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Robert Burton's Tricks of Memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Abstract
A comparison of the text of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy with its sources shows the latter to have undergone substantial alterations apparently wrought unconsciously by the author's memory. These alterations run to type: figures are exaggerated and extraordinary events are made more extraordinary. Sometimes figments are created by the fusion of two remembered names, or the elements of two stories, into one. The resulting distortions and figments often exceed their originals in literary charm, but the effect is never to falsify or misrepresent the meaning of the original.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972
References
1 Page vi: i, 19. All references to the Anatomy will give, first, the page number in the sixth edition (Oxford: Henry Cripps, 1651), from which the quotation will have been literally transcribed, and second, the volume and page where A. R. Shilleto's version may be found in his standard edition (London: Bell, 1893); e.g., “p. 42: i, 210.” Because the sixth edition has two sets of pagination, pp. 1–78 for “Democritus to the Reader” and pp. 1–723 for the rest, to avoid confusion I will put references to its “Democritus to the Reader” in Roman numerals. Thus, the passage just cited is at p. vi: i, 19, meaning that in the sixth edition the reader will find it in “Democritus to the Reader” on p. 6 and in Shilleto's edition at p. 19 of Vol. i.
2 The phrase is Henry James's, quoted in John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu (Cambridge, Mass. : Riverside Press, 1927), p. 56.
3 “Whence it is taken appears, yet it appears as something different from what it is taken from.”—Shilleto's translation.
4 Mémoires de Messire Philippe de Comines, ed. Denys Godefroy (Brussels: François Foppens, 1706), I, 187.
5 Histories, vii, xxv, 8–9.
6 Operum (Lyons : John Anthony Huguetan and Mark Anthony Ravaud, 1663), iii, 656.
7 The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, trans. John Winter Jones (London: Hakluyt Soc, n.d.), pp. 66, 77, 87. Varthema's figure for the heaviest tails is “quaranta-quattor libre” (Itinerario, in Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Délie Navigationi et Viaggi, Venice: Stamperia de Giunti, 1554, Vol. i, fol. 168v.). Richard Eden's English translation (1576) renders this faithfully as “fourtie and foure pounde weyght” (A Selection of Curious, Rare and Early Voyages, London: R. H. Evans and R. Priestly, 1812, p. 169); and this, we may assume, was Burton's source, for Burton cites Varthema's book as “navig.” in clear allusion to Eden's title, The nauigation and Vyages of Lewes Vertoman-nus. The other early editions of Varthema's book are titled Itinerario or Itinerarium.
8 “Varro trecentos Joves . . . introducit” (Apologeticus adversus Gentes pro Christianis, Ch. xiv, in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (Paris: Migne, 1844–82), I, 410–11. Hereafter this series will be cited as PL.
9 “In varias superstitiones inciderunt. & vt huius aetatis ne meminerim, plures antiqui Deos confinxere, ita vt vsque ad triginta milia haberi prodiderint, & inter hos 300. loues.”—“Historiée Deorum Gentilium Syntagma Pri-mvm” in Operum (Basel: Thomas Guarinus, 1580) I, 1–2.
10 Theogony, in Homeric Hymns, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959), p. 105.
11 Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmatum, in Opera, ed. I. L. E. Dreyer (Copenhagen: in Libraria Gyldendaliana, 1915), ii, 430.
12 A Treatise Concerning the Causes of the Magnificencie and Greatnes of Cities (London: R. Ockould and H. Tomes, 1606), p. 67.
13 There would be no point in giving the reference in Shilleto's edition, since he corrects the spelling.
14 “Adest enim . . . dea mater Prema, et dea Pertunda, et Venus, et Priapus … Et certe … si adest dea Prema, ut subacta, ne se commoveat, comprimatur; dea Pertunda ibi quid facit? Erubescat, eat foras: agat aliquid et maritus . . . Sed quid hoc dicam, cum ibi sit et Priapus nimius masculus, super cujus immanissimum et turpissimum fascinum sedere nova nupta jubebatur?” (PL, XLI, 188).
15 Partunda is a corruption of Pertunda, as Migne explains, PL, XLI, 188 n.
16 “Qui ne fait pas l'éloge de son jugement.”— Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne (Paris: Michaud frères, 1811–28), s.v. “Cléombrote.”
17 See Callimachus, Epigrams, xxv, in Callimachus, Lycophron, Aratus, trans. A. W. and G. R. Mair (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955), pp. 153–55; Ovid, Art of Love and Other Poems, trans. J. H. Mozley (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 292–93 ; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, i, xxiv, trans. J. E. King (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), p. 98; “Philopatris: A Dialogue,” in Lucian, Works, ed. Thomas Francklin (London: T. Cadell, 1781; more recent editions do not include Philopatris); Montaigne, Essayes, trans. John Florio (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), p. 318.
18 The similarity of the names suggests either (a) a common origin in Scandinavian folklore, as Greece is reported to have numerous Mt. Olympuses (see Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion, Garden City, N. Y. : Double-day, 1951, p. 44), or (b) a geographical error on the part of Jacob Coler, the only author who mentions a Norwegian gate of hell, as against five I have found who speak of an Icelandic one. The relevant passages are: Lawrence Surius, Commentarius Breuis Rerum in Orbe Gestarum (Cologne: Arnold Quentelius, 1598), pp. 293–94; Albert Krantz, Chronica Regnorum Aquilonarium (Strasbourg: Johann Schottus, 1548), p. 77; Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (Antwerp: Christopher Plantinus, 1558), fol. 13r-v; Sebastian Munster, Cosmographies Universalis (Basel: Henry Petri, 1550), p. 848; Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. J. Olrik and H. Raeder (Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1931), i, 8.
19 De Animarum Immortalitate et Statu (Wittenberg: C. Schleich, 1587), fols. 97v-98r.
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