Robert Burton (1577–1640) was an English scholar, writer, and Anglican clergyman. His Anatomy of Melancholy is a masterpiece of style and a valuable index to the science of his time, mixed with astrology, meteorology, psychology, theology, and rich, old-fashioned kidology.
Born in Lindley, Leicestershire, Burton was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and in 1599 was elected a student of Christ Church and earned a bachelor of divinity in 1614. He worked as the vicar of St Thomas the Martyr’s Church, Oxford, in 1616 and at the rectory of Segrave, Leicestershire, since 1630. He kept both livings but spent his life at Christ Church, where he died.
Burton’s first work was the Latin comedy Philosophaster (1606; edited with an English translation by P. Jordan-Smith, 1931,) a vivacious exposure of charlatanism that has affinities with Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist. It was acted at Christ Church in 1618.
The first edition of Burton’s masterpiece, Anatomy of Melancholy, was written under the pseudonym ‘Democritus Junior,’ and appeared in quarto in 1621 (final, sixth edition, 1651–52.) This strange book is a vast and witty compendium of Jacobean knowledge about the ‘disease’ of melancholy, its causes, and the symptoms. It was gathered from classical and medieval writers, as well as folklore and superstition. One of the most exciting parts is the long preface, ‘Democritus to the Reader,’ in which Burton indirectly accounts for himself and his studies.
The Anatomy was widely read in the 17th century, but it lapsed into obscurity for a while. In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson admired it, and Laurence Sterne borrowed from it. In the 19th century, the devotion of Charles Lamb helped to bring the Anatomy into favor with the Romantics and inspired intellectuals from John Keats to Cy Twombly. The standard modern edition is the edition The Anatomy of Melancholy (6 vol., 1989–2000.)
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A good conscience is a continual feast.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Conscience
The fear of death is worse than death.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Dying, Death
I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Wine
Build castles in the air.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Imagination
The pen worse than the sword.
—Robert Burton
The attachments of mere mirth are but the shadows of that true friendship of which the sincere affections of the heart are the substance.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Friendship
A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Shame
They lard their lean books with the fat of others’ works.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Writing, Plagiarism
Conquer thyself. Till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another’s appetite as to thine own.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Self-Control
They are proud in humility, proud that they are not proud.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Humility
The greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Desires
One religion is as true as another.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Religion
If there is a hell upon earth it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Sorrow
Ambitious men may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Ambition
Call a spade a spade.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Names
Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ‘Tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Smoking
For “ignorance is the mother of devotion,” as all the world knows.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Ignorance
Birds of a feather will gather together.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Birds
Seem not greater than thou art.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Greatness
One was never married. and that’s his hell; another is, and that’s his plague.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Marriage
There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Idleness
Comparisons are odious.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Comparisons
England is a paradise for women and hell for horses; Italy a paradise for horses, hell for women, as the diverb goes.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Horses
Be not solitary, be not idle
—Robert Burton
Topics: Idleness
Humor purges the blood, making the body young, lively, and fit for any manner of employment.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Humor
Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all, the surest reposals, the softest cushions to lean on in adversity.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Difficulty, Hope, Patience, Aspirations
Sickness and disease are in weak minds the sources of melancholy; but that which is painful to the body, may be profitable to the soul. Sickness puts us in mind of our mortality, and, while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a proper sense of our duty.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Disease
Idleness is the badge of the gentry, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active, and, if it is not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy.
—Robert Burton
Topics: Idleness
Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offenses…grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn ourselves.
—Robert Burton
Were it not that they are loath to lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes die to save charges.
—Robert Burton