Volume 1
The anatomy of melancholy / edited by Rev. A.R. Shilleto.
- Burton, Robert
- Date:
- Reprint 1896 (3 vol set)
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The anatomy of melancholy / edited by Rev. A.R. Shilleto. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)
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![better cure it in himself, [and] by his writings & observations1 teach others how to prevent and avoid it. Which good intent of his Hippocrates highly commended : 2 Democritus Junior is therefore bold to imitate, and because he left it unperfect, and it is now lost, quasi succenturiator Democriti? to revive again, prosecute and finish, in this treatise. You have had a reason of the name. If the title and inscription offend your gravity, were it a sufficient justification to accuse others, I could produce many sober treatises, even sermons them- selves, which in their fronts carry more phantastical names. How- soever it is a kind of policy in these days to prefix a phantastical title to a book which is to be sold. For as Larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing, like silly passengers,4 at an antick picture in a painter's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece. And indeed, as 5 Scaliger observes, mothing more invites a reader than an argument unlooked for, unthought of, and sells better then a scurrile pamphlet, turn maxime cum novitas excitat palatum.6 Many men, saith7 [Aulus] Gellius, are very conceited in their inscriptions, and able (as Pliny8 quotes out of Seneca) to make him loiter by the way that went in haste to fetch a mid-wife for his daughter, now ready to lie down. For my part I have honourable9 precedents for this which I have done : [ will cite one for all, Anthony Zara, Pap. Episc. his Anatomy of Wit, in four sections, members, subsections, &*c. to be read in )ur Libraries. If any man except against the matter or manner of treating of [his my subject, & will demand a reason of it, I can allege more han one. I writ of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melan- :holy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, i Cum mundus extra se sit, et mente captus sit, et nesciat se languere, ut mede- im adhibeat. [2 Erasmus gave this name to More in his dedicatory Epistle of Encomium Moriae. Perhaps Burton borrowed the title thence, or at least the sugges- on of the title.] [3 As a substitute for Democritus. See Terence, Phormio, i. iv. 55.] 1 Passers by. Compare Dryden's Translation of Dufresnoy's Art of Painting : Apelles, when he had finished any work, exposed it to the sight of all passengers, nd concealed himself to hear the censure of his faults.] 5 Scaliger, Ep. ad Patis- Dnem. Nihil magis lectorem invitat quam inopinatum argumentum, neque vendi- tor merx est quam petulans liber. [6 Especially when its novelty whets the palate.] Lib. xx. c. 11. Miras sequuntur inscriptionum festivitates. 8 Praefat. Nat. list. Patri obstetricem parturienti filias accersenti moram injicere possunt. Anatomy of Popery, Anatomy of Immortality, Angelus Scalas, Anatomy of ntimony, &a C](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21270818_001_0061.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
