all, melancholy men; for there are some who can freely smile and laugh, while others are free both from grief and apprehension, in the very crisis of the complaint.

The principal part affected by this disease is said by some writers to be the heart; because that is the region from whence the passions of fear and sorrow generally arise; but Laurentius, Hippocrates, Galen, and most of the Arabian writers, with greater reason contend, that, as melancholy is a species of dotage, the brain must, either by consent, or essence, be first affected, as being a similar part: not, indeed, in its ventricles, or by any obstruction in them, for then it would be apoplexy, or epilepsy; but by a cold, dry distemperature of its very substance, which, when overheated, produces madness; and when rendered too cold and dry, engenders melancholy. Montaltus, however, insists, that not only the heart, but the whole frame and contexture of the body, is in general affected by this disease; not originally, but sympathetically, by reason of the intimate connexion which almost every part holds with the brain; for these parts do, by the law of nature, sympathize, and have a fellow-feeling with each other and indeed, as the malady is originally induced by a disordered imagination, and the powers of the imagination are subject to, and controuled by, the constitution of the body, it follows that the brain, as the seat of reason, must needs be the part that is first misaffected; and then the heart, as the seat of affection. This question has been copiously

discussed by Cappivaccius and Mercurialis*, who agree in the opinion, that the subject is the inner brain, from whence it is by sympathy communicated to the heart, and other inferior parts, which are greatly affected when the disease comes by consent, and proceeds from any disorder in the stomach, liver, spleen, pylorus, or meseraick veins; for the human frame is so fearfully and wonderfully constructed, so curiously wrought, framed in such nice proportions, and united with such admirable art and harmony, as Ludovicus Vives†, in his Fable of Man, has elegantly shewn, that, like a clock, or other piece of mechanism, if one wheel be amiss,

* Jerome Mercurialis, a celebrated physician, frequently called the Esculapius of his age, was born at Forli, in the year 1530, and died on the 13th of November, 1596. Padua, Bologna, and Pisa, were the principal places in which he practised; and he excelled as much in giving salutary advice to those who were well, as in giving perfect health to those who were ill. His grateful countrymen erected a statue in honour of his memory.

+ John Louis Vives, born at Valencia, in Spain, in the year 1492, taught the belles lettres at Louvain with such great applause, that he was invited to England to teach Queen Mary the Latin tongue. He was confined six months in prison by Henry the Eighth, for having expressed his disapprobation of the King's divorce from Queen Catharine. He died at Bruges, on the 6th of May, 1540. Erasmus, Budæus, and Vives, passed for the most learned men of the age, and formed a kind of triumvirate in literature; but Vives was very inferior to Erasmus in wit, and to Budæus in learning. His style, though pure, is hard and dry, and his observations are frequently rather bold than true; but, notwithstanding these defects, he possessed considerable merit.

all the rest are affected, and the whole fabric disordered. Many doubts, however, have been entertained, as to what property of the brain it is, whether it be the imagination, or the reason alone, or both together, that first feels this depraved affection. Galen, Ætius, Altomarus, and Bruel, are of opinion that the defect first seizes on the imagination only; but Montaltus confutes this theory, and illustrates a contrary doctrine, by the examples of a man whose mind was so deranged by this disease, that he thought himself a shell-fish; and of a monk, who would not be persuaded but that he was damned; for in these instances, the reason, as well as the imagination, must have been defective, or the mind would have been still competent to correct the errors, and detect the fallacy of such extravagant conceptions; and to this opinion, Avicenna, Aretæus, Gorgonius, Guianerius, and most writers, subscribe. Certain it is, that the imagination is hurt and misaffected: and I coincide with Albertinus Bottonus, a celebrated doctor of Padua, that the disease first affects the imagination, and afterwards, as it becomes more or less inveterate, or is of longer or shorter duration, depraves the reason: and there is no doubt, as Hercules de Saxonia justly concludes, that not only faith, opinion, and discourse, but the seat of reason itself, may be materially injured, by the continued effects of a diseased imagination*.

The inhabitants of climates where the extremes * The distinct offices of the Reason and Imagination

of heat and cold prevail; those who possess a swarthy, or high sanguine complexion; who have hot hearts, moist brains, dry livers, and cold stomachs; who are discontented, passionate, and peevish, and are of a middle age; are most liable to be affected with this complaint, which certainly prevails more among men than women: but none of any complexion, condition, sex, or age, even the most merry and the most pleasant, the lightest heart, the freest mind, none, excepting only fools and stoics, who are never troubled with any passion or affection, but, like Anacreon's grasshopper, live sine sanguine et dolore*, are has been elegantly described by Dr. Akenside in the following lines:

For of all

The inhabitants of earth, to man alone
Creative Wisdom gave to lift his eye

To Truth's eternal treasures; thence to frame
The sacred laws of action and of will,
Discerning justice from unequal deeds,
And temperance from folly. But beyond
This energy of truth, whose dictates bind
Assenting Reason, the benignant Sire,
To deck the honour'd paths of just and good,
Has added bright Imagination's rays ;
Where Virtue rising from the awful depth
Of Truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake
The unadorned condition of her birth;
And dressed by Fancy in ten thousand hues,
Assumes a various feature, to attract,

With charms responsive to each gazer's eye,
The hearts of men.

* The grasshopper, as appears from Ælian, was formerly esteemed sacred to the muses; and, from the exility of its nature, a kind of rural deity, deriving its nourishment

exempt from this melancholy catalogue; and indeed, as Rasis justly observes, "the finest

not from the gross productions of the earth, but from the dews of heaven: Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicada, says Virgil, in his fifth Eclogue: "Bees feed on thyme, and grasshoppers on dew;" and were supposed, like the deities of Homer, to be free from blood. The Ode of Anacreon on this musical insect, as Theocritus terms it, has been thus translated :

Thee, sweet grasshopper, we call
Happiest of insects all,

Who from spray to spray cans't skip,
And the dew of morning sip.
Little sips inspire to sing,

Then thou art happy as a king.
All whatever thou can'st see,
Herbs and flowers belong to thee;
All the various seasous yield,
All the produce of the field.
Thou, quite innocent of harm,
Lov'st the farmer, and the farm.
Singing sweet when summer's near,
Thou to all mankind art dear;
Dear to all the tuneful Nine,
Scated round the throne divine;
Dear to Phoebus, God of Day;
He inspires thy mighty lay;
And with voice melodious blest,
And in vivid colours drest,
Thou from spoil of time art free
Age can never injure thee.
Wisest daughter of the earth!
Fond of song, and full of mirth ;
Free from flesh, exempt from pains,

No blood riots in thy veins.

To the blest I equal thee,

Little demi-deity.

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