I have encountered the following quote, and would like to know if anyone might know its source?

I read a biography of the 19th Century Anglo-Irish explorer Sir Richard Burton. In it the author mentioned that, after a great achievement (like translating "1001 Nights" or being the first non-Muslim to penetrate Mecca) Burton would feel a loss of purpose and fall into deep depressions that could last for months on end, periods where he would say he was "wrestling with the black dog."

Oscar wilde said there are two tragedies in life one is having an ambition the other is achiveving it

I'm afraid I don't know where the "black dog" quote comes from, but several biographers refer to these "black dog" moods, and I'd like to know more!

Regarding melancholy, it's surprising how often indexes confuse Robert Burton (1577-1640), the author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy", with Sir Richard Burton. Even the British Library postcard showing the title page of "The Anatomy..." bears the caption: "Richard Burton (1577-1640)"! Elsewhere I've come across references to SIR Robert Burton - I'm sure the old fellow would have been delighted to have been knighted!

"Our" Burton was of course familiar with the work of the learned, though rather obscure, Oxford don, and occasionally refers to him - I only wish I had the references to hand.

It also struck me that Burton (i.e. Richard!)may have experienced at least two different types of melancholy:

A/ the "black dog" variety, caused by frustration at lack of recognition / advancement, & at the restraints imposed upon him by tedious work and officialdom. In South America, for example, he finally jacks in his job (consul in Brazil), packs Isabel off to Europe, and lingers on, rather "down & out", like "a black leopard, caged but unforgiving" (to use Wilfrid Blunt's memorable description, from "My Diaries").

B/ a sort of "post-achievement" depression / come-down, rather as in the Wilde aphorism quoted above. Burton himself expresses this very clearly and concisely in "First Footsteps in East Africa", at the beginning of Ch. IX, "A ride to Berberah". Having finally been allowed to leave Harar, the "forbidden city" and ultimate goal of his journey, he immediately feels intense relief:
"a weight of care and anxiety fell from me like a cloak of lead."
However, he at once continues (para 2): "Yet, dear L.,I had time, on the top of my mule for musing upon how melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspires a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories
'Are shadows, not substantial things.'
Truly said the sayer, 'disappointment is the salt of life' - a salutary bitter which strengthens the mind for fresh exertion, and gives a double value to the prize.
This shade of melancholy soon passed away..."

I seem to recall him voicing similar sentiments at the end of his Mecca pilgrimage, but don't have my copy of his "Personal Narrative" to hand.

(Psycho-PS: echoes of the old Classical Latin idea that "Post coitum omne animal triste est" - After sexual intercourse every animal is sad?!?)

While I realize your special interest is Sir Richard Burton, I'm wondering whether you might be able to direct me to anyone familar with Robert Burton's travels in the American West.

Ursula Smith and I have been researching the experiences of the Fort Shaw (Montana)Government Indian Boarding School's girls' "basket ball" team, champions of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Minnie Burton, Lemhi Shoshone, was the daughter of William Burton, a Shoshone-white who was supposedly "kidnapped" by black slave traders and sent to England, where one of his black companions told him he was actually Shoshone and should look up his family back in the United States. At the time he returned, Idaho was still Idaho Territory, and because he had been educated in England (which doesn't exactly match up with the slave kidnap story), he was (according to family lore) adopted by Robert Burton in England, where he became an attorney...he supposedly returned to his people wearing a three-piece suit and polished shoes, whereas those who welcomed him (including his mother, known as Sadie, and his sister, Emma)were wearing their native dress and/or variations thereof. Incidentally, his sister is the one credited with recognizing him, despite his short hair and white-man's clothes, but since he was supposedly only 4 when kidnapped and sent to England, this story, too, may or may not pass muster. There seems to be some validity to the family's story that he returned in white-man's dress, for we've seen a photo in a tiny museum in Salmon, Idaho, that shows William Burton in his suit and the men of the tribe in native dress. Assuming this photo dates back to the 1880s, it's quite possible the family's claim that it was taken shortly after or at the time of his return to find his mother might be accurate.
Tribal census records list Minnie Burton's paternal grandfather as "Robert Burton," born in 1830. But those records do not give Robert Burton's place of birth. There are many other twists and turns in this plot, but suffice it to say that we'd like to know anything you might have to share about a Scotch-English (supposedly) man who was in the American Southwest sometime between 1850 and 1860 or so....we'd appreciate your sharing that info

In ancient superstition a black dog was ever an ill-omen, but its expression as a metaphor for melancholy certainly goes back to Horace's satire, written around 65BC - a modern rendering:

"Then too you cannot spend an hour alone;
No company's more hateful than your own;
You dodge and give yourself the slip; you seek
In bed or in your cups from care to sneak:
In vain: the black dog follows you, and hangs
Close on your flying skirts with hungry fangs"