me to his
net: divines, poets, astrologists, doctors, philosophers, men of
science, travelers, romancers--he draws from the whole range of
literature; and often page after page--scores and hundreds of pages,--is
filled with quotations, sometimes of two or three words only, sometimes
translated and sometimes not, an almost inextricable network of facts,
of fancies, and of phrases. He says: "As those old Romans rob'd all the
cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the
cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their till'd
gardens to set out our own steril plots."

Yet when he sets about it, his handling is steady and assured, and he
has distinctly the literary touch, as well as the marks of genius;
having a very great quaintness withal. The title of his famous book is
'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 Sub-sections, Philosophically,
Medically, Historically Opened and Cut Up. By Democritus Junior.' The
first edition appears to have been issued in 1621. He continued to
modify and enlarge it from time to time throughout his life; and for the
sixth edition, which appeared some years after his death, he prepared a
long address to the reader, describing his student life, accounting for
his choice of subject, and full of quaint fancies and scathing
criticisms of the ill habits and weaknesses of mankind.

"Melancholy" means with Burton _Melancholia_, but it means also all
sorts of insanity, and apparently all affections of the mind or spirit,
sane or insane. On the one hand he heaps up, in page after page and
chapter after chapter, all the horrid ills to which flesh is heir, or
which it cultivates for itself, and paints the world as a very
pandemonium of evil and outrage. And anon the air blows soft and sweet,
the birds sing, both brotherly love and domestic happiness are possible,
and

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world."

To the first volume is prefixed 'The Author's Abstract of Melancholy,'
beginning:--

"When I go musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things foreknown,
When I build castles in the ayr,
Void of sorrow and void of feare
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy."

It does not need