have passed his life, with only occasional visits to the country. There he wrote the Anatomy, and there he died and was buried. He was presented by his college to the vicarage of St Thomas in Oxford; together with which he held, from the gift of private patrons, first the rectory of Walesby in Lincolnshire, and afterwards that of Seagrave in Leicestershire, but at neither of these places does he ever appear to have resided. "I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi et Musis, in the university, as long almost as Xenocrates at Athens, ad senectam fere, to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part in my study. . . . For thirty years I have continued a scholar-left to a solitary life and my own domestic discontents; saving that sometimes (ne quid meutiar), as Diogenes went into the city and Democritus to the haven, to see fashions, I did for my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but make some little observation." The character which Wood gives of him is somewhat contradictory; "as he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous* person; so by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty,plain dealing, and charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christchurch often say that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and 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, which being then all the fashion in the university, made his company the more acceptable." There is no doubt but that he was what we should now call a very eccentric character; he had probably injured his health by close reading, and had that morbid self-consciousness which has often been the bane of scholars. There seems also to have been a certain amount of affectation in his characHe was not content with ter. assuming the name of "Democritus junior" in his book, but appears to have worked himself up into the notion that he really bore some resemblance to the original Democritus. The character which he draws of his prototype in the "Address to the Reader," which serves as the long preface to his Anatomy, is applicable in almost every particular to his own tastes and pursuits as described both by himself and others. The philosopher of Abdera was, he says, "A little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days, and much given to solitariness; wholly addicted to his studies at the last, and to a private life; a great divine, according to the divinity of those times, an expert physician, a politician, an excellent mathematician, as Diacosmus and the rest of his works do witness. He was much delighted with the studies of husbandry, saith Columella. In a word, he was omnifariam doctus, a general scholar, a great student; . . a man of an excellent wit, profound conceit, wholly betaking himself to his studies and a private life, saving that sometimes he would walk down to the haven, and laugh heartily at such variety of ridiculous objects which there he saw." The philosopher of Christchurch resembled his model in very many points of this character, and perhaps believed himself to resemble it even more completely. "He was an exact mathematician," says Wood, "a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thoroughpaced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well." That he was also an able divine, and possessed sufficient medical knowledge to have set him up as a very respectable physician, is evident from the testimony of his remarkable book. As to Democritus's love of husbandry-" if my testimony were ought worth, I could say as much of myself," writes Burton. "I am vere Saturninus; no man ever took more delight in springs, woods, groves, gardens, walks, fish-ponds, rivers, &c." But there is one curious * i.e. in the old sense of the word, "whimsical, capricious." habit recorded of him, which seems to show that he studied for the character, and was quite willing that the world of Oxford should recognise in him the eccentricities as well as the learning of the original Laughing Philosopher: "Nothing could make him laugh but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter."* It is impossible not to see in this an absurd copy of Democritus at the haven of Abdera. Probably the facilities of modern railway traffic, which have interfered so seriously with the profits of the Oxford Navigation Company, have also had a depressing effect upon the jocosity of the bargemen; for Democritus himself would find a difficulty in catching a joke upon Folly Bridge now. It is a great pity that more anecdotes of Burton have not been recorded, for he must have been a singular character as well as an amusing companion. We can fancy that, if he had been fortunate enough to meet with a Boswell, his biography might have been almost as amusing as the great Doctor's. Here is a quaint sketch of him which Hearne has preserved :— "Aug. 2, 1713.-The Earl of Southampton went into a shop and inquired of the bookseller for Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Mr Burton sate in a corner of the shop at that time. Says the bookseller, My lord, if you please, I can show you the author.' He did so. 'Mr Burton,' says the Earl, 'your servant.' Mr Southampton,' says Mr Burton, 'your servant.' And away he went."+ He died at his rooms in Christchurch, Jan. 6, 1639; so near the time which he had himself foretold some years before from a calculation of his own nativity, that, as we are told by Antony Wood (who never misses an opportunity of saying an ill-natured thing), "several of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that GRANGER'S Biog. Hist. rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his neck." He was buried, as we have seen, in the cathedral, with a short Latin epitaph, said to have been composed by himself, and which is not free from the tinge of vanity and affectation which marked his character : "Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, The only known productions of his pen, besides that which has handed him down to fame, were a Latin comedy called Philosophaster, acted at Christchurch in 1617, of which no copy is known to exist; and some epitaphs in Latin verse, which are by no means equal in neatness and elegance to the elegiac lines, "Ad librum suum," prefixed to the Anatomy. But it is probable that other productions of his pen existed in MS. (and may exist still), since in his will he leaves to the disposal of his executors "all such books as are written with my own hands." He made a bequest to the Bodleian Library of a curious collection of pamphlets and tracts, historical and miscellaneous, very many of which are probably unique. A few glances at hazard into the pages of the Anatomy will be enough to enable any one to understand the secret of the enthusiasm with which it has been regarded by some readers, and the neglect which it has experienced at the hands of others. Every page is loaded with quotations; and, what with the Latin and the italics, has such a learned and technical look, that one can easily imagine many a rambler in an old library shutting such a book in hopeless dismay. The amount of Latin in the text itself is considerable, though sometimes the author has the consideration to translate his quotations, and remit the original to the footnotes; but there is quite enough + HEARNE'S Reliquiæ, edit. Bliss, vol. i. p. 288. even in the allusions to make the book unsatisfactory except to a classical scholar. Indeed, so full is it of sentences in the more learned tongue, that Nicholls says, It * 66 had been doubted whether it was originally written in Latin or English." Burton seems at least to have had some hesitation in the choice; he almost apologises to himself and his readers for using the vulgar tongue: "It was not mine intent to prostitute my muse in English, or to divulge secreta Minerva, but to have exposed this more contract in Latin if I could have got it printed. Any scurrile pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary stationers in English, but in Latin they will not deal." When he gets upon the subject of abuses in the Church (which he probably considered as among Minerva's secrets), and wishes to lash out into that classical billingsgate of which critics were once so fond, he gives us whole pages of original Latin. It is not fair to say of it, as has been said, that it is a mere cento of quotations, though it is true that such is the title which Burton himself bestows upon it in his preface, perhaps with some little affectation of humility-" "I have laboriously collected this cento out of divers writers." He professes also, though only half in earnest, to use the shield of authority against those who might feel offended at the severity of his satire,-"It is not I, but they, that say it." Yet, while the author thus guarded himself against ill-natured critics by this self-denying ordinance at the outset, he would have been little pleased to have heard this term applied to it by any one except himself. If it be a cento, it is not to that fact that it owes either its interest or its reputation. No work ever more fully illustrated the words of Horace "Tantum series juncturaque pollet." Burton could say with the greatest truth-"The matter is theirs most part, and yet mine ;-that which nature does with the aliment of our bodies, incorporate, digest, assimilate, I do-concoquere quod hausi -dispose of what I take. The method only is mine own." It is this method-this lucidus ordowhich is at once the merit and the charm of the book. To make it a detraction from Burton's claims as an author, that he collected his materials instead of manufacturing them, is much like complaining of a successful architect, that, after all, he did not make his own bricks. But full indeed it is, in every sense, of rich material collected from all sources. One does not know whether most to admire the wealth of the learning or the originality of many of the applications. Heathen classics, Fathers of the Christian Church, Arabian physicians, German scholars, Dutch historians, travellers and philosophers of all nations and ages, are pressed into the service-frequently only a few words from each, fitted into the context in a sort of literary mosaic, wonderful to examine. Never was criticism less happy than that of Granger, that "if he had made more use of his invention, and less of his commonplace book, his work would perhaps have been more valuable than it is." No one would have been more disgusted at so mistaken a compliment than Democritus himself. He would have us believe, indeed, with that affectation from which no author seems quite to escape, that he wrote his treatise somewhat in haste : "I was enforced, as a bear doth her whelps, to bring forth this confused lump; I had not time to lick it into form, as she doth her young ones, but even so to publish it as it was first written, quidquid in buccam venit; in all other exercises), effudi quidquid dican extemporean style (as I commonly do tavit genius meus; out of a confused company of notes, and writ with as small deliberation as I do ordinarily speak." *Hist. of Leicestershire, vol. iii. part i. p. 558. It is remarkable to find so acute a critic as Dr Ferriar accepting this statement of Burton's as a true history of his authorship, and believing that he poured his quotations out on paper as fast as they came into his head. On the contrary, Burton's arrangement is, as has been already observed, a peculiar excellency in his book, and shows it to have been the careful labour of probably many years. The professed object of the book is to anatomise the passion of Melancholy; to trace its nature, its causes, and its possible cure. If any one shall ask the reason for his choice of a subject— "I write of melancholy, by being busie to avoid melancholy."-"I can peradventure affirm with Marius in SalInst, that which others hear or read of I felt and practised myself: they get their knowledge from books, I from melancholising. I would help others out of a fellow-feeling; and as that vertuous lady did of old, being a leper herself, bestow all her portion to build an hospital for lepers, I will spend my time and knowledge, which are my greatest fortunes, for the common good of all." Perhaps we have a truer reason, or at least one which had its share in leading him to authorship, in the confession that he was conscious of a considerable store of out-of-the-way reading, which might make an entertaining book; "I had a kind of imposthume in my head, which I was very desirous to be unladen of, and could imagine no fitter evacuation than this." Burton's medical studies must excuse the metaphor, which is certainly rather professional than delicate; but we must not allow its apparent humility to be caught at as a precedent; there are a great many authors the contents of whose brains can never have been such a burden to them as to justify the "unlading" of them upon the public. He writes under the name of Democritus junior, because the original Democritus cut up and anatomised beasts "To find out the seat of this atra bilis or melancholy, whence it proceeds and how it is engendered in men's bodies, to the intent he might better cure it in himself, by his writings and observations teach others how to prevent and avoid it. Which good intent of his Hippocrates highly commended, Democritus junior is therefore bold to imitate, and because he left it imperfect, and it criti, to revive again, prosecute, and is now lost, quasi succentariator Demofinish it in this treatise." He had another reason for his choice of an alias :— "Never so much cause of laughter as now: never so many fools and madmen. "Tis not one Democritus will serve turn to laugh in these days; we have now need of a Democritus to laugh at Democritus, one jester to flout another, one fool to flear at another, -a great Stentorian Democritus, as big as that Rhodian Colossus : for now, as Salisburiensis said in his time, totus mundus histrionem agitthe whole world plays the fool; we have a new theatre, a new scene, a new comedy of errors, a new company of personate actors; Volupia Sacræ (as Calcagninus wittily feigns in his Apologues) are celebrated all the world over, where all the actors were madmen and fools, and every hour changed habits, or took that which came next." He admits that some might object against him that he, as a beneficed divine, might have more fitly written sermons; but of that class of works he " saw no such great need;" there being already "so many commentaries, treatises, pamphlets, expositions, sermons, that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them." The reader of Burton need only turn to the "Cure of Despair" in the last division of his treatise, in order to feel assured that if the writer had thought fit to devote his extraordinary stores of learning and powers of composition to pulpit oratory, Donne would have had a formidable rival in his less known contemporary. But the pulpit was not his favourite line; and it was probably rather his studentship at Christchurch than his deliberate choice which led him to take holy orders. "I am," says he, " by my profession a divine, and by mine. inclination a physician." Yet he entertained the idea of some future publication more in the way of his calling." If this my discourse be over-medicinal, or savour too much of humanity, I promise thee that I will hereafter make thee amends in some treatise of divinity."-One feels curious to know what sort of sermons he preached to the good people of St Thomas's in Oxford, and whether, on the one hand, he took any pains to adapt his powers to their level, or they, on the other, had any distinct appreciation of their learned vicar. The only thing recorded of him in connection with his parochial duties there, so far as we are aware, is, that he built the south porch of the church A.D. 1621, and always administered the bread at the Holy Communion in the wafer form. He professes to find the disease of which he treats-"melancholy madness -so universal amongst mankind, that almost no condition is free from it.. "You shall find that kingdoms and provinces are melancholy, cities and families, all creatures, vegetal, sensible, and rational-that all sorts, sects, ages, conditions, are out of tune. Folly, melancholy, madness, are but one disease; delirium is a common name to all. All fools are mad, though some madder than others. And who is not a fool? who is free from melancholy? who is not touched more or less in habit or disposition?" In fact, the whole of this portion of his preface is but a sermon upon the text of the Stoic philosopher, that all men were mad -Stoics themselves included. He sets to work to establish this thesis in the most comprehensive manner. Solomon, he shows, was a fool by his own confession (Prov. xxiii. 2), and St Paul himself admits that he was occasionally no better. Socrates, after consulting all the philosophers in order to find out a wise man, came to the conclusion "that all men were fools;" and other philosophers say the same of him. 66 As to learned men in general, you have only to listen to their deliberately recorded opinions of each other to be convinced that they are the greatest fools in the world. He cunningly anticipates a possible retort of the reader on this pointDemocritus, that common flouter of folly, was ridiculous himself." He quotes an old law maxim, to the effect that "all women are ordinarily fools;" but let no fair reader feel aggrieved, for such are all men also. Of all estates, and of all ages, "youth is mad-stulti adolescentuli; old age little better-deliri senes." The only man whom he would allow to have a taste of wisdom is Theophrastus, who regretted his own death "because he was just then beginning to be wise"-at one hundred and seven years old; which, as Burton observes, was rather late in the day. But not only individuals" kingdoms, provinces, and politick bodies, are liable likewise, sensible and subject to this disease." Those who lived to see the French Reign of Terror might have well discussed such a theory in a more earnest strain than Burton's. Bishop Butler, walking in his garden with his chaplain in those terrible days, turned round to his companion after an interval of meditation, and asked him seriously whether he thought it possible for nations, like men, to have fits of insanity? There were phenomena in that Revolution which were sufficient to justify the bishop's speculation. Our present author pushes his argument still further. Even animals have this melancholy madness. "Put a bird in a cage, he will die for sullenness; or a beast in a pen, and take his young ones or companions from him, and see what effect it will cause. And even what he calls "vegetals" are liable (so he will have it) to the same diseases. Lead is "saturnine by nature;" and a plant, if removed, will pine away. Of course, our author observes, his is not the popular doctrine. On the contrary, we all think our |