e, or alone, a la mort, or carried
away wholly with pleasant dreams and phantasies, but if once crossed and
displeased,

"Pectore concipiet nil nisi triste suo;"

"He will imagine naught save sadness in his heart;"

his countenance is altered on a sudden, his heart heavy, irksome thoughts
crucify his soul, and in an instant he is moped or weary of his life, he
will kill himself. A fifth complains in his youth, a sixth in his middle
age, the last in his old age.

Generally thus much we may conclude of melancholy; that it is [2604]most
pleasant at first, I say, _mentis gratissimus error_, [2605]a most
delightsome humour, to be alone, dwell alone, walk alone, meditate, lie in
bed whole days, dreaming awake as it were, and frame a thousand fantastical
imaginations unto themselves. They are never better pleased than when they
are so doing, they are in paradise for the time, and cannot well endure to
be interrupt; with him in the poet, [2606]_pol me occidistis amici, non
servastis ait_? you have undone him, he complains, if you trouble him: tell
him what inconvenience will follow, what will be the event, all is one,
_canis ad vomitum_, [2607]'tis so pleasant he cannot refrain. He may thus
continue peradventure many years by reason of a strong temperature, or some
mixture of business, which may divert his cogitations: but at the last
_laesa imaginatio_, his phantasy is crazed, and now habituated to such
toys, cannot but work still like a fate, the scene alters upon a sudden,
fear and sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspicion, discontent,
and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places; so by little and little, by
that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, melancholy this
feral fiend is drawn on, [2608]_et quantum vertice ad auras Aethereas,
tantum radice in Tartara tendit_, "extending up, by its branches, so far
towards Heaven, as, by its roots, it does down towards Tartarus;" it was
not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh; a cankered soul
macerated with cares and discontents, _taedium vitae_, impatience, agony,
inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries. They
cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit for action, and
the like. [2609]Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered, ugly, their
looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less
entangled, as the humour hath been intended, or according to the
c