d learnedly in philosophy and astronomy, with
Alexander Achilles his master, at Bologna, in Italy. But of these I have
already spoken.

Who can sufficiently speak of these symptoms, or prescribe rules to
comprehend them? as Echo to the painter in Ausonius, _vane quid affectas_,
&c., foolish fellow; what wilt? if you must needs paint me, paint a voice,
_et similem si vis pingere, pinge sonum_; if you will describe melancholy,
describe a fantastical conceit, a corrupt imagination, vain thoughts and
different, which who can do? The four and twenty letters make no more
variety of words in diverse languages, than melancholy conceits produce
diversity of symptoms in several persons. They are irregular, obscure,
various, so infinite, Proteus himself is not so diverse, you may as well
make the moon a new coat, as a true character of a melancholy man; as soon
find the motion of a bird in the air, as the heart of man, a melancholy
man. They are so confused, I say, diverse, intermixed with other diseases.
As the species be confounded (which [2620]I have showed) so are the
symptoms; sometimes with headache, cachexia, dropsy, stone; as you may
perceive by those several examples and illustrations, collected by [2621]
Hildesheim _spicel. 2._ Mercurialis _consil. 118. cap. 6 and 11._ with
headache, epilepsy, priapismus. Trincavelius _consil. 12. lib. 1. consil.
49._ with gout: _caninus appetitus_. Montanus _consil. 26, &c. 23, 234,
249_, with falling-sickness, headache, vertigo, lycanthropia, &c. J. Caesar
Claudinus _consult. 4. consult. 89 and 116._ with gout, agues,
haemorrhoids, stone, &c., who can distinguish these melancholy symptoms so
intermixed with others, or apply them to their several kinds, confine them
into method? 'Tis hard I confess, yet I have disposed of them as I could,
and will descend to particularise them according to their species. For
hitherto I have expatiated in more general lists or terms, speaking
promiscuously of such ordinary signs, which occur amongst writers. Not that
they are all to be found in one man, for that were to paint a monster or
chimera, not a man: but some in one, some in another, and that successively
or at several times.

Which I have been the more curious to express and report; not to upbraid
any miserable man, or by way of derision, (I rather pity them,) but the
better to discern, to apply remedies unto them; and to show that the best
and soundest of us all is in great danger; how much we