'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.'