New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1886-06-20
BURTON-SHAKESPEARE.
NEW GUESS-THE ANATOMY OF NELAN-
CHOLY-BURTONS BOOKS.


has appeared, none other than Robert Burton.
The inventor of his clam to the authorship OF
Shakespeare's plays is too modest to give his own
name to the public but inserts in The Times the fol-
lowing advertisement:
Robert Burton having been in all probability
the author of the writings known as shakespeares,
all books, etc. used by him will have peculi ar
value and should be carefully preserved"
This has, must say, the ring of the puff pre-
imnary. Beneath the announcement OF
a literary discovery you seem to hear
the voice of the secondhand bookseller
with wares to dispose of. and books with Burton $
autograph may presently be expected to appear in
the market-place. Or are we to have Burton
Shakespeare craze to match the Bacon-shake-
speare craze of which the world has grOw n weary !
Well, a new craze is better than an old craze be-
cause it is new. II we must be mad let us not be
both mad and bored.
The Robert Burton Of the anonymous advertiser
is of course the Robert Burton who wrote the
" Anatomy of Melancholy" Perhaps Mr.. Ignatius
Donney will look into copy of the first edition of
that book, 1921, and discover that it is il-paged
and printed with capitals, and marked by
arbitrary itaicising meaningless bracketing
and seDseess hyphenatiOn. man capable
of the phrase senseless hyphenation is, as
thing He may, for example. be capable Of saving
that Robert Burton who was born in 1876, had
before he was sixteen written Loves Labors Lost
the Comedy of Errors and the Two Gentlemen of
Verona, all of which are assigpable to a period
earlier than 1892 He must have composed A Md
summer Nights Dream and the Merchant of Venice
before he was twenty. 1t is not probable. but it Is
at least rs probable most Of the BacOnIan Dropo-
sitions on which Mr.. Ignaius Donnelly and his
fcllow-ianatics rest their theories.
Or IS this but a clever way Of calling attention to
the new edition Of the immortal Anatomy" pub
lished here in London by Mr.. Nmmof The edition
is handsome one as books CO. and follows the text,
not of the original issue, but of the 1862 folio,
which only saw the light twelve or thirteen years
after Burtons death. Like Montaigne, Burton
left behind him corrected and enlarged copy Of
his work. The standard text of Montaigne is
the folio of 1895. edited by his file daliiance.
Mile. de Gournay. The standard Burton is in like
manner the folio of 652 on the faith of the fol-
loving curious address TO The Reader:
50 Be pleased to know Courteous Reader
that since the last Impression of this
Book the ingenious Author of il is deceased.
leaving Copy of it exactly corrected, with several
considerable Additions by his own hand this Copy
he committed to my care and custody, with di1ec-
Edition; which, in order to his command and the
Publcke Good, is faithfully performed in this last
IMPRESSION" II. G.
H. C. is Henry Grips / copy his note from the
edition OF 1927. described OH the title the thr-
tenth; a trade edition. SO called brought out as
joint speculation by dozen and more separate
London houses. The trade did not think it worth
while to have editor, or. If they did to put his
name to his work. 1t has. however, long passed
for the best modern edition. Mr.. AllISone. with
whom accurate knowledge of the books he dis
cusses il the exception ,als of Mr. Tegg's beau
tful" edition, 1915, Svo, and quotes from it
string Of notices of the Anatomy. Mr. Tegg's edl-
ton not be Iutifu and the string of notices APP
peared eighteen years before-very likely long be-
fore that also
Anthony A Wood Is the fountain Of knowledge
abont Burton, about many Others The ac-
count in the Attene Or0nicnses has been often re-
printed, and moro ofton borrowed from. Wood
said If the Anatomy otis book so full of variety
of reading that gentlemen who have lost their time
and are put to a push for invention NAV furnish
themselves with matter for common or schoastical
discourse and writing Then adds honest
A. Wood: Several authors have numerically stolen
matter from the said book without any acknow-
ledament, particularly one viii Greenwood, in his
book entitled, A Description OF the Passion of
Love- etc. Lond. 1867. Svo. Who as Others of
the like humor do, sometimes takes his quotations
hOrt the least mention OF Democritus Junior"
Pilfering Will Greenwood no longer much concerns
us: his Description of the Passion of Love long since
lighted other fires could not be kept alive even
by its quotations without the least
mention of Democritus Junior. Other
and more famous borrowers have succeeded to
viii greenwood. Milton did not dlsdan-we
IL.
and II Penseroso on what he discovered in Burton
The udcrOus Sterne, as 1t was once the fashion to
call the author of L" Iristram Shandy,' has inter
woven many parts of it into his own popular per
formancc-to quote the none too stern language of
one Of Burtons editors. DR.. Fcrrian exposed the
plagiarsms of the Reverend Lawrence Sterne. who
numbered rig hit aud left and laid under contribution
MANY another great writer than Burton-Rabe
lais. Montague and Bacon included. Sternes
steallngs from the Anatomy abated not whit
the popularity of "lristram Shandy," but they
belped revive the dormant delight of the reading
nubllc in Barton Many q minor light III literature
has followed the illustrIous example OF Milton,
whose borrowing is detenSlblr, and the example OF
Sterne. who IS not defensibe otherwise than by
abollshing a commandment or two.
1t was. however, Johnsons celebrated observa-
tion-that the Anatomy was the only book which
took him out of bed two hours sooner than he
wished to rlse-wnIch gave tue final spur to the
interest of a sluggish public. "lristram Shandy,"
it is worth noting, was published III 1913 Before
that date two editions of the Anatomy" had APP
peared during the eighteenth century-in lI2S and
1888 No third appeared, and 1t was not till 1900
that Johuson's remark bore fruit III a issue of
the book he had praised. Boswelrs Life OF Johu-
son had then been published nine years. and Bos-
well had quoted DR.. Johnson's remark made not
to him, but to the Rev. Dr. Maxwell
During the present century at least
ten editions of the Anatomy" have been
published Mr. Nimmos is the most ambitious of
them all and that W Itch the book buyer Is now
likely to think the most desirable. 1t is an age
when reading and quoting ut secondhand are more
prevalent than ever before an age of dictionaries