of their birth, and wish for death:”  for as Pineda and most interpreters hold, Job was even melancholy to despair, and almost [2743]madness itself; they murmur many times against the world, friends, allies, all mankind, even against God himself in the bitterness of their passion, [2744]_vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt_, live they will not, die they cannot.  And in the midst of these squalid, ugly, and such irksome days, they seek at last, finding no comfort, [2745]no remedy in this wretched life, to be eased of all by death. Omnia appetunt bonum, all creatures seek the best, and for their good as they hope, sub specie, in show at least, vel quia mori pulchrum putant (saith [2746]Hippocrates) vel quia putant inde se majoribus malis liberari, to be freed as they wish.  Though many times, as Aesop’s fishes, they leap from the frying-pan into the fire itself, yet they hope to be eased by this means:  and therefore (saith Felix [2747]Platerus) “after many tedious days at last, either by drowning, hanging, or some such fearful end,” they precipitate or make away themselves:  “many lamentable examples are daily seen amongst us:”  alius ante, fores se laqueo suspendit (as Seneca notes), alius se praecipitavit a tecto, ne dominum stomachantem audiret, alius ne reduceretur a fuga ferrum redegit in viscera, “one hangs himself before his own door,—­another throws himself from the house-top, to avoid his master’s anger,—­a third, to escape expulsion, plunges a dagger into his heart,”—­so many causes there are—­His amor exitio est, furor his—­love, grief, anger, madness, and shame, &c.  ’Tis a common calamity, [2748]a fatal end to this disease, they are condemned to a violent death, by a jury of physicians, furiously disposed, carried headlong by their tyrannising wills, enforced by miseries, and there remains no more to such persons, if that heavenly Physician, by his assisting grace and mercy alone do not prevent, (for no human persuasion or art can help) but to be their own butchers, and execute themselves.  Socrates his cicuta, Lucretia’s dagger, Timon’s halter, are yet to be had; Cato’s knife, and Nero’s sword are left behind them, as so many fatal engines, bequeathed to posterity, and will be used to the world’s end, by such distressed souls:  so intolerable, insufferable, grievous, and violent is their pain, [2749]so unspeakable and continuate.  One day of grief is an hundred years, as Cardan observes:  ’Tis carnificina hominum, angor animi, as well saith Areteus, a plague of the soul, the cramp and convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell; and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart.

       “For that deep torture may be call’d an hell,
        When more is felt, than one hath power to tell.”

Yea, that which scoffing Lucian said of the gout in jest, I may truly affirm of melancholy in earnest.