The anatomy of melancholy : what it is with all the kinds, causes, symptons, prognostics & several cures of it / In three partitions with their several sections members & subsections philosophically, medicinally, historically opened & cut up by Democritus Junior [Robert Burton] with a satirical preface conducing to the following discourse.

  • Burton, Robert, 1577-1640.
Date:
1924
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy of melancholy : what it is with all the kinds, causes, symptons, prognostics & several cures of it / In three partitions with their several sections members & subsections philosophically, medicinally, historically opened & cut up by Democritus Junior [Robert Burton] with a satirical preface conducing to the following discourse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    M EM OIR OF THE AUTHOR. Robert Burton was the son of Ralph Burton, of an ancient and genteel family at Lindley, in Leicestershire, and was born there on the 8 th of February, 1576,* He received the first rudiments of learning at the free school of Sutton Coldfield, in Warwiekshire,+ from whence he was, at the age of seventeen, in the long vacation, 1593, sent to Brazen Nose College, in the condition of a commoner, where he made a considerable progress in logic and philosophy. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ Church, and, for form sake, was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. In 1614 he was admitted to the reading of the Sentences, and on the 29th of November, 1616, had the vicarage of St. Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, conferred on him by the dean and canons of Christ Church, which, with the rectory of Segrave, in Leicestershire, given to him in the year 1636, by George, Lord Berkeley, he kept, to use the words of the Oxford antiquary, with much ado to his dying day. He seems to have been first beneficed at Walsby, in Lincolnshire, through the munificence of his noble patroness, Frances, Countess Dowager of Exeter, but resigned the same, as he tells us, for some special reasons. At his vicarage he is remarked to have always given the sacrament in wafers. Wood’s character of him is, that “ he was an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. 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 Christ Church often say, that his company was very merry, facete, and * His elder brother was William Burton, the Leicestershire antiquary, born 24th August, 1575, educated at Sutton Coldfield, admitted commoner, or gentleman commoner, of Brazen Nose College, 1591; at the Inner Temple, 20th May, 1593; B.A. 22nd June, 1594; and afterwards a barrister and reporter in the Court of Common Pleas. “ Bat his natural genius,” says Wood, “leading him to the studies of heraldry, genealo¬ gies, and antiquities, he became excellent in those obscure and intricate matters; and, look upon him as a gentleman, was accounted, by all that knew him, to be the best of his time for those studies, as may appear by his ‘Description of Leicestershire.’ ” His weak constitution not permitting him to follow business, he retired into the country, and his greatest work, “The Description of Leicestershire,” was published in folio, 1622. He died at Falde, after suffering much in the civil war, 6th April, 1645, and was buried in the parish church belonging thereto, called Hanbury. t This is Wood’s account. His will says, Nuneaton; but a passage in this work [vol. i. p. 395,] mention* Sutton Coldfield: probably he may have been at both schools