Comitas is a virtue between rusticity and scurrility, two extremes, as affability is between flattery and contention, it must not exceed; but be still accompanied with that [2181][Greek:  ablabeia] or innocency, quae nemini nocet, omnem injuriae, oblationem abhorrens, hurts no man, abhors all offer of injury.  Though a man be liable to such a jest or obloquy, have been overseen, or committed a foul fact, yet it is no good manners or humanity, to upbraid, to hit him in the teeth with his offence, or to scoff at such a one; ’tis an old axiom, turpis in reum omnis exprobratio.[2182] I speak not of such as generally tax vice, Barclay, Gentilis, Erasmus, Agrippa, Fishcartus, &c., the Varronists and Lucians of our time, satirists, epigrammists, comedians, apologists, &c., but such as personate, rail, scoff, calumniate, perstringe by name, or in presence offend;

[2183] “Ludit qui stolida procacitate
        Non est Sestius ille sed caballus:” 

’Tis horse-play this, and those jests (as he [2184]saith) “are no better than injuries,” biting jests, mordentes et aculeati, they are poisoned jests, leave a sting behind them, and ought not to be used.

[2185] “Set not thy foot to make the blind to fall;
          Nor wilfully offend thy weaker brother: 
        Nor wound the dead with thy tongue’s bitter gall,
          Neither rejoice thou in the fall of other.”

If these rules could be kept, we should have much more ease and quietness than we have, less melancholy, whereas on the contrary, we study to misuse each other, how to sting and gall, like two fighting boors, bending all our force and wit, friends, fortune, to crucify [2186]one another’s souls; by means of which, there is little content and charity, much virulency, hatred, malice, and disquietness among us.

SUBSECT.  V.—­Loss of Liberty, Servitude, Imprisonment, how they cause Melancholy.

To this catalogue of causes, I may well annex loss of liberty, servitude, or imprisonment, which to some persons is as great a torture as any of the rest.  Though they have all things convenient, sumptuous houses to their use, fair walks and gardens, delicious bowers, galleries, good fare and diet, and all things correspondent, yet they are not content, because they are confined, may not come and go at their pleasure, have and do what they will, but live [2187]_aliena quadra_, at another man’s table and command.  As it is [2188]in meats so it is in all other things, places, societies, sports; let them be never so pleasant, commodious, wholesome, so good; yet omnium rerum est satietas, there is a loathing satiety of all things.  The children of Israel were tired with manna, it is irksome to them so to live, as to a bird in his cage, or a dog in his kennel, they are weary of it.  They are happy, it is true, and have all things, to another man’s judgment, that heart can wish, or that they themselves can desire, bona