nd all precedent symptoms, are more or less apparent, as the
humour is intended or remitted, hardly perceived in some, or not all, most
manifest in others. Childish in some, terrible in others; to be derided in
one, pitied or admired in another; to him by fits, to a second continuate:
and howsoever these symptoms be common and incident to all persons, yet
they are the more remarkable, frequent, furious and violent in melancholy
men. To speak in a word, there is nothing so vain, absurd, ridiculous,
extravagant, impossible, incredible, so monstrous a chimera, so prodigious
and strange, [2536]such as painters and poets durst not attempt, which they
will not really fear, feign, suspect and imagine unto themselves: and that
which [2537]Lod. Vives said in a jest of a silly country fellow, that
killed his ass for drinking up the moon, _ut lunam mundo redderet_, you may
truly say of them in earnest; they will act, conceive all extremes,
contrarieties, and contradictions, and that in infinite varieties.
_Melancholici plane incredibilia sibi persuadent, ut vix omnibus saeculis
duo reperti sint, qui idem imaginati sint (Erastus de Lamiis)_, scarce two
of two thousand that concur in the same symptoms. The tower of Babel never
yielded such confusion of tongues, as the chaos of melancholy doth variety
of symptoms. There is in all melancholy _similitudo dissimilis_, like men's
faces, a disagreeing likeness still; and as in a river we swim in the same
place, though not in the same numerical water; as the same instrument
affords several lessons, so the same disease yields diversity of symptoms.
Which howsoever they be diverse, intricate, and hard to be confined, I will
adventure yet in such a vast confusion and generality to bring them into
some order; and so descend to particulars.

SUBSECT. III.--_Particular Symptoms from the influence of Stars, parts of
the Body, and Humours_.

Some men have peculiar symptoms, according to their temperament and crisis,
which they had from the stars and those celestial influences, variety of
wits and dispositions, as Anthony Zara contends, _Anat. ingen. sect. 1.
memb. 11, 12, 13, 14._ _plurimum irritant influentiae, caelestes, unde
cientur animi aegritudines et morbi corporum_. [2538]One saith, diverse
diseases of the body and mind proceed from their influences, [2539]as I
have already proved out of Ptolemy, Pontanus, Lemnius, Cardan, and others
as they are principal significators of manners, disease