The Anatomy of Melancholy

For I was educated as a scholar in the most flourishing college in Europe, “a most distinguished college,” and can almost boast with Paolo Giovio: “In that brilliant home of the Vatican, renowned throughout the world, I learned much that was useful over thirty-seven years.” I have remained a scholar for thirty years, with access to libraries as good as any he enjoyed. I would therefore be unwilling either to live as a drone, an unproductive or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society, or to write anything that might dishonour so royal and generous a foundation.

I have accomplished something, though I am a theologian by profession. Yet, “carried away by the whirlwind of my mind,” as that writer said, my roaming intelligence and inconstant, unsettled mind made me eager—unable even to acquire a superficial skill in any subject—to gain a smattering of them all: to be “somebody in everything, nobody in any one thing.” Plato commends this, and Lipsius, following him, endorses and recommends it as a principle to impress upon every inquiring mind: not to be a slave to one branch of learning, or devote oneself entirely to one subject, as most people do, but to range widely, “a youth of a hundred talents,” to have an oar in everyone's boat, to taste every dish and sip from every cup. This, Montaigne says, was admirably done by Aristotle and by his own learned countryman, Adrien Turnèbe.

I have always had this wandering inclination, though without the same success. Like a spaniel ranging about, barking at every bird it sees and abandoning its proper game, I have pursued everything except what I should. I may justly and truthfully complain, “Whoever is everywhere is nowhere,” and say, as Gesner modestly did, that I have read many books to little purpose. Lacking a good method, I have rummaged confusedly through various authors in our libraries, gaining little for want of skill, order, memory, and judgment.

I have travelled only through maps and charts, where my unconfined thoughts have wandered freely, for I have always taken particular delight in the study of cosmography. Saturn ruled my birth chart and was culminating, and so forth; Mars was the chief indicator of my character, in exact conjunction with my ascendant. Both were favourably placed in their houses, and so forth.

I am not poor, I am not rich: “I have nothing; I lack nothing.” I have little, but want for nothing; all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. I have never obtained greater advancement, and so owe no debt for it. Thanks to my noble and generous patrons, I have enough to live on—“praise be to God”—although I remain a member of the college, like Democritus in his garden, leading a monastic life, “a theatre to myself,” secluded from the world's turmoil and troubles.