r. A critical edition of the _Anatomy_,
giving these enlargements exactly with other editorial matter, is very much
wanted; but even in the rather inedited condition in which the book, old
and new, is usually found, it is wholly acceptable. Its literary history is
rather curious. Eight editions of it appeared in half a century from the
date of the first, and then, with other books of its time, it dropped out
of notice except by the learned. Early in the present century it was
revived and reprinted with certain modernisations, and four or five
editions succeeded each other at no long interval. The copies thus
circulated seem to have satisfied the demand for many years, and have been
followed without much alteration in some later issues.

The book itself has been very variously judged. Fuller, in one of his least
worthy moments, called it "a book of philology." Anthony Wood, hitting on a
notion which has often been borrowed since, held that it is a convenient
commonplace book of classical quotations, which, with all respect to
Anthony's memory (whom I am more especially bound to honour as a Merton
man), is a gross and Philistine error. Johnson, as was to be expected,
appreciated it thoroughly. Ferriar in his _Illustrations of Sterne_ pointed
out the enormous indebtedness of Tristram Shandy to Democritus Junior.
Charles Lamb, eloquently praising the "fantastic great old man," exhibited
perhaps more perversity than sense in denouncing the modern reprints which,
after all, are not like some modern reprints (notably one of Burton's
contemporary, Felltham, to be noticed shortly), in any real sense garbled.
Since that time Burton has to some extent fallen back to the base uses of a
quarry for half-educated journalists; nevertheless, all fit readers of
English literature have loved him.

The book is a sufficiently strange one at first sight; and it is perhaps no
great wonder that uncritical readers should have been bewildered by the
bristling quotations from utterly forgotten authorities which, with full
and careful reference for the most part, stud its pages, by its elaborate
but apparently futile marshalling in "partitions" and "members," in
"sections" and "subsections," and by the measureless license of digression
which the author allows himself. It opens with a long epistle, filling some
hundred pages in the modern editions, from Democritus Junior, as the author
calls himself, to the reader--an epistle which gives a true fore