The Anatomy of Melancholy

All whose fortunes are less prosperous are somehow More suspicious, more inclined to take everything as an insult; They think themselves neglected because of their powerlessness.

In adversity they are more suspicious and prone to misunderstanding; they think themselves scorned because of their misery. Many noble spirits in such circumstances therefore withdraw from all company, as the comic playwright Terence is said to have done. When he saw himself abandoned and poor, he went voluntarily into exile at Stymphalus, an insignificant town in Arcadia, and died there in misery.

Reduced to utter destitution, He therefore went out of everyone’s sight, to the remotest land of Greece.

Nor is this without reason, for we see people commonly respected according to their means—“everyone asks whether he is rich; no one whether he is good”—and despised if they are badly dressed. Philopoemen the orator was put to chopping wood because he was so plainly dressed. Terence was placed at the lower end of Caecilius’s table because of his shabby appearance. Dante, the famous Italian poet, was refused a seat at a feast because his clothes were so poor.

Gnatho scorned an old close friend because of his clothes: “I see a man covered in rags and years; at this I despised him in comparison with myself.” After his defeat, King Perseus sent a letter to the Roman general Paulus Aemilius: “Perseus to Paulus, consul, greetings.” But Paulus disdained to answer him, “silently reproaching him with his fortune,” as my author says: taunting him with his present condition.

Charles the Bold, that great duke of Burgundy, made Henry Holland, the exiled former duke of Exeter, run after his horse like a lackey, and would take no notice of him. Such is the world’s usual way. Poor people may therefore justly feel discontented and melancholy and complain of their present misery; and everyone may pray with Solomon: “Give me, O Lord, neither riches nor poverty; feed me with the food I need.”