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Robert Burton
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Robert Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy
In the year 1650, as I well remember, I was onenight reading in my bed (as it was my custom then to do, in some book or other) in the Anatomy of Melancholy: and coming to this passage of the author, that I have just now cited, viz of his having Jupiter in the sixth house, which made him a physician,I was really non-plust, and Planet-struck for that bout, and forced to lay aside my book, being unwilling to read what I could not understand. I then endeavoured to go to my rest, but in vain, my active genius was watchful, and constantly solicited me,even in my dreams, to enquire, and discover if I could, what Jupiter in the Sixth house meant. . . .I had then. . . some small acquaintance with the learned Dr. Nicholas Fisk. . .who presently gave me such satisfaction in the Point as I was thencapable of receiving.
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Gadbury Print: Book
Robert Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy
[Marginalia]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
Robert Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy
'V.S. Pritchett had an uncle, an atheist cabinet-maker, who taught himself to read from The Anatomy of Melancholy, even acquiring a few Latin and Greek words from the notes. "Look it up in Burton, lad", became his inevitable response to any question. "Burton was Uncle Arthur's emancipation", wrote Pritchett, "it set him free from the tyranny of the Bible in chapel-going circles". Whenever his pious relatives quoted Scripture at each other, he could trump them with something from The Anatomy of Melancholy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Print: Book
Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, The
'[from an account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish london-based priest friend of Johnson] Speaking of Mr. Harte, Canon of Windsor, and writer of "The History of Gustavus Adolphus", he much commended him as a scholar, and a man of the must companionable talents he had ever known. He said, the defects in his history proceeded not from imbecility, but from foppery. He loved, he said, the old black letter books; they were rich in matter, though their style was inelegant; wonderfully so, considering how conversant the writers were with the best models of antiquity. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, The
'[Johnson opined that] Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" is a valuable work. It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. But there is a great spirit and great power in what Burton says, when he writes from his own mind'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy, The
'What a strange Book is Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"! & how it has been plunder'd! Milton took his Allegro and Penseroso from the Verses at the beginning, Savage his Speech of Suicide in the Wanderer from Page 216. Swift his Tale of the Woman that held water in her Mouth to regain her Husband's Love by Silence - 'tis printed in the Tatler; Johnson got his Story of the Magnet that detects unchaste Wives from the same Farrago, & even Shakespear I believe the Trick put on the Tinker Christopher Sly in the taming of the Shrew. See page 277 of Burton.'
