Analysis reveals the composite source of Pertinax in The Rambler, indicating ties to Burton's work on irreligious sceptics.
This note revises a note in the Clarendon edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy by investigating the ultimately indeterminate provenance of Burton's Latin phrases concerning irreligious sceptics. It will then propose that this very passage in the Anatomy, together with the work's conclusion, forms a composite source for Samuel Johnson's figure of Pertinax in issue 95 of The Rambler.
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EE James (2025) studied this question.
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