Editing Robert Burton (section)

==Personal life==
===Character===
{{quotebox
|text=Known to few, unknown to fewer, here lies Democritus Junior, to whom Melancholy gave both life and death.{{efn|The original epitaph is in Latin, and reads: "{{lang|la|paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus Junior cui vitam dedit et mortem melancholia}}".{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|p=109}} There is some academic uncertainty as to the meaning of this epitaph: whether it suggests suicide, whether Burton meant here to separate his literary persona (and its separate life and death) from his own, and whether the "Melancholy" referred to is the condition or Burton's ''Anatomy of Melancholy''.{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|p=109}}}}
|halign=center
|source=—Burton's epitaph in Christ Church Cathedral, said to have been composed by himself.{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|p=109}}
|width=300px
}}
Burton has often been portrayed as something of a recluse, especially by those authors influenced by the Romantic view of Burton.{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}} Early 20th-century critic [[Floyd Dell]] imagined Burton "hedged within his cloister, his heart yearn[ing] after the romance of adventure".{{sfn|Dell|1927|p=xi}} Later biographers have been keen to dispel this image, and emphasise that Burton had a life outside of his books.{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}}{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=20}} He was no doubt an active part in the non-academic daily life of Oxford, through his university-appointed roles in its church and market life,{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|pp=96–97}}{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=20}} and Bamborough adds that in his day he "was known as a mathematician and as both an astrologer and an astronomer, and even had some reputation as a surveyor".{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}} Wood also notes that Burton's unsurpassed skill at including "verses from the poets or sentences from classical authors" in his everyday speech, "then all the fashion in the university", allowed him some popularity.{{sfn|Wood|1815}} However, Burton's "most significant occupations during his life were reading and writing",{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|p=98}} and his large library is evidence enough of this prodigious bookishness.{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}}

Burton's melancholy is the most widely acknowledged feature of his life and character. Wood reported that "he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous [i.e., moody] person", yet his peers found his company "very merry".<ref>Wood quoted in {{harvnb|Bamborough|2009}}, with Bamborough's insertions.</ref> He wrote the ''Anatomy'' in part to relieve this melancholy, but this enterprise was not wholly successful. [[White Kennett|Bishop Kennett]], writing somewhat later in the 18th century, recorded that Burton could flit between "interval[s] of vapours", in which he was lively and social, and periods of isolation in his college chambers where his peers worried he was suicidal. Kennett hands down that later in his life Burton could arouse himself from these periods of depression only by "going down to the Bridge-foot in Oxford, and hearing the barge-men scold and storm and swear at one another, at which he would set his hands to his sides, and laugh most profusely."{{sfn|Bullen|1886}}{{sfn|Dewey|1970|p=19}}

===Religious views===
Gowland has suggested the Burton family had some Catholic sympathies, because of their close relation to Jesuit [[Arthur Faunt]]. Faunt's godson and Burton's brother, William, spoke admiringly of Faunt as "a man of great learning, gravity and wisdome";<ref>William Burton quoted in {{harvnb|Gowland|2006|p=5}}</ref> William was a vigorous supporter of [[Laudian]] reforms in his home county, siding with [[High Church]] Anglicanism, which was sometimes seen as Catholic-sympathising{{sfn|Milton|2009}}{{sfn|Gowland|2006|p=5}} and at St Thomas's, Burton was apparently one of the last 17th-century Church of England priests to use unleavened wafers in the Communion, an outmoded Laudian practice.{{sfn|VCH, City of Oxford, "Churches"|1974|loc=[https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp369-412#p247 par. 247]}} However, as an Oxford scholar, Burton could have taken a personal dislike to [[Archbishop Laud]]; as the [[Chancellor of Oxford|Chancellor there]] from 1630 to 1641, Laud was in perpetual squabbles with its body of scholars.{{sfn|Milton|2009}}{{sfn|Kitzes|2017|p=5}}

Burton was an apparent supporter of James I's anti-Catholic measures, listed among those at Christ Church who took his [[Oath of Allegiance of James I of England|Oath of Allegiance]]. The anti-Catholic portions of ''Philosophaster'' were revised shortly after James released the Oath, possibly to satirise the ensuing Catholic backlash.{{sfn|Murphy|2009|loc=par. 15}}{{efn|Burton certainly took an interest in these measures, as he purchased several pamphlets dealing with the international debate over the Oath.{{sfn|Murphy|2009|loc=par. 15}}}} As Adam Kitzes put it, Burton "makes no bones about his allegiance to the king and the Church of England".{{sfn|Kitzes|2017|p=5}} Burton also claimed part of his reasoning in not proceeding to a DD (Doctor of Divinity) was his reluctance to participate in the endless argument surrounding religion, for which he "saw no such great neede".{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}}

===Library===
[[File:Robert Burton's library, Christ Church Library, Oxford, Cushing's Life of William Osler.png|thumb|left|Robert Burton's library in Christ Church Library, 1907, after Osler's efforts to reorganise the bequest.{{sfn|Dewey|1969|p=2247}}]]
According to Bamborough, "to describe Burton as 'bookish' can only be called ridiculous understatement".{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}} Burton owned 1738 books in total,{{sfn|Kiessling|1988|pp=v–xxxviii}} tenfold the library of a typical Oxford don, though not as vast as those of some other contemporary humanist scholars.{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}}{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|pp=15–16}}{{efn|The scholar and occultist [[John Dee]] (1527–1608), for instance, held a library totalling over 3000 books and 1000 manuscripts.<ref>{{cite web |title=The lost library of John Dee |url=https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/lost-library-john-dee |publisher=Royal College of Physicians |date=14 December 2015}}</ref>}} He accumulated the collection over a forty-six year period, from 1594 to 1640.{{sfn|Kiessling|1988|pp=v–xxxviii}} The profits from the ''Anatomy'' probably funded most of the library, larger than his modest academic and ecclesiastical income would have been able to cover.{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|p=100}} The majority of the library's contents was in Latin, but the number of English volumes was untypically large. Burton seems to have been uncomfortable reading outside these two primary languages; he owned only a handful of titles in Italian, German, Spanish, and [[Hebrew]], and none in [[Ancient Greek|Greek]], the last despite his humanist reputation and the recurring Grecian references in the ''Anatomy''.{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=16}} Again despite this reputation, the majority of Burton's library was contemporary. He owned hundreds of cheap pamphlets, satires, and popular plays: all works which had been excluded from the recently founded Bodleian Library, perhaps why Burton felt the need to purchase them.{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=17}} Though religious works composed the largest category in his library (about one quarter), the remaining three quarters were made up by an eclectic collection of literary, historical, medical, and geographical volumes, testifying to Burton's broad scholarship.{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=17}} Burton was an avid annotator of books, with marginal notes in around one-fifth of his books, from the tangential to the bluntly hostile.{{sfn|Gowland|2006|p=8}}

Burton's library was divided between the Bodleian and Christ Church libraries after his death. In the early 20th century, Oxford [[Regius Professor of Medicine (Oxford)|Regius Professor of Medicine]] [[William Osler]], an enthusiast for Burton, found Burton's bequests "scattered indiscriminately"<ref>Osler quoted in {{harvnb|Dewey|1969|p=2248}}</ref> throughout the two libraries, and, from 1907 to 1908, set about having them gathered together in one collection, rediscovering over a thousand of Burton's volumes. In Christ Church Library, Osler set up an elaborate display of these books surrounding a copy of the Brasenose Portrait of Burton. Osler delivered an address on the contents of Burton's library the following year.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=40}}{{sfn|Dewey|1969|p=2248}}{{sfn|Wing|2012|pp=19–20}} In 1964, Christ Church Library disassembled Osler's Burton collection, moving the books to the Archiva Superiora on the second floor.{{sfn|Wing|2012|pp=19–20}} This collection comprises 1530 of the 1738 books and two manuscripts owned by Burton. The remaining 210 were distributed to either various acquaintances of Burton; gifted or traded to other libraries or bookshops; or by selling duplicates, some of which are unrecorded. Of the 140 books yet to be located, it is thought that around half of these are extant.{{sfn|Kiessling|1988|pp=v–xxxviii}} Christ Church Library has referred to Burton's library as "one of the most important surviving English private libraries from the period before the Civil War".{{sfn|Christ Church, "History of the Library"}}