Generally thus much we may conclude of melancholy: that it is most pleasant at first, I say, _mentis gratissimus error_, a most delightsome humor, to be alone, dwell alone, walk alone, meditate, lie in bed whole days, dreaming awake as it were, and frame a thousand phantastical 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:-- "--pol! me occidistis, amici, Non servâstis, 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_, '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 _læsa imaginatio_, his phantasy is crazed, & 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 little by little, by that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, Melancholy this feral fiend is drawn on, _et quantum vertice ad auras Æthereas, 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, _tædium vitæ_, impatience, agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries. They cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit for action, and the like. 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 humor hath been intended, or according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.