The Anatomy of Melancholy

If anything happened to thwart him in his sport, or the hunting was poor, he became so impatient that he often reviled and abused men of great worth with the bitterest taunts. He looked so sour, was so angry and irritable, so grieved and vexed, that the account seems incredible. On the other hand, if he had good sport and was pleased, he would reward all his fellow hunters “with incredible generosity,” with unspeakable bounty and munificence, refusing nothing to any petitioner while he was in that mood.

To tell the truth, this is the common disposition of all gamblers, as Galateo observes. If they win, nobody alive is so jovial and merry. But if they lose, even a trifle—two or three games of backgammon, or a deal at cards for twopence a game—they become so angry and touchy that nobody can speak to them. They often break out in violent fits of passion, oaths, curses and improper language, differing little from madmen for the time being.

Of all gamblers and gambling, when excessive, we may generally conclude this much: whether they win or lose for the moment, their winnings are “not gifts of fortune but snares,” as the wise Seneca judges—not fortune’s gifts but bait. The usual outcome is beggary. “As plague takes life, so gambling takes money”: as the plague takes away life, gambling takes away possessions, for “all are stripped, destitute and needy.”

Gambling, ravenous Scylla, the surest form of theft, Not content with wealth, treacherously drowns the soul as well: A foul, thieving, infamous, idle, frantic ruin.

For the little pleasure they take and the small gains and winnings they make now and then, their wives and children suffer in the meantime, and they themselves rue it in the end, losing body and soul. I will say nothing of those monstrous spendthrifts, “born to squander money,” as the writer reproached Antony; people “who lose their inherited estates without any legal accusation,” as Cyprian says; and mad, Sybaritic squanderers “who eat up estates at a single dinner.”

They eat everything up at a breakfast or a supper, or consume their means in an instant among bawds, parasites and players, as though they had thrown it into the Tiber, through high wages and vain, idle expenses. They ruin not only themselves but all their friends. As a desperate swimmer drowns the person who comes to help him, so, through guarantees and borrowing, they willingly ruin all their associates and relations. “Angry with money,” as he says: angry with their money.