The Anatomy of Melancholy

“And as though stationed on a watchtower,” as he said, somewhere high above you all, like “the Stoic sage, seeing every age, past and present, as if in a single glance,” I hear and see what happens in the wider world: how others run, ride, struggle, and wear themselves out at court and in the country. Far from their wrangling lawsuits, “I am accustomed to laugh to myself at the vanity of the court and the ambition of the forum.” I laugh at it all. I alone am free from fears that my lawsuit will fail, my ships sink, my crops and cattle come to harm, or my trade decline. I have neither wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for.

I am merely a spectator of other people's fortunes and adventures, watching them play their parts, which seem to unfold before me in all their variety upon a public stage. I hear fresh news every day: the usual reports of war, plagues, fires, floods, thefts, murders, massacres, phenomena in the sky, comets, spectres, marvels, and apparitions; of towns captured and cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, and elsewhere; daily musters of troops and preparations, and the other events these stormy times supply; battles fought, so many men killed, single combats, shipwrecks, piracy and sea battles, peace, alliances, stratagems, and fresh alarms.

A vast confusion of vows, wishes, deeds, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, and grievances reaches our ears each day. New books every day: pamphlets, news-sheets, histories, whole catalogues of volumes of every kind; new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, and more.

Now comes news of weddings, masques, mummers' performances, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, jousts and tournaments, trophies, triumphal celebrations, revels, sports, and plays. Then, as the scene changes, treasons, swindles, robberies, monstrous villainies of every kind, funerals, burials, the deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions: now comic events, then tragic ones. Today we hear of new lords and officers appointed, tomorrow of great men deposed, then of fresh honours bestowed. One is released, another imprisoned; one buys property, another goes broke; one prospers, his neighbour becomes bankrupt; now abundance, then scarcity and famine. One runs, another rides, quarrels, laughs, weeps, and so on.

Such things I hear each day, private and public news alike, amid the world's splendour and misery: merriment, pride, perplexities and cares, innocence and villainy, subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, all mingling and presenting themselves. I jog along, “a private man apart,” continuing as I have always lived, “in the same condition as before,” left to a solitary life and my own troubles at home.

Except that sometimes, “to tell the whole truth,” just as Diogenes went into the city and Democritus down to the harbour to observe people's ways, I would take a walk for recreation, look at the world, and inevitably make a few observations: “less a shrewd observer than a plain reporter.” I did not, as they did, scoff or laugh at everything, but felt a mixture of emotions. Your commotions have often stirred my anger and my laughter.