BURTON, ROBERT (1576-1640), author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, on the 8th February 1576. He attended the grammar schools of Nuneaton and Sutton Coldfields, and at the age of seventeen entered Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ Church, and in 1614 took the degree of B.D. In 1616 he was presented to the vicarage of St Thomas, and in 1636 to the rectory of Segrave. He died on the 25th January 1639-40. The Anatomy of Melancholy, what it is, with all the lands, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it : In three partitions, untie their several sections, members, and sub-sections, philosophically, medicinally, historically opened and cut up : By .Democritus Junior, with a satyrical preface conducing to the following discourse,' was published in 1621. Our information with regard to the strange author of this strange book is very scanty. ' Anthony Wood's account of him has often been quoted ; it represents what must have been his contemporaries' opinion of lam. A very curious anecdote is told of the method he adopted to dissipate the morbid melancholy which weighed upon him. He used to go to the bridge foot and hear the ribaldry of the bargemen, winch rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. His book is truly a marvellous production, and proves at least one thing, that the author was a thorough classical scholar. Indeed the work is a cento of quotations, and, like the Intellectual System of Cudworth, has served as a storehouse of learned material. Sterile is not the only one who has borrowed from the author of the Anatomy. The book itself is essentially unsystematic, but has a fine flavour of thoroughgoing ill-humour about it. This world was a dreary farce, and life was something to be laughed at. With a certain class of readers it has always been a favourite. Charles Lamb is a typical instance of a reader in Burton. The introductory poem has some curious analogies of style and thought to the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton.