs, the soul cannot be shaken.

It is common for powerful men to vilify, insult, oppress, injure and tyrannize, taking whatever liberties they please; and who dares speak against them? “It is miserable to be injured by someone against whom you cannot complain”: miserable to suffer injury from one against whom there is no appeal. Nor is it safe to write against someone who can proscribe and punish a man at will, as Asinius Pollio understood when Octavian provoked him.

I admit that such injury is hard to bear. It is one of Chilo’s three difficult things: keeping secrets, spending one’s time well and enduring injuries.

But be patient and leave vengeance to the Lord. “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.” “I know the Lord,” says David, “will avenge the afflicted and judge the poor.”

No man, Plato further adds, can punish his adversary as severely as God will punish those who oppress the wretched.

He judges again the case already judged, And imposes a heavier penalty.

If there is any religion, any God, and that God is just, it shall be so. If you believe the one, believe the other: “It will, it will”—it shall be so. Nemesis follows, “late, but in earnest.” Wait a little, and you will see God’s just judgement overtake him.

Rarely has Punishment, though lame of foot, Abandoned the criminal who goes ahead.

You will see Samuel’s words to Agag fulfilled: “Your sword has made many women childless; so shall your mother be childless among other women”: 1 Samuel 15:33. They will be treated as they have treated others. Conradin, that gallant Swabian prince, entered the kingdom of Naples with a well-prepared army, was captured by King Charles and put to death in the flower of his youth. A little later—“vengeance for Conradin’s death,” as Pandolfo Collenuccio calls it in book 5 of his History of Naples—King Charles’s own son, with two hundred nobles, was likewise captured and beheaded.

Not only in this, but in every other offence, “each will be punished through that in which he sins.” They shall suffer punishment of the same kind, in the same part, of a like nature: eye for eye or in the eye, head for head or in the head, persecution for persecution, lust through the consequences of lust. Let them march with standards flying, drums beating and trumpets sounding “taratantara”; let them sack cities, plunder countries, murder infants, violate virgins, destroy, burn, persecute and tyrannize. They and theirs shall finally be repaid in full, in the same measure, according to their deserts.

Few kings descend to Ceres’ son-in-law without slaughter and blood; Few tyrants die a bloodless death.

Few tyrants die in their beds; Stabbed or maimed, they hasten to hell.

Often, too, a low, contemptible fellow becomes the instrument of God’s justice to punish, torment and trouble them, as an ichneumon does a crocodile. They will be repaid according to the work of their hands, as Haman was hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. They will suffer sorrow of heart and be destroyed from under heaven: Lamentations 3:64–66. Only be patient: “He conquers who endures”; in the end you will be crowned.

“Yes, but this is hard to do: flesh and blood cannot bear it. It is hard, hard!” “No,” Chrysostom replies, “it is not hard, my friend”; it is not so grievous, nor would God have commanded it had it been so difficult. But how can it be done? Easily, he continues, if you look towards heaven, contemplate its beauty, and consider what God has promised those who endure injuries.

7223.Heliodorus is the author cited for the Latin maxim about goodwill. Its precise location and the translation Burton used remain uncertain. The gentle-word image also recalls Proverbs 15:1.

7225.The dagger note at the lion passage quotes Terence, Adelphoe, Demea’s late speech on affability and clemency; it supports the surrounding argument rather than identifying a zoological source. The lion image also occurs immediately after the Ovid couplet cited below. Infestus infestis is an emblematic motto, “hostile to the hostile”.

7227.Ovid, Tristia 3.5.31–32. Ovid hopes that imperial anger can be softened. Burton retains the Latin couplet and adds his own English verse, reproduced separately here.

7230.Gualter Mapes is Walter Map; Camden is Burton’s stated intermediary. Edward Seneor is rendered Edward the Elder and Leolin as Llywelyn, preserving the reported names without certifying the chronology. The Latin margin adds an invitation to mount the speaker’s neck; exact historical identification and collation remain pending.

7233.Divine means a theologian or religious teacher. Romans 12:14 supplies the blessing of persecutors. Burton links Christian patience with the preceding pagan examples; the Chrysostom citation remains unlocated.

7235.Brangling means quarrelsome. Heart here means courage. The biblical admonition is Proverbs 26:4; the following verse gives the complementary instruction to answer a fool lest he think himself wise.

7238.The warning against contending with a superior resembles Sirach 8:1; Burton’s margin says Pro., so this is a comparison, not a silent correction. Socrates’ distinction between death and moral harm appears in Plato, Apology 30c–d. Mens immota manet recalls Virgil, Aeneid 4.449, on Aeneas’s resolve. Burton asserts an ethical ideal despite bodily suffering.

7240.The maxim about an enemy against whom one cannot complain appears in Publilius Syrus. Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.4.21, gives Pollio’s reply to Augustus. Scribere and proscribere make a pointed verbal pair: writing against someone versus putting someone on a proscription list.

7242.Chilo was one of the Seven Sages. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Chilo, reports these three difficulties. Keeping counsell means keeping confidential information, and otium means leisure.

7246.Romans 12:19 is the vengeance quotation. David’s statement corresponds to Psalm 140:12, not the printed Psa 13.12; Psalm 13 has no verse 12. The additional marginal Psal.45 is preserved separately because its intended attachment or correction is unclear.

7248.Burton attributes this maxim to Plato without identifying a dialogue. The exact source and Latin intermediary have not been established; the attribution is retained as his.

7250.Plautus, Rudens 19–20, spoken in the prologue by the star Arcturus about Jupiter’s judgement. Burton shortens the lines and omits eam before rem; the rendering follows his shortened text.

7251.Nemesis personifies retribution. The Latin contrast sero sed serio means delayed but earnest or decisive punishment. Burton combines classical personification with Christian divine judgement.

7253.Horace, Odes 3.2.31–32. Punishment, although lame, rarely loses the criminal ahead. Burton prints deseruit, a past tense, where the consulted text has deservit, present; the rendering follows the printed form.

7254.Conradinus is Conradin of Swabia. Burton’s claim that Charles I’s son was beheaded is erroneous: Charles II was captured but later released and ruled Naples. His appeal to Collenuccio requires collation. The erroneous story remains in the body as part of Burton’s argument, with the correction here.

7256.The principle that punishment answers the offence is Wisdom 11:16 in common modern numbering; Burton prints 11.6. Ensignes are military standards. Taratantarra imitates a trumpet call. The threat extends to the offenders and their households or descendants, conveyed by they and theirs.

7258.Juvenal, Satire 10.112–113. Ceres’ son-in-law is Pluto, husband of Proserpina, so descent to him means death. Burton prints & sanguine in place of the consulted ac vulnere and supplies a freer English couplet. Both his text and his English gloss are retained.

7259.The pronoun “them” continues the powerful wrongdoers of Block 096. The ichneumon is the Egyptian mongoose of ancient animal lore; Pliny, Natural History 8.90, tells how it enters and kills a crocodile. Burton’s Haman example recalls Esther 7:10. Thre. abbreviates Threni, Lamentations; the wording is retained as Burton gives it.

7262.“Put up injuries” means endure wrongs. Chrysostom’s argument is that a divine command must be possible to obey. The exact source of this passage and the preceding Leo quotation remains to be established.