The Anatomy of Melancholy

Or, if they are teachable, their will does not always match their intelligence. They can understand but will not work. They are led astray by bad companions, “or stumble into a girl’s arms, or into the wine cup,” and so spend their time to the grief of their friends and their own ruin.

Or suppose they are studious, industrious, mature in judgement and perhaps well endowed with ability: how many diseases of body and mind must they then encounter? No labour in the world compares with study. Their constitution may be unable to bear it; striving to excel and know everything, they lose health, wealth, reason, life and all.

Yet let him escape all these hazards by good fortune, “with bowels of bronze,” with a body of brass. Suppose he is now fully accomplished and mature, has benefited from his studies and taken his degrees to general applause. After so much expense, he is ready for advancement—but where will he find it? After twenty years at the university, he is as far from finding it as on the day he first arrived.

What course can he take, now that he is qualified and ready? The most readily available and easiest, which employs many, is teaching a school or becoming a lecturer or curate. For that he will receive a falconer’s wages: ten pounds a year and his food, or some small stipend, for as long as he can please his patron or the parish. If they cease to approve of him—as they usually do after a year or two, as fickle as those who cried “Hosanna” one day and “Crucify him” the next—he must find a new master, like a serving man. If they remain satisfied, what is his reward?

This too awaits you: while you teach boys their first lessons, White-haired old age will overtake you in the farthest streets.

Like a donkey, he wears out his life for fodder, and all he can show is a worn-down rod and, as Haedus says, “a threadbare and tattered gown”—an old torn gown, the badge of his misfortune. His labour earns him nothing but more trouble, a pittance to keep him until he is decrepit, and that is all. “A schoolmaster is not fortunate,” and so on.

If he is a chaplain serving at a gentleman’s table, as happened to Euphormio, after some seven years’ service he may perhaps obtain a living with only half its income, or eventually a small rectory accompanied by marriage to the woman in charge of the maids, a poor female relative, or a chambermaid whose sexual reputation has been damaged—to have and to hold for the rest of his life. But if in the meantime he offends his good patron or displeases the lady of the house:

He will be dragged by the foot like Cacus struck down by Hercules, And thrown outside if he ever dares To open his mouth.

As Hercules treated Cacus, he will be dragged out of doors by the heels: away with him! If he directs his efforts to other studies, intending to become a private secretary to a nobleman or to hold such a post with an ambassador, he will find that these men rise through the ranks like apprentices, one beneath another. In many tradesmen’s shops, when the master dies the foreman usually steps into his place.