their very intimate and familiar friends; and even then they frequently fit wholly filent, or enter into converfation with feeming pain and reluctance. Frambefarius, a French physician, had two such patients, omnino taciturnos, whom no provocation could prevail upon to speak: and Rodericus à Fonfeca gives an instance of a melancholy young man, of only feven and twenty years of age, who was fo extremely bashful that he could neither eat nor fleep if any perfon was prefent. The mind, in these cases, seems confcious of its debility, and ashamed to expose its defective powers. LOVE OF SOLITUDE is the first symptom and highest enjoyment of a melancholy mind. The fears and forrows which fill the melancholy bofoms of these poor sufferers drive them from all the lively enjoyments of social life. The strong fense they entertain of the inadequacy of their powers to endure the company, or fupport the conversation, of other men, without becoming objects of laughter and derifion, fubdues all the energies of their fouls. While by this dire disease their souls are toss'd, Like BELLEROPHON, they wander through the I deepest fellow creatures, and averle even from their belt and most familiar friends. The firft fymptoms by which the citizens of Abdera difcovered the melancholy of Democritus, were, his 'forfaking the city, wandering, in the day, on the green banks of the neighbouring brooks, and fleeping at nights in dark groves or hollow trees. The Egyptians, in their hieroglyphics, exprefs a melancholy man by a hare fitting in her form, as being the moft timid and folitary of all animals. A TEDIUM VITE, or weariness of life, fucceeds. Incapable of relifhing any of the pleafures or amusements of the world, uneafy and reftlefs in every fituation, difpleafed with every occurrence, and anxious to pull the crawling ferpent from their hearts, they call one moment upon death to relieve them from their miferies, and the next fly from his feared embrace: unwilling to die, and yet unable to live, Until the increafing wound such pangs create, The poifoned bowl of Socrates, the dagger of Lucretia, the halter of Timon, the knife of Cato, and and the fword of Nero, are the fell inftruments which fate bequeaths to their disordered fouls. MELANCHOLY difclofes its fymptoms according to the fentiments and paffions of the minds it affects. An ambitious man fancies himself a lord, statesman, minifter, king, emperor, or monarch, and pleafes his mind with the vain hopes of even future preferment. Elinora Meliorina, a melancholy but aspiring lady of Mantua, conceived fhe was married to a king, and would kneel down and addrefs her husband as if he were on his throne; and if fhe found by chance a bit of glass on a dung-hill, or in the street, fhe would say it was a jewel fent to her by her lord and husband. The mind of a covetous man fees nothing but his re or spe, and looks at the most valuable objects with an eye of hope, or with the fond conceit that they are already his own. A love-fick brain adores, in romantic ftrains, the lovely idol of his heart, "And in the fhape of Corin, fits all day or fighs in real mifery at her fancied frowns. And a fcholar's mind evaporates in the fumes of imaginary praife and literary diftinction. Rhafis, I 2 172 THE CONSEQUENCES, &c. Rhafts, the Arabian, divides the symptoms of melancholy into three degrees: First, falfa cogitatio, fuch as confift in falfe conceits and idle thoughts: fecondly, falfo cogitata loqui, where the patient foliloquifes and utters his conceits to himself; and thirdly, when the patient puts his conceits into practice. But it is impoffible to speak fufficiently upon this fubject; for to attempt a description of a phantaftical conceit, a corrupt imagination, or a vain thought, would be like the artist, in Aufonius, who attempted to paint an echo. Certain it is, however, that there is nothing so vain, absurd, ridiculous, extravagant, impoffible, incredible, chimerical, prodigious, or strange, which a melancholy man will not really fear, feign, suspect, and imagine: and what Ludovicus Vives said in jest, of a filly country fellow that killed his ass for drinking up the moon, ut lunam mundo rederet, we may truly fay of him in earnest. tower of Babel never yielded fuch confufion of tongues as the chaos of melancholy does variety of fymptoms; for there is in every fpecies of melancholy fimilitudo diffimilis; as in men's faces, a disagreeing likeness ftill: and as in a river we swim in the fame place, though not in the fame identical water, fo this disease yields a continued fucceffion of different symptoms. The CHAPTER CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE CURE OF MELANCHOLY. MEL ELANCHOLY is faid to be the inexorable parent of every mental disease; but Paracelfus ridicules the idea of its being incurable; and certain it is, that this dreadful malady, even in its most afflicting stages, seldom causes immediate death; except, indeed, by the ungoverned hand of the miferable fufferer. Montanus, however, is of opinion, that to whatever extent the patient may be relieved, fome dregs and veftiges, the veteris veftigia flammæ, will still remain, and accompany him to his grave; and unquestionably it is a disease much more eafy to be prevented than entirely cured. "To adminifter to a mind diseased, "Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, "Raze out the written troubles of the brain, "And with some sweet oblivious antidote "Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff "Which weighs upon the heart, is certainly a task furrounded with difficulties. I 3. feemingly |