You have had a reason of the name.  If the title and inscription offend your gravity, were it a sufficient justification to accuse others, I could produce many sober treatises, even sermons themselves, which in their fronts carry more fantastical names.  Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers at an antic picture in a painter’s shop, that will not look at a judicious piece.  And, indeed, as [52]Scaliger observes, “nothing more invites a reader than an argument unlooked for, unthought of, and sells better than a scurrile pamphlet,” tum maxime cum novitas excitat [53]palatum.  “Many men,” saith Gellius, “are very conceited in their inscriptions,” “and able” (as [54]Pliny quotes out of Seneca) “to make him loiter by the way that went in haste to fetch a midwife for his daughter, now ready to lie down.”  For my part, I have honourable [55]precedents for this which I have done:  I will cite one for all, Anthony Zara, Pap.  Epis., his Anatomy of Wit, in four sections, members, subsections, &c., to be read in our libraries.

If any man except against the matter or manner of treating of this my subject, and will demand a reason of it, I can allege more than one; I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy.  There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, “no better cure than business,” as [56]Rhasis holds:  and howbeit, stultus labor est ineptiarum, to be busy in toys is to small purpose, yet hear that divine Seneca, aliud agere quam nihil, better do to no end, than nothing.  I wrote therefore, and busied myself in this playing labour, oliosaque diligentia ut vitarem torporum feriandi with Vectius in Macrobius, atque otium in utile verterem negatium.

[57] “Simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vita,
        Lectorem delectando simul atque monendo.”

       “Poets would profit or delight mankind,
        And with the pleasing have th’ instructive joined. 
        Profit and pleasure, then, to mix with art,
        T’ inform the judgment, nor offend the heart,
        Shall gain all votes.”

To this end I write, like them, saith Lucian, that “recite to trees, and declaim to pillars for want of auditors:”  as [58]Paulus Aegineta ingenuously confesseth, “not that anything was unknown or omitted, but to exercise myself,” which course if some took, I think it would be good for their bodies, and much better for their souls; or peradventure as others do, for fame, to show myself (Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter).  I might be of Thucydides’ opinion, [59]"to know a thing and not to express it, is all one as if he knew it not.”  When I first took this task in hand, et quod ait [60]ille, impellents genio negotium suscepi, this I aimed at; [61]_vel