BURTON, Robert, known to the learned by the name of Democritus junior, was younger brother to William Burton who wrote "The antiquities of Leicestershire," and born of an ancient family at Lindley, in that county, upon the 8th of February 1576. He
was educated in grammatical learning in the free school of Sutton Colefield in Warwickshire; in the year 1593 was sent to Brazen-noze college in Oxford; and in 1599 was elected student of Christ-church. In 1616, he had the vicarage of St Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, conferred upon him by the dean and canons of Christ-church, to the parishioners of which, it is said, that he always gave the sacrament in wafers; and this, with the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire, given him some time after by George lord Berkeley, he held to the day of his death, which happened in January 1639.
He was a man of general learning; a great philosopher; an exact mathematician; and (what makes the peculiarity of his character) a very curious calculator of nativities. He was extremely studious, and of a melancholy turn; yet an agreeable companion, and very humorous. The anatomy of melancholy, by Democritus junior, as he calls himself, shows, that these different qualities were mixed together in his composition. This book was printed first in 4to, afterwards in folio, in 1624, 1632, 1638, and 1652, to the great emolument of the bookseller, who, as Mr Wood tells us, got an estate by it. Some circumstances attending his death occasioned strange suspicions. He died in his chamber at or very near the time which, it seems, he had some years before predicted from the calculation of his nativity; and this exactness made it whispered about, that for the glory of astrology, and rather than his calculation should fail, he became indeed a felo de se. This, however, was generally discredited; he was buried with due solemnity in the cathedral of Christ-church, and had a fair monument erected to his memory. He left behind him a very choice collection of books. He bequeathed many to the Bodleian library; and 1000 to Christ-church, the interest of which was to be laid out yearly in books for their library.