tive of the injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that they perceived our embarrassment; but were too proud, or something else, to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too lately in the condition of the noble patient

in Argos:

Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos,

In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro

and could have exclaimed with equal reason against the friendly hands that cured us

Pol me occidistis, amici,

Non servàstis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,

Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.

[When this paper was originally published at the head of the miscellaneous writings appended to the first imprint of John Woodvil, it was gravely entitled-as though it were authentic instead of simply imitative-"Curious Fragments extracted from a Commonplace Book which belonged to Robert Burton, the famous author of the Anatomy of Melancholy."]

EXTRACT I.

I DEMOCRITUS Junior have put my finishing pen to a tractate De Melancholia, this day, December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity, which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far, and make supplication with a Laus Deo, if in any case these my poor labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. Sed hoc magis volo quam expecto.

I turn now to my book, i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain-sweat, and yee, candidi lectores, lo! here I give him up to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose, will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my friends) hee is a flos rarus, forsooth, a none-such, a Phoenix, (concerning whom see Plinius and Mandeuille, though Fienus de monstris doubteth at large of such a bird, whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have been a man male scrupolositatis, of a weak and cowardlie faith: Christopherus a Vega is with him in this). Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether, my collections, for crude, inept, putid, post cænam scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal, verbose, incrudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities dogmata, sentences, of learneder writers which have been before me, when as that first named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee nothing else but a messe of opinions, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all which Wolfius behelde with great contente upon the Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the world's Epitome, which Sannazar so bepraiseth, e contra our Polydore can see nothing in it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which is all too neoteric and light for my humour.

I

One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies in my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men. have not put his affection in my cases. Hear you his case. My fine Sir is a lover, an inamorato, a Pyramus, a Romeo; he walks seven years disconsolate, moping, becauset he cannot enjoy his miss, insanus amor is his melancholy, the man is mad; delirat, he dotes; all this while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not

to be entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceeding fair, gentle eyes (which is a beauty), hair lustrous and smiling, the trope is none of mine, Eneas Sylvius hath crines ridentes-in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a boore, a Corydon, a rustic, omnino ignarus, he can scarce construe Corderius, yet haughty, fantastic, opiniatre. The lover travels, goes into foreign parts, peregrinates, amoris ergo, sees manners, customs, not English, converses with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, hermits, those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, Egyptians, natural wonders, unicorns (though Aldobrandus will have them to be figments), satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, curiosities artificial, pyramides, Virgilius his tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but ivory as Melancthon judges, though Cornutus leaneth to think them bones of dogs, cats, (why not men?) which subtill priests vouch to have been saints, martyrs, heu Pietas! By that time he has ended his course, fugit hora, seven other years are expired, gone by, time is, he should return, he taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his friends, favebant venti, Neptune is curteis, after some weekes at sea he landeth, rides post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, compotores, those jokers his friends that were wont to tipple with him at ale! houses; these wonder now to see the change, quantum mutatus, the man is quite another thing, he is disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, smell, handle, converse with his mistress, single by reason of the death of his rival, a widow having children, grown willing, prompt, amorous, shewing no such great dislike to second nuptials, hee might have her for asking, no such thing, his mind is changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to die a batchelour; marke the conclusion. In this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed in idleness, sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce wearinesse, vapours, tædium vitæ: When upon a day, behold a wonder, redit Amor, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover upon the old stock, walks with his hand thrust into his bosom for negligence, moping he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing and incomposite, eyes sunken, anhelus, breath wheezy and asthmatical by reason of over-much sighing: society he abhors, solitude is but a hell, what shall he doe? all this while his mistresse is forward, coming, amantissima, ready to jump at once into his mouth, her he hateth, feels disgust when she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jezabeel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not handsome; that which he affecteth so much, that which drives him mad, distracted, phrenetic, beside himself, is no beauty which lives, nothing in rerum naturâ (so he might entertain a hope of a cure), but something which is not, can never be, a certain fantastic opinion notional image of his mistresse, that which she was, and that which hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him, frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.

This Caprichio, Sir Humourous, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel marriage with his Mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method, together with milk diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sort of wild fowl, teals, widgeons, becca ficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages, I think this man must fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c,

EXTRACT II.

*** Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtle controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of

learned men, or such as would be so thought, as Bodinus de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident amici ridet mundus, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist

*** Philosophy running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned inquiries, what Truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are written, and who is the wiser? **** Men sitting in the Doctor's chairs, we marvel how they got there, being homines intellectus pulverulenti, as Trincauellius notes; they care not so they may raise a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; homines parvullissimi as Lemnius, whom Alcuin herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and 'tis odds but they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship, libant, they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in their sacrificials, Cerealia, May-games: Truth is the game all these hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures, humidum radicale exsiccant, as Galen, in his counsels to one of these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. *** and for all this nunquam metam attingunt, and how should they? they bowle awry, shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that Truth absolute on this planet of ours, is scarcely to be found, but in her stede Queene opinion predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever mutable Lampas, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she præcurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his sight be strong to endure the vision of Very Truth, which is in the heavens, the vision which is beatifical, as Anianus expounds in his argument against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous; these were dizzards, fools, gothamites. *** but and if Very Truth be extant indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she taketh no degrees at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin, but oftentimes to such an one as myself an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasant scenes, woods, waterfalls, or Art her statelier gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her. * * * *

EXTRACT IV.

This morning, May 2, 1602, having first broken my fast upon eggs and cooling salades, mellows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to Villanovus his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a morning as gross, fat, hebetant, ferall, altogether fitter for wild beasts than men, e contra commendeth this herb-diete for gentle, humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in the suburbes, as airiest, quietest, loci musis propriores, free from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandish birds, fishes, crocodiles, Indians, mermaids, adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the mobbe, plebs, the rabble, duellos with fists, proper to this island, at which the stiletto'd and secrete Italian laughs) withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a bezo las manos to the citty, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as horses dila

tis naribus snort the fresh aires, with exceeding great delight, when suddenly there crosses me a procession sad, heavy, dolorous, tristfull, melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour, and overcast a clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so great a city can afford. An old man, a poore man, deceased, is borne on men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hearse, mourners, plumes, mute persone, those personate actors that will weep if yee shew them a piece of silver; none of those customed civilities of children, kinsfolk, dependants, following the coffin; he died a poore man, his friends assessores opum, those cronies of his that stuck by him so long as he had a penny, now leave him, forsake him, shun him, desert him: they think it much to follow his putrid and stinking carcase to the grave; his children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c., or if he have any which survive him, sua negotia agunt, they mind their own business, forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, inclination, extremum munus perficere, to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved them, stroked them, caressed them, cockering them up, quantum potuit, as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, minims, hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun, for them, have no buriall at all, they care not. O nefas! Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been, without a pall, nothing but a few planks of cheapest wood that could be had, naked, having none of the ordinary symptomata of a funerall, those locularii which bare the body, having on diversely, coloured coats, and none black; (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles in the fields, to whose proper burying ground he was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a Cræsus, a Crassus, or as rich as Whittington, what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure of rich buriall, ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies, had been thought too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funerall orations, &c., some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite, learned, a Mecenas, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse : what weeping sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, fourtieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing striking their breasts, (they care not if he had died a year ago; so many clients dependants, flatterers, parasites, cunning Gnathoes, tramping on foot after the hearse, all their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he meantime (like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the right: Hæc sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. These follies are enough to give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene. The fruit, issue, children, of these my morning meditations, have been certain crude, impolite, incomposite, hirsute, (what shall I say?) verses, noting the difference of rich and poor, in the ways of a rich noble's palace and a poor workhouse.