THE AUTHOR of “The Anatomy of Melancholy” had no predecessor in English literature and he has found no successor. In the variety of his learning and in the complete abandonment of all restraint with which he uses it, he is unlike any other essayist in the whole range of literature. Among the Ancients, Athenæus is nearest to him in ability to quote in connection with any given subject illustrations which no one else would have thought of in that or any other connection. This ability and his own quaintness immortalized Burton. Hundreds of writers, famous or obscure, whose works are now to be reached only on the dustiest shelves of the great libraries, are quoted by him as if they were his familiar friends. It is charged that he supplied Sterne with much of the curious learning which helped to make “Tristram Shandy” celebrated, and it might as easily be charged that other reputations for extensive scholarship more pretentious than that of Sterne would collapse if “The Anatomy of Melancholy” were drawn from under them. Now, however, when handbooks of classical quotations are so abundant and cheap, Burton is thrown upon his own merits for survival, and as there is scarcely a bookstore of any pretension in England or America without “The Anatomy of Melancholy” in stock, it may fairly be said that he is standing the test. It is asserted that he was led by his own melancholy disposition to undertake the analysis of melancholy in all its physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects. In carrying out this purpose he touches on almost every subject then imaginable as earthly, besides making frequent excursions into the region of the celestial and the infernal.

  He was born in Leicestershire, England, February 8th, 1577. After graduating at Oxford, he was elected “student” of Christ Church College. He was afterwards vicar of St. Thomas and rector of Segrave under the English Church. Those who know him best as the author of “The Anatomy of Melancholy” will be most inclined to doubt his success in doing the work of a parish, though no doubt he did as well as Rev. Robert Herrick, not to mention Rev. Dr. Swift or Rev. Dr. Sterne himself.