The Anatomy of Melancholy

Italy was once lord of the world, Rome the queen of cities, boasting of twenty thousand inhabitants; now that once all-commanding country is held by petty princes, and Rome is a small village by comparison. Greece, once the home of civilized life and mother of learning and the humanities, is now desolate, the nurse of barbarism, a den of thieves. Germany, then uncultivated and forbidding, according to Tacitus, is now full of magnificent cities. Athens, Corinth, Carthage—what flourishing cities they were, now buried in their own ruins! “Haunts of ravens, wild animals, boars, and beasts,” like so many wildernesses, a refuge for wild creatures.

Venice was a poor fishing town; Paris and London were little clusters of cottages in Caesar’s time, and are now splendid centres of trade. Valois, Plantagenet, and Scaliger—what fortunate families, how likely to endure! Now utterly extinguished and uprooted.

Today he stands on high, full of favour, wealth, honour, and prosperity, at the top of Fortune’s wheel; tomorrow he is in prison, worse than ruined, his son a beggar. You are a poor, servile drudge, “the dregs of the people,” an outright slave; your son may become a prince, like Maximinus or Agathocles, a senator, or an army’s commander.

Now you stand bareheaded before him, work for him, drudge for him and his family, and accept his charity. Wait a little: perhaps his next heir will squander everything in dissipation and sink in rank while you rise, and he will beg from you. You will be his most honoured patron, he your devoted servant; his descendants will run and ride on errands for yours, and do as much for them. What happened with Frisgobald and Cromwell may happen for you.

City men swallow up country gentlemen and settle on their estates; after two or three generations their descendants squander everything in dissipation, and it returns to the city again.

A new occupant comes; For nature has made neither him, Nor me, nor anyone the permanent owner of the soil. He drove us out; Vice, or ignorance of crafty law, will drive him out in turn.

A lawyer buys out his poor client; after a while the client’s descendants buy him and his family out. So things go round, ebb and flow.

Now Umbrenus’s land, it was lately called Ofellus’s; It belongs permanently to no one, but passes for use Now to me, now to others.

As he said then, “Whose land are you? How many masters do you have?” So I say of land, houses, movable possessions, and money: mine today, his a moment later—whose tomorrow? In the end, as Machiavelli observes, virtue and prosperity produce repose; repose, idleness; idleness, dissipation; dissipation, destruction. From this we return to good laws; good laws produce virtuous actions; virtue, glory and prosperity. It is therefore no dishonour, as Guicciardini adds, for a flourishing man, city, or state to fall into ruin, nor a misfortune to be subject to nature’s law.