J O H N S O N A N D B U R T O N : T H E A N A T O M Y O F M E L A N C H O L Y A N D T H E D I C T I O N A R Y O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E H. J. JACKSON University of Toronto Speculation about the relationship between Johnson and Burton has always suffered from a shortage of concrete evidence. Readers who sensed similarities between Johnson’s writing and Burton’s, and who were encouraged by John son’s remark that the Anatomy was “the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise,”1 have for some time been hunt ing for signs of Burton’s influence on Johnson. Precise verbal parallels are hard to find, however. The idea that some of Johnson’s quotations and allu sions might have come to him by way of the Anatomy was explored about the turn of this century by George Nielson and Edward Bensly (always a cham pion of the Anatomy), but the examples they chose are unconvincing.2 The quarrel over the origin of the definition of “oats” in the Dictionary has, one hopes, been laid to rest.3The question of whether Johnson’s repeated opinion that “A ship is worse than a gaol” 4was derived from Burton’s “What is a ship but a prison?” 5is still open, but is hardly compelling. Johnson’s boast that he did not “talk from books”6seems in this case to be justified; and one begins to suspect that “influence” is the wrong term to apply to the relationship be tween the two authors. In the slow-moving but persistent discussion of Johnson’s reading of Burton, two useful pieces of evidence have been generally overlooked. They are Johnson’s working copy of the Anatomy, marked for his assistants in the Dic tionary project, and the published Dictionary itself. They must be considered, however, not as contributions to the case for literary influence, but as clues to the reasons for Johnson’s interest in the Anatomy and as confirmation of his good opinion of it. Since Johnson’s only public reference to the Anatomy appears in the Dictionary, it should be the first to be examined. Fifteen words in the Dictionary are illustrated by passages from the An atomy, with due credit given to Burton. To say that these quotations have been overlooked— as they might easily have been in the vastness of the Dictionary— is an understatement. It has been asserted that Johnson deliber ately left the Anatomy out of the Dictionary, fearing that it might be “too profoundly disturbing” for the younger readers of his work.7 But the mere E n g lish Studies in C anada, v , i, Spring 1979 presence of quotations from the Anatomy discredits the theory of moral reser vations on Johnson’s part; and a closer examination of the passages in ques tion suggests that Johnson may in fact have chosen them for their positive moral value. The fifteen words for which illustrations were drawn from Burton are “addle,” “colly,” “costard,” “doter,” “to filch,” “to fleer,” “giddyheaded,” “griper,” “hotspur,” “to macerate,” “muckhill,” “mutter,” “oligarchy,” “quacksalver,” and “squalor.” It is easy enough to see that from a purely pro fessional point of view, Johnson might have regarded the Anatomy as a rich source of old-fashioned and recondite words. “Addle,” “colly,” “costard,” and “quacksalver” may be taken as examples, and although they are less imme diately striking, “doter,” “giddyheaded,” “griper,” “hotspur,” and “squalor” may be added to the list as words which did not occur in Johnson’s model, the Dictionnarium Britannicum of Nathan Bailey.8For all of these terms with the exception of “giddyheaded,” Burton is the only authority cited by John son. Another important lexicographical criterion was met by a high propor tion of the passages selected from the Anatomy, for thanks to Burton’s habit of amplification (not, as might be suspected, to Johnson’s rewriting), several of...