This edition of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ is based on a
nineteenth-century edition that modernized Burton's spelling and
typographic conventions. In preparing this electronic version, it became
evident that the editor had made a variety of mistakes in this
modernization: some words were left in their original spelling (unusual
words were a particular problem), portions of book titles were mistaken for
proper names, proper names were mistaken for book titles or Latin words,
etc. A certain number of misprints were also introduced into the Latin. As
a result, I have re-edited the text, checking it against images of the 1638
edition, and correcting all errors not present in the earlier edition. I
have continued to follow the general editorial practice of the base text
for quotation marks, italics, etc. Rare words have been normalized
according to their primary spelling in the Oxford English Dictionary. When
Burton spells a person's name in several ways, I have normalized the names
to the most common spelling, or to modern practice if well-known. In a few
cases, mistakes present in both the 1638 edition and the base text have
been corrected. These are always minor reference errors (e.g., an incorrect
or missing section number in the synopses, or misnumbered footnotes).
Incorrect citations to other texts (Burton seems to quote by memory and
sometimes gets it wrong) have not been changed if they are wrong in both
editions. To display some symbols (astrological signs, etc.) the HTML
version requires a browser with unicode support. Most recent browsers
should be OK.--KTH

FRONTISPIECE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

[Illustration: 1. Democritus Abderites; 2. Zelotypia 3. Solitudo; 4.
Inamorato; 5. Hypocondriacus; 6. Superstitiosus; 7. Maniacus; 8. Borage; 9.
Hellebor; 10. Democritus Junior