YALE S

REVIEW NEW

WILBUR
SERIES

Edited by L. CROSS

JANUARY 1914

tE Dying Pantheist to the Peiest . Henry A. Beers

Backgeound of the Ameeican Novel Robert Herrick
Law and the Judges Arthur L. Corbin
tetoft’s Anatomy of Melancholy Sir William Osier

SlCe and Wae in 1913 . Frederick Lynch

|EY WHO Scent thh Tasselled Pine )
F
^D
^
AND THE FaEMEE
f Frederick Erastus Pierce
j

fES AND Masefield Henry Seidel Canby

Significance of Beegson . . William Ernest Hocking
:cAccio, An Apology H, D. Sedgwick
?B0UGH THE ScuTTLE WITH THE TiNMAN . Charles S. Brooks

SES OF THE Mesozoic Richard Swann Lull

Next Session of Paeliament . . W. M. J. Williams

)K Reviews

PnbUshod QuarterlF by the

YALE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. Inc.
135 Him Street. New Haven. Conn.

0 A Yeae 75 Cents a Copy

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS NUMBER A
OF THE YALE REVIEW..
Henry A. Beers, author of many poems, essays, and books, which
include “The Thankless Muse,” “The Ways of Yale,” and “English
Romanticism.” He is the senior Professor of English Literature at
'•.fl

Yale. r
\

Robert Herrick, author of “The Healer” and “One Woman’s Life,”

isamong the best known contemporary novelists. How carefully he has
thought out some of the problems of his art, appears in “The Back-
ground of the American Novel,” the first of two papers which he is
contributing to the Yale Review. A graduate of Harvard, he is now
Professor of English Literature in the University of Chicago.
Arthur L. Corbin, a graduate of the University of Kansas, and of the
Yale Law School, practised law for several years in Colorado, and was
then called to a professorship in the Yale Law School, where he holds
the chair of Contracts and Torts.
Sir William Osier, the distinguished physician, formerly of Johns
Hopkins University, is Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. Bte
has been honored by degrees from many universities, is a member of the
Royal Society, and was made a baronet on the coronation of George the
Fifth.
Frederick Lynch, editor of “The Christian Work,” has taken an
active part in the peace movement for twenty years. He was one of
the founders of the Peace Arbitration Society of New York, and has
been a representative at many peace congresses at home and abroad.
Frederick Erastus Pierce has published several critical and educa-
tional books and a volume of verse entitled “The World that God
Destroyed and other Poems.” He is an Assistant Professor of Eng-
lish in the Sheffield Scientific School.
Henry Seidel Canby, one of the editors of the Yale Review, besides
publishing various books, is a frequent contributor of literary articles
to other magazines.
William Ernest Hocking, author of “The Meaning of God in Human
Experience,” which was reviewed in the October number of this maga-
zine, is a Professor of Philosophy in Yale College. He is a graduate
of Harvard.
H. D. Sedgwick, author of essays and biographies, dealing with
American life and character, is best known for his distinguished studies
in Italian history and literature. Last year appeared in two volumes
his “Italy in the Thirteenth Century.”
Charles S. Brooks, a lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio, who contributed to
the Yale Review last year an essay in humorous vein, “On Maps and
Rabbit Holes,” is represented in this number by a characteristic sketch.
Richard Swann Lull, a weU-known palaeontologist, is an authority on
the distribution and migrations of Dinosauria. He has previously
written for the Yale Review an interesting article on Glacial Man.
W. M. J. Williams, a Welshman by a regular contributor to
birth, is
the London magazines on taxation and His book, “The King's
finance.
Revenue,” is an authoritative treatise on the income and outgo of the
nation’s exchequer. Needless to say, he is a staunch Liberal in politics.
BURTON’S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
By Sir William Osler

M elancholy
in which a man
may
is
be defined as a state of mind
so out of touch with his environ-
ment that life has lost its sweetness. Galen speaks of it as
“a malady that injures the mind, associated with profound
depression and aversion from the things one loves best.”
Burton himself nowhere defines it, but quotes definitions
from Fernelius, Fuschius, and other authors. And great
minds are not free from it: “nullum magnum ingenium
sine mixtura dementige,” says Aristotle; to defend the
truth of which thesis Reveille-Parise has written an interest-
ing monograph. Unfortunately from birth melancholy
marks some for her own: those unhappy souls who at every
stage smell the mould above the rose, and sing, with Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, “With toilsome steps I pass thro
life’s dull road.” From the transitory form, the “blues” or
low spirits, “no man living,” as our author says, “is free,
no stoic known so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so
generous, so godly, so divine that can vindicate himself; so
well composed but more or less sometime or other he feels
the smart of it.” Life is a mixed “glukupicric passion.”
Into gulf we must all wade happy those who
this infernal ;

do not get beyond the shallows but when the habit becomes
;

“a settled humor, a chronic or continuate disease,” the

unfortunate victim cries aloud with the Psalmist, “All thy
waves and storms have gone over me.”
Of the “eighty-eight varieties” said to exist. Burton
will treatonly the severer, inveterate, fixed forms, not the
passing melancholy which is more or less a character of mor-
tality. Naturally a malady of such universal prevalence
252 YALE REVIEW
has a literature of corresponding importance. A glance
through the titles of the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon’s
General Library gives one some idea of its extent in medi-
cine: books, monographs, journal articles by the score have
been written on the subject. There is scarcely an ancient
author of note who has not dealt with some aspect of it.
But among them all one only has the touchstone of time
declared to be of enduring, of supreme, merit; the cen-
turies have made Burton’s book a permanent possession
of literature. Though called by the author a cento, a patch-
work, by no means a correct designation. “The
this is
Anatomy of Melancholy” is a great medical treatise,
orderly in arrangement, serious in purpose, and weighty
beyond belief with authorities. Scores of works written by
seventeenth-century worthies more learned than Burton,
have long since sunk in the ooze. Neither system, nor mat-
ter, nor form, has sufficed to float them to our day. Nor
would “The Anatomy” have reached a second edition if
its vitality had depended upon the professional picture; but

in it a subject of universal interest is enriched with deep

human sympathy; and with its roots in this soil Burton’s
book still lives.

The main facts of Robert Burton’s life are in the book.

He was born at Lindley in Leicestershire of a family of
which he was justly proud and to the members of which
he not infrequently refers in his book. At the end of the
“Digression of Air Rectified,” mentioning pleasant high
places in England, he speaks of Oldbury “in the confines
of Warwickshire, where I have often looked about me with
great delight, at the foot of which hill I was born.” Pos-
sibly it was from his mother that he got his love for the
study of medicine. He states that she had “excellent skill
in chirurgery, sore eyes, aches, etc., and such experimental
medicines, as all the country where she dwelt can witness, to
have done many famous and good cures upon diverse poor
folks that were otherwise destitute of help.” He seems
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 253

delighted to have found that one of her cures for ague, an

amulet of a spider in a nutshell lapped in silk, was men-
tioned by Dioscorides and approved by Matthiolus. After
attending school at Nuneaton and Sutton Coldfield in War-
wickshire, he followed his brother William, in 1593, to Brase-
nose College, Oxford, as a commoner. In 1599 he was
elected a Student of Christ Church, which he calls the most
flourishing college of Europe, and where he lived, as he says,
“a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life,” trying to learn
wisdom, “penned up most part in my study.” He never
travelled, but he took a great delight in the study of cos-
mography; and for his recreation he would wander round
about the world in map or card. He had neither wife nor
children, good or bad, to provide for; he was neither rich
nor poor he had little and wanted nothing. All his treas-
;

ure was in Minerva’s tower. He was all his life aquae potor.
He was a mere spectator of others’ fortunes and adventures,
and so he rubbed on through his forty-seven years of college
life, “privus privatus; as I have still lived, so I now con-
tinue, statu quo and mine own
prius, left to a solitary life,
domestic discontents; saving that sometimes, ne quid men-
tiaVj as Diogenes went into the city, and Democritus to the

haven, to see fashions, I did for my recreation now and then

walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but
make some little observation, non tarn sagax observatory, ac
simplex recitator, not as they did to scoff or laugh at all,

but with a mixed passion.”

I

After his appointment at Christ Church, Burton took

orders and did the ordinary work of a college tutor. He
was also Vicar of St. Thomas in the West and Rector of
Segrave in Leicestershire. “He was an exact mathema-
tician,” says Wood, “a curious calculator of nativities, a gen-
eral-read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that
I understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by
]
many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors,
a melancholy and humorous person so by others, who knew
;
254 YALE REVIEW
him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing, and
charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christ
Church often say, that his company was very merry, facete,
and juvenile; and no man in his time did surpass him for
his ready and dexterous interlarding his common discourses
among them with verses from the poets, or sentences from
classic authors; which being then all the fashion in the Uni-
versity, made his company the more acceptable.”
Burton’s stay at Christ Church came under the dean-
ship of Dr. Fell, whom he remembers in his will. That he
took an active share in the college life is evidenced by the
fact that he wrote many occasional verses and a Latin
comedy called “Philosophaster,” which was acted on
Shrove Monday, February 16, 1617-18. We may infer
from his will that he was an intimate friend of Dean Fell
and his family; and he remembers a number of his friends,
so that, though an old bachelor, he was well looked after
and doubtless much beloved in the community. His will
indicates also that he was on the best of terms with his
family, to whom he left the greater part of his considerable
estate. When the melancholy fits increased, “nothing
could make him laugh but going to the bridge-foot and
hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed
to throw him into a violent fit of laughter.” He died on the
twenty-fifth of January, 1639-40, very near the time which
he had some years before foretold from the calculation of
his nativity; and Wood remarks that “being exact, several
of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves,
that rather than there s^iould be mistake in the calculation,
he sent up his soul to heaven through a noose about his
neck.” He was buried in the north aisle of Christ Church
Cathedral; and there is a handsome monument with his
bust, painted to the life, and the calculation of his nativity.
F or the writing of the book we have Burton’s full reasons.
To escape melancholy he wrote upon it, to ease his mind,
for he had gravidum cor, foedum caput, a kind of impos-
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 255

thume in his head, of which he was desirous to be unladen,

and he could imagine no fitter evacuation. He calls melan-
choly his mistress, his Egeria; and he would comfort “one
sorrow with another, idleness with idleness, ut ex Viper a
Theriacum, make an antidote out of that which was the
prime cause of my disease.” Many notable authors, he says,
—
have done the same Tully and Cardan, for example; and
he can speak from experience, and could help others out of
a fellow feeling. Though oppressed with a vast chaos and
confusion of books, so that his eyes ache with reading and his
fingers with turning,and though many excellent physicians
have written elaborate treatises on this subject, he will ven-
ture to weave the same web and twist the same rope again.
He has laboriously collected this cento out of divers writers
and that sine injuria. He can say with Macrobius, ‘'Omne
meum, nihil meum, ’tis all mine and none mine.” At any
rate, like an honest man he cites and quotes his authors ; but
if,as Synesius says, “it is a greater offense to steal dead
men’s labors than their clothes,” what shall become of most
authors? He must plead guilty and hold up his hand at
the bar with the rest. Still, the method and composition

is his own and he hopes it shows a scholar. He realizes that

medical subject and that great exception may be
this is a
taken that he, a divine, has meddled with physic. The
apology must be given in his own words:

There be many other subjects, I do easily grant, both in humanity

and divinity, fit to be treated of, of which had I written ad ostenta-
tionem only, to show myself, I should have rather chosen, and in which
I have been more conversant, I could have more willingly luxuriated,

and better satisfied myself and others but that at this time I was fatally
;

driven upon this rock of melancholy, and carried

away by this by-stream,
which, as a deducted from the main channel of my studies, in
rillet, is

which I have pleased and busied myself at idle hours, as a subject

most necessary and commodious. Not that I prefer it before divinity,
which I do acknowledge to be the queen of professions, and to which
all the rest are as handmaids, but that in divinity I saw no such great
need. For had I written positively, there be so many books in that
—

256 YALE REVIEW

kind, so many commentators, treatises, pamphlets, expositions, sermons,
that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them; and had I been as for-
ward and ambitious some others, I might have haply printed a
as
sermon at Paid’s Cross, a sermon in St. Mary’s Oxon, a sermon in Christ
Church, or a sermon before the right honorable, right reverend, a
sermon before the right worshipful, a sermon in Latin, in English, a
sermon with a name, a sermon without, a sermon, a sermon, etc. But I
have been ever as desirous to suppress my labors in this kind, as others
have been to press and publish theirs.

And the physicians, he says, must not feel aggrieved.

Have not many of their sect taken orders —Marcilius Fici-
nus and T. Linacre, for example? And as this melancholy
is “a common infirmity of body and soul,” “a compound
mixed malady,” in which a divine can do little alone and a
physician much less, he hopes it is not unbecoming in one
who is by profession a divine, and by inclination a physician,

and who was fortunate enough to have Jupiter in his sixth

house, to write on the subject. But if the good reader be
not satisfied and complains that the discourse is too medici-
nal or savors too much of humanity, he promises to make
amends in some treatise of divinity. All the same, he hopes
it may suffice when and motives are considered
his reasons
“the generality of the disease, the necessity of the cure, and
the commodity or common good that will arise to all men
by the knowledge of it.”
In explaining the adoption of the pseudonym, “Democri-
tus Junior,” Burton says that he laughed and scoffed with
Lucian and again he wept with Heraclitus and he tells of ;

the visit of Hippocrates to Abdera, where he found Democ-

ritus sitting under a shady bower, with a book on his knees,
the subject of which was melancholy, and about him lay the
carcasses of many beasts newly cut up in order to find the
seat of the atra hilis, or melancholy, and how it was engen-
dered. As this book is lost, our author undertakes to
revive it again, prosecute and finish it in this treatise. Bur-
ton’s name does not occur in the title-page of any of the
—

ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 257

seventeenth-century editions; but at the end of the post-

script, which is only in the first edition, is the name, Robert
Burton, “from my Studie in Christ Church, Oxon, Dec.
5th, 1620.” His anonymity has been respected in all sub-
sequent editions until the one issued in 1895. The work was
dedicated to George, Lord Berkeley, who had presented him
with the living of Segrave. It is not surprising that the
book at once had a great success: “The first, second, and
third editions were suddenly gone, eagerly read,” as Bur-
ton says in one place, when discussing the peevishness of
men’s judgments and the diversity of tastes in readers
“Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata lucky fate A
has followed “The Anatomy,” which has held its readers
for well-nigh three centuries.
The frontispieceone of the most Burtonian features
is

of the work. In the absence of information as to its origin,

we may well suppose that the author himself prepared the
design which was carried out by the well-known engraver
of the time, Charles Le Blond. The upper centre figure
represents Democritus of Abdera found him
as Hippocrates
sitting in a garden in the suburbs with a book on his lap.
Borage is growing in the garden, and on the wall there
—
are pictures of animals the cats and dogs of which he has
made anatomy. The sign of Saturn is in the sky. To the
left is a landscape of jealousy, and there are two fighting
cocks (evidently bantams), a swan, a heron, and a king-
fisher; and the verses state that there are two roaring bulls
to be seen, but they are not visible in any of my folios.
For the frontispiece of Tegg’s edition, the engraver has
taken liberties, as he has left out the fighting cocks and put
in the tail, at any rate, of one of the bulls. bird and aA
bat and a section of the moon appear in the sky. The third
section at the top represents solitariness —animals alone in
the desert with bats and owls hovering over them. In the
next section is Inamorato inditing a ditty:
258 YALE REVIEW
His lute and books about him lie.

As symptoms of his vanity.

If this do not enough disclose.
To paint him, take thyself by th’ nose.

Opposite is the Hypochondriac:

About him pots and glasses lie.

Newly brought from’s apothecary.

This Saturn’s aspects signify.
You see them portray’d in the sky.

The next section represents the superstitious man, and

oppositehim is the madman naked in chains a ghastly —
sight. Then below at the lower corners are borage and
hellebore, which were “the sovereign plants to purge the
veins of melancholy” and, if well assayed, the best medi-
cine that God ere made for this malady. And lastly, a por-
trait of the author, which the verses tell us shows the habit
which he wore and his image as he appeared to the world,
though his mind would have to be guessed by his writings.
It was neither pride nor vainglory made him put his pic-
ture here, but “the printer would needs have it so.”
With appropriate verses, Democritus Junior sends his
book into the open day, hoping its pleasant vein may save
—
those who con its lore in- city or country from witches of —
care. Surely Catos will not love it, and leudful matrons will
cry “pish!” and frown and yet read on. For dainty dam-
sels, whom he confesses to love dear as life, he would spread

his best stories. The melancholy wight or pensive lover will

in its pages find himself in clover and gain both sense and
laughter. The learned leech may find here no trifling
prize, but to the crafty lawyer he cries “caitiff, avaunt!”
Of his faults he asks the ripe scholar to be oblivious, hut not
refuse praise to his merit, in lines which have the ring of
Matt Prior. Flippant spouter and empty prater will search
his pages for polished words and verse; and the doggerel
poet, his brother, is welcome to the jests and stories. He
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 259

will flyfrom and not reply to sour critics and Scotch

reviewers. To the friendly though severe censor who com-
plains of his free and even smutty vein, he pleads with Catul-
lus that his life is pure heyond the breath of scandal, and
in any case he is ever willing to be improved by censure.
To use his own expression. Burton was a minion of the
Muses. I have already mentioned that his play, “Philo-
sophaster,” was acted at Christ Church, and that there are
a number of his occasional verses in the college collections
of the period. In the third edition of “The Anatomy,”
1628, appeared the well-known poem on melancholy, the
author’s address to his book, with its description of the fron-
tispiece. The poem presents all the shifting phases of his
sweet and bitter passion in alternate verses of praise and
condemnation. Let me quote the first and the last of the
twelve stanzas. The first runs:

When I go musing all alone.

Thinking of divers things fore-known,
When I build castles in the air,
Void of sorrow and void of fear.
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.

All my joys to this are folly.

Naught so sweet as Melancholy.

And then the other picture:

I’ll change my state with any wretch.
Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch;
My pain’s past cure, another hell,
I may not in this torment dwell!
Now desperate I hate my life.

Lend me a halter or a knife.

All my griefs to this are jolly.
Naught so damn’d as Melancholy.

Warton remarked upon the similarity of idea in the contrast

between these two dispositions in Milton’s famous poems,
18
260 YALE REVIEW
—
“L’Allegro” and “II Penseroso” the “Hence loathed
Melancholy” in the one, and the “Hail! thou Goddess sage
and holy, Hail! divinest Melancholy,” in the other; and
the antithesis maintained throughout the two poems may
possibly have been suggested to Milton by the lines of
Burton.
Few writers show such familiarity as Burton with poetry
ancient and modern; and his books at Christ Church and
the Bodleian testify to his fondness for literature of this
class. There are those who hold that Francis Bacon not
only wrote Shakespeare’s plays and Spenser’s “Faerie
Queene,” but also Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.”
With the biliteral cipher, the whole story of Queen Elizabeth,
Essex, and Bacon may be found in the pages of Democritus
Junior! Is it not just as reasonable to suppose, as the late
Mr. Parker of Oxford suggested, that Burton himself
wrote the plays of Shakespeare? Does he not quote him
several times, and are there not fine original editions of
“Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece” among
his books in the Bodleian?

II

“The Anatomy of Melancholy” consists of a long intro-

duction, the subject-matter on melancholy, and three long
digressions. The introduction occupies about one-fourth of
the book. Burton had to do the whole
states that he has
business himself, that the book was composed out of a con-
fused company of notes, that he had not time to lick it
into shape as a bear does her whelps, and it was writ with as
small deliberation as he ordinarily spoke, without any affec-
tation of big words. He is a loose student, he says, a rude
writer, and as free as loose. He a spade a spade, and
calls
his wit lacks the stimulus of wine, as he was a water-drinker.
He warns those who are melancholy not to read the symp-
!

ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 261

toms or prognosis, lest they should appropriate the things

there spoken to their person and get more harm than good.
Then he is transported in imagination with Cyprian and
Jerome to some place where he can view the whole world.
He finds that “kingdoms and provinces are melancholy,
cities and families, all creatures, vegetables, sensible and
rational; that all sorts, sexes, ages, conditions, are out of
tune.” He promises to bring arguments to show that most
men are mad and
have more need of a pilgrimage to the
Anticyrae than to Loretto, more need of hellebore than of
tobacco. And this he proceeds to prove abundantly from
the Scriptures and from the writers of all time. Inci-
dentally he gives the interesting story, probably apocryphal,
of the visit of Hippocrates to Democritus. If the sage of
Abdera could return and see the religious follies, the
bloody wars, the injustice, the oppression, he would think
us as mad as his fellow-townsmen. Page after page he
piles up with illustrations of human folly, and asks every
now and then how would Democritus have been confounded.
Would he think you or any man else well in their wits?
Can all the hellebore in the Anticyrae cure these men —no,
sure —an acre of hellebore alone could do it

Burton was a warm advocate for home industries, a tariff

reformer, and would not allow England to be made a dump-
ing ground for foreign manufactures. The paragraph is
worth quoting: “We send our best commodities beyond the
seas, which they make good use of to their necessities, set
themselves a work about, and severally improve, sending the
same to us hack at dear rates, or else make toys and baubles
of the tails of them, which they
sell to us again, at as great
a reckoning as the whole.” He is full of sensible sugges-
tions about the improvements of roads, and the drainage
of bad lands, and the neglect of the navigable rivers.
Following the example of Plato and of More, he sketches
his own Utopia, a new Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth.
As his predecessor, Democritus, was a politician and
262 YALE REVIEW
recorder of Abdera, why should not he presume to do as
much? Then follows a delightful sketch, based in part upon
More’s “Utopia” and full of common-sense, practical sug-
gestions. He is a strong advocate for old age pensions.
Why should a smith, a carpenter, a husbandman, who has
spent his time in continual labor and without whom we
—
cannot live why should he be left in his old age to beg or
starve and lead a miserable life? The introduction ends
with a serio-comical address to the reader, saying if he is
denied this liberty of speech he will take it; he owes him
nothing, he looks for no favor at his hand, he is independent,
and may say anything he wishes in the guise of Democritus.
Then of a sudden he comes to himself: “No, I recant, I
will not, I care, I fear, I confess my fault, acknowledge a
great offense”; and he promises a more sober discourse in
the future. In a later edition a small section of a few lines
follows the introduction, in which Burton again admonishes
the reader at leisure, not to asperse, calumniate, or slander
Democritus Junior; and this is followed by ten lines of
blank verse, in which he concludes that a thousand Heracli-
tuses and a thousand Democrituses are needed, and that all
the world must be sent to Anticyra to graze on hellebore.
The treatise itself is divided into three main partitions,
and each of these into sections, members, and subsections.
A synopsis precedes each partition, bristling with the brack-
ets which learned writers in his time loved to use. There
are many books written entirely in this synoptical way, and
Burton had many models in his own library. This is a fea-
ture of the book which at once attracts attention and is, I
believe, unique among books reprinted at the present day.
It is impossible to give more than the briefest sketch of the
way in which Burton deals with the subject; but the first
partition is taken up almost entirely with the causes, symp- 1
1
toms, and prognostics of melancholy. The second parti-
tion deals with the cure, and the third with love melancholy jti

and religious melancholy. Three important digressions j

p
— ;

ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 263

occur on anatomy, on air rectified, and on the nature of the

spirits.

The anatomy and physiology are those of the early part

of the seventeenth century before the great discovery by
Harvey; and it is remarkable that in the fourth or fifth
edition he did not refer to the circulation of the blood. The
four humors of the body blood, phlegm, — and serum bile,

play an important part, particularly the black bile which

was supposed to cause melancholy. The natural, vital, and
animal spirits of the old writers are everywhere evident.
The subject is treated in a most systematic manner, and
nothing could be more irrational than the criticism of
Hallam that the volumes are apparently “a great sweeping
of miscellaneous literature from the Bodleian library.” As
it is very difficult to make a proper division of melancholy.

Burton first deals with the subject in a general manner and

then proceeds to speak of the particular species —head mel-
ancholy, hypochondriacal melancholy, and melancholy from
the whole body. The third partition, as was said, is devoted
entirely to the subjects of love and religious melancholy.
The causes are discussed at great length and under fifteen
subsections, ranging from bad diet to over-much study.
This part of the work is really a psychological treatise with
illustrationsfrom history and literature. most attrac- A
tive section on the love of learning as a cause, with a
is

digression on the misery of scholars. For two main reasons

students are more subject than others to this malady the —
sedentary, solitary life in which health is neglected, and con-
tinuous meditation in the head, which leaves the stomach and
liver destitute.

—
About one-fourth of the work the second partition is —
taken up with the cure of melancholy. This is a strictly
medical treatise in which the author has collected all the
known information about the treatment of mental disorders
the entire pharmacopoeia is brought in, and Burton writes
prescriptions like a physician. There is scarcely a medical
264 YALE REVIEW
author of note who is not quoted. It is in this section that
there occurs the delightful digression on air rectified, the
first English tractate on climatology. Burton here shows
that he was a great student of geography and revelled in
traveller’s tales. He starts off in a most characteristic way:
“As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the
fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth
a cir- many
cuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher
he be come till

to his full pitch, and in the end, when the game is sprung,
comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden: so will I,
having now come at last into these ample fields of air,
wherein I may freely expatiate and exercise myself for my
recreation, a while rove, wander round about the world,
mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and
so descend to my
former elements again. In which pro-
gress I will whether that relation of the friar of
first see

Oxford be true, concerning those northern parts under the

Pole (if I meet obiter with the wandering Jew, Elias Arti-
fex, or Lucian’s Icaromenippus, they shall be my guides),
whether there be such four Euripuses, and a great rock of
loadstones, which may cause the needle in the compass still
to bend that way, and what should be the true cause of the
variation of the compass. Is it a magnetical rock, or the
pole-star, as Cardan will?”
One would scarcely have expected from a student of
Christ Church, much less from an old bachelor and a divine,
the most elaborate treatise on love that has ever been writ-
ten. It is not surprising that Burton apologizes that many
will think the subject too light for a divine and too comical,
a subject fit only for a wanton poet or some idle person; but
he declares that an old, grave, discreet man is fittest to discuss
of love matters, that he hashad more experience, has a more
staid judgment, and can give better cautions and more solid
precepts. He says: “I will examme all the kinds of love,
his nature, beginning, difference, objects, how it is honest or
dishonest, a virtue or vice, a natural passion or a disease, his
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 265

power and effects, how far it extends: of which, although

something has been said in the first partition, in those sec-
tions of perturbations(for love and hatred are the first
and most common passions, from which all the rest arise, and
are attendant, as Piccolomineus holds, or as Nich. Caus-
sinus, the primum mohile of all other affections, which carry
them all about them), I will now more copiously dilate,
through all his parts and several branches, that so it may
better appear what love is, and how it varies with the
objects, how in defect, or (which is most ordinary and
common) immoderate, and in excess, causeth melancholy.”
And he keeps his promise.
There no such collection of stories of love and its effect
is

in all literature; no such tribute to the power of beauty; no

such picture of the artificial allurements no such represen- ;

tations of its power of debasement. And what a section on

—
jealousy! its causes, its symptoms, and its cure. One
could almost write the history of every noted woman from
his pages:
All the golden
Names of olden
Women yet by men’s love cherished.

Burton says that after the harsh and unpleasant discourse

of melancholy which had molested the patience of the reader
and tired the author, he will ask leave to recreate himself in
this kind, and promises to tell such pretty stories that foul
befall him not well pleased with them. Nor does he
that is

propose to mince matters: “He will call a spade a spade,

and willsound all the depths of this inordinate love of ours,
which nothing can withstand or stave off.” All the love
stories, pure and impure, of literature are here. Jacob and
Rachel, Sichem and Dinah, Judah and Tamar, Samson and
Delilah, David and Bathsheba, Amon and Thamar; the
stories of Esther, Judith, and Susannah; the loves of the
—
gods the fopperies of Mars and Venus, of Neptune and
Amymone; Jupiter and his amorous escapades. Modest
266 YALE REVIEW
Matilda, Pretty Playful Pegg, Sweet Singing Susan, Minc-
ing Merry Moll, Dainty Dancing Doll, Neat Nancy, Jolly
Joan, Nimble Nell, Kissing Kate, Bouncing Bess with black
eyes. Fair Phyllis with fine white hands, —
all flit across

Burton’s pages as he depicts the vagaries of the great pas-

sion, not a single aspect of which is omitted.
Religious melancholy is a form which Burton made
peculiarly his own. Many writers had dealt with other
aspects of the subject, but he very rightly says of religious
melancholy: “I have no pattern to follow, ... no man to
imitate. Nophysician hath yet distinctly written of it, as
of the other.” Then he deals with the varied effects of
religion in a remarkable way. He says: “Give me but a
little leave, and I your eyes in brief a stu-
will set before
pendous, vast, infinite ocean of incredible madness and folly:
a sea full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfs, Euripuses and
contrary tides, full of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes,
roaring waves, tempests, and Siren calms, halcyonian seas,
unspeakable misery, such comedies and tragedies, such
absurd and ridiculous, feral and lamentable fits, that I know
not whether they are more to be pitied or derided, or may be
believed, but that we daily see the same still practised in
our days, fresh examples, nova novitia, fresh objects of
misery and madness, in this kind, that are still represented
unto us, abroad, at home, in the midst of us, in our bosoms.”
Heretics, old and new, schismatics, schoolmen, prophets,
enthusiasts, martyrs, are all discussed with their several
vagaries. This section concludes with the address to those
who are in a state of religious despair, written at the insti-
gation of his brother.

Ill
Though it smells of the lamp, “The Anatomy” has a
peculiar fragrance of its own, blended with that aroma so
dear to the student of old times which suggests the alcoves
in Duke Humphrey or the benches at Merton Library.
—

ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 267

; Burton himself acknowledges that he is largely the pur-

i veyor of other men’s wits; but, as he says, he has wronged
no author and given every man his own. He is certainly
I
the greatest borrower in literature. Others perhaps have
borrowed nearly as freely, but have concealed it. He has
not the art of Ben Jonson, in whose “Discoveries” whole
sentences from authors are woven together with such great
that it is only lately
skill that both thoughts and form have
been assigned to their lawful owners. A
careless reader
might suppose that certain sections represented what Low-
ell called

A mire ankle deep of deliberate eonfusion

Made up of old jumbles of classie allusion,

but one has not to go far before seeing a method in this

apparent confusion; and the quotations are marshalled in
telling order. Page page of “The Anatomy” is
after
made up of what Milton would call “horse loads of cita-
jtion,” the opinions of authors in their own words. Burton
acting as a conjunction. Take, for example, a page which
—
I opened at random page 300 of Tegg’s edition. There
are twenty-one references covering the whole range of
lancient and modern learning. The Bible, the fathers of the
church, particularly St. Augustine; the fathers of medicine,
Hippocrates, Galen, the Alexandrians, the Arabians, and
levery fifteenth-century medical writer of note ;
Plato, Aris-
itotle, Seneca, the poets of all ages, the travellers in all
jclimes, the mystical writers, the encyclopedists — all are laid
[under contribution in this vast emporium. Well indeed
—
ilpould he say “non mens hie sermo
—
’tis not my speech.”

BjWhat has become of his commonplace books ? He says that

}lithe quotations are often made at random, but he must have

i
I kept some references. In no copies of the early editions
lean I find marginal notes, and there are very few of his books
at Christ Church and in the Bodleian.
His own style is often delightful, and one cannot but
:

268 YALE REVIEW

regret that we have not more
Burton and less of Bodley.
of
An apology which he makes gives a good idea of his vigor:
“And for those other faults of barbarism, Doric dialect,
extemporanean style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhap-
sody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills,
excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly turn- ^

bled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit, learning,

harsh, raw, rude, fantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-

composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I

^

confess all (’tis partly affected), thou canst not think worse j

of me than I do of myself. ’Tis not worth the reading, I i

yield it, I desire thee not to lose time in perusing so vain a '

subject, I should be peradventure loath myself to read him

or thee so writing.” In another place he says that he is

studying entirely to inform his reader’s understanding, not j

to please his ear: “So that as a river runs, sometimes pre- |i

cipitate and swift, then dull and slow now direct, then ;
i

per ambages; now deep, then shallow now muddy, then ; |

'

clear now broad, then narrow doth my style flow now

; ; :
'

serious, then light now comical, then satirical now more

; ;
^

elaborate, then remiss, as the present subject required, or as j

at that time I was And

thou vouchsafe to read
affected. if j

this treatise, it shall thee, than the way

seem no otherwise to i

to an ordinary traveller, sometimes fair, sometimes foul, here i

*

champaign, there enclosed barren in one place, better soil

*

in another: by woods, groves, hills, dales, plains, etc.”

The result is that Burton often tells a story in a charming ,

fashion. I do not know that there is anything much better i

in literature than the following tale of the poor scholar who 1

would become a prebendary, a cathedral official with a good ®

stipend
In Moronia Pia, or Moronia Felix, I know not whither, nor how long 1

since, nor in what Cathedral Church, a fat prebend fell void. The car- |

cass scarce cold, many

were up in an instant. The first had rich
suitors ,

friends, a good purse, and he was resolved to outbid any man before
he would lose it, every man supposed he should carry it. The sec-
ond was my Lord Bishop’s chaplain (in whose gift it was) and he
^
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 269

thought it his due to have was nobly born, and he meant

it. The third
to get it by his great parents, patrons, and allies. The fourth stood
upon his worth, he had newly found out strange mysteries in chemistry,
and other rare inventions, which he would detect to the public good.
The fifth was a painful preacher, and he was commended by the whole
parish where he dwelt, he had all their hands to his certificate. The
sixth was the prebendary’s son lately deceased, his father died in debt,
(for it, as they say), left a wife and many poor children. The seventh
stood upon fair promises, which to him and his noble friends had been
formerly made for the next place in his lordship’s gift. The eighth
pretended great and what he had suffered for the Church, what
losses,
pains he had taken at home and abroad, and besides, he brought noble-
men’s letters. The ninth had married a kinswoman, and he sent his wife
to sue for him. The tenth was a foreign doctor, a late convert, and
wanted means. The eleventh would exchange for another, he did not
like the former’s site, could not agree with his neighbors and fellows
upon any terms, he would be gone. The twelfth and last was (a suitor
in conceit) a right honest, civil, man, an excellent scholar, and
sober,
such a one as lived private in the university, but he had neither means
nor money to compass it; besides, he hated all such courses, he could
not speak for himself, neither had he any friends to solicit his cause,
and therefore made no suit, could not expect, neither did he hope for,
or look after it. The good Bishop, amongst a jury of competitors
thus perplexed, and not yet resolved what to do, or on whom to bestow
it, at the last, of his own accord, mere motion, and bountiful nature,
gave it freely to the university student, altogether unknown to him by
fame; and, to be brief, the academical scholar had the prebend sent him
for a present. The news was no sooner published abroad but all good
students rejoiced, and were much cheered up with it, though some would
not believe it; others, as men amazed, said it was a miracle; but one
amongst the rest thanked God for it, and said. Nunc juvat tandem
studiosum esse, et Deo integro corde servire —At last there is some
advantage in being studious, and in serving God with integrity! You
have heard my tale, but alas ! it is but a tale, a mere fiction, ’twas never
so, never like to be, and so let it rest.

No
book of any language presents such a stage of mov-
—
ing pictures kings and queens in their greatness and in
their glory, in their madness and in their despair; generals
and conquerors with their ambitions and their activities the ;

princes of the church in their pride and in their shame phi- ;

losophers of all ages, now rejoicing in the power of intellect.

270 YALE REVIEW
and again grovelling before the idols of the tribe ; the heroes
of the race who have fought the battle of the oppressed in
all lands; criminals, small and great, from the petty thief
to Nero with unspeakable atrocities; the great naviga-
his
tors and explorers with whom Burton travelled so much in
map and card, and whose stories were his delight; the mar-
tyrs and the virgins of all religions, the deluded and fanatics
of all theologies; the possessed of devils and the possessed
of God; the beauties, frail and faithful, the Lucretias and
the Helens, all are there. The lovers, old and young; the
fools who were accounted wise, and the wise who were really
fools ; the madmen of all history, to anatomize whom is the
special object of the book; the world itself, against which
he brings a railing accusation —the
motley procession of
humanity sweeps before us on his stage, a fantastic but fas-
cinated medley at which he does not know whether to weep
or to laugh.
Which age of the world has been most subject to this
feral passion, so graphicallyportrayed by Burton, is a ques-
tion to be asked but not easily answered. I believe that the
improved conditions of modern life have added enormously
to the world’s cheerfulness. Few now sigh for love, fewer
still for money; and it is no longer fashionable to air our

sorrows in public. In spite of this, the worries and stress

of business, the pangs of misprized love, the anguish of
religious despair, make an increasing number of unhappy
ones choose death rather than a bitter life. With the excep-
tion of a monograph by the great Dean of St. Paul’s, I
know of no more interesting discussion on suicide than that
with which the first part of the book closes. Only one who
had himself made the descent into the hell could have writ-
ten the tender passage with which the section closes: “Thus
of their goods and bodies we can dispose; but what shall
become of their souls, God alone can tell; his mercy may
come inter pontem et fontem, inter gladium et jugulum,
betwixt the bridge and the brook, the knife and the throat.
: —

ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 271

Quod cuiquam contigit, cuivis potest. Who knows how he

may be tempted? It is his case, it may be thine. Qu(b sua
sors hodie est, eras fore vestra potest. We ought not to be
so rash and rigorous in our censures, as some are; charity
will judge and hope the best: God be merciful unto us all.”

The greatest gift that nature or grace can bestow upon

a man is the aequus animus, the even-balanced soul; but
unfortunately nature rather than grace, disposition rather
than education, determines its existence. I cannot agree
with William King, the last of the Oxford Jacobeans, in his
assertion that it is not to be acquired. On the contrary,
I maintain that much may be done to cultivate a cheerful
heart, but we must begin young if we are to have the
Grecian rather than the Hebrew outlook on life.
A recognition of the possible depths of this affection
should make us bear with a light heart those transient and
unavoidable disappointments in which we are rather apt
life

to nurse than to shake off with a smile. With the prayer of

Themistocles for forgetfulness on our lips, let us bury the
worries of yesterday in the work of to-day. Some little

tincture of Saturn may be allowed in our hearts, but never

in our faces. Sorrow and sadness must come to each one
it is our lot
We look before and after
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

We can best oppose any tendency to melancholy by an

active life of unselfish devotion to others; and with the
advice with which Burton ends the book, I will close:
Sperate miseri;
Cavete felices.

If unhappy, have hope;

If happy, be cautious.
PEACE AND WAR IN 1913

By Frederick Lynch
he
T peace advocates during 1913 have daily been sub-
jected to the irritating experience of the Psalmist, who
was taunted with the question: “Where is now thy God?”
i

“Where now is your peace movement?” has been the query I

on many lips. It has been asked, too, not only by the

scoffers but by the well-wishers —those who had hoped, until
1913, that the dawn of law, good-will, international frater-
nity, was in sight. It is not strange that even some of those j

who have hoped and worked for the cause should have
become discouraged, and surely the scoffer seems to have
had some grounds for his cynicism. For months two great
groups of people, the allied Balkan States on one side, and
Turkey on the other, throwing away all semblance of civiliza-
tion, ignoring all rules of modern warfare, determined only
to exterminate each other, were grappling in the maddest and
most cruel fighting Europe has witnessed for generations.
The warfare did not stop with the soldiers but women and;

children were slain with equal ferocity and inhumanities

practised which all men thought had disappeared forever.
|

Another discouraging element was the absolute ignoring of ]

the Hague Tribunal, and any suggestion that the issues at '

stake be settled by arbitration. The questions were all of

a judicial nature, could have been amicably adjusted before
an impartial tribunal, or at least the attempt could have been
made and the nature of the dispute have been clearly defined ,

before the world. But the Balkan States would have none
of this. The time had come when, combined, they could get
—
revenge on Turkey drive her out, get her European hold-
ings. And without the semblance of seeking justice a war
began, a war which, from the beginning, has been marked