Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in Melancholy,
the source of our depression. is either in indisposition or in habit. In disposition, is
that transitory Melancholy which goes and comes upon every small
occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or
perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which
causes anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to
pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing forwardness in us, or a dislike. In
which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad,
sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from
these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise,
none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can
vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he
feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of
Mortality... This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a
serious ailment, a settled humour as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant,
but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful)
grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed.
From The Anatomy Of Melancholy by Robert Burton. Published in1621
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