The Anatomy of Melancholy

I think I have said enough. If not, let anyone who thinks otherwise remember the case of Apuleius of Madaura: “In his life he was a philosopher,” as Ausonius says in his defence; “in his epigrams a lover, in his precepts utterly strict, and in his letter to Caerellia, licentious.” Amnianus, Sulpitius, Evenus, Menander and many other ancient poets “itched with lust in their writings”: they wrote Fescennine verses, Atellan farces and lewd songs, “cheerful material.” Yet they possessed “restraint and strictness in their conduct”; they lived chaste, strict and upright lives.

The dutiful poet himself should be chaste; His little verses need not be— Only then do they have wit and charm.

I agree with Catullus and make the same defence on my own behalf: “What I write here also depends largely on the opinions and authority of others; perhaps I am not mad myself but follow those who are. Yet grant that I am mad in this: we have all been mad at one time; and you yourself, I think, are sometimes mad, as are this man, that man and I.” For, of course, “I am human; I consider nothing human foreign to me.”

What another urges in his defence when accused of the same fault, I can plead with equal justice:

My page is licentious; my life is upright. However my lines go astray, my life is honest. My life is modest; my muse is playful.

But I presume I need no such defences. I need not cover my face, as Socrates did in Plato when he spoke of love, or blush and hide my eyes under a hood as Pallas did when Jupiter consulted her about Mercury’s marriage, “because a virgin is consulted about a wedding.” This is no licentious, obscene or wanton discussion.

Nothing written here has offended your more modest ears, as many French and Italian authors have lately done in their vernaculars, and even some of our Latin writers on the papal side—Zanches, Asorius, Abulensis, Burchardus and others. Rivet accuses them of being more licentious than Virgil in the Priapeia, Petronius in the Catalecta, Aristophanes in Lysistrata, Martial, or any other pagan, secular writer, “who,” as someone observes, “have offended so grievously in this way that chaste minds recoil from many brilliantly written works because of their obscenities.”

This is no coarse abuse, but a chaste, honourable and mostly serious work, even treating religion itself. “Fired,” as he said, “by the love of finding love, we have sought it and found it.” Moreover, I have enlarged this light treatise—if it is light—and added things absent from earlier editions. I am not ashamed to admit, with a good author, “that many people asked for this subject to be expanded and enriched. Overcome by their insistence, I forced my somewhat reluctant mind to take up the pen now for the sixth time and undertake writing far removed from my studies and profession, meanwhile stealing a few hours from my serious occupations and setting them aside for a kind of play and recreation.”

I am compelled to turn back, Set sail again and retrace courses Long since abandoned.