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Thrasibulus, otherwise called Thrasillus, being sore oppressed with this melancholike humor, imagined, that all the ships, which arrived at port Pyræus, were his: insomuch as he would number them, and command the mariners to lanch, &c: triumphing at their safe returnes, and moorning for their misfortunes. The Italian, whom we called here in England, the Monarch, was possessed with the like spirit or conceipt. Danæus¹⁸⁸ himselfe reporteth, that he sawe one, that affirmed constantlie that he was a cocke; and saith that through melancholie, such were alienated from themselves.

Now, if the fansie of a melancholike person may be occupied in causes which are both false and impossible;¹⁸⁹ why should an old witch be thought free from such fantasies, who (as the learned philosophers and physicians saie) upon the stopping of their monethlie melancholike flux or issue of bloud, in their age must needs increase therein, as (through their weaknesse both of bodie and braine) the aptest persons to meete with such melancholike imaginations: with whome their imaginations remaine, even when their senses are gone. Which Bodin ¹⁹⁰ laboureth to disproove, therein shewing himselfe as good a physician, as else-where a divine.