From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordDotage may name disordered reasoning, delusion, mental impairment or foolish attachment.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyAt the beginning of the medical survey, dotage can be the broad class containing madness, melancholy and the other conditions, according to Laurentius, Altomarus and others.
- In this editionThe local rendering pairs distinguish the senses: “dotage” becomes “delusion” in the broad prefatory catalogue; “began to dote on a sudden” becomes “he suddenly lost his reason”; “still dotage” becomes “quiet mental derangement.”
- A place to readThe broad catalogue and the attack on philosophical pretensions
Meaning
Dotage may name disordered reasoning, delusion, mental impairment or foolish attachment. Dote, dotes and doted belong to the associated verb: to think or act unsoundly, lose reason, or become excessively attached to someone or something. Old age is one setting, not a requirement. Still dotage means quiet or subdued derangement; “still” describes its manner, even where the condition comes and goes. In the love discussions, dotage regularly means infatuation. The verb can also mean permitted playful foolishness, or strong attachment which Burton calls natural in animals; it is extended poetically to lifeless things.
Three local Latin companions clarify rather than replace the English. Marginal Delirium names mental derangement; mox delirare cœpit means “soon began to rave”; tacito delirio means “with quiet delirium” in its full construction. They belong respectively to the classification, the young man’s reported episode and the quiet intermittent condition. They are not evidence that every English use is one uniform Latin medical category.
Use in the book
A general class or a particular impairment
At the beginning of the medical survey, dotage can be the broad class containing madness, melancholy and the other conditions, according to Laurentius, Altomarus and others. If treated as distinct, Burton divides it into an inborn impairment, attributed to defective organs or excess brain matter, and an acquired condition accompanying another illness. The latter may come and go; persistence is said to signal melancholy itself. These alternatives are reported historical classifications, not a single modern diagnosis.
The noun also supplies a common element in definitions of other disorders. Madness is “a vehement Dotage”; melancholy is commonly a kind of dotage without fever, accompanied by fear and sadness. The modifiers and accompanying features do separate work: violence or feverlessness is not already contained in the word dotage. Burton records objections to the common definition and then, following Laurentius, explains dotage through impairment of a principal faculty, such as imagination or reason.
This faculty-based account leaves room for restricted disturbance. Some people “dote in one thing” yet remain judicious and wise elsewhere, and signs barely visible to observers can be intolerable to the person affected. The frog-swallowing anecdote makes the contrast concrete: a learned doctor remains convinced that live frogs inhabit his belly. Burton reports eventual recovery after seven years of this particular delusion, without explaining its mechanism; the two seven-year periods in the story should not be silently added into a new chronology.
Age, onset and quiet disturbance
The young man David Helde remains a decisive example against reading old age into every occurrence. Ruland’s story says that he began to rave after eating cakes attributed to a witch; Burton’s English says he suddenly began to dote and immediately became mad. The lexical sequence is clear, while the reported identity, event and magical explanation are not independently verified here.
Old age nevertheless supplies a distinct and frequent context. Burton cites claims that its coldness, dryness and excess black bile cause loss of judgment, and describes difficulty managing affairs. Those are humoral explanations and sweeping historical characterizations. The supplied note also points out that his excerpt from Cicero stops before Cicero’s reply that such faults belong to character rather than age. In the preface, Burton deliberately extends an old man’s dotage to the young and old alike; the extension depends on recognizing rather than erasing the original association with ageing.
Quietness is a separate distinction. Rodericus’s definition, following Aretaeus, combines sudden sorrow, “still dotage,” bodily pain, solitude, weeping and distraction. The same sentence allows sudden relief because the condition comes in fits. The full original marginal description adds quiet delirium, internal pain and further bodily details. Neither “still” nor the adjoining pain makes it a permanent, exclusively intellectual condition. A different comparison calls colder natural melancholy a cause of “gentle dotage,” meaning milder disturbance as against hotter, more violent states.
Folly can know itself and persist
The preface initially welcomes dotage into melancholy’s broad literal and figurative range. Philosophers’ books can be full of it; everyday acts can show it; people may recognize their own foolish fixation yet continue. Burton’s imagined religious opponent even announces that he will “dote for company,” preferring inherited practice and associates to correction. This example belongs to Burton’s anti-Catholic polemic, not an assessment of a religious community supplied by the lexicon. At the preface’s close he expressly turns from these metaphorical kinds of folly to the established illness he will anatomize.
The later complaint about physicians carries the same critical energy: they dote while patients pay for new experiments. In consolation, however, dotage can be paradoxically praised because a person is unaware of wrongs and therefore feels secure. That is a rhetorical consolation and a report of others’ praise of folly, not advice to become impaired. Laurentius’s “pleasantest dotage,” the man afraid to drown Siena by urinating, is another standpoint-dependent phrase: the amusement belongs to the narrator of the anecdote, while the patient fears a catastrophe.
A milder, positively allowed foolishness belongs to recreation. Approving Castruccio’s answer to a rebuke for dancing, Burton says that a person wise by day “may dote a little in the night.” May and a little matter: the following paragraph permits relaxation when time, place and circumstances are suitable. Burton’s English grants a liberty that the preceding Latin, saying the wise man hardly ever loses his wits at night, does not state in the same form.
Attachment, infatuation and spiritual excess
To dote on or after something can mean to love or pursue it too much. Parents dote on children in the image of an ape whose excessive embrace destroys its young. Nobles dote after hunting until they can do and discuss nothing else. The general account of love says that objects may be good and pleasing in themselves yet cause suffering when loved immoderately; it extends the pattern to a mistress, food, pleasures and an idol. The object and degree of attachment matter.
Erotic dotage is especially an impairment of evaluation and self-command. Burton’s lovers may be wise in other respects, perceive and acknowledge their infatuation, and still fail to resist it. The accompanying blindness makes a frog appear a Diana. Another symptom passage describes quickly changing attachments, then immediately contrasts people averse to women. The catalogue gives opposing presentations rather than one rule for every melancholy person.
The verb also crosses the boundary of human conduct. Burton calls it natural for one beast to “dote upon another of the same kinde,” before asking about cross-species desire and reporting extraordinary stories. Later, “dumb and dead creatures dote”: the inanimate things of the preceding love-poetry become infatuated. Here Burton expressly asks for “poetical faith” before turning to human amazement at beauty. These uses show that dote can name attachment or poetic infatuation without itself declaring a human mental disorder.
The spiritual discussion also requires a boundary. Temperance and contemplation can be good, and Burton allows a positive account of ecstasy before calling its abuse dotage and madness. Subsequent claims about monks’ and hermits’ visions are attributed to authorities within his religious polemic and mixed bodily/demonic explanation. “Dotage” does not make the preceding endorsement of useful contemplation disappear.
Related entries
Madness; Silly; Melancholy; Imagination; Phrenitis; Distraction; Love; Ecstasy
Places to read
- Broad melancholy and intellectual follyThe broad catalogue and the attack on philosophical pretensions
- Young and old alikeAn old man’s impairment expanded into universal folly
- Recognized but persistent follyKnowing error, pleasurable fixation and “dote for company”
- Age and the transition to medicineThe late-wisdom anecdote and the distinction from metaphorical madness
- A genus or a distinct conditionInborn/acquired impairment and the modifiers in the adjacent definitions
- Faculty-based definitionThe common definition, objections and imagination or reason impaired
- The young man’s abrupt onsetBoth Latin and English in the report about David Helde
- Ageing in historical physiologyHumours, affairs and the edition’s Cicero qualification
- Doting on childrenExcessive affection; exceptional pagination retained
- Milder derangementCold natural melancholy contrasted with the hotter acquired kind
- Erotic attraction and its contraryRapid infatuation followed by contrary cases
- Deluded on one subjectLimited disturbance beside otherwise sound judgment
- The doctor and imagined frogsLearning, fixed belief and an unspecified eventual cure
- Quiet disturbance in fits“Still dotage” with its complete continuation
- Absorbed in huntingRecreation becoming an exclusive pursuit
- The Siena anecdoteThe narrator’s amusement and the patient’s fearful belief
- Permitted foolishness in recreationDancing, qualified permission and a Latin maxim distinct from Burton’s English gloss
- Paradoxical consolationLocal delusion, remaining wisdom and reputed contentment
- Physicians and their patientsIrrational innovation as a moral criticism
- Immoderate attachmentPleasing objects, desire and different explanations
- Animal attachmentNatural same-kind attraction contrasted with reported cross-species stories
- Lifeless things in lovePoetical faith, personification and the return to human amazement
- Lovers’ infatuationLost self-command and figurative blindness
- Contemplation and its abuseThe positive concession before the polemical account
- The source’s two lookup senses“Dotage what 8” and “Dotage of lovers 519”
In this edition
The local rendering pairs distinguish the senses: “dotage” becomes “delusion” in the broad prefatory catalogue; “began to dote on a sudden” becomes “he suddenly lost his reason”; “still dotage” becomes “quiet mental derangement.” The separate preceding Latin “mox delirare cœpit” becomes “soon began to rave.” Its English companion is Burton’s restatement, not a second modern translation to be merged with it.
Elsewhere the classification uses “mental impairment” or “mental derangement,” the persistent moral pursuit becomes “folly,” and the love passages use “infatuation.” Some English constructions retain “dote,” as with parents or pleasing objects. These choices distinguish local impairment, delusion, foolish conduct and excessive affection without imposing age on them all. “Gentle dotage” becomes “milder derangement,” with the comparison supplied by the surrounding hot/cold contrast. The marginal quiet-delirium translation belongs to the editorial layer of the supplied note.
In the approved dancing anecdote, “may dote a little” becomes “may be a little foolish”; in the poetic catalogue, “dote” expands to “fall foolishly in love.” The parents’ “dote so much upon their children” becomes “dote on their children,” without a separate rendering of so much. These are local construction choices, while Burton’s neighbouring Latin and English remain distinct.
delirium
Printed “Delirium” (Latin; lemma).
Mental derangement, given as the Latin marginal companion to dotage.
Context: Original topical marginal heading; the adjoining English gloss in the note container is modern editorial translation.
Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Delirium Dotage.
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Delirium; mental impairment.
Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with supplied editorial translation in the same note container; the translation is not original marginal text.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
deliro
Printed “delirare” (Latin; lemma).
To rave or be mentally deranged; the infinitive describes the young man’s disturbance in Ruland’s reported case.
Context: Ruland’s reported case; lexical meaning does not verify the alleged magical cause.
Grammar: Present active infinitive of deliro, complement of cœpit; mox supplies soon and cœpit supplies began, neither being part of the verb’s lexical meaning.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: mox delirare cœpit
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: soon began to rave
Qualification: Mox means soon; delirare is the infinitive to rave; cœpit is began. No claim is made that Burton’s following English on a sudden is separately present in mox.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 1
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Delusion or disordered thinking within a deliberately broad catalogue of literal and figurative melancholy.
Context: Burton’s prefatory universalization, not a technical identification of all these conditions.
Source: original body
Source wording: dotage, discontent, fear, sorrow, madnes
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · doted
Printed “doted” (English; word family).
Thought or spoke irrationally; a hostile comparison of philosophical doctrines with the wandering speech of old or ill people.
Context: Lactantius’s attack as adopted and reported by Burton, not a neutral appraisal of the people named.
Source: original body
Source wording: never any old woman or sick person doted worse
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 2
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Intellectual folly or delusive argument attributed to philosophical books.
Context: Burton’s hostile catalogue of reputed sages; the preceding allegations and cited authorities remain polemical.
Source: original body
Source wording: their books and elaborate Treatises were full of dotage
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 1
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Act foolishly or think unsoundly, extended from an old man’s impairment to every age.
Context: Burton widens a reported scene of mockery into universal satire.
Source: original body
Source wording: yong and old, all dote
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotes · local use 1
Printed “dotes” (English; word family).
Fixates foolishly on an activity despite acknowledging its absurdity.
Context: A hypothetical person in Burton’s moral account of knowingly persistent folly.
Source: original body
Source wording: on which he dotes
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 3
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
An entrenched foolish pursuit that survives recognition and attempted persuasion.
Context: Burton’s hypothetical example distinguishes recognition of error from abandoning it.
Source: original body
Source wording: he will persevere in his dotage
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 2
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Persist in error for the sake of inherited practice and companionship.
Context: The voice Burton gives to a religious opponent; it belongs to his anti-Catholic polemic.
Source: original body
Source wording: I will dote for company
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 3
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Lose sound judgment in old age, in a satirical comparison with the alleged late arrival of wisdom.
Context: Burton’s sweeping age claim and transmitted anecdote, not a modern account of ageing.
Source: original body
Source wording: our old ones dote at threescore and ten
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · Dotage · local use 1
Printed “Dotage” (English; word family).
A broad class of mental impairment under which some authorities place madness, melancholy and related conditions; alternatively a distinct inborn or acquired impairment.
Context: Burton reports rival classificatory uses, naming Laurentius and Altomarus.
Source: original body
Source wording: Dotage, Fatuity, or Folly, is a common name to all the following Species, as some will have it
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · Dotage · local use 2
Printed “Dotage” (English; word family).
Mental derangement, here modified by vehement to form Burton’s local definition of madness.
Context: Burton’s chosen medical taxonomy adds vehemence and absence of fever; the noun alone does not supply these features.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: a vehement Dotage
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: severe mental derangement
Qualification: Dotage supplies mental derangement; vehement supplies the severity rendered severe. The local modifier must not become part of the standalone definition of dotage.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 4
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Mental derangement as the general category in a common definition of melancholy.
Context: A definition Burton immediately reports as disputed; fear and sadness are accompanying features, not the noun’s standalone meaning.
Source: original body
Source wording: a kinde of dotage without a fever
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · Dotage · local use 3
Printed “Dotage” (English; word family).
Impairment of a principal faculty such as imagination or reason, as Laurentius explains the term.
Context: Burton reports the faculty-based account; it does not require every faculty or subject of judgment to be equally impaired.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: We properly call that Dotage, as Laurentius interprets it
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Properly speaking, as Laurentius explains it, we call a condition mental derangement
Qualification: The full rearranged clause preserves properly and the attribution to Laurentius. Dotage aligns with mental derangement; a condition expands that, rather than representing a separate English noun in the original.
Supplied words: a condition (makes the referent of that explicit)
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 4
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
To lose reason or begin delirious behaviour abruptly; the reported person is explicitly young.
Context: Ruland’s account of David Helde after eating cakes said to have come from a witch; events and attribution remain unverified.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: began to dote on a sudden
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: he suddenly lost his reason
Qualification: Began to dote on a sudden aligns with suddenly lost his reason. He is explicit in the modern extracted clause; the original subject is the preceding young man. This English restatement is distinct from mox delirare cœpit.
Supplied words: he (restores the contextual subject to this extracted finite clause)
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 5
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Become confused or lose judgment in an account of ageing and supposed excess black bile.
Context: A historical claim attributed through Melanchthon to Aristotle; not a current causal explanation.
Source: original body
Source wording: old men familiarly dote
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 6
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Love or indulge excessively, here a parent’s destructive overfondness.
Context: Burton’s educational polemic, illustrated by the ape said to crush its offspring through embracing.
Source: original body
Locator qualification: Preserve sequence and printed-number distinction exactly.
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: dote so much upon their children
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: dote on their children
Qualification: The modern construction retains dote on their children but gives no separate verbal equivalent of so much. The excessive force is carried by the surrounding account and the dote construction; the dropped degree phrase should be disclosed.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 5
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
A comparatively mild disturbance of thought, associated here with an excess of colder natural melancholy.
Context: Burton qualifies a hot-and-dry account as applicable to unnatural melancholy, then contrasts the colder kind.
Source: original body
Source wording: a gentle dotage
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 7
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Become intensely enamoured; changing objects of erotic attachment are emphasized.
Context: One side of Burton’s contradictory symptom catalogue; the same paragraph reports other people averse to women.
Source: original body
Source wording: quickly inamored, and dote upon all
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 8
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Hold a disordered belief on one subject while retaining judgment elsewhere.
Context: Burton’s explicit limitation: some remain discreet and wise on other matters.
Source: original body
Source wording: Some dote in one thing
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 6
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
The persistent belief that live frogs inhabit the belly, despite otherwise substantial learning.
Context: A Platerus anecdote; the cure is reported without a mechanism and the two seven-year periods are not silently added.
Source: original body
Source wording: after seven years dotage in this kind
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 9
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Become excessively absorbed in hunting so that other activity and conversation are displaced.
Context: Burton qualifies the preceding praise of hunting as recreation.
Source: original body
Source wording: some dote too much after it
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 7
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
A particular delusive belief, here fear of flooding a town by urinating.
Context: The superlative amusement is Laurentius’s attributed reaction, not the patient’s pleasure or the lexicon’s mockery.
Source: original body
Source wording: The pleasantest dotage that ever I read
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · Dotage · local use 4
Printed “Dotage” (English; word family).
A state of delusion paradoxically praised for freedom from awareness of suffering.
Context: Burton reports praise of folly within consolation; it is not a recommendation to cause impairment.
Source: original body
Source wording: Dotage is a state which many much magnifie and commend
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 10
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Act irrationally or foolishly in devising competing medical innovations.
Context: Burton adapts a maxim about rulers and their subjects to physicians and patients.
Source: original body
Source wording: they dote, and in the mean time the poor patients pay for their new experiments
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 11
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Attach oneself excessively to otherwise pleasing and good objects.
Context: Burton makes immoderate attachment, rather than the objects themselves, the possible source of pain.
Source: original body
Source wording: dote on them overmuch
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotes · local use 2
Printed “dotes” (English; word family).
Fix one’s desire upon a beloved object; the following examples extend the verb to food, pleasures and an idol.
Context: Burton’s classification of excessive attachments; the religious example is confessional polemic.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: The lascivious dotes on his fair mistress
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: The lustful man dotes on his beautiful mistress
Qualification: The lascivious means the lustful person, expanded to the lustful man. Dotes on retains its verb and preposition; fair aligns with beautiful.
Supplied words: man (expands the substantivized adjective the lascivious)
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 8
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Erotic infatuation that undermines usual discretion and self-government.
Context: Burton’s sweeping portrait of lovers, explicitly for the time being.
Source: original body
Source wording: Their dotage is most eminent
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 9
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Recognized erotic infatuation that the sufferer cannot overcome.
Context: Burton distinguishes perception of the condition from control of it in literary examples.
Source: original body
Source wording: their own dotage, weaknesse, fury
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 10
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Infatuation associated with distorted evaluation of the beloved.
Context: The next proverb imagines a lover seeing a frog as Diana; this is rhetorical blindness.
Source: original body
Source wording: their weaknesse and dotage
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 11
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Delusion arising from abused spiritual practice, contrasted with beneficial temperance and contemplation.
Context: Burton expressly allows a positive spiritual ecstasy before condemning its abuse.
Source: original body
Source wording: a meer dotage, madness
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dotage · local use 12
Printed “dotage” (English; word family).
Delusive experiences attributed to excessive solitude and fasting.
Context: Lavater’s claims reported within Burton’s confessional polemic and mixed natural/demonic account.
Source: original body
Source wording: visions and dotage in this kinde
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 12
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Behave playfully or a little foolishly as permitted recreation, here dancing after the day’s serious activity.
Context: Burton approves Castruccio’s reported answer; may grants permission and a little limits it. The following paragraph requires suitable time, place and circumstances. The preceding Latin states that a wise man hardly ever loses his wits at night, not the same explicit permission.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: he that is wise in the day, may dote a little in the night
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: he who is wise in the daytime may be a little foolish at night
Qualification: Dote a little becomes be a little foolish. May is preserved as permission. Keep this English gloss separate from the preceding Latin qui sapit interdiu, vix unquam noctu desipit.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 13
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Be strongly attracted or attached to another animal, expressly treated as natural within the same kind.
Context: Burton contrasts same-kind animal attachment with his question about cross-species desire. The subsequent bear genealogy is a reported story, and its supposed link to Valentine and Orson is only belike, perhaps.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: naturall for one beast to dote upon another of the same kinde
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: natural for one animal to dote on another of its own kind
Qualification: Dote upon becomes dote on, with the attachment construction retained. The source calls this natural; the verb does not itself imply irrational pathology in this example.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
dotage / dote · dote · local use 14
Printed “dote” (English; word family).
Fall in love, figuratively attributed here to speechless and lifeless things in a poetic catalogue.
Context: Burton explicitly says the preceding tales require poetical faith before turning from these personifications to human responses to beauty. Neither bodily life nor literal mental derangement is asserted of the objects.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: So dumb and dead creatures dote
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Thus speechless and lifeless things fall foolishly in love
Qualification: The single verb dote is expanded to the idiom fall foolishly in love; dumb means speechless and dead here lifeless. The modern phrase expresses the erotic sense, not merely confusion.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
still dotage
Printed “still dotage” (English; phrase).
Quiet or subdued mental derangement; still describes manner, not necessarily permanence.
Context: Rodericus’s definition with Aretaeus; the same sentence says the disturbance comes and goes in fits.
Source: original body
Source wording: a kind of still dotage
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.
tacitum delirium
Printed “tacito delirio” (Latin; phrase).
Quiet delirium: the marginal phrase parallels still dotage and keeps silence distinct from bodily pain.
Context: Original marginal medical description with separately supplied editorial translation.
Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note
Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Cum tacito delirio ac dolore alicujus partis internæ
Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: With quiet delirium and pain in some internal part
Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with supplied editorial translation in the same note container; the translation is not original marginal text.
Notes: Authorities and anecdotes are reported as Burton presents them; no fresh historical-witness collation is claimed.