The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.

The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.
ears, but the very arteries, the vital and animal spirits, it erects the mind, and makes it nimble.”  Lemnius, instit, cap. 44. This it will effect in the most dull, severe and sorrowful souls, [3471]"expel grief with mirth, and if there be any clouds, dust, or dregs of cares yet lurking in our thoughts, most powerfully it wipes them all away,” Salisbur. polit. lib. 1. cap. 6. and that which is more, it will perform all this in an instant:  [3472]"Cheer up the countenance, expel austerity, bring in hilarity” (Girald.  Camb. cap. 12.  Topog.  Hiber.) “inform our manners, mitigate anger;” Athenaeus (Dipnosophist. lib. 14. cap. 10.) calleth it an infinite treasure to such as are endowed with it:  Dulcisonum reficit tristia corda melos, Eobanus Hessus.  Many other properties [3473]Cassiodorus, epist. 4. reckons up of this our divine music, not only to expel the greatest griefs, but “it doth extenuate fears and furies, appeaseth cruelty, abateth heaviness, and to such as are watchful it causeth quiet rest; it takes away spleen and hatred,” be it instrumental, vocal, with strings, wind, [3474]_Quae, a spiritu, sine manuum dexteritate gubernetur_, &c. it cures all irksomeness and heaviness of the soul. [3475]Labouring men that sing to their work, can tell as much, and so can soldiers when they go to fight, whom terror of death cannot so much affright, as the sound of trumpet, drum, fife, and such like music animates; metus enim mortis, as [3476]Censorinus informeth us, musica depellitur.  “It makes a child quiet,” the nurse’s song, and many times the sound of a trumpet on a sudden, bells ringing, a carman’s whistle, a boy singing some ballad tune early in the streets, alters, revives, recreates a restless patient that cannot sleep in the night, &c.  In a word, it is so powerful a thing that it ravisheth the soul, regina sensuum, the queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is a happy cure), and corporal tunes pacify our incorporeal soul, sine ore loquens, dominatum in animam exercet, and carries it beyond itself, helps, elevates, extends it.  Scaliger, exercit. 302, gives a reason of these effects, [3477]"because the spirits about the heart take in that trembling and dancing air into the body, are moved together, and stirred up with it,” or else the mind, as some suppose harmonically composed, is roused up at the tunes of music.  And ’tis not only men that are so affected, but almost all other creatures.  You know the tale of Hercules Gallus, Orpheus, and Amphion, felices animas Ovid calls them, that could saxa movere sono testudinis, &c. make stocks and stones, as well as beasts and other animals, dance after their pipes:  the dog and hare, wolf and lamb; vicinumque lupo praebuit agna latus; clamosus graculus, stridula cornix, et Jovis aquila, as Philostratus describes it in his images, stood all gaping upon Orpheus; and [3478]trees pulled up by the roots came to hear him, Et comitem quercum pinus amica trahit.

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The Anatomy of Melancholy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.