Robert Burton

This work is cited in Books for College Libraries, 3d ed. It is one of the major documents of modern European civilization, a survey not only of melancholy in all its myriad forms, but also of humanity's endless efforts to assuage it. First published in 1621, the book was an immediate popular success. The New York Review Books edition was edited by Holbrook Jackson in 1932. This new edition contains a new introduction by William Gass, director of the International Writer's Center. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The Anatomy of Melancholy

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no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poets, or sentences from classic authors;

‘“Tis a book so full of variety of reading, that gentlemen who have lost their time, and are put to a push for invention, may furnish themselves with matter for common or scholastical discourse and writing.”—Wood's Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. i. p. 628. 2d edit.

the writer's variety of learning, his quotations from scarce and curious books, his pedantry sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance, miscellaneous matter, intermixture of agreeable tales and illustrations, and, perhaps, above all, the singularities of his feelings, clothed in an uncommon quaintness of style, have contributed to render it, even to modern readers, a valuable repository of amusement and information.”—Warton's Milton, 2d edit. p. 94.

828“Man in honour that understandeth not, is like unto beasts that perish,”

831“Great travail is created for all men, and an heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb, unto that day they return to the mother of all things. Namely, their thoughts, and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things they wait for, and the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen. Wrath, envy, trouble, and unquietness, and fear of death, and rigour, and strife, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly.”

[855] “Beware that he do not forget the Lord his God;” that he be not puffed up, but acknowledge them to be his good gifts and benefits, and 856“the more he hath, to be more thankful,” (as Agapetianus adviseth) and use them aright.

“The principal things for the use of man, are water, fire, iron, salt, meal, wheat, honey, milk, oil, wine, clothing, good to the godly, to the sinners turned to evil,” Ecclus. xxxix. 26.

Whom fire spares, sea doth drown; whom sea, Pestilent air doth send to clay; Whom war 'scapes, sickness takes away.

[863] Ignis pepercit, unda mergit, aeris Vis pestilentis aequori ereptum necat, Bello superstes, tabidus morbo perit. 

Dearths, tempests, plagues, our astrologers foretell us; Earthquakes, inundations, ruins of houses, consuming fires, come by little and little, or make some noise beforehand; but the knaveries, impostures, injuries and villainies of men no art can avoid.

[867] Ad unum corpus humanum supplicia plura, quam membra: We have invented more torturing instruments, than there be several members in a man's body, as Cyprian well observes.

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