Of these, Burton's 'Anatomy of
Melancholy' is one of the most marked instances. It is a vast storehouse
from which subsequent authors have always drawn and continue to draw,
even as Burton himself drew from others,--though without always giving
the credit which with him was customary. Few would now have the courage
to read it through, and probably fewer still could say with Dr. Johnson
that it "was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours
sooner than he wished to rise."

[Illustration: ROBERT BURTON]

Of Robert Burton himself very little is known. He was born in 1577,
a few years later than Shakespeare,--probably at Lindley, in
Leicestershire; and died at Oxford in 1640. He had some schooling at
Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire, and was sent to Brasenose College at
Oxford in 1593; was elected a student at Christ Church College in 1599,
and took his degree of B.D. in 1614. He was then thirty-seven years of
age. Why he should have been so long in reaching his degree, does not
appear. Two years later he was presented by the Dean and Chapter of
Christ Church to the vicarage of St. Thomas in the suburbs of Oxford. To
this, about 1630, through presentation by George, Lord Berkeley, was
added the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire, and he retained both
livings until his death. This is about the sum and substance of his
known history. Various legends remain regarding him; as, that he was
very good and jolly company, a most learned scholar, very ready in
quotations from the poets and classical authors,--and indeed no reader
of the 'Anatomy' could imagine otherwise. Yet was he of a melancholy
disposition, and it is said that "he composed this book with a view of
relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree that
nothing could make him laugh but going to the foot-bridge and hearing
the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a
violent fit of laughter." He says himself, "I write of melancholy, by
being busie, to avoid melancholy." He was expert in the calculation of
nativities, and cast his own horoscope; having determined in which, the
time at which his death should occur, it was afterward shrewdly believed
that he took measures to insure the fulfillment of the prophecy.

His life was almost wholly spent in his study at Oxford. He was a wide
and curious reader, and the book to the composition of which he devoted
himself quotes authorities without end. All was fish which ca