Robert Burton's Frontispiece

In his preface to The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton acknowledges the wide diversity of taste in a reading audience and suggests that there are those who desire “a fine frontispiece, enticing pictures.” In the third edition of 1628, there appeared a frontispiece engraved by one Christian Le Blon, little known except for his contribution to the Anatomy. Le Blon's work was probably directed by Burton, for the engravings suggest a detailed knowledge of Burton's text and of the relationship which certain birds, beasts, herbs, and planets bore to the very prevalent disease of melancholy. The frontispiece contains ten “enticing pictures”, and centered within their rectangular mass is the title-page of the two earlier editions; the only significant change in the title-page is in motto—from Macrobius's Omne meum, Nihil meum to Horace's Omne tulit punclum, qui miscuit utile dulci. Burton finds the latter more complimentary to his life's work; he asserts at the beginning of the third partition that his “earnest intent is as much to profit as to please.”