Burton’s translation:
A term of life is set to every man,
Which is but short, and pass it no one can.
So I drew a little memento mori for you to brighten your day 😀  No better way to draw in readership than reminding everyone of the brevity of life, eh? I am into memento mori (plural?) because having a little picture of a creepy skeleton on my wall would make me so much more productive in a pretty meaningful way. My husband once tried to get me a memento mori as a birthday present, but it turns out that for the last 100 years or so people haven’t been selling them in stores so much. I think that probably means something… Anyhow he got me a desiccated bat instead, and that is pretty close to the same thing.
Where was I? Oh, I suspect that Burton took some liberties with this translation. I’m starting to notice that Burton’s translations are very often better than their originals. Remember way back when? When I quoted Byron saying that The Anatomy of Melancholy is the tiptop book to read if you want to “appear” well-read? Lest I forget, this was the sort of thing he was talking about. Fun Virgil death quotes to recite at parties. As I may have said before, I am really a lot of fun at parties. [Irony]
Maybe I will get a move on with the reading tomorrow… It turns out that it is hard to read The Anatomy of Melancholy every day when you have two small children jumping on you and yelling “MOMMY I’M HUNGRY” and/or “BAAAAAAAAAAH” literally all of the time. Summer vacation is tiptop though. I’m really loving it. Wait, what page was I on again?
This post is part of a long, tedious, and very illustrated read-along of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. More info here and follow along on Facebook here. Illustrations posted via devon_isadevon on Instagram.