Democritus Junior ad Librum suum. VADE liber, qualis, non ausim dicere, fœlix, Vade tamen quocunque lubet, quascunque per oras, Si matrona gravis casu diverterit istuc, Illustris domina, aut te Comitissa legat: Da modo te facilem, et quædam folia esse memento Si generosa ancilla tuos aut alma puella Sive Melancholicus quisquam, seu blandus Amator, Huc appellat, age et tuto te crede legenti, Quod fugiat, caveat, quodque amplexabitur, ista *Hæc comice dicta, cave ne male capias. At si quis Medicus coram te sistet, amice Laudabit nonnulla. Venit si Rhetor ineptus, Annue; namque istic plurima ficta leget. Fac fugias; si nulla tibi sit copia eundi, Sed nec pelle tamen; læto omnes accipe vultu, Et ROBERT BURTON was the son of Ralph Burton, of an ancient and genteel family at Lindley, in Leicestershire, and was born there 8 February, 1576*. He received the first rudiments of learning at the free school of Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire†, from * His elder brother was William Burton, the Leicestershire antiquary, born August 24, 1575, educated at Sutton Coldfield, admitted commoner, or gentleman commoner, of Brazen Nose college, 1591; at the Inner Temple, May 20, 1593; B. A. June 22, 1594; and afterwards a barrister and reporter in the court of Common Pleas. "But his natural genius," says Wood, "leading him to the studies of heraldry, genealogies, and antiquities, he became excellent in those obscure and intricate matters; and look upon him as a gentleman, was accounted, by all that knew him, to be the best of his time for those studies, as may appear by his description of Leicestershire." His weak constitution not permitting him to follow business, he retired into the country, and his greatest work, The Description of Leicestershire, was published in folio, 1622. He died at Falde, after suffering much in the civil war, April 6, 1645, and was buried in the parish church belonging thereto, called Hanbury. This is Wood's account. His will says, Nuneaton; but a passage in this work [vol. i. p. 395.] mentions Sutton Coldfield: probably, he may have been at both schools. whence he was, at the age of seventeen, in the long vacation, 1593, sent to Brazen Nose College, in the condition of a commoner, where he made a considerable progress in logic and philosophy. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ-church, and, for form sake, was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. In 1614 he was admitted to the reading of the Sentences, and on the 29th of November, 1616, had the vicarage of St. Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, conferred on him by the dean and canons of Christ-church, which, with the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire, given to him in the year 1636, by George, Lord Berkeley, he kept, to use the words of the Oxford antiquary, with much ado to his dying day. He seems to have been first beneficed at Walsby, in Lincolnshire, through the munificence of his noble patroness, Frances, countess dowager of Exeter, but resigned the same, as he tells us, for some special reasons. At his vicarage he is remarked to have always given the sacrament in wafers. Wood's character of him is, that he was an exact. mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous person; so by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing and charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christ-church often say, that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dextrous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poets, or sentences from classic authors; which being then all the fashion in the university, made his company the more acceptable." He appears to have been a universal reader of all kinds of books, and availed himself of his multifarious studies in a very extraordinary manner. From the information of Hearne, we learn, that John Rouse, the "He Bodleian librarian, furnished him with choice books for the prosecution of his work. The subject of his labour and amusement seems to have been adopted from the infirmities of his own habit and constitution. Mr. Granger says, "He composed this book with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree, that nothing could make him laugh, but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. Before he was overcome with this horrid disorder, he in the intervals of his vapours was esteemed one of the most facetious companions in the university." His residence was chiefly at Oxford; where in his chamber in Christ-church College, he departed this life, at or very near the time which he had some years before foretold, from the calculation of his own nativity, and which, says Wood, "being exact, several of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his neck." Whether this suggestion is founded in truth, we have no other evidence than an obscure hint in the epitaph hereafter inserted, which was written by the author himself, a short time before his death. His body, with due solemnity, was buried near that of Dr. Robert Weston, in the north aisle which joins next to the choir of the cathedral of Christ-church, on the 27th of January 1639-40. Over his grave was soon after erected a comely monument, on the upper pillar of the said aisle, with his bust, painted to the life. On the right hand is the following calculation of his nativity: VOL. I. b |