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 that which
they think or speak. _Savanarola, Rub. II, Tract. 8, cap. 1, de
aegritudine_, confirms as much: _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 _Gordonius_ calls _nec caput habentia nec caudam_
[having neither head nor tail], he is in the middle way: _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, Devils, Hobgoblins, Ghosts,
strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end: like him in the Poet,
_saepe ducentos saepe decem servos_ [he often keeps two hundred slaves,
often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last,
grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog,
and raves like _Ajax_ and _Orestes_, hears Music and outcries which no
man else hears....

Who can sufficiently speak of these symptoms, or prescribe rules to
comprehend them? As _Echo_ to the painter in _Ausonius_, _vane_, _quid
affectas_, &c.--foolish fellow, what wilt? if you must needs paint me,
paint a voice, _et similem si vis pingere, pinge sonum_; if you will
describe melancholy, describe a phantastical conceit, a corrupt
imagination, vain thoughts and different, which who can do? The
four-and-twenty letters make no more variety of words in divers
languages, than melancholy conceits produce diversity of symptoms in
several persons. They are irregular, obscure, various, so infinite,
_Proteus_ himself is not so diverse