Burton’s great book, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, is one of those
more often talked about than read, running pretty close in this
respect to Sir Thomas Browne’s famous _Religio Medici_, or Milton’s
_Areopagitica_, or Fuller’s _Worthies of England_. Yet it is readable,
and although it was printed in the year 1642, there is no hint of
oddity or of the archaic in it. Call it a book of inventive wit and
scattered learning, and you have tagged it correctly. There is a
quaintness and a special charm about it, most delightful, and to it
that old thunderer Dr. Johnson owed much. For all that, it has become
almost a lost book, as forgotten and neglected as Suckling’s _Fragmenta
Aurea_, or Hobbes’ _De Cive_.
Now the every-day man who has to go to work as soon as he finds a job
that a lad may do, and who is busy ever after, sometimes wonders, when
he reads of discoveries literary, architectural or artistic, how it
comes to pass that things were lost or forgotten. He reads of gold
ornaments of considerable size being discovered when a sewer was being
dug in London, let us say; or he hears of treasures taken from the
sands of Egypt; of vast temples in the jungles of Central America. Or
he learns of precious volumes in libraries quite forgotten, of lost
arts, of the tombs of kings the very names of whom there is no mention
in history, and he finds himself wondering how such things could be
overlooked. It all seems odd and mysterious. For instance, could the
Woolworth building fall into neglect and be no more known by men? Is it
possible that these highways spanning the continent could by any chance
fall into uselessness and become earth covered, to be re-discovered
in the remote future? If so, must not the day come when all those
things on which we pride ourselves, our machines, our railroad systems,
our very civilization and our gods, shall pass away? At which point
speculation seems idle, perhaps a little dangerous, and, like a wise
man, he gives up the problem and gets down to the things of daily life,
the job of bread winning, and tax paying, and skimping to make both
ends meet and so on. Or, cleaving to an optimistic point of view, he
becomes enamored of J. B. S. Haldane and revels in his charming and
fanciful prophecies of the production of a race of supermen, of the
Seikoyski’s invention of the purple alga which manufactured nitrogen
and so increased the wheat yield, of the production of ectogenetic
children so that ectogenesis being universally adopted, it became
possible to eradicate all social evils and foster the arts and the
sciences. All of which is very amusing, but unconvincing, so that our
imaginative man would revert to his earlier speculation and wonderment
as to how this that and the other came to be forgotten and lost, and,
possibly, arrive at the conclusion that in time past men were more
careless than they are today. For, imbued with the popular notion that
we are a thrifty people, a people living in an age in which nothing is
wasted, our man would be inclined to take it for granted that no pearls
lie hidden, that merit always gets its true reward, and that a broad
path is beaten through the woods to the hut of the man who makes good
mouse traps.
And yet, a little reflection will show that we of today are quite
as wastefully ignorant as were our remote forefathers. For it has
always been a world of waste and probably always will be. You get a
fine picture of typical waste in James Fennimore Cooper’s Pioneers, a
thrilling tale of wilful destruction, of things taken from forest and
stream by the thousand, and left to rot. And every man knows that,
except for a few isolated specimens in zoological gardens, the buffalo
has disappeared, and there must soon follow the lion, the tiger,
the elephant, perhaps the quail and song birds innumerable. Whales,
seals, walrus, penguins are becoming scarce. Or read Prescott to find
a heartbreaking record. As to the waste in economic life too much has
been said and written, so much so that men cease to heed the tale. Then
there is the waste of war. Dreadful enough, but already he who harps on
it is considered a bore and a nuisance.
So we come to the question of waste in the world of literature, of
great things forgotten or unheeded. For, buried behind the mountains
of sheer trash are glories and riches untold. Things lie unread, and
Burton’s book is one of many, the value of which Time has failed to
lessen. There are other things still which Time has made great because
of the treasures in them, treasures of wisdom which the passage of time
alone could reveal. For, you see, the thoughts penned long ago are not
obsolete, are, indeed, as valuable today as when they were written. The
humor in them still brings a smile, the pathos a sigh. Old students
and scholars of clear and lofty character have always built temples of
wisdom, but always thoughtless later generations have allowed those
temples to become weed-covered and neglected, and we of today with our
printing presses and cheap magazines have very effectually covered
what was not hidden in the tangled jungles, with unmitigated trash.
So it becomes obvious that things are being lost today. To be sure,
the names of the temple builders are heard, whispered as it were in
colleges and universities--there is still talk of Langland, and Malory,
and Skelton, and Sidney, and Bacon. But it is a mere bandying of names
and no more. The things done, the work accomplished we heed not at all,
and, in our folly and our crass ignorance, we turn a willing ear to
those who speak slightingly of the old because it is old. But this is
certain, very certain. Much that ails us today, socially, politically,
internationally and economically, also ailed people in the far past
and there were men who had studied with care, and who had diagnosed
disease and advocated cures for the very malaise that now afflicts
us. That we must get straight and well fixed in our minds. For new
troubles are old troubles. And to cure those ever present ills there
were written such books as Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, Buckle’s
_History of Civilization_, John Stuart Mill’s _Science of Political
Economy_, Thomas Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_ and many, many others. And
of such sort was Burton’s book.
Now whether Robert Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is a book which
time has made great or the value of which time has failed to lessen,
let who reads say for himself. There is no denying the fact that it
is unregarded today, and, equally, there is no denying the fact that,
except in a few instances, men are too busy or too thoughtless, too
worried or too impatient to attempt to tackle so formidable a work. For
it is formidable--as formidable as Bacon’s _Advancement of Learning_,
or Hobbes’ _Leviathan_, or even Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_. I mention
the latter with purpose, for, considering it as I do one of the
greatest books written in English, comparatively modern as it is, it
is far more talked about than read. To be sure the title of it falls
easily enough from the lips of college professors, but of the wisdom in
it they seem to know nothing, else in times of stress and excitement
and unbalance, as in those hysterical war days, they would not have
taken the course that, with very few exceptions, they did.
I have spoken of the formidable appearance of the _Anatomy_, and the
consequent discouragement to any but the bravest. And formidable it is
to those used to the scrappy appearance of the popular magazine. Let a
man cast eyes on the close-written page, the long Latin passages, the
thick bristling references, and, ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he
shall be discouraged at the very appearance of the book, for it strikes
the eye as a tangle and confusion, like the tangle and confusion of a
timber-covered mountain criss-cross with underbrush. But I promise you
that you shall be well repaid if you will but disregard appearances
just as you are well repaid for cracking the rough and tough shell of
the walnut. I give a sample taken almost at random in which you cannot
fail to note the gentle humor and sound common sense.
_Love_.
Boccace hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from
the Greeks, and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius into
verse, of Cymon and Iphigenia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper man
of person, and the governor of Cyprus’ son, but a very ass; insomuch
that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farmhouse he had
in the country, to be brought up; where by chance, as his manner was,
walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia,
a burgomaster’s daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side,
in a little thicket, fast asleep in her smock, where she had newly
bathed her self. _When Cymon saw her, he stood leaning on his staff,
gaping on her immovable, and in a maze_; at last he fell so far in
love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up;
to bethink what he was; would needs follow her to the city, and for
her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing and dance, to play
on instruments, and got all those gentleman-like qualities and
compliments, in a short space, which his friends were most glad of.
In brief he became from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most
complete gentlemen in Cyprus; did many valorous exploits, and all for
the love of Mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say thus much of
them, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and
sluts, if once they be in love, they will be most neat and spruce;
for, _Omnibus rebus, et nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor_; they will
follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to have a good opinion
of themselves; _venustatum enim mater Venus_; a ship is not so long
a-rigging, as a young gentlewoman a-trimming up herself against her
sweetheart comes. A painter’s shop, a flowery meadow, not so gracious
an aspect in Nature’s storehouse as a young maid, _nubilis puella_, a
Novitsa or Venetian bride, that looks for an husband; or a young man
that is her suitor; composed looks, composed gait, clothes, gestures,
actions, all composed; all the graces, elegancies, in the world,
are in her face. Their best robes, ribbons, chains, jewels, lawns,
linens, laces, spangles, must come on, _praeter quam res patitur
student elegantiae_, they are beyond all measure coy, nice, and too
curious on a sudden. ’Tis all their study, all their business, how
to wear their clothes neat, to be polite and terse, and to set out
themselves. No sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming,
but he smugs up himself, pulls up his cloak, now fallen about his
shoulders, ties his garters, points, sets his band, cuffs, slicks his
hair, twires his beard, etc.
You catch readily the prolixity of the man. Perhaps it would be better
to say his leisureliness. But you also get something of his enthusiasm.
Certainly, there is no denying the fact that Burton, like Bacon, and
like Sir Thomas Browne, and sometimes Carlyle be it said, lacked the
power or the desire to omit and trim and prune. At any rate, all those
I have named were unsparing of their readers, as unsparing as Nature
herself is. If pruning is to be done, they seem to say, then let the
reader prune, for I shall certainly unfold in all richness. Indeed,
it sometimes seems as if the deliberate writers took care to preserve
odd, half-forgotten things as though they considered themselves the
proper custodians of this, that and the other which seemed in peril
of neglect. And, certainly, they did, at times, seize on pegs on
which to hang rags and tags of learning until whole chapters had the
appearance of a motley farrago. But that, it is clear, was a kind of
loving kindness and generosity, for the world was by no means free from
those who had the other and professorial idea of keeping information
to themselves so that they might the easier astound the more ignorant,
pretending to vast scholarship and occult learning. Perhaps, too,
the old writers were actuated by the same spirit which prompts the
housewife to keep odds and ends to the end that in some unexpected time
they may come in useful. Or perhaps they were lavish because of their
real modesty, giving credit where it was due and not boldly stealing
the ideas of others and, slightly transforming them, a modern trick
which no laws and regulations will prevent. But there is another angle
from which this kind of generous prolixity may be viewed. It is this.
With such a book, crammed with good things said and written by those
long since dead, readers would not be apt to presume that they stood on
the pinnacle of knowledge and had a monopoly of learning. And to make
a man who prided himself on his absorption of facts really and truly
humble, would be a happy miracle.
So it comes about then that such books are like muniment rooms. They
are like great, wonderful attics in which things that were once trifles
and common, have, by the passage of time, gained value both sentimental
and material. And looking around, we find ourselves filled with
astonishment to discover that what we thought our forwardness, is, very
often, nothing of the kind. The saying that there is nothing new under
the sun takes on a new meaning. We find our own wisdom distressingly
crude. Presently, Burton reads like a modern and cultured gentleman
conversing, and we are not astonished to find him discussing up-to-date
things, considering the effect of impure air on the health, talking
about heredity, birth control, monopoly, rich men, sycophantic poor
men, free love, degeneracy, fantastic literature. And our minds clear
up, as it were, getting a proper perspective as we discover that the
ancients knew something about war loans, capital levies, debasement
of the currency, inflated money. Or we learn of Pythocles and his
proposal for nationalizing the output of the mines of Laurium, of the
Ephesians raising money by taxing luxuries and jewelry, of Chabrias
threatening to disendow the temple, of Condalus levying a tax on vanity
by making men who affected long hair pay, of the Clasomenians and their
token coinage, and much more. Or if you are one to bewail the modern
tendencies of women to capture men by a half display of their bodies,
you find your corrective when Burton tells that that kind of thing is
old as the hills. Indeed, he goes back hundreds of years to quote old
Hierome on the subject with “she walks along, and with the ruffling of
her clothes makes men look at her, her shoes creak, her paps tied up,
her waist pulled in to make her look small, she is straight girded, her
hair about her ears, her upper garment sometimes falls and sometimes
tarries to show her naked shoulders, and as if she would not be seen,
she covers that in all haste which voluntarily she showed.” A perfectly
modern up-to-date maiden accurately described. Nor was George Bernard
Shaw the first to discover that it is a sheer fiction to pretend that
the man pursues and captures the maid, but rather the contrary, and
that woman sets her nets to capture the man, and has always so done.