The Anatomy of Melancholy

and labour hard for it. So did Seneca, by his own admission in Letter 8: “Not a day do I spend idle. For part of the night I keep my eyes, tired with waking and now drooping into sleep, at their continual task.” Hear Cicero in For the Poet Archias: while others idled and took their pleasure, he was continually at his books. So do those who would be scholars, and at the risk, I say, of their health, fortunes, senses and lives.

How much did Aristotle and Ptolemy spend? “The price of a kingdom,” they say, more than a king’s ransom. How many crowns a year did they spend to perfect the sciences, one on his History of Animals, the other on his Almagest? How much time did Thabit ibn Qurra spend discovering the motion of the eighth sphere? Forty years and more, some write.

How many poor scholars have lost their senses or become fools, neglecting every worldly affair and their own health, wealth, “being and well-being,” to gain knowledge? After all their labour, the world’s reward is to call them ridiculous, foolish simpletons, idiots and asses; and, as often happens, to reject, despise and mock them as foolish and mad. Look for examples in Hildesheim, Gleanings, part 2, On Mania and Delirium; read Trincavelli, book 3, consultation 36 and chapter 17; Montanus, consultation 233; Garceus, On Judgements of Nativities, chapter 33; Mercurialis, consultation 86, chapter 25; and Prosper Calenius in his book On Black Bile. Go to Bedlam and ask.

Or if they keep their senses, they are still thought worthless fellows and fools because of their behaviour. After seven years of study—“he comes out more silent than a statue and usually shakes the people with laughter.”

Because they cannot ride a horse, which any country fellow can do, greet and court a gentlewoman, carve at table, bow and make polite salutations, which any common swaggerer can do—“the people laugh at them,” and so on—our fashionable gentlemen laugh them to scorn and reckon them simple fools. Indeed, such is their misery, they often deserve it: a mere scholar, a mere ass.

With head bent sideways and eyes fixed upon the ground, They gnaw their mutterings and furious silences alone, Weighing words upon an outstretched lip, Pondering an old sick man’s dreams: that nothing comes From nothing, and nothing can return to nothing.

Who lean their heads awry, Piercing the earth with a fixed eye; Who gnaw their muttering to themselves And furious silence, as if weighing Each word upon an outstretched lip; and who Ponder the dreams of old sick men: “From nothing, nothing can be brought, And what exists can never turn to nought.”