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New Evidence about Burton's Melancholy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Barbara H. Traister
Barbara H. Traister*
Affiliation:
Lehigh University
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Extract

I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy… . I was not a little offended with this malady, shall I say my mistress Melancholy, my Egeria, or my malus genius [evil genius]? and for that cause, … make an antidote out of that which was the prime cause of my disease.

Such teasingly self-referential passages as that quoted above have long led scholars to speculate as to the real physical and mental condition of Robert Burton. Did he suffer, as he claimed, the ravages of melancholy, or was he as a scholar simply assuming the fashionable scholars’ disease as a peg upon which to hang his encyclopedic treatise? Much of this uncertainty arises from gaps in our knowledge of Burton's biography.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , Spring 1976 , pp. 66 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1976

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References

1 Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Jackson, Holbrook, 3 vols. (New York: Dutton, 1932), 1, 20–21.Google Scholar Further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text.

2 Anthony à Wood, , Athenae Oxoniensis, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Knaplock, 1721), 11, col. 75Google Scholar, for William Burton; 1, cols. 627-628, for Robert Burton. Although more recent scholars deal with Burton's biography, none has more information than Wood about Burton's early years.

3 This explanation was first offered by Fox, Arthur W., A Book of Bachelors (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1899), pp. 400–401 Google Scholar, n. 7, and is cited approvingly by Babb, Lawrence, Sanity in Bedlam: A Study of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1959), p. 13 Google Scholar, and with somewhat less confidence by Simon, Jean Robert, Robert Burton (1577-1640) et L'Anatomie de la Melancolie (Paris: Didier, 1964), pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

4 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. 226, fol. 125, hereafter cited within the text as Ash. MS. In transcribing Forman's cases I omit both the horoscopes (which are cast for the particular visit and thus are not birth horoscopes of the patient) and the astrological data which Forman includes in his diagnosis. Abbreviations and contractions have been silently expanded, and I follow modern typographical conventions in the use of u/v.

5 second questo: the second time the patient had come to Forman about the same problem.

6 diz him self: the visit was about a disease or sickness, and the patient came himself rather than sending an intermediary.

7 RC 2 [shillings]: Forman's payment of two shillings from his patient.

8 Though the age of the patient on the fourth visit is recorded as twenty-two, I am virtually certain this is an error on Forman's part. He makes a number of similar mistakes in details about patients whom he sees again and again.

9 Wood, 1, col. 628.

10 Quoted in Nochimson, Richard L., ‘Robert Burton's Authorship of Alba: A Lost Letter Recovered,’ RES, 21 (1970), 327.Google Scholar

11 Wood, II, col. 57.

12 I would like to thank Judith Cramer Fendelman, formerly of CUNY, for her help with the biographical aspects of this article.