ng both a
spiritual and bodily infirmity, the divine and the physician must unite to
cure it.

The preface is followed by a tabular synopsis of the First Partition with
its several Sections, Members and Subsections. After various preliminary
digressions Burton sets himself to define what Melancholy is and what are
its species and kinds. Then he discusses the Causes, supernatural and
natural, of the disorder, and afterwards proceeds to set down the Symptoms
(which cannot be briefly summarized, "for the Tower of Babel never yielded
such confusion of tongues as the Chaos of Melancholy doth of Symptoms").
The Second Partition is devoted to the Cure of Melancholy. As it is of
great importance that we should live in good air, a chapter deals with "Air
Rectified. With a Digression of the Air." Burton never travelled, but the
study of cosmography had been his constant delight; and over sea and land,
north, east, west, south--in this enchanting chapter--he sends his vagrant
fancy flying. In the disquisition on "Exercise rectified of body and mind"
he dwells gleefully on the pleasures of country life, and on the content
that scholars find in the pursuit of their favourite studies.
Love-Melancholy is the subject of the first Three Sections of the Third
Partition, and many are the merry tales with which these pages are
seasoned. The Fourth (and concluding) Section treats, in graver mood, of
Religious Melancholy; and to the "Cure of Despair" he devotes his deepest
meditations.

_The Anatomy_, widely read in the 17th century, for a time lapsed into
obscurity, though even "the wits of Queen Anne's reign and the beginning of
George I. were not a little beholden to Robert Burton" (Archbishop
Herring). Dr Johnson deeply admired the work; and Sterne laid it heavily
under contribution. But the noble and impassioned devotion of Charles Lamb
has been the most powerful help towards keeping alive the memory of the
"fantastic great old man." Burton's odd turns and quirks of expression, his
whimsical and affectate fancies, his kindly sarcasm, his far-fetched
conceits, his deep-lying pathos, descended by inheritance of genius to
Lamb. The enthusiasm of Burton's admirers will not be chilled by the
disparagement of unsympathetic critics (Macaulay and Hallam among them) who
have consulted his pages in vain; but through good and evil report he will
remain, their well-loved companion to the end.

The best of the modern editions of Burton was publish