eagle which, as poets feign, was perpetually plucking at the vitals of Prometheus*." Every perturbation, says the royal preacher, is a misery; but grief is a cruel torment†. In ancient Rome, when a dictator was created, all inferior magistracies ceased; and when excessive grief seizes on the soul, all other passions immediately vanish. Eleonora, the mournful duchess, in our English Ovidt, well describes the effect of this perturbation, in her lamentation over her noble husband Humphrey Duke of Gloucester :

"Saw'st thou those eyes, in whose sweet cheerful look
Duke Humphrey once such joy and pleasure took ;
Sorrow hath so despoil'd them of all grace,
Thou couldst not say, this was my Elnor's face.

David roared in the disquietude of his heart; his soul melted away for very heaviness; and he became like a bottle in the smoke§. Crato gives an extraordinary instance of a patient whose mind was weighed down by the blackest melancholy merely from his having indulged immoderate sorrow. And Montanus furnishes another instance of the like kind, in the case of a noble matron, whose sorrow gained such firm posses

*Dr. Johnson says, "Sorrow properly is that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future; an incessant wish that something was otherwise than it has been; a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain." + Eccles. xxv. 15, 16. ↑ Mich. Drayton, in his Her. Ep. § Psalm xxxviii. 8.

|| Mærore maceror, marcesco et consenesco miser, ossa atque pellis suæ misera macritudine.

sion of her mind that the consequent melancholy

could never be removed.

It was the violence of

sorrow that transformed Hecuba into a dog, and Niobe into stone.

Widow'd and childless, lamentable state!
A doleful sight among the dead she sat ;
Harden'd with woes, a statue of despair;
To every breath of wind unmov'd her hair:
Her cheeks still reddening, but their colour dead;
Faded her eye, and set within her head.
No more her pliant tongue its motion keeps,
But lies congeal'd within her frozen lips.
Stagnate and dull within her purple veins,
Its current stopp'd, the lifeless blood remains.
Her feet their usual offices refuse;

;

Her arms and neck their graceful gestures lose
Action and life from every part are gone,
And ev'n her entrails turn'd to solid stone :
Yet still she weeps, and, whirl'd by stormy winds,
Borne through the air, her native country finds;
There fix'd she stands upon a bleaky bill;
There yet her marble cheeks fresh tears distil.

These lines well express that dumb, deaf, melancholy stupidity which benumbs all our faculties, when oppressed by accidents which we are not able to bear: and, indeed, the operation of grief, if it be excessive, must so overwhelm the soul as to deprive it of the liberty of its functions.

Melancthon observes, that sorrow draws a black blood from the spleen, and diffuses it round the heart in such a manner as to extinguish the spirits, and occasions those terrible hypochondrical convulsions to which persons who have surrendered themselves to habitual sadness are so frequently subject. But the kind

of sorrow most likely to produce these mischievous effects, is that which is silent and inactive; for

Complaining oft gives respite to our grief;

From hence the wretched Progne sought relief;
Hence the Pœantian chief his fate deplores,
And vents his sorrows to the Lemnian shores :
In vain by secresy we would assuage

Our cares; conceal'd, they gather tenfold rage.

Fear is cousin-german, or rather sister, to Sorrow, her fidus Achates, constant companion; chief assistant, and principal agent in procuring this mischief. What Virgil says of the Harpies may be truly applied to these twin destroyers : "Monsters more fierce offended heaven ne'er sent, From hell's abyss, for human punishment."

This foul fiend was held in so much awe by the Lacedæmonians, that they worshipped it under the title of Angerona Dea; and their augurs yearly sacrificing at its shrine in the temple of Volupia, endeavoured to deprecate its wrath, and to induce her to banish from the bosoms of the people all cares, anguish, and vexation, during the succeeding year. The Ephori of Sparta erected a temple to Fear near their tribunal, to strike awe into those who approached it. Theseus, before he engaged the Amazons, in obedience to the command of an oracle, sacrificed to Fear, that his troops might not be seized with it. Alexander performed the same ceremony before the battle of Arbela. Virgil places Fear at the entrance of hell; and Ovid in the retinue of Tisiphone, one of the furies. The lamentable

effects of this disqualifying perturbation are very sensibly felt by those who are compelled to speak before public assemblies, or in the presence of the wise and great, as both Cicero and Demosthenes have very candidly confessed; for it impedes utterance, confuses the ideas, destroys the memory*, and confounds the judgment. Lucian, to illustrate its effects, introduces Jupiter Tragœdus, when he was about to make a speech to the rest of the gods, as totally unable to utter a syllable, until he was prompted by the herald Mercury. It frequently confounds the brightest and strongest faculties of the human mind; hinders the most honourable attempts; discourages the efforts of genius; aggravates calamity; and keeps those who are under its influence in continual suspense and increasing alarm, depressing every hope of their minds, and rendering sad and heavy every feeling of their hearts. There is no passion that sooner dethrones the judgment from its natural seat :

Mistrust of good success hath done the deed:
Oh! hateful error, Melancholy's child.
And Shakspeare has declared that

-Our fears are traitors,

Which make us lose the thing we wish
To gain, by dread of the event."

There is, in short, no rack or torture so truly painful. Nulla ut miseria major quàm metus, says Vives truly; for there is certainly no greater

* Timor inducit frigus, cordis palpitationem, vocis defectum, atque pallorem. AGRIPPA, lib. 1. c. 63.

H

misery. It leads the imagination into its most dreadful abyss, and tyrannises over the fancy more than all other affections; for what the mind fears it fancies it perceives; and the ideas of ghosts, goblins, hags, spectres, devils, and every thing that imports calamity and distress, present themselves so strongly to the mind, as to overwhelm it with horrors, which, if not dissipated by timely remedies, will in the end embitter life with miserable melancholy.

Shame and disgrace cause most violent and bitter pangs, and frequently plunge the most generous minds into the deepest despair; for there are men, as Cicero observes, who are able to neglect the tumults of the world, to abandon the fields of glory, to contemn pleasure, and endure grief, who are alarmed even at the appearance of infamy, and are utterly unable to endure even undeserved obloquy or reproach. A sense of shame operates so powerfully on every liberal and ingenuous mind, that it frequently causes the tortured sufferer to destroy his life. Aristotle, ashamed of being not able to understand the motion of Euripus*, put a period to his existence: Homer was overwhelmed by this distressing perturbation, because he was unable to unfold the fisherman's riddle†: Sophocles was unable to survive the disgrace he felt on his favourite tragedy being hissed off the stage‡:

* Cælius Rodiginus antiquar. lec, lib. 29. cap. 8. + Quod piscatoris ænigma solvere non posset. Valer. Max. lib. 9, cap. 12. Ob Tragœdeum explosam, mortem sibi gladio conscivit.