The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
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page 95 of 2094 (04%)
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did by Charon in Lucian, by touching of his eyes, to make him discern
_semel et simul rumores et susurros_. "Spes hominum caecas, morbos, votumque labores, Et passim toto volitantes aethere curas." "Blind hopes and wishes, their thoughts and affairs, Whispers and rumours, and those flying cares." That he could _cubiculorum obductas foras recludere et secreta cordium penetrare_, which [388]Cyprian desired, open doors and locks, shoot bolts, as Lucian's Gallus did with a feather of his tail: or Gyges' invisible ring, or some rare perspective glass, or _Otacousticon_, which would so multiply species, that a man might hear and see all at once (as [389] Martianus Capella's Jupiter did in a spear which he held in his hand, which did present unto him all that was daily done upon the face of the earth), observe cuckolds' horns, forgeries of alchemists, the philosopher's stone, new projectors, &c., and all those works of darkness, foolish vows, hopes, fears and wishes, what a deal of laughter would it have afforded? He should have seen windmills in one man's head, an hornet's nest in another. Or had he been present with Icaromenippus in Lucian at Jupiter's whispering place, [390]and heard one pray for rain, another for fair weather; one for his wife's, another for his father's death, &c.; "to ask that at God's hand which they are abashed any man should hear:" How would he have been confounded? Would he, think you, or any man else, say that these men were well in their wits? _Haec sani esse hominis quis sanus juret Orestes_? Can all the hellebore in the Anticyrae cure these men? No, sure, [391]"an acre of hellebore will not do it." That which is more to be lamented, they are mad like Seneca's blind woman, |
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