affected for my part, and hope as [173]Theophrastus did by his characters, “That our posterity, O friend Policles, shall be the better for this which we have written, by correcting and rectifying what is amiss in themselves by our examples, and applying our precepts and cautions to their own use.”  And as that great captain Zisca would have a drum made of his skin when he was dead, because he thought the very noise of it would put his enemies to flight, I doubt not but that these following lines, when they shall be recited, or hereafter read, will drive away melancholy (though I be gone) as much as Zisca’s drum could terrify his foes.  Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present, or my future reader, who is actually melancholy, that he read not the [174]symptoms or prognostics in this following tract, lest by applying that which he reads to himself, aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken, to his own person (as melancholy men for the most part do) he trouble or hurt himself, and get in conclusion more harm than good.  I advise them therefore warily to peruse that tract, Lapides loquitur (so said [175]Agrippa de occ.  Phil.) et caveant lectores ne cerebrum iis excutiat.  The rest I doubt not they may securely read, and to their benefit.  But I am over-tedious, I proceed.

Of the necessity and generality of this which I have said, if any man doubt, I shall desire him to make a brief survey of the world, as [176] Cyprian adviseth Donat, “supposing himself to be transported to the top of some high mountain, and thence to behold the tumults and chances of this wavering world, he cannot choose but either laugh at, or pity it.”  S. Hierom out of a strong imagination, being in the wilderness, conceived with himself, that he then saw them dancing in Rome; and if thou shalt either conceive, or climb to see, thou shalt soon perceive that all the world is mad, that it is melancholy, dotes; that it is (which Epichthonius Cosmopolites expressed not many years since in a map) made like a fool’s head (with that motto, Caput helleboro dignum) a crazed head, cavea stultorum, a fool’s paradise, or as Apollonius, a common prison of gulls, cheaters, flatterers, &c. and needs to be reformed.  Strabo in the ninth book of his geography, compares Greece to the picture of a man, which comparison of his, Nic.  Gerbelius in his exposition of Sophianus’ map, approves; the breast lies open from those Acroceraunian hills in Epirus, to the Sunian promontory in Attica; Pagae and Magaera are the two shoulders; that Isthmus of Corinth the neck; and Peloponnesus the head.  If this allusion hold, ’tis sure a mad head; Morea may be Moria; and to speak what I think, the inhabitants of modern Greece swerve as much from reason and true religion at this day, as that Morea doth from the picture of a man.  Examine the rest in like sort, and you shall find that kingdoms and provinces are melancholy, cities and families, all creatures,