uwmspeccoll:Post-Election MelancholyWe don’t know if Robert Burton had a section on post-

uwmspeccoll:

Post-Election Melancholy

We don’t know if Robert Burton had a section on post-election depression in his famous 17th-century treatise on The Anatomy of Melancholy, but the engraved title page from our copy of the 1632 4th edition, printed at Oxford by John LichfieldforHenry Cripps, with the engraving by Christof Le Blon (grandfather of the more famous printing innovator Jacob Christoph Le Blon), bears at least two figures that seem to reflect our mood on this day after Election Day. Of the first, Burton writes:

Old Democritus under a tree,
Sittes on a stone with booke on knee … .
The seat of blacke choler to see.
Over his head appears the skye,
And Saturne Lord of Melancholy.

Of the second, he writes:

Hypocondriacus leanes on his arme,
Winde in his side doth him much harme,
And troubles him full sore God knowes,
Much paine he hath and many woes.
About him pottes and glasses lye,
Newly brought from’s Apothecary,
This Saturne aspects signify,
Tou see them portraid in the skye.

And one last word from Burton:

When I lie, sit, or walke alone,
I sigh, I grieve, making great moane,
In a darke grove, or irkesome denne,
With disconents and Furies then,
A thousand miseries at once,
Mine heavy heart and soule ensconce.
    All my griefes to this are jolly,
    None so soure as Melancholy.

<SIGH!!>