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Prognostics, or signs of things to come, are either good or bad.

1, London, George Bell and Sons, 1893, p. Bullen, introduction to Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. This edition, by Karl Hagen, is based on a nineteenth-century edition that modernized Burton’s spelling and typographic conventions, and has been further corrected. Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 1, Section 4, Member 1, available from Project Gutenberg. Only God alone can tell the reasons for their act and what shall become of their souls, he insists, since they may have repented and been forgiven at the very moment of death, as he famously puts it, “betwixt the bridge and the brook, the knife and the throat.” In any case, Burton argues that one ought not to be rash in censuring those who commit suicide. Similar ambivalence about suicide in mental illness persists into contemporary times. He thus appears to adopt potentially conflicting views: on the one hand, that suicide is the causal consequence of mental illness (and so not under voluntary control), and, on the other, that suicide is a matter of moral choice (which one can make badly). In the section “Prognostics of Melancholy,” Burton treats suicide as the outcome of melancholy, though he also reviews classical and medieval arguments concerning the ethics of suicide. The Anatomy was widely read and influenced several later writers, notably John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, and Charles Lamb. The result of most of his life’s work, Anatomy is encyclopedic in its references to nearly every aspect of 17th-century culture and thought, causing Lord Byron to remark that studying it was the surest way of obtaining “a reputation of being well read.” Focusing particularly on previous theories of cognition but sprinkling the book with classical allusions in a style influenced by Montaigne and the satire of Erasmus, Burton treated the subject of depression in a manner ahead of his time and with a modification of the then-conventional mind/body dualism.

It is reported that Burton also tried to recreate Democritus’s practice of walking down to the haven at Abdera and laughing heartily at the ridiculous objects that presented themselves to his view, by repairing to the bridge-foot at Oxford and listening to the bargemen swearing at one another, “at which he would set his hands to his sides and laugh most profusely.”Īnatomy of Melancholy is a treatise on the symptoms, causes, and cures of the melancholic or depressive personality. Burton apparently saw himself as completing the project of Democritus to discover the biological seat of melancholy, including what would now be called depression and related mental illnesses.

His first published work was the Latin comedy Philosophaster (1605).īurton’s Anatomy of Melancholy was originally published in 1621 under the pseudonym Democritus Junior. Thomas’s Church, living a self-described “silent, sedentary, solitary” lifestyle. From 1616 until his death, he served as vicar nearby at St. Working as a tutor and librarian, he was elected a fellow in 1599. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he received bachelor of arts, master of arts, and bachelor of divinity degrees. Born in Lindley, Leicestershire, Robert Burton was an English clergyman and author.