All this madness yet proceeds from ourselves, the main engine which batters us is from others, we are merely passive in this business: from a company of parasites and flatterers, that with immoderate praise, and bombast epithets, glossing titles, false eulogiums, so bedaub and applaud, gild over many a silly and undeserving man, that they clap him quite out of his wits. Res imprimis violenta est, as Hierom notes, this common applause is a most violent thing, laudum placenta, a drum, fife, and trumpet cannot so animate; that fattens men, erects and dejects them in an instant. [1946] Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. It makes them fat and lean, as frost doth conies. [1947]“And who is that mortal man that can so contain himself, that if he be immoderately commended and applauded, will not be moved?” Let him be what he will, those parasites will overturn him: if he be a king, he is one of the nine worthies, more than a man, a god forthwith,—[1948]edictum Domini Deique nostri: and they will sacrifice unto him,
[1949]———divinos si tu patiaris honores,
Ultro ipsi dabimus meritasque sacrabimus aras.
———laudataque virtus
Crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet.[1952]
[1955]———nihil est quod credere de se
Non audet quum laudatur diis aequa potestas.[1956]
SUBSECT. XV.—Love of Learning, or overmuch study. With a Digression of the misery of Scholars, and why the Muses are Melancholy.
Leonartus Fuchsius Instit. lib. iii. sect. 1. cap. 1. Felix Plater, lib. iii. de mentis alienat. Herc. de Saxonia, Tract. post. de melanch. cap. 3, speak of a [1970]peculiar fury, which comes by overmuch study. Fernelius, lib. 1, cap. 18, [1971]puts study, contemplation, and continual meditation, as an especial cause of madness: and in his 86 consul. cites the same words. Jo. Arculanus, in lib. 9, Rhasis ad Alnansorem, cap. 16, amongst other causes reckons up studium vehemens: so doth Levinus Lemnius, lib. de occul. nat. mirac. lib. 1, cap. 16. [1972]“Many men” (saith he) “come to this malady by continual [1973]study, and night-waking, and of all other men, scholars are most subject to it:” and such Rhasis adds, [1974]“that have commonly the finest wits.” Cont. lib. 1, tract. 9, Marsilius Ficinus, de sanit. tuenda, lib. 1. cap. 7, puts melancholy amongst one of those five principal plagues of students, 'tis a common Maul unto them all, and almost in some measure an inseparable companion. Varro belike for that cause calls Tristes Philosophos et severos, severe, sad, dry, tetric, are common epithets to scholars: and [1975]Patritius therefore, in the institution of princes, would not have them to be great students. For (as Machiavel holds) study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, abates their strength and courage; and good scholars are never good soldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, for when his countrymen came into Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by no means they should do it, [1976] “leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigour, and martial spirits.” The [1977]Turks abdicated Cornutus the next heir from the empire, because he was so much given to his book: and 'tis the common tenet of the world, that learning dulls and diminisheth the spirits, and so per consequens produceth melancholy.
Two main reasons may be given of it, why students should be more subject to this malady than others. The one is, they live a sedentary, solitary life, sibi et musis, free from bodily exercise, and those ordinary disports which other men use: and many times if discontent and idleness concur with it, which is too frequent, they are precipitated into this gulf on a sudden: but the common cause is overmuch study; too much learning (as [1978]Festus told Paul) hath made thee mad; 'tis that other extreme which effects it. So did Trincavelius, lib. 1, consil. 12 and 13, find by his experience, in two of his patients, a young baron, and another that contracted this malady by too vehement study. So Forestus, observat. l. 10, observ. 13, in a young divine in Louvain, that was mad, and said [1979]“he had a Bible in his head:” Marsilius Ficinus de sanit. tuend. lib. 1, cap. 1, 3, 4, and lib. 2, cap. 16, gives many reasons, [1980] “why students dote more often than others.” The first is their negligence; [1981]“other men look to their tools, a painter will wash his pencils, a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c.; a musician will string and unstring his lute, &c.; only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and spirits (I mean) which they daily use, and by which they range overall the world, which by much study is consumed.” Vide (saith Lucian) ne funiculum nimis intendendo aliquando abrumpas: “See thou twist not the rope so hard, till at length it [1982]break.” Facinus in his fourth chap. gives some other reasons; Saturn and Mercury, the patrons of learning, they are both dry planets: and Origanus assigns the same cause, why Mercurialists are so poor, and most part beggars; for that their president Mercury had no better fortune himself. The destinies of old put poverty upon him as a punishment; since when, poetry and beggary are Gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions;