Causes of Melancholy - OVERMUCH STUDY

From Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621 (etc.), Part I, Sect. 2 (Mem.3, Subsect. xv):

SUBSECT. XV. —Love of Learning, or overmuch Study. With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars, and why the Muses are Melancholy. 

Leonartus Fuchsius, Instit. lib. 3, sect. I, cap. I; Felix Plater, lib. 3 de mentis alienat.; Herc. de Saxonia, tract. post. de melanch. cap. 3, speak of a peculiar fury which comes by overmuch study (8). Ferlenius, lib. I, cap. 18, puts study, contemplation, and continual meditation as an especial cause of madness (9): and in his 86th consul. cites the same words. Jo. Arculanus, in lib. 9 Rhasis ad Almansorem, cap. 16, amongst other causes reckons up studium vehemens [passionate study]: so doth Levinus Lemnius, lib. de occul. nat. mirac. lib. I, cap. 16.

(8) Peculiaris furor, qui ex literis fit.

(9) Nihil magis auget, ac assidua studia, et profundae cogitationes.

"Many men" (saith he) "come to this malady by continual study (1), and night-waking, and of all other men, scholars are most subject to it" (2);  and such, Rhasis adds, "that have commonly the finest wits" ()3) (Cont. lib. I., tract. 9). Marsilius Ficinus, de sanit. tuenda, lib. I, cap. 7, puts melancholy amongst one of those principal plagues of students, 'tis a common moll unto them all, and almost in some measure an inseparable companion. Varro belike for that cause calls tristes philosophos et severos [philosophers sad and austere]; severe, sad, dry, tetric, are common epithets to scholars: and Patricius thereefore (4), in the institution of princes, would not have them to be great students. For (as Machiavel holds) study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, abates their strength and courage; and good scholars are never good soldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, for when his countrymen came into Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by all means they should not do it; "Leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigour, and martial spirits" (5). The Turks abdicated Corcutus, the next heir, from the empire, because he was so much given to his book (6): and 'tis the common tenent of the world, that learning dulls and diminished the spirits, and so per consequens produceth melancholy.