SUBSECT.  V.—­Melancholy in Disposition, improperly so called, Equivocations.

Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or 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 causeth anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness 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, [925]no man living is free, no stoic, 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. [926]"Man that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble.”  Zeno, Cato, Socrates himself, whom [927]Aelian so highly commends for a moderate temper, that “nothing could disturb him, but going out, and coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance, what misery soever befell him,” (if we may believe Plato his disciple) was much tormented with it.  Q. Metellus, in whom [928]Valerius gives instance of all happiness, “the most fortunate man then living, born in that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well qualified, healthful, rich, honourable, a senator, a consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children,” &c. yet this man was not void of melancholy, he had his share of sorrow. [929]Polycrates Samius, that flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate of discontent with others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions.  No man can cure himself; the very gods had bitter pangs, and frequent passions, as their own [930]poets put upon them.  In general, [931]"as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers:  so is our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies:  Invicem cedunt dolor et voluptas,” there is a succession of pleasure and pain.

[932]   ------“medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid, in ipsis floribus angat.”

“Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow,” (as [933]Solomon holds):  even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as [934]Austin infers in his Com. on the 41st Psalm, there is grief and discontent. Inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos strangulat, for a pint of honey thou shalt