SOURCE: Thrale, Hester Lynch. In Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi), 1776-1809, edited by Katharine C. Balderston, Vol. 1, pp. 536-37. 1942. Reprint. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.

In the following excerpt, Thrale acknowledges the widespread influence of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy on English literature.

What a strange Book is Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy! & how it has been plunder'd! Milton took his Allegro and Penseroso from the Verses at the beginning,¹ Savage his Speech of Suicide in the Wanderer² from Page 216. Swift his Tale of the Woman that held water in her Mouth to regain her Husband's Love by Silence—'tis printed in the Tatler;³ Johnson got his Story of the Magnet that detects unchaste Wives⁴ from the same Farrago, & even Shakespear I believe the Trick put on the Tinker Christopher Sly in the taming of the Shrew.⁵ See page 277. of Burton.⁶

Notes

1. ‘The Author's Abstract of...