While not a few of the commentators thus rejected or ridiculed my
thesis, others hinted that I had been anticipated. Several suggested
that Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ had been my model. As a matter
of fact, although one of the critics referred to my book as "a marvel
of epitomized research," I must confess, to my shame, that I was not
aware that Burton had devoted two hundred pages to what he calls
Love-Melancholy, until I had finished the first sketch of my
manuscript and commenced to rewrite it. My experience thus furnished a
striking verification of the witty epitaph which Burton wrote for
himself and his book: "Known to few, unknown to fewer still." However,
after reading Burton, I was surprised that any reader of Burton should
have found anything in common between his book and mine, for he
treated love as an appetite, I as a sentiment; my subject was pure,
supersensual affection, while his subject is frankly indicated in the
following sentences:
"I come at last to that heroical love, which is proper
to men and women ... and deserves much rather to be
called burning lust than by such an honorable title."
"This burning lust ... begets rapes, incests, murders."
"It rages with all sorts and conditions of men, yet is
most evident among such as are young and lusty, in the
flower of their years, nobly descended, high fed, such
as live idly, at ease, and for that cause (which our
divines call burning lust) this mad and beastly passion
... is named by our physicians heroical love, and a
more honorable title put upon it, _Amor nobilis_, as
Savonarola styles it, because noble men and women make
a common practice of it, and are so ordinarily affected
with it." "Carolus à Lorme ... makes a doubt whether
this heroical love be a disease.... Tully ... defines
it a furious disease of the mind; Plato madness
itself."
"Gordonius calls this disease the proper passion of
nobility."
"This heroical passion or rather brutish burning lust
of which we treat."
The only honorable love Burton knows is that between husband and wife,
while of such a thing as the evolution of love he had, of course, not
the remotest conception, as his book appeared in 1621, or two hundred
and thirty-eight years before Darwin's _Origin of Species_.