ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, The. Robert Burton spent all his mature life at Ox ford in scholarly retirement. He was a library student, not a man of affairs, and not a prac tical physician but a divine. He conceived of his subject in his 'Anatomy [i.e. analysis of] Melancholy' as a malady of both soul and body, and he busied himself with writing his book, so he says, to cure himself of melancholy, one of the chief causes of which he declared to he idleness. The book was a serious effort, carefully planned in its large outlines. But the main outline seems often forgotten, and is filled in with a great mass of various detail. The *roving humour° to which he confesses gave Burton an opportunity to provide a run ning commentary on men and morals, politics, religion, business, pleasure, love, and any other topics suggested to him by the books which he had *confusedly tumbled over.° The book has been continuously read since the appear ance of the first edition in 1621, and in a way has remained popular with the lovers of quaint literature. The sources of interest in it for the modern reader are above all its quaintness, not always intended by Burton, its out of the way scholarship which seems often grotesque nowadays, and its fidelity as a picture of a certain type of 17th century mind. It treats, moreover, with good humor and constant vivacity of feeling, of subjects which affect all mortal men, it abounds in anecdote and lively illustration, and, mixed with its credulity, it exhibits not a little skill in analyzing the states of mind and body of mankind. *I have laid myself open (I know it) in this treatise,° says Burton, *turned my inside outward," and the book has not a little similarity to the numerous *confessions" of a later day.
The style of the is one of its most notable characteristics. Burton had first
intended to publish his treatise *more contract in Latin,° but found he could not get a long Latin book printed, though "any scurrile pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary Sta tioners in English.° Perhaps it is fortunate that he did not find a willing publisher for the Latin version, for when he came to write in English he certainly spoke more from *the strings of his than he would have done in writing a foreign idiom. He declared that he wrote *with as small deliberation as I do ordinarily speak, without all affectation of big words, fustian phrases, jingling terms, tropes, strong lines, that like Acestes' arrows caught fire as they flew, strains of wit, brave heats, elogies, hyperbolical exornations, elegancies, etc., which many so much affect. I am ague potor, drink no wine at all, which so much im proves our modern wits, a loose, plain, rude writer." This passage, if it does not describe Burton's style adequately, illustrates at least some of its main features. It is not a neat and meticulous style, nor is it ornate and in genious. It is rather an easy, discursive essay style, often elaborated until it attains a kind of robustious eloquence. It is characterized also by a monstrous heaping of citations and quo tations, like a mediaeval sermon, or as a mod ern scholarly dissertation would be if the foot notes were inserted in the body of the text. To read Burton with pleasure, one must regard these quotations as interruptions, not part of the rhythm of his phrasing. When they are omitted or are not present, the style moves along easily and rapidly, not unlike the style of one conversing with some degree of ani mation.