The Anatomy of Melancholy

So sweet is the pleasure of study that the more learning people possess, the more they desire to learn—like someone with dropsy, who grows thirstier the more he drinks. The latest day is “the pupil of the one before.” Learning is harsh at first: “bitter roots,” but “sweet fruits,” according to Isocrates—pleasant in the end. The longer they live, the more they fall in love with the Muses.

Heinsius, keeper of the library at Leiden in Holland, was shut up in it all year long. What you might think would have bred disgust only increased his delight. “No sooner,” he says, “do I enter the library than I bolt the door behind me, shutting out lust, ambition, greed, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance—and Melancholy herself. In the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with such an elevated spirit and such sweet contentment that I pity all our great and wealthy people who do not know this happiness.”

Meanwhile, despite what I have said, I know how barbarously and meanly most of our less cultivated gentry regard libraries and books: how they neglect and despise so great a treasure, so priceless a benefit, as Aesop’s cock did the jewel he found in the dungheap—all through error, ignorance, and lack of education.

It is astonishing, too, to see how much they squander on needless expenses. “In how many ways,” says Erasmus, “does the money of the great disappear! How much is consumed by gambling, prostitutes, drinking parties, unnecessary journeys, displays of splendour, wars deliberately sought, ambition, the flatterer, the fool, the player,” and so on! What sums go on hawks, hounds, lawsuits, vain buildings, gluttony, drinking, sports, plays, pastimes, and the rest!

If someone well disposed towards the Muses were to ask some of them for financial support towards maintaining or enlarging such a work—a college, lectureship, library, or anything else that might advance learning—they are so unwilling, so opposed, that they would rather see the institutions already built at such expense and with such care utterly ruined, demolished, or put to other uses. Many of them resent and grudge the gifts and revenues devoted to such purposes.

It would therefore be in vain, as Erasmus aptly observes, “to demand such a service either from these men or from merchants who have devoted themselves to Mammon—perhaps an unreasonable demand.” To solicit or ask anything for this purpose from men so likely damned to riches! For my part, I pity them: “I gladly bid them remain fools.” Let them go as they are, in the catalogue of ignoramuses.

How deeply, on the other hand, are all of us scholars indebted to those munificent Ptolemies, generous Maecenases, heroic patrons, and divine spirits—“who have provided this leisure for us; for he will always be a god to me”—who have furnished us with so many well-stocked libraries, both in the public academies of most cities and in our individual colleges?