Censure

Use in the book

Publication exposes an author to censure. Burton stages himself before readers, admits that his writing reveals his character, and compares their varying judgments to differing palates. His defiance is selective: he tells an unsatisfied reader to choose another book, yet submits his labour to the judgment of good readers while rejecting malicious abuse. The request for a favourable assessment of errors follows an undertaking to yield and amend when proved wrong. His admitted paraphrases and selective translations help explain what he asks readers to judge.

The critic is not always a public official. Burton’s severe censurer would discover many defects in his writing, but the following request asks for friendly correction. The Latin address tells the book to repel a pompous, troublesome critic; the postscript conditionally threatens that Democritus Junior will himself become a critic and accuser in return. By contrast, Roman censors supply a model for reciprocal inspection of officials in the proposed commonwealth, where annual accounting checks corruption. A later margin makes shared office a cause of reconciliation between enemies; its printed Julius Flaccus remains an unresolved historical name.

Assessment also operates inside the historical account of perception. Common sense receives sensory forms from the external organs and judges them; imagination then examines and recombines what it receives. Here being censured is cognitive discrimination. Medical assessment is another practical use. Montanus, as reported by Burton, assesses a soldier’s case through the six non-natural conditions of life. Much later, the accusation against corrupt physicians turns their legitimate access to examine patients into an alleged opportunity for procurement. That is a hostile account of misuse, not the ordinary definition of examination. In the discussion of magic, Burton reports condemnation by several universities after earlier public teaching, alongside continuing practice and defence; these claims and the ensuing accusation against contemporary rulers remain his historical and polemical account.

Censure’s social force depends on who judges whom. After mocking gentlemen whose inherited rank outruns their learning, Burton explicitly honours worthy patrons and submits to their censure and service. He does not submit to their condemnation in advance; he acknowledges their judgment while continuing to attack corrupt members of the same rank. The scholar in the symptom survey, by contrast, swings between fearing failure in an academic exercise and scorning all censures. Criticism is the apt modern rendering there, but the surrounding account presents this contempt as a changing disposition rather than a settled principle of scholarship.

The synopsis asks how someone suffering from melancholy who harms himself should be censured. Its negative answer concerns a preceding question about permissibility; the question of judgment requires the later argument. At the end of the First Partition, Burton rejects philosophical defences of self-killing but asks that harsh judgments be mitigated in some cases of lost reason, including desperate violence against others. His margin specifies historical burial and property penalties. Foreest’s reported story makes the legal force concrete: two brothers’ dishonourable burial sentence is revoked after inquiry into their suffering and mental disorder. Burton finally separates human disposal of bodies and property from the soul’s fate, which God alone knows, and urges charitable judgment. The edition also distinguishes the adjacent Senecan rhetorical dispute from a straightforward statement of Roman law.

Critical examination need not be wholly adverse. Burton imagines scrutinizing travellers’ reports, correcting maps and determining longitudes if possible; his severe name for the reports, lies, belongs to that imagined inquiry. Della Porta’s censure of agricultural writers is expressly mixed, approving much and rejecting some. The dancing discussion likewise ends with Burton’s own censure: a conditional judgment allowing sober, modest and timely recreation while condemning unchaste abuse.

Latin brings two further shades into view. In the consolation of a condemned person, vexat censura columbas, “Censure persecutes the doves,” represents punitive authority falling unequally on the weak. Burton’s accompanying comparison of the prisoner with judges and spectators is conditional, not proof that every condemned person is innocent. In his defence of writing about love, in moribus censuram, & severitatem means “restraint and strictness in their conduct.” Here discipline belongs to the poets’ lives, which the defence distinguishes from their erotic verses; it is not a claim that their poems contain hostile reviews.

The final religious material distinguishes earthly sanctions from other judgment. Someone may evade the censure of law through a corrupt judge and still suffer the accusation of conscience. Later Burton stops a disputed theological inquiry under threat of ecclesiastical censure. The passage identifies a disciplinary restriction without specifying excommunication. Immediately before it he forbids identifying oneself or another as finally rejected by God; immediately after it, the quotation attributed to Erasmus commends endurance of authority with the express condition that it does not compel impiety. Church sanction, personal conscience and ultimate divine judgment do not collapse into one tribunal.

Related entries

Judgment: The cognitive faculty and the act of evaluating.

Apologize: Burton’s defence of his writing and conduct.

Church patronage: The authority and obligations of patrons.

Dancing: An explicit conditional verdict rather than blanket condemnation.

Bawd: The polemical misuse of clinical access.

Conscience: Accusation that persists despite escaping earthly law.

Despair: The limits of human judgment and the refusal of final condemnation.

Fact: The older sense deed in the account of the brothers.

Explode: Adverse rejection as distinct from evaluation in general.

Witchcraft: Reported institutional condemnation and continued defence of magic.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to His Book · paragraphs 36–38the book’s conditional treatment of ordinary poets and malicious critics.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 7–10; Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 15; Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 19–20reciprocal criticism, the exposed author, differing tastes and the distinction between good readers and malicious detractors.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 1–6the severe critic, friendly correction, willingness to correct error, favourable censure, and acknowledged liberties in translation and quotation.
4. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 34–36Roman censors as a model for reciprocal inspection and equal justice in Burton’s proposed commonwealth.
5. To the Reader Who Misuses His Leisure · paragraphs 1–4the comic conditional threat that Democritus Junior will turn critic and accuser.
6. Symptoms Particular to the Three Distinct Species. Section 3, Member 2 · paragraph 63the synopsis separates permissibility from the question of how to judge.
7. Subsection 7. The Internal Senses · paragraphs 17–18common sense assesses sensory forms; imagination’s further examination follows.
8. Subsection 3 Witches and Magicians: How They Cause Melancholy · paragraphs 37–39reported university condemnation of magic, its continued defenders and the ensuing accusation against princes and popes.
9. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraphs 29–31Montanus’s assessment of a soldier within the historical six-non-naturals account.
10. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 18–20satire of inherited authority, submission to worthy patrons, and the renewed distinction from corrupt members of their rank.
11. Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our Circumstances, Mingled With Other Diseases, Occurring in Fits, From Inclination, and So On · paragraphs 6–9the scholar’s alternating fear and scorn of criticism within the account of variable and sometimes concealed distress.
12. Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraphs 1–4; Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraphs 15–22the question of judgment, opposition to self-killing, mitigation, a revoked burial sentence and the final appeal to charity. The leaf printed 454 is sequence page 222, as note 4911 explains; note 4921 and note 4925–26 qualify the penalties and rhetorical authorities.
13. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraphs 6–9proposed critical scrutiny of geographical reports and correction of navigation.
14. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraphs 6–8della Porta’s mixed assessment of agricultural authorities.
15. Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults, Slander, Mockery and the Like · paragraphs 33–36conditional consolation and the image of punitive censure pursuing harmless birds.
16. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1 The Preface · paragraphs 4–8; Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1 The Preface · paragraphs 13–22disciplined lives versus erotic writing; requests for lenient judgment and interpretation of the good alongside the bad.
17. Subsection 2 Pleasant Objects of Love · paragraphs 10–12; note 8341; note 8343shared circumstances unite people; appointment as censors reconciles the reported enemies, with Julius Flaccus unresolved.
18. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraphs 46–60the reply to absolute condemnation of dancing, ending with Burton’s conditional censure.
19. Subsection 5 Procurers and Love Potions as Causes · paragraphs 67–69clinical examination within a polemical accusation of procurement.
20. Causes of Despair: The Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Harsh Ministers, Misunderstanding Scripture, Guilty Consciences, and So On · paragraphs 52–55evasion of a legal sentence, conscience and the subsequent danger of despair.
21. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 19–23disputed theology, the refusal to identify the finally rejected, ecclesiastical censure and the qualified quotation about obedience.

In this edition

Three examples show distinct choices: “censured” → “judge” in the synopsis; “censure” → “judgement” in Burton’s address to patrons; and “censures” → “criticism” in the scholar’s self-defensive attitude. The first recasts a passive construction as an active question without adding condemnation. Elsewhere the same family becomes assessed, scrutinize, examine or sentence according to its objects and consequences.

In “to censure and ask questions” → “to examine and question people,” the modern text supplies people as the shared object; censure itself contributes examine. In the Latin description of the poets, censuram contributes restraint, severitatem strictness, and in moribus the setting in their conduct; their is supplied from the poets referred to. The phrase does not make the entire English description the meaning of censuram alone.

The punitive examples remain historical and attributed. Foreest’s burial story is uncollated, and the edition identifies the Senecan material as a rhetorical controversy. The source’s anomalous printed page 454 is retained with its explanation, while the synopsis’s 100 is identified as a scan page of unnumbered matter. Ecclesiastical censure remains broad: neither the original nor the translation names a specific sanction.

Censor; public examiner

Printed “Roman Censors” (English; family).

Roman officials charged with scrutiny of public conduct.

Here: Roman censors provide a model for reciprocal inspection of officials in Burton’s proposed commonwealth.

Context: Burton’s prospective rules require yearly accounting and punishment for misconduct; the comparison does not assert these reforms already exist.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: those Roman Censors

Modern rendering: the Roman censors

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Roman identifies the historical officials; Censors names their examining office, not the critics of Burton’s book.

Further local use

Printed “censores” (Latin; family).

Citation key: Censor; public examiner.

Censors, nominative plural, naming public officials.

Here: The margin reports two enemies setting aside hostility when declared censors, illustrating solidarity created by shared circumstances.

Context: An example attributed through Scultetus; the printed Julius Flaccus and precise source require collation.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: censores renunciati

Modern rendering: when declared censors

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censores supplies censors; renunciati is a nominative plural passive participle, declared. The English when makes the temporal relation explicit.

Modern container: note

Uncertainty: The printed Julius Flaccus is retained; neither the name nor the Scultetus reference has been independently collated.

Sense relation: The related actor noun with its locally distinct construction and agency.

Censura; punitive censure

Printed “censura” (Latin; family).

Censure or disciplinary judgment; here personified as punitive authority.

Here: Juvenal’s persecuted doves figure unequal punishment of the powerless, contrasted with the powerful who escape notice.

Context: A poetic tag adapted within Burton’s consolation of a condemned person; perhaps and if qualify the preceding comparisons of guilt.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: vexat censura columbas

Modern rendering: Censure persecutes the doves

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censura is the nominative subject Censure; vexat means persecutes or harasses; columbas is the accusative object the doves.

Grammar: Censura is a feminine nominative singular noun; vexat is third-person singular present active.

Censura; restraint of conduct

Printed “censuram” (Latin; family).

Restraint or moral discipline, here governing conduct.

Here: Burton distinguishes the poets’ strict lives from their sexually playful writing as part of his own defence of discussing love.

Context: Burton reports and adopts an apologetic distinction supported by Ausonius and Catullus; the named poets are examples in that defence.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: in moribus censuram, & severitatem

Modern rendering: restraint and strictness in their conduct

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censuram contributes restraint; severitatem strictness; in moribus in their conduct. The possessive their is supplied from the poets referred to.

Translator-supplied words: their, referring to the poets whose conduct is described

Grammar: Censuram and severitatem are accusative singular objects of the surrounding English had; in moribus is a Latin prepositional phrase with ablative plural moribus.

Censure

Printed “censure” (English; lemma).

A judgment or assessment, which may be favourable, adverse or mixed.

Here: By publishing, Burton exposes his work and character to readers’ differing judgments; the same passage also anticipates adverse criticism.

Context: Burton’s self-defence: he must accept evaluation, while comparing its variety to differences of taste.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: I must abide the censure

Modern rendering: I must submit to judgement

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censure is judgement; abide becomes submit to in this construction.

Further local use

Printed “favorable censure” (English; lemma).

Citation key: Censure.

Here: Burton asks readers to judge uncorrected faults and his selective translations leniently.

Context: Burton, after promising to amend demonstrated errors.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a favorable censure

Modern rendering: a lenient judgement

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Favorable specifies lenient assessment, not praise for every fault.

Sense relation: A further local use of the same evaluative sense, with its own agent and force.

Further local use

Printed “censures” (English; lemma).

Citation key: Censure.

Here: Della Porta’s assessment approves much and rejects some: evaluation is explicitly mixed.

Context: Della Porta as reported by Burton; the cited chapter remains uncollated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: censures Varro, Cato, Columella, and those ancient Rusticks

Modern rendering: assesses Varro, Cato, Columella, and those ancient writers on farming

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censures contributes assesses; ancient Rusticks contributes ancient writers on farming.

Sense relation: A further local use of the same evaluative sense, with its own agent and force.

Further local use

Printed “my censure” (English; lemma).

Citation key: Censure.

Here: Burton concludes that dancing is beneficial when sober, modest and timely, harmful when unchastely abused.

Context: Burton’s announced verdict after accusation, objection and qualified defence.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: this is my censure in brief

Modern rendering: This is my judgment in brief

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: My censure means my judgment, without necessarily implying condemnation.

Sense relation: A further local use of the same evaluative sense, with its own agent and force.

Further local use

Printed “censured” (English; lemma).

Citation key: Censure.

Here: Magic is reported to have received formal adverse judgment after earlier public teaching; opposition coexists with continued practice and defence.

Context: Burton’s attributed historical narrative and contemporary accusation, not independently verified university history.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: though after censured by several Universities

Modern rendering: though later condemned by several universities

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censured contributes condemned; after becomes later, preserving the temporal contrast.

Sense relation: A further local use of the same evaluative sense, with its own agent and force.

Censure; censured

Printed “censured” (English; family).

Judged or assessed.

Here: The synopsis announces a question about how to judge a person who harms himself; its preceding negative answer concerns permissibility, not an already settled verdict on the person.

Context: The synopsis summarizes distinct questions subsequently discussed at the end of the First Partition.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: censured

Modern rendering: judge

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The passive original is recast as an active infinitive in How to judge; the shared lexical meaning is assessment.

Censure; clinical examination

Printed “censure” (English; family).

Examine or assess a person.

Here: Access to question patients and feel their pulse becomes, in Burton’s accusation, a cover for sexual procurement.

Context: Burton’s satire of corrupt practitioners, embedded in anti-Catholic polemic; honest men is sarcastic.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to censure and ask questions

Modern rendering: to examine and question people

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censure contributes examine; ask questions becomes question, while people supplies the shared object from the clinical setting.

Translator-supplied words: people, the shared object supplied from those being examined and questioned

Qualification: The passage records hostile accusations, not established conduct of all physicians or religious orders.

Censure; critical scrutiny

Printed “censure” (English; family).

Critically examine or judge.

Here: The imagined investigator would scrutinize geographical reports and correct maps and longitudes if possible; calling the reports lies gives this scrutiny an adverse edge.

Context: Burton’s conditional intellectual journey, not a report that he has verified and corrected every named traveller.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: I would censure

Modern rendering: I would scrutinize

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censure contributes scrutinize; I would preserves the proposed rather than accomplished action.

Censure; criticism

Printed “censures” (English; family).

Judgments or criticisms directed at someone’s work.

Here: The scholar alternates between fear of failure and scorning criticism; this is one changing disposition among others.

Context: Burton’s description of a scholar’s fluctuating thoughts, not endorsement of the scholar’s self-applause.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: censures

Modern rendering: criticism

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Plural censures is rendered by the mass noun criticism; all belongs to the surrounding determiner in both texts.

Censure; medical assessment

Printed “censuring” (English; family).

Assessing or examining a case.

Here: Montanus assesses a soldier and attributes his melancholy to misuse of the six non-natural conditions of life.

Context: A consultation reported by Burton, in his historical causal account; the attributed charge is not a present diagnosis.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: censuring a melancholy souldier

Modern rendering: assessing a melancholy soldier

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censuring contributes assessing, with the patient as its object.

Censure; patronal judgment

Printed “censure” (English; family).

Judgment or assessment.

Here: Burton submits to the judgment of worthy patrons while distinguishing them from corrupt members of their rank.

Context: Burton’s respectful qualification of his satire of inherited social authority.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: censure

Modern rendering: judgement

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern noun retains the broader evaluative sense; censure and service remain separate objects of submission.

Censure; punitive judgment

Printed “hard censures” (English; family).

Harsh judgments, here extending to punitive decisions.

Here: Burton asks for mitigation in some cases involving loss of reason; his margin gives burial and property penalties as examples.

Context: Burton’s qualified plea following his theological opposition to self-killing; it applies also to violence against others in the specified desperate fits.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: those hard censures

Modern rendering: those harsh judgments

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Hard contributes harsh; censures judgments. The punitive force is established by the marginal examples, not by hard alone.

Qualification: These are historical legal and religious claims, not present law or medical advice.

Censure; sensory assessment

Printed “censured” (English; family).

Assessed or discriminated by the judging faculty.

Here: External senses bring sensory forms to common sense for assessment; the forms are not being morally blamed.

Context: Burton’s historical account of the internal senses, portraying common sense as their judge or moderator.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the Species to be censured

Modern rendering: sensory forms to be assessed

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Species contributes sensory forms, censured assessed, and to be carries the passive construction.

Qualification: The assignment of faculties to parts of the brain belongs to historical psychology.

Censure; sentence

Printed “censure” (English; family).

An authoritative judgment or sentence.

Here: A reported sentence denying honourable burial is revoked after further inquiry into two brothers’ suffering and mental disorder.

Context: The story is attributed to Pieter van Foreest; the supplied edition has not independently collated it.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the censure was revoked

Modern rendering: the judgment was revoked

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censure names the decision that is withdrawn; the predicate preserves its reversibility.

Uncertainty: The Foreest story remains uncollated. The adjacent Senecan material is a rhetorical controversy, not a simple declaration of Roman law.

Further local use

Printed “censure of law” (English; family).

Citation key: Censure; sentence.

Here: A person may escape a worldly sentence through corruption, while Burton’s argument says conscience will later accuse him.

Context: Burton’s account of delayed remorse, followed by the distinction between conscience and the devil’s claim that sin is unforgivable.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: avoid the censure of law

Modern rendering: evade the sentence of the law

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censure of law means sentence of the law; avoid is rendered evade.

Sense relation: A further local use of the same evaluative sense, with its own agent and force.

Censurer; censor as critic

Printed “censurer” (English; family).

A person who judges or criticizes.

Here: A severe critic would find many faults in Burton’s work; severity belongs to rigid, not to the noun alone.

Context: Burton concedes possible defects and immediately asks for friendly correction rather than bitter abuse.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a rigid censurer

Modern rendering: a severe critic

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censurer means critic; rigid contributes severe.

Further local use

Printed “Censorque” (Latin; family).

Citation key: Censurer; censor as critic.

Censor means a critic or fault-finder; enclitic -que means and.

Here: The reader envisaged as a pompous and troublesome critic is refused admission by the addressed book.

Context: Burton’s Latin address personifies the book and conditionally warns it against malicious readers.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: tumidus Censorque molestus

Modern rendering: a pompous and troublesome censor

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censor is nominative singular; -que supplies and in the coordinated description, while tumidus and molestus supply pompous and troublesome. English a supplies the article.

Sense relation: The related actor noun with its locally distinct construction and agency.

Further local use

Printed “censorem” (Latin; family).

Citation key: Censurer; censor as critic.

Critic, in the accusative singular.

Here: Democritus Junior threatens to turn critic and accuser against a malicious reader in return.

Context: A comic conditional threat: if Democritus Junior has even something of his claimed predecessor’s spirit, he will retaliate.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: censorem æque ac delatorem aget econtra

Modern rendering: He will turn critic and accuser against you in return

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Censorem contributes critic, delatorem accuser, æque ac and, aget will turn or play the part, and econtra in return. He and against you make the contextual agents explicit.

Sense relation: The related actor noun with its locally distinct construction and agency.

Ecclesiastical censure

Printed “Ecclesiastical censure” (English; phrase).

Disciplinary judgment or sanction imposed by church authority.

Here: Burton invokes the threat of church discipline when ending a speculative discussion of predestination.

Context: Burton cites the declaration prefixed to the Articles, in an edition printed 1633, and says he will stop the digression.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: upon pain of Ecclesiastical censure

Modern rendering: on pain of ecclesiastical censure

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The phrase retains its disciplinary force; it does not specify a particular penalty such as excommunication.

Qualification: A historical restriction as reported by Burton, not a statement of current ecclesiastical law.