which now being [2120] Udum et molle lutum, “a moist and soft clay,” is easily seasoned and perverted.  And if such a nurse may be found out, that will be diligent and careful withal, let Phavorinus and M. Aurelius plead how they can against it, I had rather accept of her in some cases than the mother herself, and which Bonacialus the physician, Nic.  Biesius the politician, lib. 4. de repub. cap. 8. approves, [2121]"Some nurses are much to be preferred to some mothers.”  For why may not the mother be naught, a peevish drunken flirt, a waspish choleric slut, a crazed piece, a fool (as many mothers are), unsound as soon as the nurse?  There is more choice of nurses than mothers; and therefore except the mother be most virtuous, staid, a woman of excellent good parts, and of a sound complexion, I would have all children in such cases committed to discreet strangers.  And ’tis the only way; as by marriage they are engrafted to other families to alter the breed, or if anything be amiss in the mother, as Ludovicus Mercatus contends, Tom. 2. lib. de morb. haered. to prevent diseases and future maladies, to correct and qualify the child’s ill-disposed temperature, which he had from his parents.  This is an excellent remedy, if good choice be made of such a nurse.

SUBSECT.  II.—­Education a Cause of Melancholy.

Education, of these accidental causes of melancholy, may justly challenge the next place, for if a man escape a bad nurse, he may be undone by evil bringing up. [2122]Jason Pratensis puts this of education for a principal cause; bad parents, stepmothers, tutors, masters, teachers, too rigorous, too severe, too remiss or indulgent on the other side, are often fountains and furtherers of this disease.  Parents and such as have the tuition and oversight of children, offend many times in that they are too stern, always threatening, chiding, brawling, whipping, or striking; by means of which their poor children are so disheartened and cowed, that they never after have any courage, a merry hour in their lives, or take pleasure in anything.  There is a great moderation to be had in such things, as matters of so great moment to the making or marring of a child.  Some fright their children with beggars, bugbears, and hobgoblins, if they cry, or be otherwise unruly:  but they are much to blame in it, many times, saith Lavater, de spectris, part. 1, cap. 5. ex metu in morbos graves incidunt et noctu dormientes clamant, for fear they fall into many diseases, and cry out in their sleep, and are much the worse for it all their lives:  these things ought not at all, or to be sparingly done, and upon just occasion.  Tyrannical, impatient, hair-brain schoolmasters, aridi magistri, so [2123]Fabius terms them, Ajaces flagelliferi, are in this kind as bad as hangmen and executioners, they make many children endure a martyrdom all the while they are at school, with bad diet, if they board in their