The Anatomy of Melancholy

His saying was true: “wine brings joy and grief.” Drink causes mirth, and drink causes sorrow; drink causes poverty and want (Proverbs 21), shame and disgrace. “Many have fallen into dishonour through drinking wine and, stripped of their honours, have wandered as fugitives,” says Augustine. Many men have shipwrecked their fortunes and wander like rogues and beggars, having turned all their property into “drinkable gold,” though they might otherwise have lived in good standing and prosperity.

For a few hours’ pleasure—for their term of merriment is short—or “voluntary madness,” as Seneca calls it, they purchase endless weariness and trouble.

That other madness centres on women. “It makes the heart turn away,” says the wise man, “and diminishes a man’s brain.” At first she is pleasant, like Dioscorides’ rhododaphne, that plant so beautiful to the eye but poisonous to taste. What follows is as bitter as wormwood in the end (Proverbs 5:4), and sharp as a two-edged sword. At 7:21: “Her house is the way to hell, and goes down to the chambers of death.”

What more sorrowful thing could be said? They are miserable in this life: mad, beasts, led like oxen to the slaughter. Worse still, whoremongers and drunkards will be judged: “they forfeit grace,” says Augustine, “lose glory, and incur eternal damnation.” They lose grace and glory,

That brief pleasure Cancels heaven’s eternal glory—

They gain hell and eternal damnation.