Laudator Temporis Acti

Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), His Wife. With Additions of New Characters: And many other Witty Conceits never before Printed. The Seventeenth Impression (London: Printed for John Playfere, 1664), fols. G6-G7 (?):

A Melancholly Man

Is a strayer from the drove: one that Nature made a sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition hath altered. Impleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they make him dream weaking, there's his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continuall motion, as the poise the clock: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelopes web thrives faster. He'le seldome be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottome a river dwels. He carries a cloud in his face, never faire weather; his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keeps a Decorum, both unseemly. Speak to him; he hears with his eyes, eares follow his mind, and that's not at leasure. He thinkes businesse, but never does any; he is all contemplation, no action. He hewes and fashions his thoughts, as if he meant them to some purpose, but they prove unprofitable, as a peece of wrought timber to no use. His Spirits and the Sun are enemies; the Sun bright and warm, his humour black and cold: variety of foolish apparitions people his head, they suffer him not to breath according to the necessities of nature, which makes him sup up a draught of as much aire at once as would serve at thrice. He denies nature her due in sleep, and nothing pleaseth him long, but that which pleaseth his own fantasies; they are the consuming evils, and evil consumptions that consume him alive. Lastly, he is a man onely in shew, but comes short of the better part; a whole reasonable soul, which is man's cheif preeminence, and sole mark from creatures sensible.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.