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The soul loaths the day, and sickens at the sky,
And longs in bitterness of soul to die.

Stroza Filius, the elegant Italian poet, in his Epicedium, bewails the death of his fond father with an excess of sorrow; and Quintilian, in lamenting the loss of his wife and children, shews how superior the genuine feelings of the heart are to all the rules of rhetoric in the eloquence of distress. "What affectionate father could ever pardon my insensibility should I be capable to pursue my studies? What parent will not detest me, should I now find any other employment for my tongue, than to accuse the gods of suffering me to live, after depriving me of all that was near and dear to my soul? Can I think that providence watches over mortals? Witness, my misery, it does not and yet in what am I to blame, but that I yet live?" Even Alexander, whose trade was death, on losing his beloved Hephestion, lay tossing in the bitterness of his grief for three days on the cold earth, refusing all sustenance or sleep, and calling on the fates to destroy him, that his soul might be united in death, as it had been through life, with that of his departed friend: and with similar excess did Adrian, the emperor, lament the death of his friend Antinous; and Austin, his mother Monica: to which might be added many other instances of a like kind, from the works of the later physicians. "From the day," says Montaigne, "that I had the misfortune to lose my friend, I pined and languished; the pleasures of the world, instead of comforting me, doubled

my affliction. I was so accustomed to be his second part at all times and places, that I felt my better half was taken away. There was no action or imagination in which I did not miss him; for as he surpassed me in virtue, and every other accomplishment, so also did he in the duties of friendship."

Now he, alas! is snatch'd away,

Wherefore, ah! wherefore should I stay?
My bliss is fled; no longer whole,
And but possessing half my soul,
Cheerful to Pluto's dark abode,
With him I'll tread the dreary road;
Nor fell Chimera's breath of fire,
Nor hundred handed Gyas dire,
Shall ever tear my friend from me,
So Justice and the Fates decree.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF MELANCHOLY.

THE consequences which the disease of melancholy produces, are the symptoms and prognostics, or, in other terms, the effects which follow from the causes already described. Parrhasius, the celebrated Grecian painter, purchased, among those Olynthian captives which Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, a strong, athletic, but extreme old man, and put him to the most violent agonies that the severest tortures could inflict, in order, by the writhings and contortions of his body, the better to express the pains and passions of the Prometheus which he

was then about to paint: but the effects and consequences of a melancholy habit are so strongly delineated upon both the body and the mind, that no such ingenious, but inhuman, cruelty is necessary to describe the symptoms of this torturing disease. The herb tortocolla is said to produce the different effects of laughing, crying, sleeping, dancing, singing, howling, and drinking, on different constitutions; and in like manner the various causes which produce melancholy, work in different habits innumerable and opposite symptoms; but various and complicated as they are, they may be aptly described in such as affect the Body, and such as affect the Mind.

The consequences of this disease, upon the body, are leanness, a withered skin, hollow eyes, a wrinkled forehead, a dejected visage, harsh features, cholicy complaints, eructations, singing in the ears, twinkling of the eyes, vertigo in the head, a palpitation of the heart, a faultering speech, laughing, grinning, fleering, murmuring, blushing, trembling, soliloquy, sobbing, swooning, a depraved and indifferent appetite, bad digestion, a slow and timid pulse, except it be of the carotides, which is very strong; varying, as Struthius clearly proves, according to the strength and violence of the disease; but the principal consequences is an eternal restlessness, watching, and indisposition to sleep. Trincavelius mentions an instance of a melancholy man, who never closed his eyes for fifty days : the mother of Hercules de Saxonia, who laboured for many years under this disease, declared

:

most solemnly, that, during the period of seven months, she was a total stranger to the blessings of repose and Skenkius produces instances of patients who have never slept for two years; and yet received no visible injury from so long a privation of rest.

Tir'd nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!

He, like the world, his ready visit pays

Where fortune smiles: the wretched he forsakes:
Swift on his downy pinions flies from woe,

And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.

The consequences of this disease on the mind, are fear, sorrow, suspicion, jealousy, inconstancy, petulancy, bashfulness, a love of solitude, and a hatred of life.

Fear is almost the first, and certainly the most general, consequence of a melancholy disposition; but the apprehensions it excites are always without any real cause, or apparent foundation. Like an unstaunched hound, the mind runs away with a wrong scent, without perceiving itself to be at fault; as in those cases where the patients conceive the canopy of heaven is falling upon their heads; that their bodies are frames of glass about to receive a fracture; that the earth is about to sink under their feet; that they are kings, cardinals, persons appointed to save the world, and many other of the like nature, more or less extravagant, in proportion to the strength and description of the disease.

Sorrow, a causeless sorrow, is another inseparable companion of melancholy. The unhappy sufferers, pensive, weeping, and dejected,

look as if they had newly come from the Trophonian cave; or as if the vulture which is said to have preyed incessantly on the vitals of Titius, was continually gnawing at their hearts. Terrible dreams disturb their short repose; and no sooner are their eyes open, than the heaviest sighs escape from their lips. Smiles, indeed, and fits of laughter, will sometimes intervene; but they only sink from their short-lived mirth into deeper sadness and despondency.

Suspicion and Jealousy are among the mental aberrations of this disease. A melancholy person always conceives himself neglected, and applies every whisper or jest which he happens to hear to his own disadvantage; misconstrues every word that is uttered; puts the worst interpretation on all that is said; and conceives all around him are forming plans to circumvent and cover him with disgrace. Montanus mentions the case of a melancholy Jew, who was so waspish and suspicious, that no man, however cautious, could continue inoffensively in his company: and these unhappy conceits generally strike deep root into their disordered minds.

Inconstancy is another characteristic consequence of this disease: alternately easy and restless, resolute and wavering, obstinate and yielding, prodigal and covetous, constant and fickle, pleased and displeased, animated and dejected.

"From their coarse mixture of terrestial parts,

Desire and fear by turns possess their hearts,

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