All other joys to this are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy Presents a thousand ugly shapes, Headless bears, black men, and apes, Doleful outcries, and fearful sights, My sad and dismal soul affrights.All my griefs to this are jolly, None so damn'd as melancholy. Methinks I court, methinks I kiss,
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Methinks I now embrace my mistress. O blessed days, O sweet content,
In Paradise my time is spent.
Such thoughts may still my fancy move, So may I ever be in love.
All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. When I recount love's many frights,
My sighs and tears, my waking nights,
My jealous fits; O mine hard fate
I now repent, but 'tis too late. No torment is so bad as love, So bitter to my soul can prove. All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so harsh as melancholy.
Friends and companions get you gone,
'Tis my desire to be alone;
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. All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy.
'Tis my sole plague to be alone, I am a beast, a monster grown, I will no light nor company,
I find it now my misery.
The scene is turn'd, my joys are gone, Fear, discontent, and sorrows come. All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so fierce as melancholy.
I'll not change life with any king, I ravisht am: can the world bring
More joy, than still to laugh and smile, In pleasant toys time to beguile?
Do not, O do not trouble me, So sweet content I feel and see. All my joys to this are folly, None so divine as melancholy.
I'll change my state with any wretch, Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch; My pain's past cure, another hell,
I may not in this torment dwell! Now desperate I hate my life, Lend me a halter or a knife;
All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so damn'd as melancholy. DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER.
Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as [7]he said, Primum si noluero, non respondebo, quis coacturus est? I am a free man born, and may choose whether I will tell; who can compel me? If I be urged, I will as readily reply as that Egyptian in [8]Plutarch, when a curious fellow would needs
know what he had in his basket, Quum vides velatam, quid inquiris in rem absconditam? It was therefore covered, because he should not know what was in it. Seek not after that which is hid; if the contents please thee, [9]and be for thy use, suppose the Man in
the Moon, or whom thou wilt to be the author; I would not willingly be known. Yet in some sort to give thee satisfaction, which is more than I need, I will show a reason, both of this usurped name, title, and subject. And first of the name of Democritus; lest any man, by reason of it, should be deceived, expecting a pasquil, a satire, some ridiculous treatise (as I myself should have done), some
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prodigious tenet, or paradox of the earth's motion, of infinite worlds, in infinito vacuo, ex fortuita atomorum collisione, in an infinite
waste, so caused by an accidental collision of motes in the sun, all which Democritus held, Epicurus and their master Lucippus of old maintained, and are lately revived by Copernicus, Brunus, and some others. Besides, it hath been always an ordinary custom, as [10]Gellius observes, for later writers and impostors, to broach many absurd and insolent fictions, under the name of so noble a philosopher as Democritus, to get themselves credit, and by that means the more to be respected, as artificers usually do, Novo qui marmori ascribunt Praxatilem suo. 'Tis not so with me.
[11]Non hic Centaurus, non Gorgonas, Harpyasque
Invenies, hominem pagina nostra sapit.
No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find,
My subject is of man and human kind.
Thou thyself art the subject of my discourse. [12]Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, Gaudia, discursus, nostri farrago libelli.
Whate'er men do, vows, fears, in ire, in sport, Joys, wand'rings, are the sum of my report.
My intent is no otherwise to use his name, than Mercurius Gallobelgicus, Mercurius Britannicus, use the name of Mercury, [13] Democritus Christianus, &c.; although there be some other circumstances for which I have masked myself under this vizard, and some peculiar respect which I cannot so well express, until I have set down a brief character of this our Democritus, what he was, with an epitome of his life.
Democritus, as he is described by [14]Hippocrates and [15]Laertius, was a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days, [16]and much given to solitariness, a famous philosopher in his age, [17]coaevus with Socrates, wholly addicted to his studies at the last, and to a private life: wrote many excellent works, a great divine, according to the divinity of those times, an expert physician, a politician, an excellent mathematician, as [18]Diacosmus and the rest of his works do witness. He was much delighted with the studies of husbandry, saith [19]Columella, and often I find him cited by [20]Constantinus and others treating of that subject. He knew the natures, differences of all beasts, plants, fishes, birds; and, as some say, could [21]understand the tunes and voices of them. In a word, he was omnifariam doctus, a general scholar, a great student; and to the intent he might better contemplate, [22]I find it related by some, that he put out his eyes, and was in his old age voluntarily blind, yet saw more than all Greece besides, and [23] writ of every subject, Nihil in toto opificio naturae, de quo non scripsit. [24]A man of an excellent wit, profound conceit; and to attain knowledge the better in his younger years, he travelled to Egypt and [25] Athens, to confer with learned men, [26]admired of some, despised of others. After a wandering life, he settled at Abdera, a town in Thrace, and was sent for thither to be their lawmaker, recorder, or town-clerk, as some will; or as others, he was there bred and born. Howsoever it was, there he lived at last in a garden in the suburbs, wholly betaking himself to his studies and a private life, [27]saving that sometimes
he would walk down to the haven, [28]and laugh heartily at such variety of ridiculous objects, which there he saw. Such a one was
Democritus.
But in the mean time, how doth this concern me, or upon what reference do I usurp his habit? I confess, indeed, that to compare myself unto him for aught I have yet said, were both impudency and arrogancy. I do not presume to make any parallel, Antistat mihi millibus trecentis, [29]parvus sum, nullus sum, altum nec spiro, nec spero. Yet thus much I will say of myself, and that I hope without all suspicion of pride, or self-conceit, I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi et musis in the University,
