My Mistress Melancholy

Melancholy was the most pervasive and elusive of Renaissance diseases, and Robert Burton (1577-1640) its most dedicated, even obsessive, chronicler. His memorial stone on the wall of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford is inscribed: ‘Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus Junior, cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia’ (which I translate as ‘Known to few, unknown to fewer, here lies Democritus Junior, to whom Melancholy gave life and death’). It is characteristic of the man that his final words are both mysterious and mischievous, concealing his real identity behind the pseudonym that made him famous. For it was as Democritus Junior that Burton published his only book, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).