ve in Leicestershire. He held the two
livings "with much ado to his dying day" (says Antony a Wood, the Oxford
historian, somewhat mysteriously); and he was buried in the north aisle of
Christ Church cathedral, where his elder brother William Burton, author of
a _History of Leicestershire_, raised to his memory a monument, with his
bust in colour. The epitaph that he had written for himself was carved
beneath the bust: _Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus
Junior, cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia_. Some years before his death
he had predicted, by the calculation of his nativity, that the approach of
his climacteric year (sixty-three) would prove fatal; and the prediction
came true, for he died on the 25th of January 1639-40 (some gossips
surmising that he had "sent up his soul to heaven through a noose about his
neck" to avoid the chagrin of seeing his calculations falsified). His [v.04
p.0866] portrait in Brasenose College shows the face of a scholar, shrewd,
contemplative, humorous.

A Latin comedy, _Philosophaster_, originally written by Robert Burton in
1606 and acted at Christ Church in 1617, was long supposed to be lost; but
in 1862 it was printed for the Roxburghe Club from a manuscript belonging
to the Rev. W.E. Buckley, who edited it with elaborate care and appended a
collection of the academical exercises that Burton had contributed to
various Oxford miscellanies ("Natalia," "Parentalia," &c.).
_Philosophaster_ is a vivacious exposure of charlatanism. Desiderius, duke
of Osuna, invites learned men from all parts of Europe to repair to the
university which he has re-established; and a crowd of shifty adventurers
avail themselves of the invitation. There are points of resemblance to
_Philosophaster_ in Ben Jonson's _Alchemist_ and Tomkis's _Albumazar_, but
in the prologue Burton is careful to state that his was the earlier play.
(Another manuscript of _Philosophaster_, a presentation copy to William
Burton from the author, has since been found in the library of Lord
Mostyn.)

In 1621 was issued at Oxford the first edition, a quarto, of _The Anatomy
of Melancholy ... by Democritus Junior_. Later editions, in folio, were
published in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651, 1652, 1660, 1676. Burton was for
ever engaged in revising his treatise. In the third edition (where first
appeared the engraved emblematical title-page by C. Le Blond) he declared
that he would make no further alterations. But the