In 1621 Robert Burton published The Anatomy of Melancholy. Often cited as Samuel Johnson’s favourite book, the work has engaged readers throughout the centuries and is being reconsidered during its 400th anniversary year. In this blog post we look at Johnson’s relationship with Burton’s book (please be aware that this post includes discussion of depression and mental health topics)
Samuel Johnson told James Boswell that “Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy… was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise”
The Anatomy of Melancholy was first published in 1621 and enlarged in successive editions up to 1651. The author, Robert Burton (1577 – 1640) was a fellow Midlander, educated at Nuneaton and Sutton Coldfield schools and continuing his studies at Brasenose College and Christchurch, Oxford. He was Rector of All Saint’s Church in Seagrave, a small village in Leicestershire, for the last ten years of his life.
The Anatomy of Melancholy was Burton’s only significant publication although, like Johnson, he also wrote a play as a younger man. The Anatomy presents as a medical text but with a gentle satirical tone, indicated by the pseudonym he used for work of ‘Democritus Junior’, as Democritus was the laughing philosopher. Burton finds melancholy to be universally present in human experience. He presents causes, symptoms and cures and includes quotes from a huge range of sources.
It appears that Johnson had a life-long relationship with Burton’s work. The book was known to Johnson as a young man: John Hawkins refers to Johnson as having “frequently resorted to [the Anatomy] for the purpose of exhilaration” while he was running his failing school at Edial Hall shortly after his marriage and before moving to London. It is also very possible that Johnson would have known the book from earliest childhood, as we know it was a title which his father carried in the family bookshop. In the 1680s a disgruntled customer in Ashbourne wrote to Michael Johnson: “Burton’s Melancholy I return, being dear and there is a much better edition”. Michael Johnson may well have had a personal interest in the book, as we know through his son’s accounts that he experienced episodes of depression.
Samuel Johnson’s own mental health struggles are documented and particularly apparent in his private writings, later published as his Diaries, Annals, and Prayers. Boswell’s biography includes discussion of Johnson’s experiences of melancholy, recounting a number of episodes when Johnson refers to Burton’s book while offering guidance on how to manage the condition.
Johnson introduces the topic soon after the two men meet, and against melancholy he recommended “constant occupation of the mind, a great deal of exercise, moderation in eating and drinking and especially to shun drinking at night.”
The friends came back to the subject while visiting Oxford in March 1776, when Johnson states “to have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise”. Johnson’s recommendation that Boswell should have a lamp burning and book to hand to compose himself to rest when he wakes in the night gives insight into his own nocturnal experiences. He recommended Burton’s Anatomy for the purpose, saying “there is a great spirit and great power in what Burton says, when he writes from his own mind”
On a later occasion, when counselling Boswell, Johnson quotes and adjusts Burton’s advice: “The great direction which Burton has left to Men disordered like you, is this: Be not solitary; be not idle; which I would thus modify: “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle”
Burton’s Melancholy was not only a tool to assist Johnson’s ‘management of the mind’, but one which aided his compilation of his Dictionary of the English Language. He recognised that Burton’s work “is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation” but this reflected the author’s extensive library, and was no doubt an approach attractive to Johnson. 15 definitions cite Melancholy in the final publication, though 45 were marked up as possible entries in Johnson’s 1676 edition of the book which is in the Bodleian library collection at Oxford University.
The words with examples of usage quoted from Burton indicate that Johnson considered the text to be a good source of unusual and old-fashioned words, rather than a source for topics directly related to the subject of the work. The words quoting Burton are “addle,” “colly,” “costard,” “doter,” “to filch,” “to fleer,” “giddyheaded,” “griper,” “hotspur,” “ to macerate,” “muckhill,” “mutter,” “oligarchy,” “quacksalver,” and “squalor.” Entries were sympathetically edited by Johnson to appeal to an 18th century readership, many of whom may not have been familiar with Burton’s work, which grew in reputation in the 19th century.
Find out more
At 400, Burton’s work is being reconsidered and an exhibition exploring the theme opens in Oxford next month and is free to visit until March 2022. Find out more on their website
Last year Radio 4 ran an excellent series looking at what the book can teach us today: ‘A New Anatomy of Melancholy’
You can read more about Burton in this 2020 blog post from Aeon:
The charity Mind offer help and support for mental health issues: Click here to visit their website