despair vs melancholia

despair

noun
  • That which causes despair. 

  • Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency. 

  • That which is despaired of. 

verb
  • To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation. 

  • To cause to despair. 

melancholia

noun
  • Deep sadness or gloom; melancholy 

  • depression, characterised by irrational fears, guilt and apathy 

How often have the words despair and melancholia occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )