The Anatomy of Melancholy

MEMBER 5 Against sorrow over the death of friends or other causes, groundless fear, and so on.

Death and the departure of friends are generally grievous things. “Of everything that happens in human life, bereavement and death are the bitterest”: the harshest and most bitter events that can befall anyone in this life. “To say farewell for ever,” to part for ever, to leave the world and all our friends: this is “the ultimate terror,” the last and greatest terror, most distressing and troubling to us. “A person dies as often as he loses those dear to him.”

Although we hope for a better life, eternal happiness after these painful and miserable days, we cannot bring ourselves to die willingly. The thought of it is most grievous to us, especially to the fortunate and rich: they shy at the name of death like a horse at a rotten post. Say what you will about that other world: with Montezuma, that Indian prince, they say, “It is good to be here,” and would rather stay here.

Indeed, many noble spirits, people otherwise grave and composed, are so sensitive in this matter that, when they lose a dear friend, they cry out, roar and tear their hair, lamenting for months afterwards. They howl “O hone,” like those Irish women and Greeks at their graves, behave in many unseemly ways, and almost lose their minds. “My dear father, my sweet husband, my only brother is dead: to whom can I cry out? Oh, wretched me!”

Who will give a fountain for tears, and so on?

What shall I do?

But my brother’s death has taken all this pursuit from me in grief. Alas, my brother, taken from wretched me!

My brother’s death has put an end to my study. Woe is me! Alas, my brother is gone!

Mezentius would not live after his son:

Yet I live, and still do not leave humankind and the light; But I will leave them.

And Pompey’s wife cried out at the news of her husband’s death:

It is shameful that, after you, I cannot die of grief alone.

“Violent in grief and unable to endure it,” as Tacitus says of Agrippina: unable to govern her emotions. So, when she heard that her son had been killed, she abruptly broke off her work, her expression and colour changed, she tore her hair, and burst into howling:

Suddenly the colour left her wretched frame; The shuttles fell from her hands, her work unravelled. The unhappy woman rushes out, with a woman’s wailing, Her hair torn.

Another was determined to rush onto the sword’s point after Euryalus’s death:

Pierce me, if there is any mercy; hurl all your weapons At me, O Rutulians.

Oh, let me die; let some good man put an end to me. How Achilles raged over Patroclus’s death! A black cloud of sorrow overshadowed him, says Homer. Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth around his waist, mourned his son for a long time, and could not be comforted. He insisted that he would go down to his son in the grave: Genesis 37:37.