will be some relics of melancholy still left, not so easily to be rooted out. Seldom does this disease produce death, except (which is the most grievous calamity of all) when these patients make away with themselves—a thing familiar enough amongst them, when they are driven to do violence to themselves to escape from present insufferable pain. They can take no rest in the night, or, if they slumber, fearful dreams astonish them. Their soul abhorreth all meat, and they are brought to death’s door, being bound in misery and in iron. Like Job, they curse their stars, for Job was melancholy to despair, and almost to madness. They are weary of the sun, and yet afraid to die, _vivere nolunt et mori nesciunt_. And then, like Æsop’s fishes, they leap from the frying pan into the fire, when they hope to be cured by means of physic—a miserable end to the disease; when ultimately left to their fate by a jury of physicians, are furiously disposed; and there remains no more to such persons, if that heavenly physician, by his grace and mercy, (whose aid alone avails,) do not heal and help them. One day of such grief as theirs is as a hundred years: it is a plague of the sense, a convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell; and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart. No bodily torture is like unto it; all other griefs are swallowed up in this great Euripus. I say the melancholy man then is the cream and quintessence of human adversity. All other diseases are trifles to hypochondria; it is the pith and marrow of them all! A melancholy man is the true Prometheus, bound to Caucasus; the true Tityrus, whose bowels are still devoured by a vulture.” “Dull melancholy—— She’ll make you start at ev’ry noise you hear, And visions strange shall to your eyes appear. Her voice is low, and gives a hollow sound; She hates the light, and is in darkness found; Or sits by blinking lamps, or taper small, Which various shadows make against the wall. She loves nought else but noise which discord makes, As croaking frogs whose dwelling is in lakes; The raven hoarse, the mandrake’s hollow groan, And shrieking owls, that fly i’th’ night alone; The tolling bell, which for the dead rings out, A mill, where rushing waters run about. She loves to walk in the still moonshine light, And in a thick dark grove she takes delight; In hollow caves, thatch’d houses, and low cells, She loves to live, and there alone she dwells.”