ANOTHER AGE

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1931, Page 13 (Supplement)

ANOTHER AGE

HUMOUR OF MELANCHOLY

(By

“Juvenis.”)

For pity’s sake turn the shrieking record off. Stop admiring for a moment your legs in the flesh-coloured stockings. Don’t move your arms and shoulders in that ugly, ugly way you saw some cheap American woman do in the pictures. Stay away for once from the miniature golf where you hit little white balls up hills and round corners and into holes. Sit down a moment in that easy chair and let me talk a. little of an old, dead man. If you find me dull and airless remember that the fault comes partly from the occupation. For students are subject to melancholy, living a sedentary, solitary, life; Saturn and Mercury, the patrons of learning, are both dry planets; and contemplation “dries the brain and extinguished natural heat; for whilst the spirits are intent to meditation above in the head, the stomach and liver are left destitute and thence comes black blood.”

Old Burton says so and old Burton knows. Ho wrote one of the most humorous books in the world on the subject of Melancholy. Into it he packed the tittle-tattle of history, the legends of Greece, the oracles of Socrates, the riddles of astrology, the superstition of the Middle Ages, the pharmacopoeia of the monasteries and snacks of the literature of the world. Hard students, he wrote, were commonly troubled with gouts, catarrhs, rheums, bad eyes, colic and so on. They were for the most part lean, dry, illcoloured. He knew because he was himself a student, a rector who lived at Oxford, a student so exact to prove his studies that, it was whispered, having some time ago calculated the time of his death from his nativity, in the interests of science he took his own life at the hour he had foretold. So practical a man would naturally not be always at you with nothing more than Latin nostrums. In fact he goes so far as to draw up a catalogue of diet, an excellent thing with the solitary fault that it . condemns almost every possible food. 0

Beef, a strong and hearty meat, is condemned to breed gross melancholy blood. Hart and red deer hath an evil name; it yields gross nutriment; a strong and great-grained meat next to horse. Milk, and all that comes of milk, as butter and cheese, curds, etc., in-, crease melancholy. The cabbage causes troublesome dreams and sends ur> black vapours to the brain. Roots trouble the mind, sending gross fumes to the brain, make men mad, especially garlic, onions, if a man liberally feed on them a year together. Bread that is made of base grain, as peas, beans, oats,' rye, or over-baked, crusty and black is often spoken against as causing melancholy juice. Spices cause hot and head melancholy, and are for that cause forbidden to such men' as are inclined to this malady, as pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, mace, dates, etc., honey and sugar. Beer, if it be over-new or over-stale, over-strong, or not sodden, smell of the cask, sharp, or sour, is most unwholesome, frets and galls.

But as an approved medicine against dotage, head melancholy, and such diseases of tlie brain, he gives a remedy “recorded by many learned authors.”

Take a ram’s head, cut off at aiblow, and the horns only take away ; boil it well, skin and wool together; after it is well sod, take out the brains, and put these spices to it, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace, clover; mingle the powder of theso spices with it and beat them in a platter upon a chafing-dish of coals together, stirring them well that, they do not burn; take heed it be not overmuch dried, or drier than a calf’s brains ready to be eaten. Keep it so prepared, .and for three days give it the patient fasting, so that he fast' two hours after it.

But he doubts a little, the old sceptic, he doubts the value of precious stones. Many “explode the use of them or any mineral in physic.” Still, for what it i? worth, he will grant that be has heard that granatus, “if hung about the neck, or taken in drink, much resisteth sorrow, and recreates the heart . . ..And there is a stone called chelidonius which, lapped in a fair cloth and tied to the right arm, will make lunatics and madman amiable and merry.”

Imperfections of the body, he finds, not a whit blemish the soul or hinder the operations of it, but rather help and much increase it. How many deformed princes, kings, emperors, could he reckon up, he erics, philosophers, orators?

Hannibal had but one eye, Appius Claudius, Tiinoleon, blind . . . Homer was Wind, yet who made more accurate, lively or better descriptions with both his eyes? . . . Aesop was crooked, Socrates purblind, long-legged, hairy; Democritus withered; Seneca lean and harsh, ugly to behold; yet show me so many flourishing wits, with divine spirits; Horace,! a little blear-eyed contemptible fellow, yet who so sententious and wise? Galba the Emperor was crook-backed, Epictetus lame: that great Alexander a little man of stature; Augustus Caesar of the same pitch. sUladeslaus Cubitalis that pigmy king of Poland reigned and fought more victorious battles than any of his long-shanked predecessors/. . . Sickness is the mother of modesty, putteth US in mind of our mortality; and when we are in the full career of worldy pomp and jollity, she puUeth us by the ear, and maketh us know ourselves.

Cautiously, almost surprised at his own venturing, lie touches on the melancholy of maids, noting carefully that the midriff and heart-strings do burn and beat very fearfully and when this vapour or fume is stirred, flieth upward, the heart itself beats, is sore grieved and faints. Then, astonished at tlie path his studies take him, the quaint fellow cries out and closes up like an oyster.

But where am I? Into what subject have I rushed? I am a bachelor myself, and lead a monastic life,in a college. I confess 'tis an indecorum, and as Pallas a virgin blushed, when Jupiter by chance spake of love matters in her presence, arid turned away her face, me rcprimam, though my subject necessarily require it, I will say no more.

Of the melancholy of love he fills page after close-written page. Your most grim stoics and severe philosophers, he says, will melt away with the passionsPoets, orators and princes fall under the sway. But Hot, apparently, Burtons. For Burton speaks a bookish love, admits a tender innocence.

But I conclude there is no end of love’s symptoms, 'tis a bottomless pit. No man ca.n discourse of love matters, or judge of them aright, that hath not made trial in his own person, hath not a little doted, been mad or lore-sick himself. I confess I am but a novice, a. contemplator only. I have a tincture; for whv should 1 lie, dissemble or excuse it, yet I am a man. not altogether inexpert. in this subject. . .

Pale, studious Burton who loved perhaps as he died, entirely in the interests of science.

You yawn. You are bored exhaustively, aren't you, and you want to get away? You are late for the pictures and the miniature golf and the speedway racing. Dab your vivid mouth with lipstick. Will I come loo? I am too old, as old as Burton, three hundred long years old.