THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, WHAT IT IS, WITH ALL THE KINDS, CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, PROGNOSTICS, AND SEVERAL CURES OF IT. IN THREE PARTITIONS: WITH THEIR SEVERAL SECTIONS, MEMBERS, AND SUBSECTIONS, PHILOSOPHICALLY, MEDICINALLY, HISTORICALLY OPENED AND CUT UP. BY DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR. WITH A SATYRICALL PREFACE, CONDUCING TO THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSE. NEW EDITION, CORRECTED: TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR. Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, REES, & CO.; J. BOOKER; S. BAGSTER; BALDWIN & SECT. III. MEMB. I. SUBSECT. I. A Consolatory Digression, containing the Remedies of all manner of Discontents. BECAUSE, in the precedent section, I have made mention of good counsel, comfortable speeches, perswasion, how necessarily they are required to the cure of a discontented or troubled mind, how present a remedy they yield, and many times a sole sufficient cure of themselves; I have thought fit, in this following section, a little to digress, (if at least it be to digress in this subject) to collect and glean a few remedies, and comfortable speeches, out of our best orators, philosophers, divines, and fathers of the church, tending to this purpose. I confess, many have copiously written of this subject, Plato, Seneca, Plutarch, Xenophon, Epictetus, Theophrastus, Xenocrates, Crantor, Lucian, Boëthius-and some of late, Sadoletus, Cardan, Budæus, Stella, Petrarch, Erasmus, besides Austin, Cyprian, Bernard, &c. and they so well, that, as Hierome in like case said, si nostrum areret ingenium, de illorum posset fontibus irrigari, if our barren wits were dryed up, they might be copiously irrigated from those well-springs; and I shall but actum agere. Yet, because these tracts are not so obvious and common, I will epitomize, and briefly insert some of their divine precepts, reducing their voluminous and vast treatises to my small scale; for it were otherwise impossible to bring so great vessels into so little a creek. And, although (as Čardan said of his book de consol.) I know before hand, this tract of mine many will contemn and reject; they that are fortunate, happy, and in flourishing estate, have no need of such consolatory speeches; they that are miserable and 1 Lib. de lib. propriis. Hos libros scio multos spernere; nam felices bis se non indigere putant, infelices ad solationem miseriæ non sufficere. Et tamen felicibus moderationem, dum inconstantiam humanæ felicitatis docent, præstant: infelices, si omnia recte æstimare velint, felices reddere possunt. |