Robert Burton

, known otherwise to Scholars by the name of Democritus Junior, younger Brother to Will. Burton, whom I shall mention under the year 1645, was born of an ancient and gentile family at Lindley in Leicestershire, 8. Feb. 1576, and therefore in the titles of several of his choice books which he gave to the publick Library, he added to his Sirname Lindliacus Leycestrensis. He was educated in Grammar learning in the Free-School of Sutton-Colfield in Warwickshire, whence he was sent to Brasnose coll. in the long vacation, an. 1593. where he made a considerable progress in Logic and Philosophy in the condition of a Commoner. In 1599. he was elected Student of Ch. Ch. and for form sake, tho he wanted not a Tutor, he was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxon. In 1614. he was admitted to the reading of the Sentences, and on the 29. Nov. 1616. he had the Vicaridge of St. Thomas Parish in the West Suburb of Oxon confer’d on him by the Dean and Canons of Ch. Church, (to the parishioners whereof, he always gave the Sacrament in Wafers) which, with the Rectory of Segrave in Leycestershire, given to him some years after by George Lord Berkley, he kept with much ado to his dying day. He was an exact Mathematician, a curious calculator of Nativities, a general read Scholar, a thro-pac’d Philologist, and one that understood the surveying of Lands well. As he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humerous person; so by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing and charity. I have heard some of the Antients of Ch. Ch. often say that his company was very merry, facete and juvenile, and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dextrous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the Poets or sentences from classical authors. Which being then all the fashion in the University, made his company more acceptable. He hath written,

The Anatomy of Melancholy—First printed in qu. and afterwards several times in sol. an. 1624. 1632, 38, and 1652. &c. to the great profit of the Bookseller, who got an estate by it. ’Tis a book so full of variety of reading, that Gentlemen who have lost their time and put to a push for invention, may furnish themselves with matter for common or scholastical discourse and writing. Several authors have unmercifully stolen matter from the said book without any acknowledgment, particularly one Will. Greenwood, in his book intit. A description of the passion of Love, &c. Lond. 1657. oct. Who, as others of the like humour do, sometimes take his quotations without the least mention of Democritus Junior. He the said R. Burton paid his last debt to nature, in his Chamber in Ch. Ch. at, or very near that time, which he had some years before foretold from the calculation of his own nativity. which being exact, several of the Students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven thro a slip about his neck. His body was afterwards with due solemnity buried near that of Dr. Rob. Weston, in the north isle which joyns next to the choire of the Cath. of Ch. Church, 1639-40. on the 27. of January in sixteen hundred thirty and nine. Over his grave was soon after erected a comely Monument on the upper pillar of the said isle, with his bust painted to the life: On the right hand of which, is the calculation of his nativity, and under the bust this inscription made by himself; all put up by the care of William Burton his brother. Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus junior, cui vitam dedit, & mortem melancholia. Obiit viii. Id. Jan. A. C. M. DCXXXIX. He left behind him a very choice library of books, many of which he bequeathed to that of Bodley, and a hundred pounds to buy five pounds yearly for the supplying of Ch. Ch. Library with books.