Reading Robert Burton - Part I

From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 – 1651)

I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi & musis [to myself and letters]… I had a great desire (not able to attain to a superficial skill in any) to have some smattering in all, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis [something in everything, no authority in anything]… I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui ubique est, nusquam est [he who is everywhere is nowhere]… I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of art, order, memory, judgement. I never travelled but in map… I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil… I hear news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged… A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, please, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts… Thus I daily hear, and suchlike, both private, and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world.

I did for my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but make some little observation… I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness… This I aimed at; vel ut lenirem animum scribendo, to ease my mind by writing… Besides I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itcheth… ‘Tis most true, many are possessed by an incurable itch to write, and “there is no end of writing of books.” [Ecclesiastes 12:12] Bewitched with this desire of frame, etiam mediis in morbis, to the disparagement of their health, and scarce able to hold a pen, they must say something, have it out… They turn authors lest peradventure the printers should have a holiday, or they must write something to prove they have lived… Quis tam avidus librorum helluo [what a glut of books!], Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
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