Thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself. ‘Tis not worth the reading, I yield it.

The Anatomy of Melancholy is a 17th century book by Robert Burton that attempts to understand the source of and potential cure for unhappiness.

Now, the question of why anyone should look to a centuries-old medical treatise for any reason at all is a perfectly understandable one. Here’s why I think you should read at least a little of it.

• It is a strange, beautiful, and unique documentation of the difficulties of life that is still relevant today.
• It is perhaps the earliest sympathetic account of neurodiversity, written by a neurodiverse person.
• It is a fascinating, wide-ranging tour of literary and scientific history, and indeed of history itself.
• It is both serious and hilarious, relatable and insightful, readable and erudite, learned and self-deprecating.

In navigating modern-day issues such as information overload, social media, war, corrupt politicians, and the perennially fresh hell that is other people, we tend to think of ourselves as the first to encounter such things. And in a sense we are — both as individuals, and as a society facing new challenges.

But it only takes a glance into people and habits of hundreds, even thousands of years ago to see how much we have in common with them. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes, and The Anatomy of Melancholy is a wonderful example of that.

The book is a striking demonstration how similar the problems and worries we face today are to those faced by people of the relatively distant past. While the Anatomy is nominally a medical treatise and indisputably archaic, it is also a remarkably relatable survey of how life 400 years ago was much as it is today, in ways that are surprising and comforting.

To be sure, the likes of Plato and Marcus Aurelius also provide timeless advice on modern living, but they are far more didactic and philosophical. The Anatomy’s chatty, matter-of-fact tone reads much more like an opinionated personal blog, yet is simultaneously one of the most erudite and esoteric works ever written.

Robert Burton was a professor, more or less, and to call him bookish would be the understatement of the millennium; the most well-read people in the western world since then have all stood in awe of how comprehensive his knowledge was.

This monomaniacal pursuit of knowledge was almost certainly at least partly due to his own “melancholy,” a term that carries a different meaning now than it did then, but in this context might translate best as neurosis, madness, depression, or neurodivergence.

I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy.

I write, like them, saith Lucian, that “recite to trees, and declaim to pillars for want of auditors:” as Paulus Aegineta ingenuously confesseth, “not that anything was unknown or omitted, but to exercise myself,” which course if some took, I think it would be good for their bodies, and much better for their souls.

Burton was an inveterate scribbler, setting down whatever he’d learned, haphazardly at first and later organized into this book, which swelled in successive editions. But far from simply describing how to treat the symptoms, he attempts to identify the cause.

Of course, contemporary medical science (and he was probably the best read on the planet in that) was fundamentally incapable of identifying and adjusting disequilibrium in the brain. So his medical advice is really the least important aspect of the book. It is rather his diagnosis of mankind’s more general melancholy, the way we fail ourselves as individuals, communities, and societies, that is still valuable and, in my opinion, fascinating.

The book itself is also a compendium (in the true sense) of knowledge and citations that is unrivaled in history. To read Burton — even as Samuel Johnson did, by opening it at random — is to be constantly overwhelmed with quotes, paraphrasis, snippets of verse, retold rumors and legends, theories and opinions running one into the other, and all so charmingly narrated that you don’t notice that you’re becoming wiser by the page.

There is much critical literature on The Anatomy of Melancholy, but little of it is palatable, let alone intended for a casual reader — or as casual a reader as this book can expect. I’ve enjoyed reading and rereading parts of it so much that I wanted to share why in a more systematic way than occasional cryptic quotes dropped into articles or conversation.

Thus, this website. I’ll be collecting notable passages here, both individually and under themes, and providing context and commentary that places those passages in the modern milieu.