WHICH BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. * * * * * EXTRACT I. I, Democritus Junior, have put my finishing pen to a tractate _De Melancholia_, this day, December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity, which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far, and make supplication, with a _Laus Deo_, if in any case these my poor labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. _Sed hoc magis volo quam expecto._ I turn now to my book, _i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain-sweat_, and yee, _candidi lectores_, lo! here I give him up to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose, will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my friends), hee is a _flos rarus_, forsooth, a nonesuch, a Phoenix (concerning whom see _Plinius_ and _Mandeuille_, though _Fienus de Monstris_ doubteth at large of such a bird, whom _Montaltus_ confuting argueth to have been a man _malæ scrupulositatis_, of a weak and cowardlie faith: _Christopherus a Vega_ is with him in this). Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether my collections, for crude, inept, putid, _post coenam scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal_, verbose, inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, _dogmata_, sentences of learneder writers which have been before me, when as that first-named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee nothing else but a _messe of opinions_, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all which _Wolfius_ behelde with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the World's Epitome, which _Sannazar_ so bepraiseth, _e contra_ our Polydore can see nothing in it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which is all too neoterick and light for my humour.