Democritus Junior to the Reader, page 19

I've always found something very compelling about lists. Cataloguing, collecting, hoarding, piling, compiling, heaping, amassing, enumerating, archiving, reminiscing... are melancholy preoccupations par excellence. "I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method; I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries, with small profit for want of art, order, memory, judgment..." (pp. 17–18). Anatomy of Melancholy might be an attempt to bestow order onto this jumbled mass of knowledge. The sheer quantity of compulsively accumulated items is both the source of melancholy and a pretext for an activity that purports to be its cure.