which may divert his cogitations:  but at the last laesa imaginatio, his phantasy is crazed, and now habituated to such toys, cannot but work still like a fate, the scene alters upon a sudden, fear and sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspicion, discontent, and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places; so by little and little, by that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, melancholy this feral fiend is drawn on, [2608]_et quantum vertice ad auras Aethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit_, “extending up, by its branches, so far towards Heaven, as, by its roots, it does down towards Tartarus;” it was not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh; a cankered soul macerated with cares and discontents, taedium vitae, impatience, agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries.  They cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit for action, and the like. [2609]Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered, ugly, their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less entangled, as the humour hath been intended, or according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.

To discern all which symptoms the better, [2610]Rhasis the Arabian makes three degrees of them.  The first is, falsa cogitatio, false conceits and idle thoughts:  to misconstrue and amplify, aggravating everything they conceive or fear; the second is, falso cogitata loqui, to talk to themselves, or to use inarticulate incondite voices, speeches, obsolete gestures, and plainly to utter their minds and conceits of their hearts, by their words and actions, as to laugh, weep, to be silent, not to sleep, eat their meat, &c.:  the third is to put in practice [2611]that which they think or speak.  Savanarola, Rub. 11. tract. 8. cap. 1. de aegritudine, confirms as much, [2612]"when he begins to express that in words, which he conceives in his heart, or talks idly, or goes from one thing to another,” which [2613]Gordonius calls nec caput habentia, nec caudam, ("having neither head nor tail,”) he is in the middle way:  [2614] “but when he begins to act it likewise, and to put his fopperies in execution, he is then in the extent of melancholy, or madness itself.”  This progress of melancholy you shall easily observe in them that have been so affected, they go smiling to themselves at first, at length they laugh out; at first solitary, at last they can endure no company:  or if they do, they are now dizzards, past sense and shame, quite moped, they care not what they say or do, all their actions, words, gestures, are furious or ridiculous.  At first his mind is troubled, he doth not attend what is said, if you tell him a tale, he cries at last, what said you? but in the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men when they sit alone, upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run away, and swear they see or hear players, [2615]devils, hobgoblins,