The Anatomy of Melancholy

What braggarts they and we are, then! “How brief is this talk of us,” as he said; “you will be ashamed of your enlarged renown.” How short a time, how little while does this fame of ours last? When all is said and done, every outlying province, every small territory and city will produce spirits as noble, examples as fine in every respect, people as famous as ourselves. Cadwallader in Wales, Rollo in Normandy, Robin Hood and Little John are as renowned in Sherwood as Caesar in Rome, Alexander in Greece, or his Hephaestion. “Every age and every people will furnish examples and objects of admiration.”

Every town, city and book is full of fine soldiers, senators and scholars. Though Brasidas was a worthy commander, a good man, and—as they thought—unequalled in Lacedaemon, his mother truly said, “Sparta has many men better than Brasidas”: Sparta had many better men than he ever was. However much you admire yourself or your friend, many an obscure fellow the world never noticed, had he held the position or taken part in the action, would have done much better than this man or that, or you yourself.

There is another kind of madman, the opposite of these, mad without knowing it: those who despise all praise and glory, who think themselves most free when they are in fact most mad. “They trample it down, but with a different pride”: a company of Cynics, such as monks, hermits and anchorites, who despise the world, despise themselves, despise all titles, honours and offices, yet in that contempt are prouder than anyone else alive.

They are proud in their humility, proud that they are not proud. “Often a man boasts more vainly of his contempt for vainglory,” as Augustine puts it in Confessions, book 10, chapter 38. Like Diogenes, “they glory inwardly”: they boast within themselves and feed themselves fat on a conceit of holiness, which is no better than hypocrisy.

Many great men who could afford cloth of gold go about in coarse wool and appear lowly and humble in their outward bearing, while inwardly they are swollen with pride, arrogance and self-conceit. Seneca therefore advises his friend Lucilius, in his dress, bearing and outward actions, especially to avoid anything conspicuous in itself: rough clothing, an unkempt head, a shaggy beard, contempt for money, a coarse bed, and whatever pursues fame by that contrary route.

All this madness, however, proceeds from ourselves. The chief engine that batters us comes from others; in this business we are entirely acted upon: by a company of parasites and flatterers who, with excessive praise, inflated epithets, flattering titles and false eulogies, so smear with praise, applaud and gild many a foolish and undeserving man that they clap him clean out of his senses. “It is an exceedingly violent thing,” as Jerome observes: this public applause is most powerful, “a cake of praises.” No drum, fife or trumpet can stir men so; it fattens them, raises them up and casts them down in an instant.

Denied the palm, he returns lean; awarded it, fat.

It makes them fat and lean, as frost does rabbits.