When I lie, sit, or walk alone, Methinks I hear, methinks I see, Now here, then there, the world is mine; Whate'er is lovely or divine. All other joys to this are folly; But when methinks I hear, and see, Methinks I court, methinks I kiss, Naught so sweet as Melancholy. But when I feel love's various frights, Deep sighs, sad tears, and sleepless nights, My jealous fits, my cruel fate! I then repent, but 'tis too late: No torment is so sad as love, So bitter to my soul can prove : Friends and companions, get ye gone! Ne'er well, but when my thoughts and I Do domineer in privacy. No gem, no treasure like to this; 'Tis my delight, my crown, my bliss: 'Tis my sole plague to be alone; The scene is chang'd, my joys are gone; I'll not change life with any king; I'll change my state with any wretch, But the melancholy of which we intend to treat in the following pages, is not merely the transitory dejection of spirits above mentioned, but a permanent and habitual disorder of the intellect, morbus sonticus aut chronicus; a noisome, chronic, or continuate disease; a settled humour, not errant, but fixed and grown into an inveterate habit. It is, in short, that “Dull melancholy, Whose drossy thoughts drying the feeble brain, CHAPTER II. THE DEFINITION, AFFECTION, MATTER, AND MELANCHOLY derives its name from the Greek word Μελανχολια, quasi, Μελαιναχολη, which signifies that black choler which corrodes the constitution of the patient during the prevalency of the disease. The descriptions, notations, and definitions which are given of it, are many and various; and it is even doubted whether it be a cause or an effect; an original disorder, or only a symptom of some other complaint. Fracastorius, in his 2nd book "Of Intellect," calls those melancholy "whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler has so misaffected, that they become mad, and doat in most things, or in all belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding" and others, as Galen*, Melanelius, Ruffust, Ætiust, Hercules de Saxonia, Fuschius§, Arnoldus Breviarus ||, Guianerius ¶, Paulus ** Halyabbas, Aretæus††, Montanus ‡‡, and other * Claudius Galenus was born at Pergamus in the year of our Lord 131. His father was a celebrated architect, and spared no pains in the education of his son; but medicine was his favourite study; and he attained so profound a knowledge of this art, that his contemporaries attributed his success to the power of magic; but Nature and the works of Hippocrates were his best instructors. After having gained great reputation under the reigns of the Antonines, Marcus Aurelius, and other emperors, died in the place of his nativity in the year 210. he' + Ruffus was a physician at Ephesus, and attained a high degree of reputation under the Emperor Trajan. His works, which are frequently cited by Suidas, were published at London in 1726, in quarto. Ætius lived very near the end of the fifth or in the beginning of the sixth century. § Leonard Tusch, or Fuschius, was born at Wembdingen in Bavaria, and died in 1566. Arnold of Villeneuve, a physician of the thirteenth century. ¶ John Guianerius was born at Anternach in the year 1487, and was afterwards appointed physician to Francis I. He died in the year 1574. ** Francis Paul, a physician of the academies of Montpellier and Marseilles, was born at St. Chamas in Provence, and died at the age of forty-three years. ++ Aretæus of Cappadocia, a Grecian physician, of the sect of Pneumatics, lived under Julius Cæsar or Trajan. tt John Baptist Montanus, of Verona, was born in the year 1498, and died on the 6th of May, 1551. He was esteemed a second Galen, and enjoyed the double C celebrated writers upon this subject, describe it to be " a bad and peevish disease, which makes men degenerate into beasts;"-" a privation or infection of the middle cell of the head;"—“ a depravation of the principal function by means of black choler;"-" a commotion of the mind, or perpetual anguish of the soul, fastened on one thing, without an ague or fever; having for its ordinary companion fear and sadness without any apparent occasion." It is said to be a dotage, to shew that some one principal faculty, as the imagination, or the reason, is corrupted, as it is with all melancholy persons: it is said to be an anguish of the principal parts of the mind, with a view to distinguish it from cramp, palsy, and such diseases as affect the outward sense and motion of the body: it is said to be a depravation of the principal functions, in order to distinguish it from fatuity and madness, in which those functions are rather abolished than depraved it is said to be unaccompanied by ague or fever, because the humour is most part cold, dry, and contrary to putrefaction; and which distinguishes it from those disorders which are called phrensies: and it is said to be attended with vain fears and groundless sorrows, in order to differ it from madness, and from the effects of the ordinary passions of fear and sorrow, which are the true characteristics and inseparable companions of most, though not of : advantage of being the first poet and the first physician of his age. |