The Anatomy of Melancholy

Here, navigable rivers are mostly neglected. Our streams are not large, I admit, because the island is narrow; but they run smoothly and evenly, not headlong, swift, or among rocks and shallows like the foaming Rhône and Loire in France, the Tigris in Mesopotamia, or the violent Douro in Spain. Nor do they have cataracts and whirlpools like the Rhine and Danube around Schaffhausen, Laufenburg, Linz, and Krems, endangering those who sail them; nor are they broad and shallow like the Neckar in the Palatinate or the Tiber in Italy.

Instead, calm and fair like the Saône in France, the Hebrus in Macedonia, or the Eurotas in Laconia, they glide gently along. Many could be improved as readily as the River Lea from Ware to London: I mean the Wye, Trent, Ouse, and Thames at Oxford, whose shortcomings we suffer meanwhile.

Long ago Bishop Atwater—or, according to some, Henry I—made a navigable channel from the Trent to Lincoln; it is now in decay, says Mr Camden. Much is said of anchors and similar remains found around ancient Verulamium. Substantial ships once reached Exeter and many other places whose channels, harbours, and ports are now blocked and abandoned.

We disregard the benefit of transport by water, and consequently, in the interior of this island, where carriage is so expensive, we are forced to consume our own produce and live like so many boars in a sty, for want of markets and outlets.

We have many excellent, magnificent harbours—Falmouth, Portsmouth, Milford, and others—equal, if not superior, to Havana in the Indies, ancient Brundisium in Italy, Aulis in Greece, Ambracia in Acarnania, or Suda in Crete. Yet they contain few ships and little or no commerce or trade; they scarcely have a village beside them, though they could support great cities. “But let the statesmen see to that.”

I could justly censure many other instances of neglect, abuse, error, and deficiency, here and abroad: depopulation, dissipation, drunkenness, and many more, “which I do not now care to whisper in anyone’s ear.” But I must take care “not to say anything too harsh,” not to go too far. “A pig teaching Minerva”: perhaps you think I am out of my element. And sometimes “truth breeds hatred.” As the saying goes, verjuice and oatmeal are good for a parrot.

For what Lucian said of a historian I say of a political writer: whoever means to speak and write freely must remain no one’s subject, under no prince or law, but set out the matter truthfully as it stands, regardless of what anyone can do, intends, approves, or dislikes.

We have good laws, I do not deny it, to correct such abuses, as do all other countries; but they do not always seem to achieve much. Our age needs some universal inspector to reform what is wrong: a whole army of Rosicrucians, for they will set everything right, they say—religion, government, morals, arts, sciences, and all the rest.

Another Attila, Tamerlane, Hercules: to wrestle with Achelous, “clean out the stable of Augeas,” subdue tyrants as Hercules subdued Diomedes and Busiris, drive out thieves as he drove out Cacus and Lacinius, rescue poor captives as he rescued Hesione, cross the torrid zone and the deserts of Libya, and purge the world of monsters and centaurs.

Or another Crates of Thebes, to reform our conduct and settle quarrels and disputes, as he did in his own time, for which he was worshipped as a god at Athens. As Hercules purged the world of monsters and subdued them, so Crates fought envy, lust, anger, greed, and all those savage vices and monsters of the mind.