Burton Robert

Burton, Robert, was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, in 1576, and graduated at Brasenose College, Oxford, being elected later student of Christchurch. Very few details of his life are known to us beyond the fact that he received the college living of St. Thomas, Oxford, in 1616, and in 1636 held also the rectory of Segrave. According to Anthony Wood, he led a silent and solitary existence at Oxford, reading a great variety of books, and enjoying some reputation as a scholar, a mathematician and a caster of nativities. In 1621 under the pseudonym, Democritus Junior, he let loose his marvellous stores of learning and his vein of quaint, satirical and occasionally malicious humour in the famous work entitled The Anatomy of Melancholy. The author was no doubt himself a prey to the strange physical and moral disorder that spread like an epidemic in the Elizabethan period, and he very probably found relief in the incessant industry to which his book bears witness. It is a mine of quotations from every field of literature, familiar or remote, and it has been freely drawn upon by later writers. Burton's own portion of the book is rugged in style, but not without a certain flavour of wit, and the poem that serves as an introduction reminds the reader of Il Penseroso. He died in 1639 and was buried in Christ Church cathedral.