(1577 - 1640)
In 1599 Robert Burton was made a fellow at Oxford University, where he spent the majority of his “silent, sedentary, solitary” life. Apparently having failed to obtain a patron, Burton complained of being “left behind, as a dolphin on shore, confined to my College, as Diogenes to his tub.” He became a vicar of St. Thomas’ Church in 1616, writing his Anatomy of Melancholy because he felt obligated to “prescribe means how to prevent and cure so universal a malady.”
See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
—Robert Burton, 1621One religion is as true as another.
—Robert Burton, 1621What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621
