enemy to concoction that may be, and cause of corruption of humours, which
produce this, and many other diseases. Not without good reason then doth
Salust. Salvianus, _l. 2. c. 1_, and Leonartus Jacchinus, _in 9. Rhasis_,
Mercurialis, Arcubanus, and many other, set down [1539]immoderate exercise
as a most forcible cause of melancholy.

Opposite to exercise is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise,
the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of
discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins,
and a sole cause of this and many other maladies, the devil's cushion, as
[1540]Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal. "For the mind can
never rest, but still meditates on one thing or other, except it be
occupied about some honest business, of his own accord it rusheth into
melancholy." [1541]"As too much and violent exercise offends on the one
side, so doth an idle life on the other" (saith Crato), "it fills the body
full of phlegm, gross humours, and all manner of obstructions, rheums,
catarrhs," &c. Rhasis, _cont. lib. 1. tract. 9_, accounts of it as the
greatest cause of melancholy. [1542]"I have often seen" (saith he) "that
idleness begets this humour more than anything else." Montaltus, _c. 1_,
seconds him out of his experience, [1543]"They that are idle are far more
subject to melancholy than such as are conversant or employed about any
office or business." [1544]Plutarch reckons up idleness for a sole cause of
the sickness of the soul: "There are they" (saith he) "troubled in mind,
that have no other cause but this." Homer, _Iliad. 1_, brings in Achilles
eating of his own heart in his idleness, because he might not fight.
Mercurialis, _consil. 86_, for a melancholy young man urgeth, [1545]it as a
chief cause; why was he melancholy? because idle. Nothing begets it sooner,
increaseth and continueth it oftener than idleness. [1546]A disease
familiar to all idle persons, an inseparable companion to such as live at
ease, _Pingui otio desidiose agentes_, a life out of action, and have no