combination of gifts lay in the union of almost universal reading with the application of that reading to the setting forth and illustration of a peculiar temperament of mind—the temperament which is expressed by writers as ancient as the Preacher, and as modern as Schopenhauer. To dwell on the way in which, as far as matter goes, he deals with the subject of Melancholy would be here impossible. (It is sufficient to say that he had read almost everything-classical, mediaeval, and modern, theology, science (as science then went), law, history, poetry. He will quote Ovid one moment and Chaucer the next, a schoolman on this page, and—rarest of all quotations to be found in his own contemporaries—a contemporary playwright on that. The whole is cast into the form of a scientific investigation of the causes, symptoms, varieties, and cure of what he calls Melancholy. But as the manner of his age was (though no one else shows it in quite such perfection) the investigation passes into, or is continually accompanied by, an endless chain of citation from his innumerable authors. Nor is the fashion of this citation less peculiar than its abundance. For the most part the borrowed passages are not given singly to support and illustrate single sentences or paragraphs of the author's own. They run on into endless series with each other, or are twisted in alternate strands with Burton's own writing. (Sometimes his sentences read as if a string of references in a footnote had by some inadvertence cropped up in the text ;) often as if the clauses were written in shorthand—notes for the author's own use in future extension or selection. Now he will give the original of his version, or a paraphrase in a note; now he will quote his author in Latin or another tongue, and follow this up with a sort of half-gloss, half-version in English. To a careless reader, or to one quite out of sympathy with Burton's own mood, the method may seem either a cumbrous conglomeration, due to lack of taste, skill, and energy, or the lost labour of elaborate eccentricity. Not so to any one who takes the trouble to master Burton's own introduction, or who starts in harmony with the spirit of the book. If the Anatomy of Melancholy be regarded as mere outpouring of commonplace books, with a pretext of unity in purpose and subject, it is no great thing. To be understood it must be regarded as at once the exhibition of a temperament, and the discussion of a case.)

Burton occupied rather more than twenty years, from the time of his election to a position of learned ease, in shaping

his book for its first appearance in 1621 he spent rather less than another twenty in refashioning and perfecting the work. Frequently as it has been reprinted, no attempt has ever yet been made to execute a critical edition, indicating the variations which were thus introduced by him on the four occasions when reissues were called for in his own lifetime. These alterations

and additions are very numerous and very considerable, and the author not unfrequently draws attention to them in the text. But he has never, in making them, broken through the singular unity and control of treatment which the book shows. As far as the minutiæ of style are concerned, Burton's characteristics are well marked, and not very numerous. His method of quotation obliges him of necessity to immense sentences, or rather clauseheaps. But it is noteworthy that when he intermits citation and narrates or argues in his own person he is less, not more, given than his contemporaries to the long sentence, and frequently has a distinctly terse and crisp arrangement of the members of his paragraph. Of definite mannerisms he chiefly affects apposition, the omission of conjunctions and connecting words of all kinds, and a very curious and characteristic use of the demonstrative he and its cases, which covers with him a range of senses from "that well-known person " to "anybody."

These details of form, however, though adding to the fantastic personality of the book, are as nothing compared to the idiosyncrasies of its matter and spirit. Apt as Burton is to digress— indeed he has a formal defence of the practice—and enormous as is the range of his digression, he has contrived to make all this huge congeries of material subservient to his purpose of illustrating a new "vanity of vanities," of combining, as it were, in one book the knowledge of Solomon, and his reflections on the futility of the things known and the knowing of them. Rigidly precise in appearance as is the scheme he lays out, its sweep and ramifications are so great and intricate that hardly anything introduced by him can be said to be absolutely irrelevant. He contrives to see all things in Melancholy, and yet to make his treatment of them anything but melancholic. Indeed with all his plunges in the balneum diaboli, all his love for quaint out-of-the-way knowledge, there is in Burton a strong vein of plain commonsense which is sometimes almost prosaic, in the transferred and uncomplimentary sense, and which emerges now and then, especially in his long and famous discourse of Love-melancholy.

His own verse translations, too, are such mere doggrel for the most part that one almost suspects a trick and deliberation. But there are few things, indeed, that deserve censure in Burton, the perpetual refuge and delight of scholarly English readers, an unmatched storehouse of learning, and one not easily matched for wisdom, a writer who, by force of genius, has turned into an organic whole the hugest and most apparently heterogeneous stock of materials that ever an architect of letters set himself to build withal.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

DEMOCRITUS HIS UTOPIA

UTOPIAN parity is a kind of government, to be wished for, rather than effected, Respub. Christianopolitana, Campanella's City of the Sun, and that new Atlantis, witty fictions, but mere chimeras : and Plato's community in many things is impious, absurd, and ridiculous; it takes away all splendour and magnificence. I will have several orders, degrees of nobility, and those hereditary, not rejecting younger brothers in the mean time; for they shall be sufficiently provided for by pensions, or so qualified, brought up in some honest calling, they shall be able to live of themselves. I will have such a proportion of ground belonging to every barony: he that buys the land, shall buy the barony; he that by riot consumes his patrimony, and ancient demesnes, shall forfeit his honours. As some dignities shall be hereditary, so some again by election or gift (besides free offices, pensions, annuities) like our bishoprics, prebends, the Bassa's palaces in Turkey, the procurators' houses, and offices in Venice, which (like the golden apple) shall be given to the worthiest and best deserving both in war and peace, as a reward of their worth and good service, as so many goals for all to aim at (honos alit artes), and encouragements to others. For I hate those severe, unnatural, harsh, German, French, and Venetian decrees, which exclude plebeians from honours be they never so wise, rich, virtuous, valiant, and well qualified, they must not be patricians, but keep their own rank: this is naturæ bellum inferre, odious to God and men; I abhor it. My form of government shall be monarchical;

nunquam libertas gratior exstat, Quam sub rege pio," etc.

few laws, but those severely kept, plainly put down, and in the mother tongue, that every man may understand. Every city shall have a peculiar trade or privilege, by which it shall be chiefly maintained and parents shall teach their children (one

of three at least), bring up and instruct them in the mysteries of their own trade. In each town these several tradesmen shall be so aptly disposed as they shall free the rest from danger or offence. Fire-trades, as smiths, forge-men, brewers, bakers, metalmen, etc., shall dwell apart by themselves; dyers, tanners, felmongers, and such as use water, in convenient places by themselves: noisome or fulsome for bad smells, as butchers' slaughterhouses, chandlers, curriers, in remote places, and some back lanes. Fraternities and companies I approve of, as merchants' burses, colleges of druggers, physicians, musicians, etc., but all trades to be rated in the sale of wares, as our clerks of the market do bakers and brewers; corn it self, what scarcity soever shall come, not to exceed such a price. Of such wares as are transported or brought in, if they be necessary, commodious, and such as nearly concern man's life, as corn, wood, coal, etc., and such provision we cannot want, I will have little or no custom paid, no taxes ; but for such things as are for pleasure, delight, or ornament, as wine, spice, tobacco, silk, velvet, cloth of gold, lace, jewels, etc., a greater impost. I will have certain ships sent out for new discoveries every year, and some discreet men appointed to travel into all neighbour kingdoms by land, which shall observe what artificial inventions and good laws are in other countries, customs, alterations, or ought else, concerning war, or peace, which may tend to the common good;-ecclesiastical discipline, penes episcopos, subordinate as the other; no impropriations, no lay patrons of church livings, or one private man, but common societies, corporations, etc., and those rectors of benefices to be chosen out of the universities, examined and approved as the literati in China. No parish to contain above a thousand auditors. If it were possible, I would have such priests as should imitate Christ, charitable lawyers should love their neighbours as themselves, temperate and modest physicians, politicians contemn the world, philosophers should know themselves, noblemen live honestly, tradesmen leave lying and cozening, magistrates corruption, etc. But this is impossible; I must get such as I may. I will therefore have of lawyers, judges, advocates, physicians, chirurgions, etc., a set number; and every man, if it be possible, to plead his own cause, to tell that tale to the judge, which he doth to his advocate, as at Fez in Africk, Bantam, Aleppo, Raguse, suam quisque caussam dicere tenetur;—those advocates, chirurgions, and physicians, which are allowed to be