Its professed
object was simple and comprehensive; it was to analyze human melancholy,
to describe its effects, and prescribe for its removal. But as his task
grew, melancholy came to mean to Burton all the ills that flesh is heir
to. He tracked it in obscure and unsuspected forms; drew illustrations
from a range of authors so much wider than the compass of the reading
of even the most learned since, that he is generally credited with the
invention of a large part of his quotations. Ancients and moderns, poets
and prose writers, schoolmen and dramatists are all drawn upon for the
copious store of his examples; they are always cited with an air of
quietly humorous shrewdness in the comments and enclosed in a prose that
is straightforward, simple and vigorous, and can on occasion command
both rhythm and beauty of phrase. It is a mistake to regard Burton from
the point of view (due largely to Charles Lamb) of tolerant or loving
delight in quaintness for quaintness' sake. His book is anything but
scientific in form, but it is far from being the work of a recluse or a
fool. Behind his lack of system, he takes a broad and psychologically an
essentially just view of human ills, and modern medicine has gone far in
its admiration of what is at bottom a most comprehensive and subtle
treatise in diagnosis.
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