Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

V >> Various >> Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4




After serving on the staff of Beatson's Bashi-bazouks at the Dardanelles,
but never getting to the front in the Crimea, Burton returned to Africa in
1856. The foreign office, moved by the Royal Geographical Society,
commissioned him to search for the sources of the Nile, and, again
accompanied by Speke, he explored the lake regions of equatorial Africa.
They discovered Lake Tanganyika in February 1858, and Speke, pushing on
during Burton's illness and acting on indications supplied by him, lighted
upon Victoria Nyanza. The separate discovery led to a bitter dispute, but
Burton's expedition, with its discovery of the two lakes, was the incentive
to the later explorations of Speke and Grant, Baker, Livingstone and
Stanley; and his report in volume xxxiii. of the _Proceedings of the Royal
Geographical Society_, and his _Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa_ (1860),
are the true parents of the multitudinous literature of "darkest Africa."
Burton was the first Englishman to enter Mecca, the first to explore
Somaliland, the first to discover the great lakes of Central Africa. His
East African pioneering coincides with areas which have since become
peculiarly interesting to the British Empire; and three years later he was
exploring on the opposite side of Africa, at Dahomey, Benin and the Gold
Coast, regions which have also entered among the imperial "questions" of
the day. Before middle age Burton had compressed into his life, as Lord
Derby said, "more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful
enterprise and adventure, than would have sufficed to fill up the existence
of half a dozen ordinary men." _The City of the Saints_ (1861) was the
fruit of a flying visit to the United States in 1860.

Since 1849 his connexion with the Indian army had been practically severed;
in 1861 he definitely entered the service of the foreign office as consul
at Fernando Po, whence he was shifted successively to Santos in Brazil
(1865), Damascus (1869), and Trieste (1871), holding the last post till his
death on the 20th of October 1890. Each of these posts produced its
corresponding books: Fernando Po led to the publishing of _Wanderings in
West Africa_ (1863), _Abeokuta and the Cameroons_ (1863), _A Mission to
Gelele, king of Dahome_ (1864), and _Wit and Wisdom from West Africa_
(1865). The _Highlands of the Brazil_ (1869) was the result of four years'
residence and travelling; and _Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay_
(1870) relate to a journey across South America to Peru. Damascus suggested
_Unexplored Syria_ (1872), and might have led to much better work, since no
consulate in either hemisphere was more congenial to Burton's taste and
linguistic studies; but he mismanaged his opportunities, got into trouble
with the foreign office, and was removed to Trieste, where his Oriental
prepossessions and prejudices could do no harm, but where, unfortunately,
his Oriental learning was thrown away. He did not, however, abandon his
Eastern studies or his Eastern travels. Various fresh journeys or
revisitings of familiar scenes are recorded in his later books, such as
_Zanzibar_ (1872), _Ultima Thule_ (1875), _Etruscan Bologna_ (1876), _Sind
Revisited_ (1877), _The Land of Midian_ (1879) and _To the Gold Coast for
Gold_ (1883). None of these had more than a passing interest. Burton had
not the charm of style or imagination which gives immortality to a book of
travel. He wrote too fast, and took too little pains about the form. His
blunt, disconnected sentences and ill-constructed chapters were full of
information and learning, and contained not a few thrusts for the benefit
of government or other people, but they were not "readable." There was
something ponderous about his very humour, and his criticism was personal
and savage. By far the most celebrated of all his books is the translation
of the "Arabian Nights" (_The Thousand Nights and a Night_, 16 vols.,
privately printed, 1885-1888), which occupied the greater part of his
leisure at Trieste. As a monument of his Arabic learning and his
encyclopaedic knowledge of Eastern life this translation was his greatest
achievement. It is open to criticism in many ways; it is not so exact in
scholarship, nor so faithful to its avowed text, as might be expected from
his reputation; but it reveals a profound acquaintance with the vocabulary
and customs of the Muslims, with their classical idiom as well as their
vulgarest "Billingsgate," with their philosophy and modes of thought as
well as their most secret and most disgusting habits. Burton's
"anthropological notes," embracing a wide field of pornography, apart from
questions of taste, abound in valuable observations based upon long study
of the manners and the writings of the Arabs. The translation itself is
often marked by extraordinary resource and felicity in the exact
reproduction of the sense of the original; Burton's vocabulary was
marvellously extensive, and he had a genius for hitting upon the right
word; but his fancy for archaic words and phrases, his habit of coining
words, and the harsh and rugged style he affected, detract from the
literary quality of the work without in any degree enhancing its fidelity.
With grave defects, but sometimes brilliant merits, the translation holds a
mirror to its author. He was, as has been well said, an Elizabethan born
out of time; in the days of Drake his very faults might have counted to his
credit. Of his other works, _Vikram and the Vampire, Hindu Tales_ (1870),
and a history of his favourite arm, _The Book of the Sword_, vol. i.
(1884), unfinished, may be mentioned. His translation of _The Lusiads of
Camoens_ (1880) was followed (1881) by a sketch of the poet's life. Burton
had a fellow-feeling for the poet adventurer, and his translation is an
extraordinarily happy reproduction of its original. A manuscript
translation of the "Scented Garden," from the Arabic, was burnt by his
widow, acting in what she believed to be the interests of her husband's
reputation. Burton married Isabel Arundell in 1861, and owed much to her
courage, sympathy and passionate devotion. Her romantic and exaggerated
biography of her husband, with all its faults, is one of the most pathetic
monuments which the unselfish love of a woman has ever raised to the memory
of her hero. Another monument is the Arab tent of stone and marble which
she built for his tomb at Mortlake.

Besides Lady Burton's _Life of Sir Richard F. Burton_ (2 vols., 1893, 2nd
edition, condensed, edited, with a preface, by W.H. Wilkins, 1898), there
are _A Sketch of the Career of R.F. Burton_, by A.B. Richards, Andrew
Wilson, and St Clair Baddeley (1886); _The True Life of Captain Sir Richard
F. Burton_, by his niece, G.M. Stisted (1896); and a brief sketch by the
present writer prefixed to Bohn's edition of the _Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah
and Meccah_ (1898), from which some sentences have here been by permission
reproduced. In 1906 appeared the _Life of Sir Richard Burton_, by Thomas
Wright of Olney, in two volumes, an industrious and rather critical work,
interesting in particular for the doubts it casts on Burton's originality
as an Arabic translator, and emphasizing his indebtedness to Payne's
translation (1881) of the _Arabian Nights_.

(S. L.-P.)

BURTON, ROBERT (1577-1640), English writer, author of _The Anatomy of
Melancholy_, son of a country gentleman, Ralph Burton, was born at Lindley
in Leicestershire on the 8th of February 1576-7. He was educated at the
free school of Sutton Coldfield and at Nuneaton grammar school; became in
1593 a commoner of Brasenose College, and in 1599 was elected student at
Christ Church, where he continued to reside for the rest of his life. The
dean and chapter of Christ Church appointed him, in November 1616, vicar of
St Thomas in the west suburbs, and about 1630 his patron, Lord Berkeley,
presented him to the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire. He held the two
livings "with much ado to his dying day" (says Antony a Wood, the Oxford
historian, somewhat mysteriously); and he was buried in the north aisle of
Christ Church cathedral, where his elder brother William Burton, author of
a _History of Leicestershire_, raised to his memory a monument, with his
bust in colour. The epitaph that he had written for himself was carved
beneath the bust: _Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus
Junior, cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia_. Some years before his death
he had predicted, by the calculation of his nativity, that the approach of
his climacteric year (sixty-three) would prove fatal; and the prediction
came true, for he died on the 25th of January 1639-40 (some gossips
surmising that he had "sent up his soul to heaven through a noose about his
neck" to avoid the chagrin of seeing his calculations falsified). His [v.04
p.0866] portrait in Brasenose College shows the face of a scholar, shrewd,
contemplative, humorous.

A Latin comedy, _Philosophaster_, originally written by Robert Burton in
1606 and acted at Christ Church in 1617, was long supposed to be lost; but
in 1862 it was printed for the Roxburghe Club from a manuscript belonging
to the Rev. W.E. Buckley, who edited it with elaborate care and appended a
collection of the academical exercises that Burton had contributed to
various Oxford miscellanies ("Natalia," "Parentalia," &c.).
_Philosophaster_ is a vivacious exposure of charlatanism. Desiderius, duke
of Osuna, invites learned men from all parts of Europe to repair to the
university which he has re-established; and a crowd of shifty adventurers
avail themselves of the invitation. There are points of resemblance to
_Philosophaster_ in Ben Jonson's _Alchemist_ and Tomkis's _Albumazar_, but
in the prologue Burton is careful to state that his was the earlier play.
(Another manuscript of _Philosophaster_, a presentation copy to William
Burton from the author, has since been found in the library of Lord
Mostyn.)

In 1621 was issued at Oxford the first edition, a quarto, of _The Anatomy
of Melancholy ... by Democritus Junior_. Later editions, in folio, were
published in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651, 1652, 1660, 1676. Burton was for
ever engaged in revising his treatise. In the third edition (where first
appeared the engraved emblematical title-page by C. Le Blond) he declared
that he would make no further alterations. But the fourth edition again
bore marks of revision; the fifth differed from the fourth; and the sixth
edition was posthumously printed from a copy containing his latest
corrections.

Not the least interesting part of the _Anatomy_ is the long preface,
"Democritus to the Reader," in which Burton sets out his reasons for
writing the treatise and for assuming the name of Democritus Junior. He had
been elected a student of "the most flourishing college of Europe" and he
designed to show his gratitude by writing something that should be worthy
of that noble society. He had read much; he was neither rich nor poor;
living in studious seclusion, he had been a critically observant spectator
of the world's affairs. The philosopher Democritus, who was by nature very
melancholy, "averse from company in his latter days and much given to
solitariness," spent his closing years in the suburbs of Abdera. There
Hippocrates once found him studying in his garden, the subject of his study
being the causes and cure of "this _atra bilis_ or melancholy." Burton
would not compare himself with so famous a philosopher, but he aimed at
carrying out the design which Democritus had planned and Hippocrates had
commended. It is stated that he actually set himself to reproduce the old
philosopher's reputed eccentricities of conduct. When he was attacked by a
fit of melancholy he would go to the bridge foot at Oxford and shake his
sides with laughter to hear the bargemen swearing at one another, just as
Democritus used to walk down to the haven at Abdera and pick matter for
mirth out of the humours of waterside life.

Burton anticipates the objections of captious critics. He allows that he
has "collected this cento out of divers authors" and has borrowed from
innumerable books, but he claims that "the composition and method is ours
only, and shows a scholar." It had been his original intention to write in
Latin, but no publisher would take the risk of issuing in Latin so
voluminous a treatise. He humorously apologizes for faults of style on the
ground that he had to work single-handed (unlike Origen who was allowed by
Ambrosius six or seven amanuenses) and digest his notes as best he might.
If any object to his choice of subject, urging that he would be better
employed in writing on divinity, his defence is that far too many
commentaries, expositions, sermons, &c., are already in existence. Besides,
divinity and medicine are closely allied; and, melancholy being both a
spiritual and bodily infirmity, the divine and the physician must unite to
cure it.

The preface is followed by a tabular synopsis of the First Partition with
its several Sections, Members and Subsections. After various preliminary
digressions Burton sets himself to define what Melancholy is and what are
its species and kinds. Then he discusses the Causes, supernatural and
natural, of the disorder, and afterwards proceeds to set down the Symptoms
(which cannot be briefly summarized, "for the Tower of Babel never yielded
such confusion of tongues as the Chaos of Melancholy doth of Symptoms").
The Second Partition is devoted to the Cure of Melancholy. As it is of
great importance that we should live in good air, a chapter deals with "Air
Rectified. With a Digression of the Air." Burton never travelled, but the
study of cosmography had been his constant delight; and over sea and land,
north, east, west, south--in this enchanting chapter--he sends his vagrant
fancy flying. In the disquisition on "Exercise rectified of body and mind"
he dwells gleefully on the pleasures of country life, and on the content
that scholars find in the pursuit of their favourite studies.
Love-Melancholy is the subject of the first Three Sections of the Third
Partition, and many are the merry tales with which these pages are
seasoned. The Fourth (and concluding) Section treats, in graver mood, of
Religious Melancholy; and to the "Cure of Despair" he devotes his deepest
meditations.

_The Anatomy_, widely read in the 17th century, for a time lapsed into
obscurity, though even "the wits of Queen Anne's reign and the beginning of
George I. were not a little beholden to Robert Burton" (Archbishop
Herring). Dr Johnson deeply admired the work; and Sterne laid it heavily
under contribution. But the noble and impassioned devotion of Charles Lamb
has been the most powerful help towards keeping alive the memory of the
"fantastic great old man." Burton's odd turns and quirks of expression, his
whimsical and affectate fancies, his kindly sarcasm, his far-fetched
conceits, his deep-lying pathos, descended by inheritance of genius to
Lamb. The enthusiasm of Burton's admirers will not be chilled by the
disparagement of unsympathetic critics (Macaulay and Hallam among them) who
have consulted his pages in vain; but through good and evil report he will
remain, their well-loved companion to the end.

The best of the modern editions of Burton was published in 1896, 3 vols.
8vo (Bell and Sons), under the editorship of A.R. Shilleto, who identified
a large number of the classical quotations and many passages from
post-classical authors. Prof. Bensley, of the university of Adelaide, has
since contributed to the ninth and tenth series of _Notes and Queries_ many
valuable notes on the _Anatomy_. Dr Aldis Wright has long been engaged on
the preparation of a definitive edition.

(A. H. B.)

BURTON, WILLIAM EVANS (1804-1860), English actor and playwright, born in
London in September 1804, was the son of William George Burton (1774-1825),
a printer and author of _Research into the religions of the Eastern nations
as illustrative of the scriptures_ (1805). He was educated for the Church,
but, having entered his father's business, his success as an amateur actor
led him to go upon the stage. After several years in the provinces, he made
his first London appearance in 1831. In 1834 he went to America, where he
appeared in Philadelphia as Dr Ollapod in _The Poor Gentleman_. He took a
prominent place, both as actor and manager, in New York, Philadelphia and
Baltimore, the theatre which he leased in New York being renamed Burton's
theatre. He had much popular success as Captain Cuttle in John Brougham's
dramatization of _Dombey and Son_, and in other low comedy parts in plays
from Dickens's novels. Burton was the author of a large number of plays,
one of which, _Ellen Wareham_ (1833), was produced simultaneously at five
London theatres. In Philadelphia he established the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
of which Edgar Allan Poe was for some time the editor. He was himself the
editor of the _Cambridge Quarterly_ and the _Souvenir_, and the author of
several books, including a _Cyclopaedia of Wit and Humour_ (1857). He
collected a library of over 100,000 volumes, especially rich in
Shakespeariana, which was dispersed after his death at New York City on the
9th of February 1860.

BURTON-UPON-TRENT, a market town and municipal and county borough in the
Burton parliamentary division of Staffordshire and the Southern
parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England; lying mainly upon the left
bank of the Trent, in Staffordshire. Pop. (1891) 46,047; (1901) 50,386. It
is 127 m [v.04 p.0867] north-west from London by the London & North-Western
and the Midland railways, and is also served by the Great Northern and
North Staffordshire railways. The Trent is navigable from a point near the
town downward. The neighbouring country is pleasant enough, particularly
along the river, but the town itself is purely industrial, and contains no
pre-eminent buildings. The church of St Mary and St Modwen is classic in
style, of the 18th century, but embodies some remains of an ancient Gothic
building. Of a Benedictine abbey dedicated to the same saints there remain
a gatehouse and lodge, and a fine doorway. The former abbot's house at
Seyney Park is a half-timbered building of the 15th century. The free
grammar school was founded in 1525. A fine bridge over the Trent, and the
municipal buildings, were provided by Lord Burton. There are pleasant
recreation grounds on the Derbyshire side of the river.

Burton is the seat of an enormous brewing trade, representing nearly
one-tenth of the total amount of this trade in the United Kingdom. It is
divided between some twenty firms. The premises of Bass's brewery extend
over 500 acres, while Allsopp's stand next; upwards of 5000 hands are
employed in all, and many miles of railways owned by the firms cross the
streets in all directions on the level, and connect with the lines of the
railway companies. The superiority which is claimed for Burton ales is
attributed to the use of well-water impregnated with sulphate of lime
derived from the gypseous deposits of the district. Burton is governed by a
mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 4202 acres.

Burton-upon-Trent (Burhton) is first mentioned towards the close of the 9th
century, when St Modwen, an Irish virgin, is said to have established a
convent on the Isle of Andressey opposite Burton. In 1002 Wulfric, earl of
Mercia, founded here a Benedictine abbey, and by charter of 1004 granted to
it the town with other large endowments. Burton was evidently a mesne
borough under the abbot, who held the court of the manor and received the
profits of the borough according to the charter of Henry I. granting sac
and soc and other privileges and right in the town. Later charters were
given by Henry II., by John in 1204 (who also granted an annual fair of
three days' duration, 29th of October, at the feast of St Modwen, and a
weekly market on Thursday), by Henry III. in 1227, by Henry VII. in 1488
(Henry VII. granted a fair at the feast of St Luke, 18th of October), and
by Henry VIII. in 1509. At the dissolution Henry VIII. founded on the site
of the abbey a collegiate church dissolved before 1545, when its lands,
with all the privileges formerly vested in the abbot, were conferred on Sir
William Paget, ancestor of the marquess of Anglesey, now holder of the
manor. In 1878 it was incorporated under a mayor, 8 aldermen, 24
councillors. Burton was the scene of several engagements in the Civil War,
when its large trade in clothing and alabaster was practically ruined.
Although the abbey ale was mentioned as early as 1295, the brewing industry
is comparatively of recent development, having begun about 1708. Forty
years later it had a market at St Petersburg and the Baltic ports, and in
1796 there were nine brewing firms in the town.

See William Molyneux, _History of Burton-on-Trent_ (1869); _Victoria County
History, Staffordshire_.

BURU (_Buro_, Dutch _Boeroe_ or _Boeloe_), an island of the Dutch East
Indies, one of the Molucca Islands belonging to the residency of Amboyna,
between 3 deg. 4' and 3 deg. 50' S. and 125 deg. 58' and 127 deg. 15' E. Its extreme
measurements are 87 m. by 50 m., and its area is 3400 sq. m. Its surface is
for the most part mountainous, though the seaboard district is frequently
alluvial and marshy from the deposits of the numerous rivers. Of these the
largest, the Kajeli, discharging eastward, is in part navigable. The
greatest elevations occur in the west, where the mountain Tomahu reaches
8530 ft. In the middle of the western part of the island lies the large
lake of Wakolo, at an altitude of 2200 ft., with a circumference of 37 m.
and a depth of about 100 ft. It has been considered a crater lake; but this
is not the case. It is situated at the junction of the sandstone and slate,
where the water, having worn away the former, has accumulated on the
latter. The lake has no affluents and only one outlet, the Wai Nibe to the
north. The chief geological formations of Buru are crystalline slate near
the north coast, and more to the south Mesozoic sandstone and chalk,
deposits of rare occurrence in the archipelago. By far the larger part of
the country is covered with natural forest and prairie land, but such
portions as have been brought into cultivation are highly fertile. Coffee,
rice and a variety of fruits, such as the lemon, orange, banana, pine-apple
and coco-nut are readily grown, as well as sago, red-pepper, tobacco and
cotton. The only important exports, however, are cajeput oil, a sudorific
distilled from the leaves of the _Melaleuca Cajuputi_ or white-wood tree;
and timber. The native flora is rich, and teak, ebony and canari trees are
especially abundant; the fauna, which is similarly varied, includes the
babirusa, which occurs in this island only of the Moluccas. The population
is about 15,000. The villages on the sea-coast are inhabited by a Malayan
population, and the northern and western portions of the island are
occupied by a light-coloured Malay folk akin to the natives of the eastern
Celebes. In the interior is found a peculiar race which is held by some to
be Papuan. They are described, however, as singularly un-Papuan in
physique, being only 5 ft. 2 in. in average height, of a yellow-brown
colour, of feeble build, and without the characteristic frizzly hair and
prominent nose of the true Papuan. They are completely pagan, live in
scattered hamlets, and have come very little in contact with any
civilization. Among the maritime population a small number of Chinese,
Arabs and other races are also found. The island is divided by the Dutch
into two districts. The chief settlement is Kajeli on the east coast. A
number of Mahommedan natives here are descended from tribes compelled in
1657 to gather together from the different parts of the island, while all
the clove-trees were exterminated in an attempt by the Dutch to centralize
the clove trade. Before the arrival of the Dutch the islanders were under
the dominion of the sultan of Ternate; and it was their rebellion against
him that gave the Europeans the opportunity of effecting their subjugation.

BURUJIRD, a province of Persia, bounded W. by Luristan, N. by Nehavend and
Malayir, E. by Irak and S. by Isfahan. It is divided into the following
administrative divisions:--(1) town of Burujird with villages in immediate
neighbourhood; (2) Silakhor (upper and lower); (3) Japalak (with Sarlek and
Burbarud); (4) nomad Bakhtiari. It has a population of about 250,000 or
300,000, and pays a yearly revenue of about L16,000. It is very fertile and
produces much wheat, barley, rice and opium. With improved means of
transport, which would allow the growers to export, the produce of cereals
could easily be trebled. The province is sometimes joined with that of
Luristan.

The town Burujird, the capital of the province, is situated in the fertile
Silakhor plain on the river Tahij, a tributary of the Dizful river (Ab i
Diz), 70 m. by road from Hamadan and 212 m. from Isfahan, in 33 deg. 55' N. and
48 deg. 55' E., and at an elevation of 5315 ft. Pop. about 25,000. It
manufactures various cotton stuffs (coarse prints, carpet covers) and felts
(principally hats and caps for Lurs and Bakhtiaris). It has post and
telegraph offices.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.