Born at Lindley, Leicestershire, Robert Burton was the son of Ralph and Dorothy Burton and the brother of William Burton the antiquary. Burton spent most of his life at Oxford, first as a pupil at Brasenose College, and then as a student of Christ Church. He studied a large number of diverse subjects, many of which informed the study of melancholia, for which he is chiefly famous. He was appointed vicar of St Thomas' Church in Oxford in 1616, and in 1630 he was also made the rector of Seagrave in Leicestershire. Burton was a mathematician and dabbled in astrology. When not depressed he was an amusing companion, "very merry, facete, and juvenile", and a person of "great honesty, plain dealing, and charity". Merry, indeed, Burton had favouritesources for laughter. In 1728 Bishop Kennett wrote that: There was a rumour that Burton hanged himself in his chambers at Christ Church, supposedly so that his death would match his prediction. Burton was buried at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.
Work
Burton's Melancholy focuses sharply on the self; unlike Bacon, Burton assumes that knowledge of psychology, not natural science, is humankind's greatest need. His enormous treatise is considered "delightful" by critics; it examines in encyclopaedic detail the ubiquitous Jacobean malady, melancholy, supposedly caused by an excess of "black bile", according to the humour theory fashionable at the time. Melancholy was responsible, according to Burton and others, for the wild passions and despairs of lovers, the agonies and ecstasies of religious devotees, the frenzies of madmen, and the studious abstraction exemplified by scholars such as Shakespeare or Milton. He wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy largely to write himself out of being a lifelong sufferer from depression. As he described his condition in the preface "Democritus Junior to the Reader," Therefore, the treatise itself was intended as treatment. Again, from the preface: However, this sentence may also be interpreted ironically, as Burton is citing a well-known adage of the time. Indeed, the entire preface is quite satirical in nature—at one point Burton pretends to warn melancholics to avoid his book for fear of exacerbating their symptoms: The parenthetical aside is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. The work, published under the pseudonym Democritus Junior in 1621, was quite popular. In the words of Thomas Warton: Many later writers were deeply influenced by the book's odd mix of pan-scholarship, humour, linguistic skill, and creative insights. This influence was so strong that later writers sometimes drew from the work without acknowledgment. Samuel Johnson considered it one of his favourite books, being "the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise". The book has continued as a favourite among many twentieth and twenty-first-century authors, such as Anthony Burgess, William H. Gass, and Llewelyn Powys. Apart from The Anatomy of Melancholy Burton's only other published work is Philosophaster, a satirical Latin comedy.
