The Anatomy of Melancholy

In Lucian, Pancrates lacked a servant on his journey from Memphis to Coptus in Egypt. He took a door bar, spoke some magical words—Eucrates, who tells the story, was there—and made it stand up like a servant, fetch water, turn the spit, serve supper, and do whatever other work he wanted. When it had finished the service he required, he turned his man back into a stick. I have no such skill to create men whenever I please, or money to hire them; no whistle to summon them like a ship’s master and order them to hurry. I have no such authority or benefactor as the noble Ambrose was to Origen, providing six or seven copyists to take down his dictation. So I must do my work myself.

I was therefore forced, like a bear giving birth to her cubs, to bring forth this shapeless lump. I had no time to lick it into shape, as she does her young, but had to publish it just as it was first written: “whatever came into my mouth,” in an improvised style, as I usually perform all my other compositions. “I poured out whatever my genius dictated,” from a confused heap of notes, and wrote with as little deliberation as I ordinarily speak: without affecting grand words, inflated phrases, jingling expressions, figures of speech, striking lines that catch fire in flight like Acestes’ arrows, flights of wit, splendid bursts of inspiration, eulogies, exaggerated ornament, elegant turns, and so on, which so many people love.

I am “a water-drinker”: I drink none of the wine that so greatly improves our modern wits. I am a loose, plain, rough writer: “I call a fig a fig and a spade a spade.” I am as outspoken as I am unrestrained: “the same in my pen as in my mind.” I call a spade a spade; “I write these things for minds, not ears.” I value substance, not words, remembering Cardano’s saying, “words for things, not things for words,” and seeking, with Seneca, “what to write, not how”: what to write about rather than how to write.

For, as Philo thinks, someone occupied with substance neglects words, and those who excel in the art of speaking have no deep learning: Words glitter with trappings, but words have no marrow within. Besides, wise Seneca observed: when you see a man painstaking about his words and polished in his speech, be certain that his mind is occupied with trifles; there is nothing solid in him. “Verbal elegance is no manly ornament.” As someone said of a nightingale: you are a voice, and nothing more, and so on.