Democritus Junior

It opens with a long epistle, filling some hundred pages in the modern editions, from Democritus Junior, as the author calls himself, to the reader—an epistle which gives a true foretaste of the character and style of the text, though, unlike that text, it is not scholastically divided.

Ferriar in his Illustrations of Sterne pointed out the enormous indebtedness of Tristram Shandy to Democritus Junior.

Robert Burton, otherwise Democritus Junior, the author of that glorious book The Anatomy of Melancholy, is stated by Wood to have been born at Lindley, in Leicestershire.

In 1621 was issued at Oxford the first edition, a quarto, of The Anatomy of Melancholy ... by Democritus Junior.

Not the least interesting part of the Anatomy is the long preface, "Democritus to the Reader," in which Burton sets out his reasons for writing the treatise and for assuming the name of Democritus Junior.