From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Despair
désespoir; désespérant
Désespoir names an extreme state; désespérante also names the effect a critic can have on someone else.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDésespoir names an extreme state; désespérante also names the effect a critic can have on someone else.
- In JoubertThe unnamed man who smiles when saying farewell after despair does not prove that suffering was insincere.
- In this editionThe English translation brackets the contextual completions [For] and [turmoil] in the damaged farewell passage and takes dit as narrative present while acknowledging the possible past tense.
- A place to beginDespair gives way to a smile in an unidentified narrative fragment.
- English renderings
- despair; inspires despair
Meaning
Désespoir names an extreme state; désespérante also names the effect a critic can have on someone else.
Use in the book
The unnamed man who smiles when saying farewell after despair does not prove that suffering was insincere. The accompanying sentence denies uninterrupted permanence to both serenity and turmoil. The passage thus records an alternation of states without identifying its subject or episode. The literary comparison concerns a different agency: one criticism encourages beauty and effort, another seems to tell the writer to become nothing. Despair here is induced by a judgment that closes possibilities. Both witnesses resist treating the word as a permanent identity or as a modern clinical diagnosis.
Places to read
- II, p. 777, entry 9, ¶1Despair gives way to a smile in an unidentified narrative fragment.
- II, p. 913, entry 3, ¶1Discouraging criticism is defined by its destructive effect.
Translation in this edition
The English translation brackets the contextual completions [For] and [turmoil] in the damaged farewell passage and takes dit as narrative present while acknowledging the possible past tense. Inspires despair preserves the causative force of désespérante.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, II, pp. 777, 913.
From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Despair
Despair
Despair is the loss or rejection of hope and comfort: withdrawal from a desired good thought unattainable, or distress without expectation of improvement.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDespair is the loss or rejection of hope and comfort: withdrawal from a desired good thought unattainable, or distress without expectation of improvement.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe preliminary poem ends with its darkest voice calling its pain incurable and hating life.
- In this edition“Final and temporal” becomes “final and temporary despair”; the supplied noun states the subject of the elliptical original.
- A place to readThe preliminary poem’s final dark voice and its alternating states
Meaning
Despair is the loss or rejection of hope and comfort: withdrawal from a desired good thought unattainable, or distress without expectation of improvement. Its objects include release, recovery, livelihood, love, pardon and salvation. Burton uses “despair,” “despaire,” “dispair,” “desperation,” “desperate” and “desperately,” with Latin desperatio, desperabundus and forms of despero. A desperate person may be despairing or recklessly bold; desperate malice expresses a judgement of extreme wickedness. A desperate case may appear beyond help, and desperately may intensify a description. These senses are related but not interchangeable. The closing religious discussion selects despair concerning God from this wider vocabulary and distinguishes temporary distress from final despair.
Use in the book
The preliminary poem ends with its darkest voice calling its pain incurable and hating life. This is one side of the poem’s alternating attraction to and revulsion from melancholy, rather than the work’s final verdict. The prose preface places desperation among the passions and vices requiring spiritual physic, while Democritus’s reported speech connects it with frustrated desires. Its political account makes oppression provoke desperate subjects and describes rulers’ affairs as desperate before exile or destruction. The Latin rebus desperatis characterizes their circumstances, not a feeling experienced by “affairs.”
Recklessness is especially important. The preface attacks the false honour given to murderous, “desperate” soldiers while allowing a separate defence of necessary war. The symptom catalogue includes “desperate hairbraines” who lack fear and sorrow. Elsewhere Burton distinguishes some violent people as mad or desperate rather than properly melancholy. In the Atalanta story, suitors “desperatly adventured” their lives expressly in hope of marriage: reckless action need not mean that hope is absent. The religious polemic likewise calls people both secure and desperate, meaning complacent and heedless. Its following English “desperately performed” intensifies a Latin claim about resolute action. These are moral and rhetorical descriptions, not modern diagnoses.
Despair also acquires an allegorical body. In Burton’s adaptation of Lucian’s picture of Wealth, the ruined spendthrift is abandoned to Shame, Reproach and Despair; Sorrow and Grief attend him in the continuation. A different image makes the prodigal resemble a desperately struggling swimmer who drowns his rescuer. The deliberate ruin of helpers belongs to the prodigal’s borrowing and guarantees; the simile does not itself establish that a drowning swimmer intends the rescuer’s death. The phrase “desperate amazement,” meanwhile, describes the overwhelming bewilderment of envy and rivalry, not admiring wonder.
Secular hopelessness has many occasions. Burton describes people condemned to forced labour as without hope of release; loss of money and oppressive poverty can also bring despair. His account sometimes adopts the world’s contemptuous estimate of poverty before reversing it into a praise of adversity. Masters’ cruelty is said to make servants desperate, while debt and litigation add their own burdens. None of these contexts should automatically be recast as unfounded fear of damnation. The claims about foreign labour conditions and social outcomes remain Burton’s reports and judgements.
Bereavement may bring someone “almost” to despair. The case treated by Falloppio includes recovery followed years later by relapse after a fresh loss. Consolation elsewhere tells a widower that he need not “dispair” of another wife, through a gendered argument about finding or teaching a replacement. Poverty is likewise answered through changing fortune and hope, though Burton also acknowledges the beggar’s need for actual assistance. A marginal maxim paradoxically says that someone who can hope for nothing should despair of nothing. It calls for fortitude; it is not simply a command to extinguish hope.
Medical and emotional meanings intersect without becoming identical. The reproductive account attributes despair of life and improvement to unmarried women, nuns and widows; its bodily explanation and conclusion about husbands remain historical, gendered claims. A despairing monk figures in the debate over whether melancholy damages reason as well as imagination. The closing diagnosis later makes a faulty bodily instrument impede the soul’s work without necessarily destroying its capacity.
Burton’s own severe prognosis declares sufferers “past all hope of recovery” and says death alone must ease them. That is an absolute rhetorical assertion, not merely a sufferer’s reported opinion. Yet the next partition begins “Nil desperandum,” we must not despair: even long-established melancholy may admit cure or mitigation, with willingness to accept help expressly required. Between them, his discussion opposes self-inflicted death while allowing compassionate judgement where reason has failed. The tension between the darkest prognosis and the renewed promise of help belongs to the work.
A “desperate case” can test the limits of permitted remedies. Burton asserts that celebrated cures of this kind occur daily and allows that such cures may be done, while attributing the stronger claim that only spells, seals and spiritual medicine can cure these diseases to Paracelsus. He then takes efficacy as a premise for the separate question of lawfulness and rejects consulting witches or wizards even in a desperate case. The white-hellebore discussion uses the same expression for a last resort after other remedies fail; its margins require bodily strength and exclude those at risk of fainting, while the continuation reports contrary advocates of earlier use. Another margin calls patients deploratos, given up as hopeless, before reporting their restoration. These are judgements about outlook, not necessarily reports that the patients themselves despair, and the treatment claims are historical, not present-day instructions.
The physician and patient can occupy different positions. The Damascen-attributed margin permits promises of recovery “etsi ipse desperet,” even if the physician privately despairs. This is a reported medical ethic, not advice to deceive patients. Burton subsequently warns patients themselves against abandoning hope and perseverance. Musical praise similarly claims help for those deemed beyond hope and reports cures of people “desperately melancholy,” meaning severely affected; the wider discussion allows different and sometimes harmful effects upon different listeners.
Love makes the persistence and reversal of hope especially clear. A commentator objects to defining love through hope because people desire things without hope of obtaining them. Myrrha alternately despairs and wishes to attempt her forbidden desire. Burton’s merged Lucian narrative makes a woman recover a lover after despairing of his affection; the Latin margin says she had “almost” despaired, which the English body omits. His account of marriages founded on wealth or lust predicts despair after fleeting pleasure, while people barred from marrying face a “desperate” social dilemma between desire and lost livelihood. These literary, moral and institutional cases have different kinds of authority.
The prognosis of love and jealousy includes despair and particular deaths, often under conditions such as prolonged passion or failure to obtain help. Burton combines dramatic speakers and narrative examples; Chaerea’s distress, for instance, is enlarged by words transferred from other speakers. Platter’s jealous painter’s wife is desperate without a stated suicidal act, unlike a neighbouring merchant’s case. The reported cure of Platter’s lovesick baker and the lover’s “nil desperandum” supply counterweights to fatal outcomes. The regimen for a lover near despair is itself qualified: Burton calls some proposals “mad Physick,” and says that the same recreation may help one person and worsen another.
Religious classification places despair among the defects of love, knowledge, faith and hope, alongside a different extreme of complacency. Excessive fear and insufficient trust can therefore fall under “defect”; the scheme is not a simple scale from little fear to much fear. Burton also names despair as an outcome of what he calls superstition and attributes it to demonic coercion and rigid observance. His accusations against Catholics, Jews and other communities are confessional polemic, not neutral religious descriptions. Earlier he even declares that some carnal people offer no hope of conversion; his later counsel refuses to identify oneself or others as finally rejected.
The formal definition distinguishes fear from despair through expectation. Drawing through Abernethy on Cicero, Burton says that anticipated evil produces fear, while evil regarded as certain produces despair. The adjoining Aquinas-attributed definition makes the qualification crucial: impossibility is “supposed.” A person’s conviction that hope is gone does not establish that recovery or salvation is impossible. Later pastoral argument challenges precisely the certainty of self-condemnation.
In this formal discussion a desperate disposition can even receive qualified praise in war, producing unexpected courage when escape seems impossible. Virgil’s paradox of hoping for no safety belongs to Aeneas addressing his companions at Troy. Burton also describes failed petitions, disappointment with fortune and the proverb “Desperatio facit Monachum,” despair makes the monk. He calls these uses “equivocal, unproper”: broader than the religious sense now selected, not meaningless or false. Zanchi restricts his discussion to despair concerning God, while Musculus lists God, oneself, one’s neighbour and an undertaking as possible objects.
Some writers divide despair into “final and temporal.” The final kind is called incurable and assigned to the reprobate; the temporary kind is “a rejection of hope and comfort for a time,” which may afflict the best of God’s children. Burton says it commonly proceeds from weak faith and, despite its ebbing and flowing, calls it a grievous sin. He separately allows a good despair of one’s own resources when joined to complete reliance on God, then excludes that kind from his present subject. These are historical theological distinctions. They must neither be softened into purely clinical categories nor turned into a judgement that a distressed reader is finally condemned.
The harmful despair selected for discussion is called the soul’s murderer. The sufferer believes death alone will bring relief, but Burton explicitly says the outcome is otherwise. The whole soul and all its faculties are affected: joy, hope, trust and confidence disappear, and fear and sorrow succeed them. A wounded conscience and a mind darkened by black fumes combine moral and bodily language. The symptom chapter’s extreme images, including the veiled face of Agamemnon, confess that representation cannot fully express the suffering. Its unwanted thoughts and convictions of damnation are reported experiences, not proof of settled consent or actual rejection.
The causes join theology, bodily constitution, circumstances and interpretation. The Devil acts by God’s permission, using melancholy humour as an instrument figured as a bath, shoehorn and bait. Many writers make melancholy both cause and symptom of despair. Burton nevertheless insists that the two do not always coincide: much melancholy lacks distress of conscience, while he says melancholy can sometimes suffice to produce it. His claim is stronger than Perkins’s position in the supplied editorial comparison. Loss, illness, solitude and excessive devotion enter the account. Foreest, not Burton, is the first-person physician who reports treating a minister exhausted by fasting and meditation; the nearby Platter cases have their own courses and outcomes.
Preaching and conscience can deepen the suffering. Burton condemns terrifying ministers as well as those who flatter hearers into complacency. The Erasmus margin asks which extreme is worse, while Burton’s English says the terrifying preachers do more harm; elsewhere its “many” becomes “all their auditors” in his body. Bernard’s advice joins judgement with mercy. Conscience is called the greatest cause, but Burton distinguishes serious wrongdoing from magnifying trifles and inventing guilt. The continuation adds a different theological cause: God may try people to humble or strengthen them, a trial distinguished from enticement to sin.
A sudden sarcastic passage claims that no Catholic should ever despair because indulgences supposedly offer unrestricted pardon. It continues into the allegation that confessors can produce and relieve scruples at will, like musicians adjusting strings. This does not cancel Burton’s earlier claim that rigid Catholic observance causes despair, nor does it provide reliable evidence about Catholic doctrine or prevalence of distress. His later recommendation of Catholic writers who offer consolation makes the polemical shift still more conspicuous.
The prognostics include severe generalizations and particular fatal cases attributed to Platter, among them the merchant’s wife and the man in the Rhine. Burton’s “most” is not an established historical frequency, and he then says that multitudes recover. His discussion of salvation permits charitable judgement, distinguishes the force of illness from free will and retains the condition of earlier evidence of regeneration. Medicine and counsel generally work together, although he also reports recovery through medicine alone. Neither the case histories nor the theology warrants saying that every despairing person follows one outcome.
The counsel initially presupposes recipients who have been examined, confessed, humbled and prepared for comfort. Yet Burton immediately acknowledges that most are so overwhelmed that they cannot attend to counsel, pray, believe or repent; help must therefore meet their particular causes and symptoms. Hemmingius’s “two antidotes” includes both good hope, to be embraced, and complacency or presumption, to be rejected as equally harmful as despair. Burton’s apparent contradiction in calling both antidotes remains visible. He reassures through divine mercy and repentance without turning that reassurance into permission for complacency. The phrase “desperata animas” gives life to what is beyond hope: animas is a verb here, not the noun “souls.”
The voice of despair then becomes an objection answered by reassurance. “I cannot hope, pray, repent” belongs to the imagined sufferer. Burton distinguishes felt absence from actual absence of grace, involuntary thoughts from settled consent, and the desire for repentance from its completed act: desire counts as repentance “though not in nature, yet in Gods acceptance.” He extends comfort even to partial assent later rejected and abhorred. The objections and replies retain their particular conditions; they are not one undifferentiated promise.
Misinterpreted election becomes a “rock of despair.” The subsequent doctrinal dispute reports a rival claim that particular election drives everyone to despair; this belongs to Caelius Secundus or the possible impostor named by Burton, not to Burton’s adopted conclusion. His own compressed doctrinal account preserves competing views and insists that only the elect are “apprehended,” taken hold of. Nevertheless he forbids readers to determine who is rejected or to condemn themselves or others, because the invitation is universal and reception may be late. He then cites the Church’s declaration, in his 1633 edition, as a reason to cease speculative dispute.
The final reassurance invokes Job and David, who did not finally despair, and moves from possible recovery to confident pastoral promises. Hidden embers and a clouded sun figure faith not necessarily extinguished; the bodily analogy supplies an argument for renewed powers. The continuation allows frightening sights, sounds and smells to arise from bodily causes, while also retaining demonic agency bounded by God. Mixed causes are said to require mixed remedies. Burton reports proposed remedies, questions or rejects some of them, returns to trust in God, and closes with disclosure to physicians and divines, companionship and occupation. The motto gives hope to the miserable and vigilance to the fortunate, followed by an appeal to repent while healthy. The medical and religious counsel remains his historical argument, not present-day health advice.
Related entries
Sorrow; Fear; Desperate; Hope; Religious melancholy; Faith and assurance; Grace; Salvation; Scruple; Conscience; Prognostics; Melancholy; Love melancholy; Jealousy; Consolation; Music; Physician; Predestination and election; Repentance; Imagination; Solitude; Idleness
Places to read
- Unnumbered preliminary matter, scans 15–16The preliminary poem’s final dark voice and its alternating states
- · paragraph 20–24Spiritual physic and Democritus’s account of frustrated desire
- · paragraph 1–11Reckless warfare, false honour and the qualification concerning necessary war
- · paragraph 12–18Oppression, desperate subjects and rulers’ hopeless affairs
- · paragraph 18–23The despairing monk in the reason-and-imagination dispute
- · paragraph 10–15Despair of life and improvement in historical reproductive medicine
- · paragraph 11–15Desperate amazement as bewilderment amid envy
- · paragraph 24–27Personified Despair and the drowning-swimmer comparison
- [sequence 148–149], 152–153Cruelty to servants and hopeless release from forced labour
- · paragraph 18Bereavement, almost despair, reported recovery and relapse, debt and litigation
- · paragraph 27–29Reckless sufferers, madness distinguished, bodily theories and variable severity
- [misnumbered]; unnumbered Second Partition synopsis [scan 326]; Second Partition opening [scan 327]Absolute hopeless prognosis, the debate on self-inflicted death and renewed hope of treatment
- · paragraph 42–53Magical help rejected; the physician’s private despair and the patient’s perseverance
- · paragraph 13–19Music, those regarded as hopeless, severe melancholy and different effects
- · paragraph 27–31Worldly judgements of poverty, loss and changing fortune
- · paragraph 1–5Actual need, hope in adversity and the paradox of despairing of nothing
- · paragraph 5–9Dispair as a spelling and the gendered consolation of a widower
- · paragraph 36–40The desperate medical case, last resort, contraindications and competing authorities
- · paragraph 51–55Patients given up as hopeless and claims of restoration
- Unnumbered Third Partition synopsis [404–405]Synoptic prognostics and the religious branch’s defect, causes and cures
- · paragraph 39–43Loss of wealth and friendship; desperate malice in a reported moral judgement
- [sequence 446]Love’s definition challenged by desire without hope
- · paragraph 11–14Marriage polemic and a literary lover’s despair, with marginal almost
- · paragraph 74–DJR-128-3Transferred dramatic voices, failed courtship and Myrrha’s oscillating hope
- · paragraph 36–40Reckless risk explicitly undertaken in hope of marriage
- · paragraph 43–49Conditional love prognoses, attributed cases, qualified regimens and reported recovery
- · paragraph 69–71The lover’s encouragement and the desperate institutional dilemma
- · paragraph 1–5Jealousy’s conditional prognosis and distinct fatal and nonfatal despairing cases
- · paragraph 21–25Religious melancholy, bodily predispositions and the classification of despair under defect
- · paragraph 17–21Demonic coercion and despair within Burton’s religious polemic
- · paragraph 44–48Claims that rigid observance produces despair; confessional accusations and prognosis
- · paragraph 28–31Excessive distrust contrasted with reckless complacency and alleged hopeless conversion
- · paragraph 26–43Definitions, military courage, proverbial withdrawal, restricted sense, final and temporary kinds, whole-soul effects
- · paragraph 1–56Divine permission, bodily instruments, melancholy distinguished, reported cases, preaching and conscience
- · paragraph 1–46Trials, anti-Catholic irony, inadequate representation, involuntary thoughts and symptoms
- · paragraph 1–52Severe prognosis, charitable judgement, recovery, pastoral prerequisites, rejected complacency and mercy
- · paragraph 1–55Sufferers’ objections, desire for repentance, unwanted thoughts and the rock of despair
- · paragraph 1–51Election dispute, attributed claims, refusal of self-condemnation and final reassurance
- Bodily and demonic explanations, qualified remedies, counsel, companionship, hope and vigilance
- Unnumbered Tableoriginal retrieval headings for despair’s meanings, causes, symptoms, prognostics and cure; their printed page numbers include unresolved or conflicting destinations and are not silently repaired
In this edition
“Final and temporal” becomes “final and temporary despair”; the supplied noun states the subject of the elliptical original. “Rejection of hope and comfort for a time” remains unchanged. In Platter’s case, “desperate as he was” becomes “in despair”. Temporary clarifies duration, and despair describes the historical condition without supplying a present-day diagnosis. The same adjective’s reckless sense elsewhere requires a different explanation.
The original margin’s “etsi ipse desperet” is rendered “even if one despairs oneself” in its editorial translation. The Latin is the attestation; the English is not Burton’s wording. The dictionary key despero also gathers the finite desperat, contracted pluperfect desperassem, jussive desperet, active participle desperantes and passive participial forms such as desperatis and desperata. Their grammatical roles and local senses remain separate. Desperatio names despair, desperabundus describes someone despairing, diffido expresses distrust, and deploro supplies the passive description of patients given up as hopeless. Phrase keys such as nil desperandum retain their distinct status.
Original marginal wording and supplied editorial explanation must also remain distinct when they disagree in force with the body. The lover’s margin says “almost”; the preachers’ margin says “many” where Burton’s English says “all”; the election-dispute margin speaks of minds where his English says all people. Aquinas’s locator is printed as the second part of the second part, 40.4, while the supplied note identifies the parallel in I–II, question 40, article 4, reply 3. The notes also identify moved literary speeches, uncertain attributions and difficult doctrinal syntax. No fresh collation of those historical witnesses is claimed here, and modernization is not independent primary authority.
antidotes to despair
Printed “Two main Antidotes” (English; phrase).
Two purported opposites of despair: good hope is accepted, while complacency and presumption are rejected as equally harmful.
Context: Burton reports Hemmingius and calls both antidotes despite rejecting the second; this apparent contradiction is retained.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: Two main Antidotes Hemmingius observes opposite to Despair
Modern rendering: Hemmingius identifies two chief antidotes to despair
Word and construction: Antidotes is a remedy metaphor; their opposite ethical values are specified by the following clauses.
Supplied words note: Chief renders main; the modern does not silently change two to one.
combined medicine and counsel
Printed “for the most part” (English; phrase).
Generally, with exceptions, medicine and counsel are required to work together.
Context: Burton reports medicine-only cures before stating that medicine and counsel generally need to cooperate; he then rejects reliance exclusively on either as a general rule.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: But for the most part they must concur
Modern rendering: But generally the two must work together
Supplied words note: The two expands they, referring to medicine and good counsel; generally preserves for the most part.
deploro
Printed “deploratos” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Deploratos is an accusative plural passive participle: patients given up as hopeless, rather than necessarily themselves despairing.
Context: The Mercatus-associated margin claims witnessed restoration through cupping; its first-person witnesses are the cited authority, not Burton or the editor.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: nonnullos præ tensione ventris deploratos illico restitutos his vidimus
Modern rendering: We have seen some people, given up as hopeless because of abdominal distension, immediately restored by these
Word and construction: Deploratos marks the adverse judgement; restitution and speed come from restitutos and illico.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: People makes nonnullos explicit; by these refers to cupping glasses from the context.
desire without hope
Printed “without all hope of attaining” (English; phrase).
Desire can persist when attainment is regarded as hopeless.
Context: The commentator’s objection challenges Arnald’s inclusion of hope in the definition of love; the argument is not an assertion that every desire is hopeless.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: many things we covet and desire, without all hope of attaining
Modern rendering: we covet and desire many things without any hope of attaining them
Word and construction: Without all hope becomes without any hope; the desired things remain the objects of attainment.
Supplied words note: Them makes the understood object of attaining explicit.
despair · despair almost
Printed “despair almost” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Lose or give up hope; almost explicitly limits the approach to that state in Quintilian’s bereavement lament.
Context: Burton describes Quintilian’s lament, not an independently diagnosed case.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: to despair almost
Modern rendering: almost to the point of despair
Supplied words note: Almost is explicit and limits despair; the modern point of articulates the degree approached.
despair · Despaire not
Printed “Despaire not” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Give up hope; here the negative imperative forbids it in a pastoral appeal to the distressed reader.
Context: Burton’s reassurance answers the sufferer’s objection, renewed in the next paragraph.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: Despaire not then
Modern rendering: Do not despair, then
Word and construction: Despaire contributes giving up hope; not supplies the prohibition and then the connective force.
Supplied words note: Then is explicit; English do is the auxiliary required for the negative imperative. The prohibition does not assert that recovery has already happened.
despair · dispair
Printed “dispair” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Give up hope, here of finding or shaping another wife after bereavement.
Context: Burton’s Seneca-attributed reply assumes the husband can teach a replacement wife; its gendered reasoning and the continuation’s disparagement belong to the historical consolation.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: he need not dispair
Modern rendering: He need not despair
Word and construction: Dispair is a spelling of despair; need not is a modal reassurance.
Supplied words note: He is the bereaved husband in the preceding objection; the target of hope is supplied by the full argument.
despair caused by preaching
Printed “all their auditors desperate” (English; phrase).
Cause the hearers to despair, with an explicit universal claim in Burton’s English.
Context: Burton’s Erasmus-attributed English says all; the associated original Latin says multos, many. The stronger quantifier belongs to Burton’s rendering, not the Latin attestation.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: they make all their auditors desperate
Modern rendering: They drive all their hearers to despair
Word and construction: Desperate is a resulting state; make becomes drive to, and auditors means hearers.
Supplied words note: All is explicit, not supplied by the modern. The Latin difference must remain visible.
despair in the election dispute
Printed “apt to draw all men to desperation” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: apt to draw all men to desperation
Likely or fitted to drive people to despair: a hostile assessment of particular election and reprobation within a reported dispute.
Context: The assessment belongs to Caelius Secundus or the possible impostor Burton has just named, not Burton’s endorsed conclusion. Burton rejects the rival inference and cites counterarguments.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: apt to drive everyone to despair
Word and construction: Apt marks tendency, not an established universal outcome; all men intensifies the margin’s animos, minds.
Supplied words note: Everyone renders all men. Neither all nor an empirical causal demonstration is present in the marginal Latin.
despair of God
Printed “desperare solent homines de deo” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: desperare solent homines de deo
People commonly despair of God: the specific object of the restricted religious use.
Context: The original marginal quotation is attributed to Zanchi, whose own I limits the scope of his discussion.
Source: original marginal quotation
Modern rendering: people commonly despair of God
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: People renders homines; commonly is the habitual force of solent; God is the stated object de deo.
Despair personified
Printed “Shame, Reproach, Despair” (English; phrase).
Despair as a personified attendant of the ruined and rejected spendthrift.
Context: Burton adapts Lucian’s picture of Wealth from salaried dependence to prodigality; this is an allegorical figure.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: left to Shame, Reproach, Despair
Modern rendering: left there to Shame, Reproach and Despair
Word and construction: The coordinated personifications are aligned; despair retains its hopelessness sense while acting as a figure in the image.
Supplied words note: There clarifies the location after expulsion; and supplies the final conjunction.
desperabundus · local use 1
Printed “desperabundus” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Despairing: describing Mersenne’s distressed acquaintance.
Context: The original marginal first-person witness is Mersenne; the blasphemous questions in the body belong to his friend, not Burton.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: desperabundus quidam
Modern rendering: A certain despairing man
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Man makes the masculine substantive quidam explicit; despairing renders the adjective desperabundus.
desperabundus · local use 2
Printed “desperabundus” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Despairing: a nominative singular adjective describing the merchant in one reported violent case.
Context: The case is one of Platter’s examples. The adjacent painter’s wife is also called desperate without a reported suicidal act; the adjective alone does not entail that outcome.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: inde desperabundus ex alto se præcipitavit
Modern rendering: then in despair threw himself from a height
Word and construction: Desperabundus supplies the state in despair; the action and its means belong to the rest of the sentence.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Then renders inde; himself is explicit in se.
desperate · grew desperate
Printed “grew desperate” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: grew desperate
Despairing or without hope; grew marks entry into the state, within a reported course of recovery and later relapse.
Context: Burton reports Trincavelli’s account and Falloppio’s cure.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: fell into despair
Supplied words note: Grew marks entry into the state, rendered fell into; the full narrative supplies the patient and bereavement.
desperate · desperate hairbraines
Printed “desperate hairbraines” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: desperate hairbraines
Reckless or audacious, modifying hairbraines; the people are described as free of fear and sorrow.
Context: Burton presents a contrasting subset, not a property of all melancholy sufferers.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: desperate, reckless people
Word and construction: Desperate contributes reckless audacity; hairbraines supplies the people described. The complete phrase is aligned.
Supplied words note: People expands the substantive hairbraines. Reckless is the local sense of desperate, while the whole phrase describes rash people.
desperate
Printed “desperate” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: desperate
Despairing in love, in a case Burton reports as subsequently cured.
Context: Platter is the reported clinician and the baker the patient; no independent confirmation of the cure.
Source: original body
Supplied words note: No lexical material is added in this single-word alignment; the surrounding case identifies the lovesick baker.
desperate · desperate as he was
Printed “desperate as he was” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: desperate as he was
In a state of despair in a particular reported fatal case.
Context: Burton attributes the case of the man in the Rhine to Platter; it is not an outcome for every sufferer.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: in despair
Supplied words note: The modern suppresses the incidental as he was while preserving the state; the man is identified by the preceding case narrative.
desperate · desperate malice
Printed “desperate malice” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Extremely wicked or recklessly hardened, modifying malice rather than naming sadness.
Context: Burton attributes a counterfactual judgement of Jerusalem’s destruction to Josephus and then applies the warning to his own society.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: their desperate malice, wickedness and peevishness was such
Modern rendering: such was their desperate malice, wickedness and perversity
Word and construction: Desperate intensifies or characterizes malice; the other two nouns are separate accusations.
Supplied words note: Perversity renders peevishness. The threatened divine destruction is a reported moral interpretation.
desperate · so secure, so desperate
Printed “so secure, so desperate” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: so secure, so desperate
Recklessly heedless of judgement, paired with spiritual complacency.
Context: This is Burton’s hostile portrayal of impious people, contrasted within the same subsection with excessively fearful people who despair of mercy.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: so complacent, so reckless
Word and construction: Desperate supplies reckless; secure supplies complacent. The coordinated adjectives must not be collapsed into one emotion.
Supplied words note: So is repeated in both columns; no lack of hope is separately asserted by this phrase.
desperate amazement
Printed “desperate amazement” (English; phrase).
Overwhelming or despairing bewilderment and consternation in the passions arising from envy.
Context: Burton expands the adjacent Latin full of consternation into an English account of destructive envy and rivalry.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: affections full of desperate amazement
Modern rendering: emotions filled with desperate bewilderment
Word and construction: Amazement means bewilderment, not admiration; desperate intensifies the distressed state.
Supplied words note: Emotions modernizes affections; the Latin does not contain a separate word corresponding exactly to desperate.
desperate case · in a desperate case · local use 1
Printed “in a desperate case” (English; phrase).
A condition apparently beyond ordinary help, used to test whether seeking magical help would be lawful.
Context: Burton has asserted daily cures and allowed that such cures may be done (067-44–45); the exclusive need for spiritual means is Paracelsus’s claim. Hoc posito now takes efficacy as a premise for the separate question of lawfulness, and Burton ultimately rejects resort to witches or wizards; the question is not permission.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: whether it be lawfull in a desperate case, to crave their help
Modern rendering: whether, in a desperate case, it is lawful to ask for their help
Word and construction: The phrase describes the severity of the case, not necessarily the sufferer’s emotional conviction.
Supplied words note: Their refers to the proposed magical helpers; assuming efficacy comes from the opening Hoc posito.
desperate case · in a desperate case · local use 2
Printed “in a desperate case” (English; phrase).
A severe medical case in which other remedies have failed, giving the rhetorical setting for a last resort.
Context: The white-hellebore discussion reports disputed historical practice. The margins require continuing bodily strength and exclude fainting risk; the next paragraph also reports advocates of early use.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: when other helps fail in inveterate melancholy, in a desperate case
Modern rendering: When other remedies fail in long-established melancholy, in a desperate case
Word and construction: Desperate describes the case’s outlook; inveterate means long-established and is a separate qualification.
Supplied words note: Remedies explains helps. The phrase is contextual description, not a present-day instruction.
desperate case · their case is desperate
Printed “their case is desperate” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: their case is desperate
A predicament represented as offering ruinous alternatives: marriage forfeits livelihood, while celibacy prolongs frustrated desire.
Context: Burton attacks restrictive rules but explicitly concedes that some have a formal free choice to marry; the wolf-by-the-ears and horns images mark a dilemma.
Source: original body
Word and construction: Case means predicament, not necessarily a medical case; desperate describes its apparent lack of a safe escape.
Supplied words note: Their refers to people subject to the marriage restrictions just listed, not all unmarried people.
desperate humour
Printed “desperate humor” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: desperate humor
A disposition arising from hopelessness that may produce extraordinary courage.
Context: Burton allows qualified praise in war, before narrowing his subject to religious despair.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: desperate disposition
Supplied words note: Disposition renders humor here; no particular bodily fluid is named by the aligned phrase.
desperately · desperately swimming
Printed “desperately swimming” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Frantically or in a desperate struggle for survival, in the drowning-swimmer comparison.
Context: The swimmer illustrates how prodigals ruin helpers through debts. The following willingly describes the prodigals, not necessarily a swimmer’s deliberate intention.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: as a man desperately swimming drowns him that comes to help him
Modern rendering: As a desperate swimmer drowns the person who comes to help him
Word and construction: The modern recasts adverb plus swimming as adjective plus swimmer; the whole simile is aligned.
Supplied words note: Person explains him; swimmer derives from man swimming.
desperately · desperately melancholy
Printed “desperately melancholy” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
To an extreme or severe degree, modifying melancholy in a reported musical cure.
Context: Jason Pratensis supplies the examples of Clinias and Empedocles; some is explicit and does not cover every sufferer.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: cured some desperately melancholy, & some mad
Modern rendering: curing some who were desperately melancholy and others who were mad
Word and construction: Desperately marks degree; cured and the two classes belong to the larger phrase.
Supplied words note: Who were supplies the relation of the adjective to some; others makes the second some distinct.
desperately · desperatly adventured
Printed “desperatly adventured” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Recklessly or with extreme daring, risking life while still hoping to obtain marriage.
Context: Burton recounts the mythical Atalanta contest; the explicit hope of marriage shows that this reckless sense need not mean absence of hope.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: desperatly adventured their dearest blood for Atalanta
Modern rendering: recklessly risked their precious lives for Atalanta
Word and construction: Desperatly contributes recklessly; adventured contributes risked, and blood stands for lives.
Supplied words note: Lives renders the metonymic blood; precious explains dearest.
desperately · as desperately performed
Printed “as desperately performed” (English; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Recklessly or with determined disregard for restraint in carrying out wicked actions.
Context: Burton’s moral paraphrase intensifies the preceding Latin fortiter executi, resolutely carried out; fortiter is not a form of despero.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: but as desperately performed
Modern rendering: carried out with as much recklessness
Word and construction: The English adverb supplies recklessness; the Latin comparison describes resolve rather than lexical despair.
Supplied words note: As much articulates the as comparison; the attempted wickedness is supplied by the full sentence.
desperatio · Desperatio facit Monachum
Printed “Desperatio facit Monachum” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Desperatio facit Monachum
Despair or loss of hope, the grammatical subject of makes in the proverb about becoming a monk. The wider saying connects withdrawal with frustrated worldly hopes.
Context: Burton calls this a saying, before excluding such broad uses from the strict sense selected.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: Despair makes the monk
Word and construction: Desperatio means despair; becoming a monk belongs to facit Monachum, not to the noun alone.
Supplied words note: Despair renders Desperatio, makes renders facit, and the monk renders Monachum; the proverb supplies the causal claim.
desperatio · in desperationem trahunt
Printed “in desperationem trahunt” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: in desperationem trahunt
Despair or loss of hope: desperationem is accusative after in, marking the state into which the mind is dragged.
Context: Erasmus’s marginal quotation balances terrifying and flattering preachers; the body’s greater-harm comparison is stronger.
Source: original marginal quotation
Modern rendering: drag it into despair
Word and construction: Desperationem contributes despair, in marks entry into that state, and trahunt supplies drag. The complete construction is aligned.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: It supplies mentem, the mind named earlier in the same marginal quotation. Drag comes from trahunt; despair from desperationem.
desperatio · cum summa vitæ & rerum meliorum desperatione
Printed “cum summa vitæ & rerum meliorum desperatione” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: cum summa vitæ & rerum meliorum desperatione
Loss of hope: ablative desperatione is intensified by summa and has life and better circumstances as its objects.
Context: Mercado and Castro are cited for a historical reproductive account of unmarried women, nuns and widows; Burton’s conclusion about husbands is a gendered causal claim.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: utterly despairing of life and any improvement
Word and construction: The modern recasts the noun phrase with despairing; summa supplies the maximum degree, and the genitives specify its objects.
Supplied words note: Any improvement explains rerum meliorum, better things or circumstances; utterly renders summa.
desperation
Printed “desperation” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Distress without hope or expectation of improvement.
Context: The definition is attributed through Abernethy to Cicero; a reported distinction separates holy and unholy kinds.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: There be many kinds of desperation
Modern rendering: There are many kinds of despair
Supplied words note: Kinds is explicit; despair modernizes desperation without importing the narrower salvation sense into every kind.
desperation · Desperation
Printed “Desperation” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Despair produced by preaching judgement alone without mercy.
Context: Burton’s Bernard citation contrasts despair with complacency; the Latin qualifies the latter as caused by a misleading display of mercy.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: the one alone brings Desperation, the other security
Modern rendering: one alone brings despair, the other complacency
Supplied words note: The one and the other resume judgement and mercy in the preceding sentence; complacency explains security.
despero · etsi ipse desperet
Printed “etsi ipse desperet” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: etsi ipse desperet
Despair or lose hope: desperet is third-person singular present subjunctive in an even-if clause about the physician’s own expectation of recovery.
Context: Original marginal advice attributed to Damascen permits assurances despite the physician’s despair; historical report.
Source: original marginal quotation
Modern rendering: even if one despairs oneself
Word and construction: Desperet contributes despairs; etsi contributes even if, and ipse emphasizes the physician himself. The complete clause is aligned.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: One and oneself render the personal force of ipse and the verb; the physician is the contextual referent, not an explicit noun in this fragment.
despero · rebus desperatis
Printed “rebus desperatis” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: rebus desperatis
Desperatis is an ablative plural passive participial adjective: affairs have become hopeless or ruined, rather than themselves feeling despair.
Context: The Botero-attributed margin describes rulers’ ruin and exile; the collective catalogue does not establish the same fate for every named ruler.
Source: original marginal quotation
Modern rendering: when affairs are desperate
Word and construction: Rebus names the affairs; desperatis characterizes them as hopeless in an ablative absolute.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: When articulates the circumstantial construction; affairs renders rebus.
despero · desperatis
Printed “desperatis” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Desperatis is a substantival dative plural passive participial adjective: people regarded as beyond hope, who receive help.
Context: A marginal verse praises musical relief; the surrounding account attributes different effects to different listeners.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: Et desperatis conciliavit opem
Modern rendering: and brought help to those beyond hope
Word and construction: Desperatis supplies the recipients beyond hope; opem supplies help and conciliavit its provision.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Those makes the substantival adjective explicit; beyond hope does not establish actual incurability.
despero · desperet nihil
Printed “desperet nihil” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Desperet is a third-person singular present subjunctive used as a counsel: let the person despair of nothing.
Context: The second maxim shares a note container with a Valerius citation but has no separate attribution; its paradox supports fortitude in adversity.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: Qui nil potest sperare, desperet nihil
Modern rendering: Whoever can hope for nothing should despair of nothing
Word and construction: The balanced nil/nihil clauses oppose hope and despair; the sentence does not simply recommend abandoning all hope.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Should expresses the jussive force; whoever renders qui.
despero · fere de illo desperassem
Printed “fere de illo desperassem” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: phrase.
Desperassem is a contracted first-person singular pluperfect subjunctive: having almost given up hope concerning the lover.
Context: The first person belongs to the literary speaker in Burton’s merged Lucian narrative. The margin says almost, which his English body omits.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: cum fere de illo desperassem
Modern rendering: when I had almost despaired of him
Word and construction: Fere supplies almost; de illo names the man about whom hope is failing; the finite verb supplies I had despaired.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: Him renders illo. The body’s his love explains the relation but is not an explicit noun in this Latin phrase.
despero · desperat
Printed “desperat” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Desperat is third-person singular present: she gives up hope, alternating with renewed desire to attempt the forbidden act.
Context: Ovid’s Myrrha is the literary subject, in a struggle against incestuous desire; the verse is not a settled account of Burton’s own state.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: Et modo desperat, modo vult tentare
Modern rendering: Now despairs, now wishes to attempt them
Word and construction: Desperat supplies despairs; the paired modo clauses supply alternation and vult tentare renewed intention.
Supplied words note: She is carried from the preceding verse; them supplies the desires or acts already in question.
despero · desperantes
Printed “desperantes” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Desperantes is a nominative plural present active participle: despairing people performing the stated action.
Context: The marginal prognosis is attached to the Arnoldus/Valescus discussion, whose body repeatedly conditions severe outcomes on failure to help. It does not establish every lover’s fate.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: sibi ipsis desperantes mortem afferunt
Modern rendering: despairing, bring death upon themselves
Word and construction: Desperantes supplies despairing; death and its agency are expressed by the rest of the clause.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: The understood they is inherited from the preceding prediction; themselves renders sibi ipsis.
despero · desperata
Printed “desperata” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Desperata is a substantival neuter plural passive participial adjective: things regarded as hopeless, restored to life in a spiritual metaphor.
Context: The margin’s second-person praise continues the repentance argument, with a provisional Isidore attribution. Burton’s body expands it into what was desperately dying.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: desperata animas
Modern rendering: give life to what is beyond hope
Word and construction: Desperata supplies what is beyond hope; animas is the verb give life, not the noun souls.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: The subject you is carried from the opening of the English sentence and encoded by second-person animas; what makes the neuter plural substantive idiomatic in English.
Also find under: animas (exact attested component; Latin second-person singular verb; you give life, not the plural noun souls); give life (English component meaning; Latin second-person singular verb; you give life, not the plural noun souls)
diffido
Printed “diffidit” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Distrust or lack confidence in: diffidit is third-person singular present, with divine mercy as its object.
Context: The Augustine-attributed margin calls such distrust an injury to God. This is a theological judgement, not a description of ordinary caution or self-confidence.
Source: original marginal quotation
Source wording, Original wording: qui diffidit de ejus misericordia
Modern rendering: One who distrusts his mercy
Word and construction: Diffidit supplies distrusts; the object comes from de ejus misericordia.
Edition note: checked against supplied editorial translation within Burton-labelled note; translation is not original Burton wording
Supplied words note: One who renders qui; his refers to God, expressly named earlier in the same sentence.
equivocal and unproper
Printed “equivocal, unproper” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: equivocal, unproper
Broader uses outside the restricted theological sense now being chosen.
Context: Burton introduces Zanchi’s focus on despair concerning God; these words do not invalidate the secular examples.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: broader, less precise uses of the word
Supplied words note: Uses of the word makes the understood reference to desperation explicit; broader and less precise explain the classificatory adjectives.
ex vi morbi
Printed “ex vi morbi” (Latin; phrase).
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: ex vi morbi
Under the force of illness, qualifying the act’s voluntariness.
Context: Burton urges favourable judgement with the explicit condition of earlier evidence of regeneration.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: under the force of illness
Supplied words note: Illness renders morbi; English the marks the contextually identified malady. No particular modern diagnosis is supplied.
final and temporary despair
Printed “final and temporal” (English; phrase).
Citation key, Modern rendering: final and temporary despair
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: final and temporal
Despair persisting to the end versus despair lasting for a time.
Context: Burton reports some writers’ division: the final kind is called incurable and assigned to reprobates, while the temporary kind may affect the best believers. Later counsel forbids readers to infer their own final rejection from present distress.
Source: original body
Word and construction: The supplied modern noun despair makes the elliptical original subject explicit; temporal here concerns duration.
Supplied words note: Despair is supplied from the governing subject. Temporal means temporary, not worldly or secular.
final despair
Printed “finally despaire” (English; phrase).
Persist in despair to the end, expressly denied of Job and David.
Context: Their suffering is used pastorally to distinguish affliction from final abandonment of hope.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: yet neither Job nor David did finally despaire
Modern rendering: Yet neither Job nor David finally despaired
Supplied words note: Neither and nor are explicit, and the modern preserves both negations and the final-duration qualification.
holy despair
Printed “despair of our own means” (English; phrase).
Abandon reliance on one’s own resources while relying wholly on God.
Context: Zanchi’s acceptable kind is explicitly excluded from the harmful despair treated here.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: we despair of our own means, and rely wholy upon God
Modern rendering: we lose confidence in our own resources and rely wholly upon God
Supplied words note: Resources explains means; reliance wholly on God is a separate coordinated action, not meaning contained in despair alone.
hope and vigilance
Printed “SPERATE MISERI, CAVETE FŒLICES.” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: SPERATE MISERI, CAVETE FŒLICES.
A balanced closing exhortation: the miserable are called to hope and the fortunate to vigilance.
Context: Burton’s concluding motto addresses opposite conditions; it is followed by an Augustine-attributed appeal to repent while healthy.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: Have hope, you who are miserable; Be on your guard, you who are fortunate.
Word and construction: Sperate and cavete are second-person plural imperatives; miseri and fœlices identify the people addressed. This is a phrase key, not a dictionary lemma for either verb.
Supplied words note: You who makes the substantival vocatives explicit; fortunate is the contextual sense of fœlices.
melancholy and despair
Printed “do not alwaies concur” (English; phrase).
Melancholy and despair often coincide but need not do so.
Context: Burton distinguishes them and then permits melancholy sometimes to cause terror of conscience.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: melancholy and despaire though often, do not alwaies concur
Modern rendering: although melancholy and despair often occur together, they do not always do so
Supplied words note: Although articulates though; often and not always are both explicit and must remain together.
mixed remedies
Printed “mixt diseases must have mixt remedies” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: mixt diseases must have mixt remedies
Remedies appropriate to the combination of bodily and spiritual causes posited for distress.
Context: Burton permits medicine as God’s instrument after allowing both natural misperception and bounded demonic agency. His later catalogue contains conditional reports and explicit rejections, not a single endorsed regimen.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: diseases with mixed causes must have mixed remedies
Word and construction: Mixed causes explains mixt diseases in the immediate causal argument; must is the original normative claim.
Supplied words note: Causes is supplied from the preceding statement that the devil works through humours.
nil desperandum · Nil desperandum
Printed “Nil desperandum” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: Nil desperandum
We must not despair: hope of cure or at least mitigation of long-established melancholy.
Context: Burton’s opening encouragement includes degrees of benefit and willingness to accept help.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: We must not despair
Supplied words note: We is supplied for the impersonal gerundive construction; the prohibition is not a guarantee that every patient will recover.
nil desperandum
Printed “nil desperandum” (Latin; phrase).
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: nil desperandum
Do not abandon hope of success in love.
Context: Burton encourages a discouraged lover and reuses Virgil’s bitter rejected-lover line as encouragement.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: Never despair
Supplied words note: Never is the idiomatic force assigned to nil in the negative exhortation; success in love is the contextual object of hope.
past hope of recovery
Printed “past all hope of recovery” (English; phrase).
Presented as wholly beyond recovery, in an absolute rhetorical description of severe melancholy.
Context: This is Burton’s own strong assertion within the comparison of bodily and mental suffering, not merely a patient’s belief. His next partition reopens hope of cure or mitigation.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: past all hope of recovery, incurably sick
Modern rendering: beyond all hope of recovery, incurably ill
Word and construction: Past means beyond; the two expressions reinforce hopeless prognosis.
Supplied words note: Ill modernizes sick; all is explicit and must not be weakened into some.
privation
Printed “privation” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Absence or deprivation; here the loss of joy, hope, trust, confidence and present and future good is predicated of the whole soul.
Context: Burton assigns the whole soul and all its faculties as the affected part, with fear and sorrow succeeding.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: there is a privation of joy, hope, trust, confidence, of present and future good
Modern rendering: Joy, hope, trust, confidence, and present and future good are lost
Word and construction: The full coordination is aligned; the modern verb are lost renders the privation construction, with no single-word equivalence claimed.
Supplied words note: The modern recasts privation as are lost and carries the full coordinated list into its subject; it does not add an emotion or diagnosis.
rock of despair
Printed “rock of despair” (English; phrase).
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: rock of despair
A destructive obstacle in a nautical image for misinterpreted predestination and self-condemnation.
Context: The people construct fatal interpretations; the next question challenges their certainty that they are rejected.
Source: original body
Supplied words note: The rock is a nautical metaphor; the shipwreck action appears in the surrounding sentence, not in the noun alone.
sarcastic denial of despair
Printed “why a Papist at any time should despaire” (English; phrase).
A sarcastic denial of any reason for Catholic despair, used to attack indulgences and religious manipulation.
Context: The first person is Burton’s polemical voice. The statement is neither neutral Catholic doctrine nor evidence that Catholics do not experience despair; earlier he alleges the reverse.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: I see no reason at all why a Papist at any time should despaire
Modern rendering: I see no reason at all why a Papist should ever despair
Word and construction: The full negative claim is aligned; no reason and at any time supply its sweeping force.
Supplied words note: Ever renders at any time. Papist remains Burton’s partisan term.
supposed impossibility
Printed “propter impossibilitatem existimatam” (Latin; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: propter impossibilitatem existimatam
Because attainment is thought impossible: the judgement belongs to the despairing person.
Context: Burton quotes a definition attributed to Aquinas; supposed impossibility is not established impossibility.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: because it is thought impossible
Supplied words note: It refers to attaining the desired good in the preceding definition; thought renders existimatam and preserves subjective judgement.
temporary despair
Printed “rejection of hope and comfort for a time” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: rejection of hope and comfort for a time
The temporary suspension or loss of hope and consolation.
Context: This is expressly temporary and may befall the best of God’s children.
Source: original body
Supplied words note: The wording is unchanged; for a time is an explicit temporal limit.
without hope of release
Printed “without all hope of delivery” (English; phrase).
Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: without all hope of delivery
Without expectation of release from forced labour or captivity.
Context: Burton condemns harsh taskmasters and reports enslaved miners’ suffering; the numbers and mining account remain attributed and unverified.
Source: original body
Modern rendering: without any hope of release
Word and construction: All after without is rendered any; delivery means release, not childbirth.
Supplied words note: No new agent of release is supplied.