The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy, What It Is,
With All The Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics, And Several Cures Of It.
In Three Partitions.
With Their Several Sections, Members, and Subsections,
Philosophically, Medically, Historically Opened And Cut Up.
By Democritus Junior.
With a Satirical Preface, Conducing To The Following Discourse.
A New Edition, Corrected, And Enriched By Translations Of The Numerous Classical Extracts.
By Democritus Minor. To Which Is Prefixed An Account Of The Author.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, What It Is,
With All The Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics, And Several Cures Of It.
In Three Partitions.
With Their Several Sections, Members, and Subsections,
Philosophically, Medically, Historically Opened And Cut Up.
By Democritus Junior.
With a Satirical Preface, Conducing To The Following Discourse.
A New Edition, Corrected, And Enriched By Translations Of The Numerous Classical Extracts.
By Democritus Minor. To Which Is Prefixed An Account Of The Author.

The narrower your description, the more cliched and uncommunicative, the more of the object you leave behind. Art is simply being able to communicate an object in its entirety, and it is just beyond the realm of human capability. The proponents of the encyclopedic novel, the so-called novel of learning, Sterne, Rabelais, Cervantes—and Burton in his book—have nevertheless had great fun trying to refute this. -- RoCF Interview, 1991.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton (1621): This is a dense, digressive, wonderfully learned, quasi-autobiographical, quasi-psychological exploded encyclopedia of all things melancholic and otherwise—a mishmash of case studies (a man who thought he was turned to glass), citations from contradictory ancient and modern authorities (c. 1620), quotations from the Bible, essays on geography and climatology, observations on the deficiencies of the Catholic Church, recommendations of study as a cure for melancholy (and then reflections on study as a cause of melancholy), a utopia. Burton described his Anatomy as: “a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry…” Indeed, such it is, and for this intellectually dense disorder, the book can be baffling and dizzy-making (esp. if you read the NYRB edition, the most readily available, which has very close-set type and does not translate all of Burton’s Latin). Burton’s long, loose, Latinate sentences can also be rough going. But it is very much worth a try. Burton is an endearingly humble narrator who, while he calls himself an ignorant smatterer, might teach you to accept the incurable madness— melancholy— fallenness—of humankind.

Abderitanae pectora plebis habes.

GENTLE Reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as he said

GENTLE Reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as he said, … I am a free man born, and may choose whether I will tell; who can compel me? If I be urged, I will as readily reply as that Egyptian in Plutarch when a curious fellow would needs know what he had in his basket, … It was therefore covered, because he should not know what was in it. Seek not after that which is hid; if the contents please thee, "and be for thy use, suppose the Man in the Moon, or whom thou wilt to be the Author;" I would not willingly be known. Yet in some sort to give thee satisfaction, which is more than I need, I will show a reason, both of this usurped name, title, and subject. And first of the name of Democritus; lest any man by reason of it should be deceived, expecting a pasquil, a satire, some ridiculous treatise (as I myself should have done), some prodigious tenant, or paradox of the earth’s motion, of infinite worlds, in infinito vacuo, ex fortuita atomorum collisione, in an infinite waste, so caused by an accidental collision of motes in the sun, all which Democritus held, Epicurus and their master Leucippus of old maintained, and are lately revived by Copernicus, Brunus, and some others. Besides, it hath been always an ordinary custom, as Gellius observes, “for later writers and impostors to broach many absurd and insolent fictions under the name of so noble a philosopher as Democritus, to get themselves credit, and by that means the more to be respected,” as artificers usually do, … [who sign the name of Praxiteles on a new statue of their own]. ‘Tis not so with me

No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find
My subject is of man and humankind.

Thou thyself art the subject of my discourse.

Whate’er men do, vows, fears, in ire, in sport,
Joys, wand’rings, are the sum of my report.

Robert Burton was a bookman first and last. He lived among books and upon them, and devoted the greater part of his life to the writing of an epitome or quintessence of the books of all times. His treatise is the legitimate offspring of a bookish mind, and although it is largely a distillation of authors it is an original work. The Anatomy looks like a crude assembly of quotations and it is indeed a vast mobilization of the notions and expressions of others, yet it is not they but the rifler who is revealed on every page, it is he, not they, who peeps from behind every quotation. The reason is clear. He is an artist in literary mosaic, using the shreds and patches he has torn from the work of others to make a picture emphatically his own. Books are his raw material. Other artists fashion images out of clay, contrive fabrics and forms of stone, symphonies of words, sounds, or pigments. Burton makes a cosmos out of quotations. He raids the writings of the past, which he often finds neglected or in ruins, and reassembles them in a structure of his own, much as the ruins of Rome were pillaged by the builders of the Renaissance and worked into the temples and palaces of a new civilization.

What can we expect when we vie with one another every day in admitting to degrees any and every impecunious student drawn from the dregs of the people who applies for one? They need only to have learnt by heart one or two definitions and distinctions, and to have spent the usual number of years in chopping logic – it matters not what progress they have made or of what character they are; they can be idiots, wasters, idlers, gamesters, boon companions, utterly worthless and abandoned, squanderers and profligates; let them only have spent so many years at the university in the capacity, real or supposed, of gownsmen, and they will find those who for the sake of profit or friendship will get them presented, and, what is more, in many cases with splendid testimonials to their character and learning. These they procure on leaving from persons who unquestionably jeopardize their own reputation by writing them. For (as one saith) doctors and professors think of nothing save how from their various professions, and especially those which are irregular, they may further their own advantage, and benefit themselves at the expense of the State. Our annual university heads as a rule pray only for the greatest possible number of freshmen to squeeze money from, and do not care whether they are educated or not, provided they are sleek, well groomed, and good-looking, and in one word, men of means. Philophasters innocent of the arts become Masters of Arts, and those are made wise by order who are endowed with no wisdom, and have no qualifications for a degree save a desire for it. Theologasters, if they can but pay, have enough learning and to spare, and proceed to the very highest degrees. Hence it comes that such a pack of vile buffoons, ignoramuses wandering in the twilight of learning, ghosts of clergymen, itinerant quacks, dolts, clods, asses, mere cattle, intrude with unwashed feet upon the sacred precincts of Theology, bringing with them nothing save brazen impudence, and some hackneyed quillets and scholastic trifles not good enough for a crowd at a street corner. This is that base and starveling class, needy, vagabond, slaves of their bellies, worthy to be sent back to the plough-tail, fitter for the pigsty than the altar, which has basely prostituted the study of divinity. These it is who fill the pulpits and creep into noblemen’s houses. Having no other means of livelihood, and being incapable both mentally and physically of filling any other post, they find here an anchorage, and clutch at the priesthood, not from religious motives, but, as Paul says, ‘huckstering the word of God.’

[T]hey are most part lean, dry, ill-coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times their lives, and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus’ and Thomas Aquinas’ works, and tell me whether those men took pains? Peruse Austin, Hierome, etc., and many thousands besides.

He that desires this wished goal to gain,
Must sweat and freeze before he can attain,

and labour hard for it. So did Seneca, by his own confession; “Not a day that I spend idle, part of the night I keep mine eyes open, tired with waking, and now slumbering to their continual task.” Hear Tully: “Whilst others loitered, and took their pleasures, he was continually at his book”; so they do that will be scholars, and that to the hazard (I say) of their healths, fortunes, wits, and lives. How much did Aristotle and Ptolemy spend? Unius regni pretium they say, more than a king’s ransom; … How many poor scholars have lost their wits, or become dizzards, neglecting all worldly affairs and their own health, esse and bene esse [being and well-being], to gain knowledge for which, after all their pains, in this world’s esteem they are accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and (as oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, doting, and mad! Look for examples … Go to Bedlam and ask. Or if they keep their wits, yet they are esteemed scrubs and fools by reason of their carriage: “after seven years’ study,”

Dumb as a statue, slow he stalks along,
And shakes with laughter loud the gazing throng.

Because they cannot ride an horse, which every clown can do; salute and court a gentlewoman, carve at table, cringe and make congees, which every common swasher can do, … they are laughed to scorn, and accounted silly fools by our gallants. Yea, many times, such is their misery, they deserve it: a mere scholar, a mere ass.

Who do lean awry
Their heads, piercing the earth with a fixt eye;

This being thus, have not we fished fair all this while, that are initiate divines, to find no better fruits of our labour? [Is it for this we have pale faces and do without our breakfasts?] Do we macerate ourselves for this? Is it for this we rise so early all the year long, “leaping” (as he saith) “out of our beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we had heard a thunderclap?” If this be all the respect, reward and honour we shall have, [break your pens, Thalia, and tear up your books], let us give over our books, and betake ourselves to some other course of life. To what end should we study? What did our parents mean to make us scholars, to be as far to seek of preferment after twenty years’ study, as we were at first? Why do we take such pains? [Why lose the colour of our youthful age by constant bending o’er the stupid page?] If there be no more hope of reward, no better encouragement, I say again, [break your pens, Thalia, and tear up your books]; let’s turn soldiers, sell our books and buy swords, guns, and pikes, or stop bottles with them, turn our philosophers’ gowns, as Cleanthese once did, into millers’ coats, leave all, and rather betake ourselves to any other course of life than to continue longer in this misery. [It is better to sharpen toothpicks than to beg the favour of the great with literary productions].

[I]f he be poor, “all his days are miserable,” he is under hatches, dejected, rejected, and forsaken, poor in purse, poor in spirit,…. Though he be honest, wise, learned, well-deserving, noble by birth, and of excellent good parts; yet, in that he is poor, unlikely to rise, come to honour, office, or good means, he is contemned, neglected, [his wisdom is worthless, he starves for all his learning, he is a troublesome friend]. “[I]f he speak, what babbler is this?” … [We are worthless chicks of luckless fowls], if once poor, we are metamorphosed in an instant, base slaves, villains, and vile drudges; for to be poor is to be a knave, a fool, a wretch, a wicked, an odious fellow, a common eye-sore, say poor and say all: they are born to labour, to misery, to carry burdens like juments, [to eat dung] with Ulysses’ companions, and as Chremylus objected in Aristophanes, salem lingere, [to] lick salt, to empty jakes, fay channels, carry out dirt and dunghills, sweep chimneys, rub horse-heels, etc. (I say nothing of Turks’ galley-slaves, which are bought and sold like juments, or those African negroes, or poor Indian drudges, [who daily succumb on the roadside under their burdens, for they do the work of oxen and asses among us], etc.) They are ugly to behold, and though erst spruce, now rusty and squalid, because poor, [dirty luck naturally brings on dirty living], it is ordinarily so. “Others eat to live, but they live to drudge,” … a servile generation, that dare refuse no task. … Sirrah, blow wind upon us while we wash, and bid your fellow get him up betimes in the morning; be it fair or foul, he shall run fifty miles afoot to-morrow, to carry me a letter to my mistress; Sosia ad pistrinam, Sosia shall tarry at home and grind malt all day long, Tristan thresh. Thus are they commanded, being indeed some of them as so many footstools for rich men to tread on[.]

If hereafter, anatomizing this surly humour, my hand slip, as an unskillful prentice I lance too deep, and cut through skin and all at unawares, make it smart, or cut awry, pardon a rude hand, an unskillful knife, ‘tis a most difficult thing to keep an even tone, a perpetual tenor, and not sometimes to lash out; [it is hard not to write a satire], there be so many objects to divert, inward perturbations to molest, and the very best may sometimes err; [sometimes that excellent Homer takes a nap], it is impossible not in so much to overshoot; [over such a long work a little sleep is permissible]. But what needs all this?

What dost thou vaunt of now? “What dost thou gape and wonder at? Admire him for his brave apparel, horses, dogs, fine houses, manors, orchards, gardens, walks? Why, a fool may be possessor of this as well as he; and he that accounts him a better man, a nobleman for having of it, he is a fool himself.” Now go and brag of thy gentility. (Emphasis mine)

Cauteries and hot irons are to be used “in the suture of the crown, and the seared or ulcerated place suffered to run a good while. ‘Tis not amiss to bore the skull with an instrument, to let out the fuliginous vapours.” Sallust Salvianus, “because this humour hardly yields to other physic, would have the leg cauterized, or the left leg, below the knee, and the head bored in two or three places,” for that it much avails to the exhalation of the vapours.

As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher till he be come to his full pitch and in the end when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden: so will I, having now come at last into these ample fields of air wherein I may freely expatiate and exercise myself for my recreation, awhile rove, wander round about the world, mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and so descend to my former elements again.

But hoo! I am now gone quite out of sight, I am almost giddy with roving about: I could have ranged farther yet, but I am an infant, and not able to dive into these profundities or sound these depths, not able to understand, much less to discuss. … [M]y melancholy spaniel’s quest, my game, is sprung, and I must suddenly come down and follow.

But where am I? Into what subject have I rushed? What have I to do with nuns, maids, virgins, widows? I am a bachelor myself, and lead a monastic life in a college, [it is certainly very foolish of me to speak thus], I confess ‘tis an indecorum, and as Pallas, a virgin, blushed when Jupiter by chance spake of love matters in her presence, and turned away her face, me reprimam [I will check myself]; though my subject necessarily require it, I will say no more.

And yet I must and will say something more, add a word or two, [in favour of maids and widows], in favour of all such distressed parties, in commiseration of their present estate.