BOOKS.
BURTON'S "ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY." 1' HIGH commendation is due to the enterprise of the publishers in planning, and to the industry of the editor in executing, a critical edition of Burton's marvellous treatise. Its actual length is considerable—about six octavo volumes of average size and closeness of printing—though in this respect it has often been excelled ; but the variety of its contents is such that it would not be easy to find a parallel. Burton deserved, if any man ever did, the sobriquet of helluo librorum; he read incessantly, and this in days when a reader's time was not wasted on ephemeral literature. Mr. A. R. Shilleto, the notice of whose premature death we have observed with great regret, attempted, and with no inconsiderable success, to verify Burton's quotations. Burton was not always exact ; he often quoted memoriter, and consequently sometimes quoted incorrectly. Sometimes he gave but a vague reference, some- times no reference at all ; occasionally he made no acknow- ledgment. Mr. Shilleto has not always corrected him. For instance, he writes (ii., 90) :—" Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, bragged of nothing more than his Orchard, hi stint ord'ines mei." The editor supplies the reference, which is to the De Senectute, but fails to notice that it was not Lysander who talked to ambassadors on the subject, but the younger Cyrus who talked to Lysander. But even a brief inspection of these volumes will show that Mr. Shilleto has accomplished a great deal ; the references, to take one instance, to the huge miscellany of Plutarch's Morelia, show how careful and laborious he was. In one respect be
"In South Wales, Lord Bute has had a vineyard for nineteen years, and he has made good wine from his grapes. Lord Butes head gardener says that some of the wine from the 1:.:1 crop realised ills. a down when sold by auction at Birmingham last year. This crop was grown at Castoll (loch. Lord Bute has now another largo vineyard on the shore of the Bristol Channel, where the ' Gamy Nori grapes last year gave forty hogsheads of wine of the best quality."—Baiiy Graphic, September 17th, 1 4,
1- Tito Anatomy of Melancholy. By Robert Burton. Edited by the niA With an Introduction by A, H. Bull= 3 vols. London: Bell and Bons. 1893.
has done, we cannot but think, more than was wanted. The translations given of the Latin are somewhat tiresome. Readers who need to have inlaid rendered by " saith," need not have been so carefully considered. It is extremely unlikely that such will ever open a book that is peculiarly meant for scholars.
The Anatomy was published in 1621. It was printed at Oxford, but for a London bookseller, Cripps of the Old Bailey. It was reprinted in folio three years afterwards, and again 1628, 1632, and 1638. The author died in 1639, leaving to his executors, for the benefit of his general estate, "half my Melancholy eopie, for Cripps hath the other halfe." This is an interesting example of the " half-profits" system. Apparently, the edition was exactly divided between publisher and author. If so, Burton must have realised a considerable sum from his book ; not less, we may guess, than £5,000. As he had a studentship at Christ Church—not a great matter, it is true—and two benefices, both of which he contrived to hold "with much ado to his dying day," he must have had more means than would appear from his will, which does not dispose of more than £1,000 at the outside. The text from which the present edition is printed is that of 1651.52. This had the author's latest corrections. Mr. Bullen desiderates what he calls "a definitive edition." "Were I," he exclaims enthusiastically, "on the foundation of that most flourishing College of Europe,' I should have no peace until not only the quarto [the first edition] but all the folios had been added to the shelves. Then I would induce some college friends to join me in collating all the various editions and in verifying all the numberless quotations." This pious aspiration is unhappily an anachronism. To be on the foundation of a " flourishing college "—if any colleges are flourishing—means anything but learned leisure. If it had been made and taken effect fifty years ago, when at least there was leisure, and sometimes learning Nothing could be more logical than the arrangement of the Anatomy. It is as precise and scientific as befits the name. The author begins with diseases in general, divides them as diseases of the body (of which he says there are three hundred), or of the head or mind. Diseases of the mind are distinguished again as diseases " in disposition " or " habit." Diseased habits are of nine kinds,—Dotage, Phrensy, Madness, Elderly, Lycanthropia, Chorus Sancti Viti, Hydrophobia, Pos- session or Obsession of Devils, and—though one might have thought the catalogue exhausted—the real subject of the book, Melancholy. Before this is dealt with, there comes an anatomy of the body and of the soul ; this is followed by a definition of melancholy, by a description of its species, and an enumera- tion of its causes, general or particular ; its symptoms, common to all or most, or particular to private persons ; and its prog- nostics, tending to good (possibly better than they seem, "black jaundice" being one of them) or tending to evil. So far the first " partition." The second " partition " deals with "cures," which are divided into moral and physical, and of course subdivided into varieties quae describere longum est. Partition III. is of the nature of a supplement, and includes two main divisions,—Love, Melancholy, and Religions Melan- choly. The elaborate detail in which all this is set out quite defies description.
But however logical the plan, the treatment is not a little discursive. In Partition IL, for instance, an elaborate sub- division of topics conducts us to a "Consolatory Digression, containing the Remedies of all Manner of Discontents." "I have thought fit," he ingenuously remarks, " a little to digress." And he does digress to some purpose. He first notices the Multitude of books of consolation, and then discusses the doubt whether, after all, they are of any use. Catiline is quoted as saying that " words add no courage," and Job as complaining of his friends that they are " miserable com- forters," while the younger Pliny wants an entirely new consola- tion for the death of a dear friend. Still, be it as it may, I will essay." He goes on to point out that the "discontents and grievances are either general or particular ; " if you suffer what is after all the common lot, why be troubled P " Grave nihil est horning quod fert necessitas, was Tully'e theme out of an old Poet." If it be long, 'tie light ; if grievous, it cannot last, No man's good fortune long continues,—a saying proved by Coriolanus, Alcibiades, Gonsalvo, and by general considera- tions of astrology, for as the planets "have their fortitudes and
debilities So we rise and fall in this world." So our author wanders on, taking us with him, well content to be with a companion so marvellously well read and apt in quota- tion. Only at the last we remember that all we have been hearing has as little as possible to do with melancholy. Another instance of digression in the same "Partition" or volume—the volumes are conveniently arranged to include the "partitions "—is one of the finest and most characteristic specimens of our author's style. He imagines himself free to wander through air, and tells us how he would satisfy his curiosity. Among the objects of this passion in him are the Arctic Ocean and the North-West Passage, " whether the Great Oliam of Tartary and the King of China be one," whether there be "a wall four hundred leagues long to part China from Tartary," where "Presbyter John" is to be found, where are the fountains of Nilus, and what causes its overflow, and then he goes on :—
" I would see those inner parts of America, whether there be any such great City of Mama or Eldorado in that golden Empire, where the highways are as much beaten (one reports) as between Madrid and Valladolid in Spain ; or any such Amazonas as he relates, or gigantical Patagones in Chico; with that miraculous Mountain Ybouyapab in the Northern Brazil, °Wits jugum sternitur in concenissimanc planitiem, 4'c., or that of Periacacca, so high elevated in Peru. The pike of Tenariffe how high is it P 70 miles, or 52, as Patricius holds, or 9, as Sne/lius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes : see that strange Cirknickzerksey lake in Oa rreioia, whose waters gush so fast mi- of the ground, that they will overtake a swift horse- man, and by and by with as incredible celerity are supped up : which Lazius and Warnerus make an argument of the Argonauts sailing under ground. And that vast den or hole called Esmeilen in Muscovia, quce visitur horrendo hiatu, 4'c., which, if anything casually fall in, makes such a roaring noise, that no thunder, or ordnance, or warlike engine can make the like ; such another is Gilber's Cave in Laplamd, with many the like. I would examine the Caspian Sea, and see where and how it exonerates itself, after it hath taken in Volga, Iateares, Oxus, and those great rivers ; at the mouth of 0by, or where ? What vent the Mexican lake bath, the Titicacarc in Peru, or that circular pool in the vale of Terapeia, of which Acosta 1. 3 c. ill, hot in a cold country, the spring of which boils up in the middle twenty foot square, and bath no vent but exhalation ; and that of Mare Mortuum in Palestine, of Thrasy- mene, at Perusium, in Italy : the Mediterranean itself. For from the Ocean, at the Straits of Gibraltar, there is a perpetual current into the Levant, and so likewise by the Thracian Bosphorus out of the Euxine or Black Sea, besides all those great rivers of Nilus, Padus, Rhoda/nue, &a. how is this water consumed ? by the sun, or otherwise P I would find out with Trajan the Fountains of Danubius, of Ganges, Oxus, see those Egyptian Pyramids, Trojan's Bridge, Grotta de Sibylla, Lucullus' Fish-ponds, the Temple of Nidrose, 4,c., and, if I could, observe what becomes of swallows, storks, cranes, cuckoos, nightingales, redstarts, & many other kind of singing birds, water-fowls, hawks, &c. some of them are only seen in summer, some in winter ; some are observed in the snow, and at no other times, each have their season. In winter not a bird is in Muscovy to be found, but at the spring in an instant the woods and hedges are full of them, saith Herbastein: bow comes it to pass ? "
Not the least interesting parts of his book are those in which he speaks of his own times. His complaints of the position of the clergy and the behaviour of patrons are bitter in the extreme. " If he be a trencher chaplain in a gentle- man's house, as it befell Euphormio, after some seven years' service, he may perchance have a living to the halves, or some small Rectory with the mother of the maids at length, or a poor kinswoman." This is, of course, the chief authority for Macaulay's famous description of the clergy. The curious
phrase, "a living to the halves," is illustrated by charges which he brings against the patrons of the day with a vehemence and a definiteness which seem to imply that he had some cause for his complaints. He certainly gives us to understand that it was a common practice to make a simoniacal bargain by which a half, or even two-thirds, of the revenues of a benefice were reserved for the patron.
A not dissimilar charge is brought against the authorities of the University, who are accused of making a profit by grant- ing degrees to unworthy recipients. Burton, as may be supposed, did not write virginibus puerisque, but we do not see in him, even when he takes his greatest license, what Mr. Haiku discovers. On the con- trary, we venture to think that there is a worse offence against good taste in the Introduction than iu the book which it introduces.
Previous page
