Democritus Junior to the Reader, page 17

[p. 17]
...as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens...

Edward Bensly notes: "Xenocrates was head of the Academy for twenty-fives years (cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives..., book IV, 2, 11). Burton had been a student of Christ Church for over twenty-one years when he published Anatomy)." (N&Q, 10th ser. vol. II, Dec. 3, 1904, p. 442). In another note Bensly comments again on the same passage: "The first edition [of Anatomy] has: 'that I haue liu'd a silent, solitary, priuate life, mini & musis in the Vniuersity this tuentie yeares, and more, penned vp most part in my study. And though by my profession a Diuine, yet...' Xeoncrates does not appear until the 3rd edition..." (N&Q, 10th ser. vol. VI, Aug. 25, 1906, p. 144).

Somehow, back then, being an "eternal student" wasn't a bad thing!

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... antistat mihi milibus trecentis [lit.: he excels me in 300,000 ways]

[Shilleto: Catullus, ix, 2]

Verani, omnibus e meis amicis
antistans mihi milibus trecentis...

Dear Veranius, of all my close companions
by three hundred miles the foremost...

(trans. Peter Green)

The slight divergences from the original suggest that Burton is quoting from memory!

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... can brag with Jovius,*

* R.B.: Præfat. Hist.

[Paulus] Jovius is Paolo Giovio (1483–1552), an Italian physician, historian, biographer, prelate. The quoted passage does comes from the Preface to his History of My Time: the time Jovius spent in the Papal palaces, along with his prodigious memory, personal acquaintance with everyone who would figure in a sixteenth-century Who's Who, are meant to lend him credibility. The Preface is, in many ways, a piece of self-advertisement. 

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... turbine raptus ingenii, as he* said, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind...

* R.B.: Scaliger

... being carried away by a giddy disposition [trans. Floyd Dell & Paul Jordan-Smith]. 

Reference is again to Jules César Scaliger (1484–1558) and his Exotericæ exercitationes (1582).

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...Lipsius approves and furthers...

Justus Lipsius (aka Joost Lips) (1547–1606) was the father of neo-Stoicism. He was also the author of Politics [Politicorum Libri Sex, 1590] which consisted entirely of centos, or versified text composed entirely of excerpts from other authors -- only prepositions and pronouns were the author's. (I imagine a poetic work or erasure that would leave only the "original" material in that work!) Why Lipsius would appeal to Burton is not hard to see: he is one of the models for the patchwork form of Anatomy...   Here, however, Burton isn't quoting Politics, but Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam [Digest of Stoic Philosophy], 1604, Book III, 8.

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...centum puer artium...

This is from Horace, Ode IV.1, To Venus. I suppose Burton didn't see it necessary to annotate this, as his contemporary readers would have learned Horace by heart at school. 

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