This is the fourth volume of the Clarendon edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the first of three volumes of Commentary. It contains commentary on the text up to p. 327 of volume one - i.e. The Argument of the Frontispeice, Democritus to the Reader, and Partition 1 as far as the end of Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15: 'Misery of Schollers'.

In his study of morbid psychology as it was understood in his day, Burton cites many other writers. No previous edition of the Anatomy has identified all of these or verified all his quotations. In addition to explanatory notes and translations of all the passages in Latin, this edition attempts to locate all Burton's sources in the actual books he himself owned or to which he probably had access. The last of the three volumes of commentary will contain a Biobibliography listing over 1,500 authorities referred to by Burton, many very obscure, and will give not only bibliographical details but information about the writers.