The Anatomy of Melancholy

In this edition. “precise” → “a strict Puritan” (DJR-049-33); “Precisians” → “religious rigorists” (DJR-160-14); “preciseness” → “religious scrupulosity” (DJR-161-24). The equivalents specify religious observance rather than accuracy in general. Strict Puritan follows the particular contrast between patronal allegiances; rigorists allows the broader force of the later noun.

See also. Religion and superstition; Curiosity.

Present

Source forms: present possession; present death; present; present ease; present remedy; present diverter

The word. Present often means immediate or immediately effective. It can describe possession, an effect, relief or a remedy, rather than merely something belonging to the current time.

In Burton. Appointment in Burton’s imagined commonwealth brings immediate possession. Unkindness becomes instant death in the exaggerated language of courtly dependence. In the medical passages, present expresses the urgency of recovery, the demand for relief, or the claimed speed of a remedy. Scriptural reading offers an immediate diversion of attention.

The places. The qualified appointee takes possession without delay. (p. 60–61; DJR-015-41.) An angry look is described as instant death. (p. 169; DJR-056-07.) The sufferer desires immediate recovery. (p. 215; DJR-066-01.) Lack of immediate relief prompts repeated changes of physician. (p. 229; DJR-069-35.) Moderate sexual activity is called an immediate remedy for some people. (p. 239; DJR-072-01.) Reading Scripture supplies an immediate diversion. (p. 282; DJR-081-27.)

In this edition. “present possession” → “take possession immediately” (DJR-015-41); “present death” → “instant death” (DJR-056-07); “a present recovery” → “an immediate recovery” (DJR-066-01); “present ease” → “immediate relief” (DJR-069-35); “a present remedy” → “an immediate remedy” (DJR-072-01); “present diverter” → “an immediate diversion” (DJR-081-27). The equivalents make the temporal force explicit. The immediacy of a reported cure remains Burton’s claim, while instant death retains the rhetorical exaggeration.

See also. Still; Prevent; Prognostics.

Prevent

Source forms: prevent; prevented death

The word. Prevent can mean act beforehand, anticipate or intervene before something occurs. Its older force may differ sharply from the modern sense of stopping an event altogether.

In Burton. The heavenly Physician prevents by intervening before a fatal outcome. In the account of old people forestalling their deaths, the word instead describes anticipating the death that would otherwise come. The second use cannot mean preserving their lives.

The places. Divine aid is described as intervening before a fatal outcome. (p. 214; DJR-065-20.) Prevented death means anticipated the death otherwise expected. (p. 217; DJR-066-11.)

In this edition. “do not prevent” → “intervenes” (DJR-065-20); “they prevented death” → “they forestalled death” (DJR-066-11). The surrounding unless clause preserves the condition expressed by if the Physician does not intervene in the source. Forestalled retains the anticipatory sense in the second passage.

See also. Present.

Prime mover

Source forms: primum mobile

The word. Primum mobile is the first moving sphere in the older astronomical model. Prime mover is the explanatory heading for that image here, rather than a substitution of a separate theological argument.

In Burton. Love and hatred are imagined as a sphere carrying all other passions around with them. Burton uses the cosmological image to explain their governing place among the affections before expanding his account of love.

The places. Love and hatred carry the other affections as the first moving sphere carries the heavens. (p. 411; DJR-108-27.)