LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY ANN GUEST THE WORKS SIR THOMAS BROWNE EDITED BY SIMON WILKIN, F.L.S. VOLUME I. CONTAINING FOUR BOOKS OF VULGAR ERRORS, LONDON : GEOEGE BELL AND SONS, YOEK STREET COVENT GARDEN. 1890. LONDON; PBINIBD Br WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS. LIMITEH STASIFUUD STaGET AND OUAItlNd UKOSS. ?R A\ 1888 LIBRARY UMVERSITV Oi' tlALIFORNlA' BAiN 1 A BAilJJARA CONTENTS TO VOL. I. Preface. page Dr. Johnson's Life of Sir Thomas Browne ix Supplementary Memoir by the Editor xxxvii Mrs. Lyttleton's Communication to Bishop Kennet . . Ixviii PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA, Books I. to IV. Editor's Preface Ixxi (The Author) to the Reader 1 The First Book ; containing the general part. Chap. 1. Of the first cause of common errors ; the common infirmity of human nature 7 Chap. 2. A further illustration of the same 12 Chap. 3. Of the second cause of common errors ; the erroneous disposition of the people 16 Chap. 4. Of the more immediate causes of common errors, both in the wiser and common sort ; and first, of misappre- hension and fallacy, or false deduction 26 Chap. 5. Of other more immediate causes of error : viz. credulity and supinity 33 Chap. 6. Of another more immediate cause of error : viz. obstinate adherence unto antiquity 39 Chap. 7. Of another of the more immediate causes of error : viz. adherence unto authority 51 Chap. 8. Of authors who have most promoted popular conceit . 59 Chap. 9. Of others indirectly effecting the same "ti Chap. 10. Of the last and great promoter of false opinions, the endeavours of Satan 75 Chap. 11. A farther illustration of the same 86 The Second Book ; beginning the particular part. Of popular and received tenets concerning mineral and vegetable bodies. ''^hap. 1, That crj-stal is nothing else but ice "trongly congealed , 94 Chap. 2. Concerning the loadstone ; of things po.iicularly spoken thereof, evidently or probably tnie ... 112 CONTEKTS. PAGE Chap. 3. Concerning the loadstone ; a rejection of sundry common opinions and relations thereof ; natural, medical, his- torical, magical 133 Chap. 4. Of bodies electrical 157 Chap. 5. Compendiously of sundry other common tenets concern- ing minerals and terreous bodies, which, examined, prove either false or dubious. That a diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat ; that glass is poison, and that it is malleable ; of the cordial quaUty of gold ; that a pot full of ashes will contain as much water as it would withoul; them ; of white powder that kills without report ; that coral is soft under water, but hardeneth in the air ; that porcelain lies under the earth an hundred years in preparation ; that a carbuncle gives a light in the dark ; of the eagle stone; of foiry stones ; with some others . . . .166 Chap. 6. Of sundry tenets concerning vegetables or plants, which, examined, prove either false or dubious. Of man- drakes ; that cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, are but the parts or fruits of the same tree ; that miseltoe is bred upon trees, from seeds which birds let fall thereon ; of the rose of Jericho, that flowereth every year upon Christmas Eve ; of Glastonbury thorn ; that Sferra Cavallo hath a power to break or loosen iron ; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder ; that bitter almonds are preservatives against ebriety 192 Chap. 7. Of some insects and the properties of several plants. Of the death-watch ; the presages drawn from oak- apple insects ; whether all plants have seeds ; whether the sap of trees runs to the ground in winter ; of the effects of camphor ; with many others 210 The Thibd Book ; the partkidar part continued. Of popular and received tenets concerning animals. Chap. 1. That an elephant hath no joints, &c 220 Chap. 2. That the horse hath no gall 232 Chap. 3. That a pigeon hath no gall 235 Chap. 4. That a beaver, to escape the hunter, bites off his testicles or stones 240 Chap. 5. That a badger hatli the legs of one side shorter than of the other 245 Chap. 6. That a bear brings forth her cubs informous or unshaped 247 Chap. 7. Of the basilisk 250 Chap. 8. That a wolf first seeing a man begets a dumbness in him 261 Chap. 9. Of the long life of the deer 262 Chap. 10. Th.at a kingfisher, hanged by the bill, showeth where the wind lay 270 Chap. 11. Of griffins 273 CONTENTS. PAGB Chill :2. Ofthe phcenix 276 Chaj 13. Of frogs, toads, aid toad-stone 284 Chap, 14. That a salainaiid<:r lives in the fire 291 Chap. 15. Of the araphisbana 294 Chap. 16. That young vipt rs force their way through the bowels of their dam 297 Chap. 17. That hares are both male and female 305 Chap. 18. That moles are blind 312 Chap. 19. That lampreys lave many eyes 316 Chap. 20. That snails have no eyes 318 Chap. 21. That the chamrleon lives only upon air 321 Chap. 22. That the ostrici digesteth iron 334 Chap. 23. Of the unicorn's horn 337 Chap. 24. That all animals of the land are in their kind in the sea 344 Chap. 25. Concerning the common course of our diet, in making choice of some animals and abstaining from eating others 346 Chap. 26. Of the spermaceti whale 353 Chap. 27. Compendiously, of the musical note of swans before their death ; that the fle.sh of peacocks corrupteth not ; that they are ashamed r>f th=Jr legs : that storks will only live in republicks and fi-ee states ; of the noise of a bittern by putting the bill iu a reed ; that whelps are blind nine 'E. XI turned his studies to pbysick, and practised it for some time in Oxfordshire;* but soon afterwards, either induced by curiosity, or invited by promises, he quitted his settlement, and accom- panied his fa"ther-in-la\v,t who had some employment in Ireland, in a visitation of the forts and castles, which the state of Ireland then made necessary. He that has once prevailed on himself to break his connexions of acquaintance, and begin a wandering life, very easily continues it. Ireland had, at that time, very little to offer to the observa- tion of a man of letters : he therefore passed into France and Italy jij; made some stay at Montpellier and Padua, which were then the celebrated schools of physick ; and returning home through Holland, procured himself to be created doctor of physick at Leyden.'' When he began his travels, or when he concluded them, there is no certain account ; ' nor do there remain any observations made by him in his passage through those countries which he visited. To consider, therefore, what pleasure or instruction might have been received from the remarks of a man so curious and diligent, wovdd be voluntarily to indulge a painful reflection, and load the imagination with awish, which, while it is formed, is known to be vain. It is, however, to be lamented, that those who are most capable of improving mankind, very frequently neglect to communicate their knowledge ; either because it is more pleasing to gather ideas than to impart them, or because to minds naturally great, few things appear of so much importance as to deserve the notice of the pubUck. About the year 1634,§ he is supposed to have returned to London ; and the next year to have written his celebrated treatise, called Religio Medici,'^ " the religion of a physician," || which he * Wood's Athence Oxonienses, vol. i. col. 713. t Life, truthJ] His willingness to take pains to disprove e\CL the most absurd febles, is well evinced in his chapter Ow tlte Thi' S LIFE OF was, surely, plausible, even before it was confirmed by later observations. The reputation of Browne encouraged some low writer to publish, under his name, a book called •' Nature's Cabinet Unlocked;"* translated, according to Wood, from the physicks of Magrrus ; of which Browne took care to clear himself, by modestly advertising, that " if any man had been benefited by it, he was not so ambitious as to challenge the honour thereof, as having no hand in that work."t In 1658 the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occasion to write Hydriotaphia, Urnburial, or a Discourse of Sepulchral Urns, in which he treats with his usual learning on the funeral rites of the ancient nations ; exhibits their various treatment of the dead ; and examines the substances found in his Norfolcian urns. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. It is scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars he has amassed together, ill a treatise which seems to have been occasionally written ; and for which, therefore, no materials could have been pre- viously collected. It is, indeed, like other treatises of antiquity, rather for curiosity than use ; for it is of small importance to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them into the sea, or which gave them to birds and beasts ; when the practice of cremation began, or when it was disused ; whether the bones of diiferent persons were mingled in the same urn ; what oblations were thrown into the pyre ; or how the ashes of the body were distinguished from those of other substances. Of the uselessness of all these enquiries, Browne seems not to have been ignorant ; and, therefore, con- cludes them with an observation which can never be too fre- quently recollected. " All or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future being, which ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those per- verted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they, which live not in that disad- vantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason ; whereby the noblest minds fell often upon double ful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions : with these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits, against the cold potion ; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the Immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt. " It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can thi'ow at man, * Wood, and Life of Sir Tliomas Brovme. t At the end of the (Jardcn of Cyrvs. SIE THOMAS BEOWTfE. XIX to tell liim he is at the end of his nature ; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain : without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature ; unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their constitution, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower, whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper igno- rance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitu- tions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures ; and being framed below the circumference of these hopes or cognition of better things, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment. But the superior ingredient and obscured part of ovu'selves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell us we are more than our present selves ; and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments." To his treatise on Urnburial was added the Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunxial Lozenge, or Network Plantation of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered. '' This discourse he begins with the Sacred Garden, in which the first man was placed ; and deduces the practice of horticidture from the earliest accounts of antiquity to the time of the Per- sian Cyrus, the first man whom we actually know to liave planted a Quincunx ; which, however, our author is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it in the descrip- tion of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems willing to believe, and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by the feeders on vegetables before the flood. Some of the most pleasing performances have been produced by learning and genius exercised upon subjects of little im- portance. It seems to have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to show how it.could exalt the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things really and naturally great, is a task not only difficult but disagi'eeable ; because the writer is degraded in his own eyes by standing in comparison with his subject, to which he can hope to add nothing from his imagina- tion : but it is a perpetual triumph of fancy to expand a scanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from obscure properties, and to produce to the world an object of wonder to which nature had contributed little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the ' Mystically Considered.'] He withstood the Copernican hypcthesi.s — on precisely the same ground on which some modern naturalists are disposed to regard, with apprehension and distrust, the Cuvierian Sj^stem of Geology — as opposing the statements of Scripture. VOL. I. 5 XX DR. JOHKSON S LIFE OF Frogs of Homer, the Gnat and the Bees of Tirgil, the But- terfly of Spenser, the Shadow of Wowerus, and the Quincunx of Browac. In the prosecution of this sport of fancy, he considers every production of art and nature, in which he could find any decus- sation or approaches to the form of a Quincunx ; and as a man once resolved upon ideal discoveries, seldom searches long in vain, he finds hjs favourite figure in almost every thing, whe- ther natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, sacred and civU; so that a reader, not watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a Quincunx. To show the excellence of this figure, he enumerates aU its properties ; and finds in it almost every thing of use or plea- sure : and to show how readily he supphes what he cannot find, one instance may be sufficient ; " though therein (says he) we meet not with right angles, yet every rhombus containing four angles equal unto two right, it virtually contains two right in every one." The fanciful sports of great minds are never without some advantage to knowledge. Browne has interspersed many curious observations on the form of plants, and the laws of vegetation ; and appears to have been a very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched with great nicety the evo- lution of the parts of plants from their seminal principles. He is then naturally led to treat of the number five ; and finds, that by this number many things are circumscribed ; that there are five kinds of vegetable productions, five sections of a cone, five orders of architecture, and five acts of a play. And observing that five was the ancient conjugal or wedding number, he proceeds to a speculation which I shall give in his own words ; " the ancient numerists made out the conjugal number by two and three, the first parity and imparity, the active and passive digits, the material and formal principles in generative societies." These are all the tracts which he published : but many papers were found in his closet, " some of them (says Whitefoot), de- signed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious writers." Of these, two collections have been publislied ; one by Dr. Tenison, the other in 1722 by a nameless editor."^ Wliether the one ov the other selected those pieces which the author would have preferred, cannot now be known : but they have both the •* editor.] John Hajse, Richmond Herald. — See Preface to Jteperto- SIB THOMAS BROWNE. XAl merit of giving to mankind what was too valuable jO be sup- pressed ; and what might, without their interposition, have, perhaps, perished among other innumerable labours of learned men, or have been burnt in a scarcity of fuel like the papers of Pereskius. The first of these posthumous treatises contains "observations upon several plants mentioned in Scripture." These remarks, though they do not immediately either rectify the faith, or refine the morals of the reader, yet are by no means to be censured as superfluous niceties or useless speculations ; for they often show some propriety of description, or elegance of allusion, utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in oriental botany; and are often of more important use, as they remove some difficulty from narratives, or some obscurity from precepts. The next is " of garlands, or coronary and garland plants ;" a subject merely of learned curiosity, without any other end than the plcEisure of reflecting on ancient customs, or on the industry with which studious men have endeavoured to recover them.' The next is a letter, " on the fishes eaten by our Saviour with his disciples, after his resurrection from the dead ;" which con- tains no determinate resolution of the question, what they were, for indeed it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning could supply, consists in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea. Then follow " answers to certain queries about fishes, birds, and insects ;" and " a letter of hawks and falconry, ancient and modem :" in the first of which he gives the proper interpretation of some ancient names of animals, commonly mistaken ; and in the other has some curious observations on the art of hawking, which he considers as a practice unknown to the ancients. I believe all our sports of the field are of Gothick original ; the ancients neither hunted by the scent, nor seem much to have practised horsemanship as an exercise; and though, in their works, there is mention of " aucupium" and "piscatio," they seem no more to have been considered as diversions, than agri- culture or any other manual labour. In two more letters he speaks of " the cymbals of the Hebrews," but without any satisfactory determination ; and of "ropalick or gradual verses," that is, of verses beginning w'lth a word of one syllable, and proceeding by words of which each has a syllable more than the former ; as, " Deus, wternw stationis conciliator." — AusONius. ' recover themJ] To which Browne's attention was turned by the enquiries of Evelyn, who applied to him for assistance in his projected work on horticulture, and to whom this essay was enclosed, in a letter, — See Correspondence. b 2 XIU DR. JOHNSOK S LIFE OF and, after his manner, pursuing the hint, he mentions many other restrained methods of versifying, to which industrious ignorance has sometimes voluntarily subjected itself. His next attempt is " on languages, and particularly the Saxon tongue." He discourses with great learning, and generally with great justness, of the derivation and changes of languages ; but, like other men of multifarious learning, he receives some notions without examination. Thus he observes, according to the popu- lar opinion, that the Spaniards have retained so much Latin, as to be able to compose sentences that shaU be at once grammati- cally Latin and Castihan : this wiU appear very unlikely to a man that considers the Spanish terminations ; and Howell, who was eminently skilful in the three provincial languages, declares, that after many essays he never could effect it. The principal design of this letter, is to show the affinity between the modern English and the ancient Saxon; and he observes, very rightly, that "though we have borrowed many substantives, adjectives, and some verbs, from the French ; yet the great body of numerals, auxiliary verbs, articles, pronoims, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, which are the distin- guishing and lasting parts of a language, remain with us from the Saxon." To prove this position more evidently, he has drawn up a short discourse of six paragraphs, in Saxon and English; of which every word is the same in both languages, excepting the terminations and orthography. The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phraseology is Euglisli ; and, I think, would not have been understood by Bede or iElfric, notwithstanding the confi- dence of our author. He has, however, sufficiently proved his position, that the English resembles its parental language, more than any modern European dialect. There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned ; one " of artificial hills, mounts, or burrows, in England ;" in reply to an interrogatory letter of E. D. whom the writers of Biographia Britannica suppose to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or Sir William Dugdale, one of Browne's correspondents. These are declared by Browne, in concurrence, I think, with aU other antiquarians, to be for the most part funeral monuments. He proves, that both the Danes and Saxons buried their men of eminence under piles of earth, " which admitting (says he) nei- ther ornament, epitaph, nor inscription, may, if earthquakes spare them, outlast other monuments : obelisks have their term, and pyramids will tmnble ; but these mountainous monuments may stand, and are like to have the same period with the earth." In the next, he answers two geographical questions ; one con- cerning Troas mentioned in the Acts and Epistles of St Paul, SIR THOMAS BEOWNE. XXIU which he determines to be the city buUt near the ancient Hium ; and the other concerning the Dead Sea, of which he gives the same account with other writers. Another letter treats " of the answers of the oracle of ApoUo at Delphos, to Croesus king of Lydia." In this tract nothing deserves notice, more than that Browne considers the oracles as evidently and indubitably supernatural, and founds all his dis- quisition upon that postulate/ He wonders why the physiolo- gists of old, having such means of instruction, did not enquire into the secrets of nature : but judiciously concludes, that such questions would probably have been vain ; " for, in matters cog- noscible, and formed for our disquisition, our industry must be our oracle, and reason our ApoUo." The pieces that remain are, "A prophecy concerning the future state of several nations ;" in which Browne plainly dis- covers his expectation to be the same with that entertained lately with more confidence by Dr. Berkeley, " that America will be the seat of the fifth empire :" and " Museum clausum, sive Bibhotheca abscondita ;" in which the author amuses himself with imagining the existence of books and curiosities, either never in being, or irrecoverably lost. These pieces I have recounted as they are ranged in Tenison'a collection, because the editor has given no account of the time at which any of them were written. Some of them are of Uttle value, more than as they gratify the mind with the picture of a great scholar, turning his learning into amusement ; or show upon how great a variety of enquiries the same mind has been successfully employed. The other collection of his posthumous pieces, pubUshed in octavo, Lond. 1722,^ contains " E-epertorium ; or some accoimt of the tombs and monuments in the cathedral of Norwich ;" where, as Tenison observes, there is not matter proportionate to the skill of the antiquary. The other pieces are, " Answers to Sir William Dugdale'a enquiries about the fens ; a letter concerning Iceland ; another relating to urns newly discovered ; Some short strictures on dif- ferent subjects ;" and " A letter to a friend on the death of his intimate friend," pubhshed singly by the author's son in 1690. There is inserted, in the Biographia Britannica, " A letter ' postulmte.] His perfect conviction of the Satanic influence exerted n oracles is' strongly expressed in a passage of his Religio Medici, respecting the ground of his belief of their cessation at the coming of Jesus Christ ; — viz. the confession of the devil himself in his oracle to Augustus. K 1722.] This date was taken from a copy which had a reprint title. The book was published in 1712. XXIV DE. JOHNSON S LIFE OF containing instructions for the study of pliysick ;" wWcli, with the Essays here offered to the publick, completes the works of Dr. Browne. To the life of this learned man, there remains little to be added, but that in 1665 he was chosen honorary fellow of the college of physicians,'' as a man, "Virtute et Uteris ornatissimus, — eminently embellished with literature and virtue :" and, in 1671, received, at Norwich, the honour of knighthood from Charles II., a prince, who with many frailties and vices, had yet skill to discover excellence, and virtue to reward it, with such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing, yet, conferred by a king so judicious and so much beloved, had the power of giving merit new lustre and greater popularity. Thus he lived in high reputation; till in his seventy-sixth year he was seized with a colick, which, after having tortured him about a week, put an end to his life, at Norwich, on his birth- day, October 19, 1 682.* Some of his last words were expres- sions of submission to the will of God, and fearlessness of death. He lies buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft,' in Nor- wich, with this inscription on a mural monument, placed on the south pillar of the altar : M.S. HIO SITUS EST THOMAS BROWNE, M.D. ET MILES. A" 1605. LONDONI NATUS OENEROSA PAMILIA APUD UPTON IN AGRO CESTRIENSI ORIUNDUS. SCHOLA PRIMUM WINTONIENSI, POSTEA IN COLL. PEMBR. APUD OXONIENSES BONIS UTERIS HAUD LEVITER IMBUTUS. IN URBE HAC NORDOVICENSI MEDICINAM ARTE EGREGIA, ET FOELICI SUCCESSU IROFESSDS, SCRIPTIS, QUIBUS TITULI, RELIGIO MEDICI ET PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA ALIISQUE PER ORBEM NOTISSIMUS VIB PIENTISSIMUS, INTEGERRIMCS, DOCTISSIMUS J OBIIT OCTOBR. 19, 1682. PIE POSUIT MCESTISSIMA CONJUX D°- DOROTH. BR. * Life, 'E. XSVll " For a character of his person, his complexion and liair waa answerable to his name, his stature was moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but svcdpKog. " In his habit of clothing, he had an aversion to all finery, and afiected plainness, both in the fashion and ornaments. He ever wore a cloke, or boots, when few others did. He kept himself always very warm, and thought it most safe so to do, though he never loaded himself with such a multitude of garments, as Suetonius reports of Augustus, enough to clothe a good family, " The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere of the world ; all that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much. He could tell the number of the visible stars in his horizon, and call them all by their names that had any ; and of the sel^ as hath been done by many eminent persons, both antient and modem, Hebrews, Greeks, Latins, and others,* it would not only have gratified, but obliged, the world beyond what is possible to be done by any other hand, much more by that, into which (upon divers particular obligations) that task is fallen : ' For what man knows the things of a man, save the Spirit of a Man, which is in him.'f And though that must needs know more of any man, than can be known by others, yet may it be, and generally is (being blinded with that original sin of self- love), very defective in the habit and practice of that original precept, that is said to have come down from heaven, yvwOi aiaurui, 'Know thyself.' Two things there are in nature, which are the greatest impe- diments of sight ; viz. nearness and distance of the object, but of the two, distance is the greater ; in ordinary cases every man is too near himself, others are too far distant from him, to observe his imperfections ; some are greater strangers to themselves than they are to their neigh- bours ; tills worthy person had as complete an intelligence of himself aa any other man, and much more perfect than most others have, being a singular observer of everything that belonged to himself, from the time that he became capable of such observation, whereof he hath given several remarkable instances in his Religio Medici, of which I shall have occasion to speak more hereafter. " I ever esteemed it a special favour of Divine Providence to have had a more particular acquaintance with this excellent person, for two- thirds of his life, than any other man that is now left alive ; but that which renders me a willing debtor to his name and family, is the special obhgations of favour that I had from him above most men. "Two and thirty years, or thereabouts, of his life was spent before I had any knowledge of him, whereof I can give no other account than I received from his relations : by whom I am informed, that he was born in the year 1605, in the city of London." (Tfi^n follows the text, top. xxix.) * Moses, Josephus, Antoninus, Cardan, Junius, Bishop Hall, &c. t 1 Cor. ii. 11. XXVUl DE. JOHNSON S LIFE OF earth, he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge, as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained surveyor- general of the whole terrestrial orb, and its products, minerals, plants, and animals. He was so curious a botanist, that besides the specifical distinctions, he made nice and elaborate observa- tions, equally useful as entertaining. " His memory, though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was capacious and tenacious, insomuch as he remem- bered all that was remarkable in any book that he had read ; and not only knew all persons again that he had ever seen at any distance of time, but remembered the circumstances of their bodies, and their particular discourses and speeches " In the Latin poets he remembered everything that was acute and pungent ; he had read most of the historians, antient and modern, wherein his observations were singular, not taken notice of by common readers ; he was excellent company when he was at leisure, and expressed more light than heat in the temper of his brain. " He had no despotical power over his affections and passions (that was a privilege of original perfection, forfeited by the neglect of the use of it), but as large a political power over them as any stoick or man of his time, whereof he gave so great expe- riment, that he hath very rarely been known to have been over- come with any of them. The strongest that were found in him, both of the irascible and concupiscible, were under the controul of his reason. Of admiration, which is one of them, being the only product, either of ignorance, or uncommon knowledge, he had more, and less, than other men, upon the same account of his knowing more than others ; so that though he met with many rarities, he admired them not so much as others do. *' He was never seen to be transported with mirth, or dejected with sadness ; always cheerful, but rarely merry, at any sensible rate, seldom heard to break a jest ; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the levity of it : his gravity was natural with- out affectation. " His modesty was visible in a natural habitual blush, which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any observable cause. " They that knew no more of him than by the briskness of his writings, found themselves deceived in their expectation when they came in his company, noting the gravity and sobriety of his aspect and conversation ; so free from loquacity, or mucn talkativeness, that he was something diiBcult to be engaged in any discourse ; though when he was so, it was always singular and never trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss SIE THOMiS BliOWNE. ttit as any man in it, when he had any to spare from his drud^ng practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study ; 80 impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing." " Sir Thomas understood most of the European languages, viz. all that are in Hutter's bible, which he made use of. The Latin and Greek he understood critically ; the oriential lan- guages, which never were vernacular in this part of the world, he thought the use of them would not answer the time and pains of learning them ; yet had so great a veneration for the matrix of them, viz. the Hebrew, consecrated to the Oracles of God, that he was not content to be totally ignorant of it ; though very little of his science is to be found in any books of that primitive language. And though much is said to be written ia the derivative idioms of that tongue, especially the Arabick, yet he was satisfied with the translations, wherein he found nothing admirable. " In his religion he continued in the same mind which he had declared in his first book, written when he was but thirty years old, his Eeligio Medici, wherein he fully assented to that of the church of England, preferring it before any in the world, as did the learned Grotius. He attended the pubUck service very con- " do nothing.'] Here Dr. Johnson has omitted the following pas- "In his papers left behind him, which were many, nothing was found that was vulgar, but all savouring of much ingenuity and curiosity ; some of them designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious wits. "He had ten children by his surviving only wife,* a lady of such a symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism. " Four of his children sm-vived, a son and three daughters, all of them remarkably partakers of his ingenuity and virtues ; who were left behind to propagate that iv(pvia, that excelled in his person. Though health, grace, and happiness, are no hereditary portions, yet good nature generally is. "His surviving son+ was his eldest child, a person of eminent reputation in the city of London ; and hath seen the best part of Europe — France, Italy, Lower and High Germany, Croatia, and Greece, as far as Larissa — has been in four of the greatest princes' courts that border upon the Mediterranean, viz. that of the Emperor, that of France, the Pope, and the Grand Signior," * Whose maiden name was Mileham, a gentlewoman of a very considerable family in the county of Norfolk. t Dr. Edward Browne, late President of the College of Physicians. XXX DB. JOHNSON S LIFE OP stantly, when lie was not witlilield by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were in town. Read the best Enghsh sermons he could hear of, with liberal applause ; and delighted not in controversies. In his last sickness, wherein he continued about a week's time, enduring great pain of the cholick, besides a continual fever, with as much patience as hath been seen in any man, without any pretence of stoical apathy, animosity, or vanity, of not being concerned thereat, or suffering no impeachment of happiness. Nihil agis dolor. " His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and a sound faith of God's providence, and a meek and humble submission thereunto, which he expressed in few words. I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much ; the last words which I heard from him were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of God, being without fear. He had oft triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given many repulses in the defence of patients ; but when his own turn came, he sub- mitted with a meek, rational, and religious courage. " He might have made good the old saying of dat Galenus opes, had he lived in a place that could have afforded it. But his indulgence and liberality to his children, especially in their travels, two of his sons in divers countries, and two of his daugh- ters in France, spent him more than a Uttle. He was liberal in his house entertainments, and in his charity ; he left a comfort- able, but no great estate, both to his lady and children, gained by his own industry, having spent the greatest part of his patri- mony* in his travels. " Such was his sagacity and knowledge of all history, antient and modern, and his observations thereupon so singular, that it hath been said by them that knew him best, that if his profes- sion, and place of abode, would have suited his ability, he would have made an extraordinary man for the privy council, not much inferior to the famous Padre Paulo, the late oracle of the Vene- tian state. " Though he were no prophet or son of a prophet, yet, in that faculty which comes nearest it, he excelled, i. e. the stochastick," * He was likewise very much defrauded by one of his guardians. ^ stochastich.'] On the predictive power expressed by this term, I meet with the following passage in 1)' Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, 2nd seri&s, vol. ii. 425 : — " This faculty seems to be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucydides in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is given as a close translation. ' By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no dej^ee indebted either to early education or after study, he was 8v:per- SIR THOMAS BEOWNE. XX51 wherein he was seldom mistaken, as to future events, as well publick as private; but not apt to discover any presages or superstition." ° It is observable, that he who in his earlier years had read all the books against religion, was in the latter part of his life averse from controversies. To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections and elude proof, is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly repents. There is a time, when every wise man is weary of raising difficulties only to task himself with the solution, and desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard of contest. There is, perhaps, no better method of encountering these troublesome irruptions of scepticism, with which inquisitive minds are frequently harassed, than that which Browne declares himself to have taken : "If there arise any doubts in my way, I do forget them ; or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment and more manly reason be able to resolve them: for I perceive, every man's reason is his best Oedipus, and w'lil, upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds, wherewith the subtilties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender judgments." The foregoing character may be confirmed and enlarged, by many passages in the Religio Medici ; in which it appears, from WTiitefoot's testimony, that the author, though no very sparing panegyrist of himself, has not exceeded the truth, with respect to his attainments or visible qualities. There are, indeed, some interior and secret virtues, which a man may sometimes have without the kno\^lo(lge of others ; and may sometimes assume to himself, without sufficient reasons for his opinion. It is charged upon Browne by Dr. Watts, as an eminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation ; at the same time that he far surpassed all in his deductions of tut future from the past ; or was the best guesser of the future from th^' jiast.'* Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered as a science, we can even furnish it with a denomiuMtion ; for the writer of the life of Sir Thomas Browne, prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour of it for that philosopher, calls it 'the Stochastic,' a term derived from the Greek and from archeiy, meaning, ' to shoot at a mark.' This eminent genius, it seems, often 'hit the white.' Our biographer declares, that ' though he were no prophet, yet in that faculty, &c.' " ° sufjtrstition.] End of WJdtefoot's Minutes. * OtKtig, yap Si;i'£(T£(, kuI ovrt irpofiaQwv ig nvTTjv oliCev, ovr iTTifiaOuJi', Twv T( TTapaxpfjfia Si i\axi(TTTig fSovXfjg KpaTiffrog yviomoVf KOI Twv fiiWovTwv eTriTrXtlffT'ov to ytv)](Toixki'0V dpiffTog fiKracrrjjc.— Thdcydides, lib. I. XXXll DR. JOHNSON S LIFE OF mstance of arrogant temerity, that, after a long detail of hia attainments, he declares himself to have escaped "the fiist and father-sin of pride." A perusal of the Eeligio Medici will not much contribute to produce a belief of the author's exemption from this father-sin : pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself. As easily may we be mistaken in estimating our own courage, as our own humility ; and, therefore, when Browne shows himself persuaded, that " he could lose an arm without a tear, or with a few groans be quartered to pieces," I am not sure that he felt in himself any uncommon powers of endurance ; or, indeed, anything more than a sudden effervescence of imagina- tion, which, uncertain and involuntary as it is, he mistook for settled resolution. " That there were not many extant, that in a noble way feared the face of death less than himself," he might likewise beheve at a very easy expense, while death was yet at a distance ; but the time will come to every human being, when it must be known how well he can bear to die ; and it has appeared, that our author's fortitude did not desert him in the great hour of trial. It was observed by some of the remarkers on the Religio Medici, that " the author was yet alive, and might grow worse as weU as better : " it is, therefore, happy, that this suspicion can be obviated by a testimony given to the continuance of his virtue, at a time when death had set him free from danger of change, and his panegyrist from temptation to flattery. But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity ; of which he will not easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men : for there is no science, in which he does not discover some skill ; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success. His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas, some- tjnes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his decisions : on whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately so many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent notions, that he was always starting into collateral considerations : but the spirit and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight ; and the reader foUows him, without reluctance, thro' his mazes, in them- selves flowery ani pleasing, and ending at the point originally in yiew. To have great excellencies, and great faults, " macfnce virtules SIR THOMAS BEOWNE. XXXIU mc minora vitia, is the poesy," says our author, " of the best natures." This poesy may be properly applied to the style of Browne: It is vigorous, but rugged ; it is learned, but pedantick; it is deep, but obscure ; it strikes, but does not please ; it commands but does not allure : his tropes are harsh, and his combinations uncouth. He fell into an age, in which our language began to lose the stability which it obtained in the time of Elizabeth ; and was considered by every writer as a subject on which he might try his plastic skill, by moulding it according to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of this encroaching licence, began to introduce the Latin idiom : and Browne, though he gave less disturbance to our structures and phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotick words ; many, indeed, useful and significant, which, if rejected, must be suppUed by circum- locution, such as ' commensality' for the state of many Uving at the same table ; but many superfluous, as ' a paralogical ' for an unreasonable doubt ; and some so obsciu"e, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it, as ' arthritical analogies ' for parts that serve some animals in the place of joints. His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages ; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He must, however, be confessed to have augmented our phUosopliical diction ; and in defence of his uncommon words and expressions, we must consider, that he had vmcommon sentiments, and was not content to express in many words that idea for which any language could supply a single term. But his innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy : he has many " verba ardentia," forcible expressions, which he would never have found, but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety ; and flights which would never have been reached, but by one who had very Httle fear of the shame of falling. There remains yet an objection against the writings of Browne, more formidable than the animadversions of criticism. There are passages, from which some have taken occasion to rank him among deists, and others among atheists. It would be difficult to guess how any such conclusion should be formed, had not experience shown that there are two sorts of men willing to enlarge the catalogue of infidels. It has been long observed, that an atheist has no just reason for endeavouring conversions ; and yet none harass those minds which they can infiuence, with more importunity of solicitation to adopt their opinions. In proportion as they doubt the truth of their own doctrines, they are desirous to gain the attestation xxxiv DE. johkson's life of of another understanding ; and industriously labour to win a proselyte, and eagerly catch at the slightest pretence to dignify their sect with a celebrated name.* The others become friends to infidelity only by unskilful hostility : men of rigid orthodoxy, cautious conversation, and rehgious asperity. Among these, it is too frequently the practice, to make in their heat concessions to Atheism, or Deism, which their most confident advocates had never dared to claim or to hope. A sally of levity, an idle paradox, an indecent jest, an imseasonable objection, are sufficient, in the opinion of these men, to efface a name from the lists of Christianity, to exclude a soul from everlasting Ufe. Such men are so watchful to censure, that they have seldom much care to look for favourable interpretations of ambiguities, to set the general tenor of life against single failures, or to know how soon any slip of inad- vertency has been expiated by sorrow and retractation ; but let fly their fulminations, without mercy or pnidence, against slight offences or casual temerities, against crimes never committed, or immediately repented. The infidel knows well what he is doing. He is endeavouring to supply, by authority, the deficiency of his arguments ; and to make his cause less invidious, by showing numbers on his side : he wUl, therefore, not change his conduct, till he reforms his principles. But the zealot should recollect, that he is labouriag, by this frequency of excommunication, against his own cause ; and voluntarily adding strength to the enemies of truth. It must always be the condition of a great part of mankind, to reject and embrace tenets upon the authority of those whom they thiak wiser than themselves ; and, therefore, the addition of every name to infidelity, in some degree invali- dates that argument upon which the rehgion of multitudes is necessarily founded. Men may differ from each other in many religious opinions, and yet all may retain the essentials of Christianity ; men may sometimes eagerly dispute, and yet not differ much from one another : the rigorous persecutors of error, should, therefore, enhghten their zeal with knowledge, and temper their orthodoxy with charity ; that charity, without which orthodoxy is vain ; charity that " thinketh no evU," but " hopeth all things," and " endureth all things," "Whether Browne has been numbered among the contenuiers * Therefore no hereticks desire to spread Their wild opinions like these epicures. For s ? their stagg'ring thonglits are computed. And other men'd assent their doubts assure. Davies. 8IE THOMAS BROWXE. IXXV of religion, by tlie fury of its friends, or the artifice of its enemies, it is no difficult task to replace him am»ng the most zealous professors of Christianity. He may, perhaps, in the ardour of his imagination, have hazarded an expression, which a mind intent upon faults may interpret into heresy, if considered apart from the rest of his discourse ; but a phrase is not to be opposed to volumes : there is scarcely a writer to be found, whose profession was not divinity, that has so frequently testified his belief of the sacred writings, has appealed to them with such unlimited submission, or mentioned them with such unvaried reverence. It is, indeed, somewhat wonderful, that he should be placed without the pale of Chi'istianity, who declares, that "he assumes the honourable style of a Christian," not because it is "the rehgion of his country," but because " having in his riper years and confirmed judgment seen and examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles of grace, and the law of his own reason, to embrace no other name but this :" who, to specify his persuasion yet more, tells us, that "he is of the reformed religion; of the same beUef our Saviour taught, the apostles disseminated, the fathers authorised," and " the martyrs confirmed : " who, though " paradoxical in philosophy, loves in divinity to keep the beaten road ;" and pleases himself, that " he has no taint of heresy, schism, or error:" to whom "where the Scripture is silent, the church is a text; where that speaks, 'tis but a comment ;" and who uses not " the dictates of his own reason, but where there is a joint silence of both :" who "blesses himself that he lived not in the days of miracles, when faith had been thrust upon him ; but enjoys that greater blessing, pronounced to all that beheve and saw not." He cannot surely be charged with a defect of faith, who " believes that our Saviour was dead, and buried, and rose again, and desires to see him in his glory :" and who affirms, that " this is not much to believe ;" that " as we have reason, we owe this faith unto history;" and that "they only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived before his coming ; and, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a beUef." !Nor can contempt of the positive and ritual parts of religion be imputed to him, who doubts, whether a good man would refuse a poisoned eucharist ; and "who would violate his own arm, rather than a church." p The opinions of every man must be learned from himself: P rather than, etc.] To the foregoing arguments in vindication of Browije's attachment to Christianity, may well be added liis own resolutions for the guidance of his conduct, and the regulation of hia heart. VvJL. I. xxxvi DE. Johnson's life of sib t. beowne. concerning his practice, it is safest to trust the evidence of others. Where these testimonies concur, no higher degree of historical certainty can be obtained ; and they apparently concur to prove, that Browne was a zealous adherent to the faith of Christ, that he lived in obedience to his laws, and died in confidence of his mercy. I should be glad to know the authority of the following assertion attributed to Dr. Johnson: — "I remember the remark of Sir Thomas Browne , — ' Do the Devils lie ? ' No ; for then hell could not subsist." — Jroker's Joh7ison, vol. iv. p. 152. SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIR. ScABCELT a trace remains of the earlier events of Browne's life ; nor are we possessed of any memorials whatever, from his own pen, respecting those travels and various adventures which pre- ceded his residence at Norwich. An interesting piece of avito- biography must, therefore, have perished ; for it is impossible to suppose that he travelled without observing, or that he observed without recording. And, although (as Johnson has remarked) " he traversed no imknown seas or Arabian deserts," Browne was not the man to have visited even " France and Italy, or resided at Montpellier and Padua," without having stored his note-books with much that would have amply repaid the perusal. Besides which, his family connections were sufficient to have provided him with introductions to foreigners of character and eminence, of which he would eagerly have availed himself. To all these we should have been introduced, and everything worth remembering in his intercourse with them would have been preserved. It has, indeed, been conjectured, that " he was an absent and solitary man ; "" but I can by no means adopt this " I refer to a series of papers in the Athenoeum, No. 93, 1829, entitled The Humourhts, the first of which is devoted to Sir Thomas Browne ; from which I subjoin the following passage : — "We have endeavoured to rescue Sir Thomas Browne from the imputation of being merely a ' curiou-i thinker,' while we have ever admitted that the philosopher and the homourist are strangely blended in his character. Of his domestic manners and relations little is known. But we may conjecture, frtjm various passages in his works, tliat the same melancholy enthusiasm and eternal speculation which appear in them, tinged, also, with sad and solemn colours, his daily habits. In all likelihood, he was an absent and solitary man, extracting the food of serious contemplation from all objects indifferently, and busied in perpetual abstractions. Ceremonious in observing times and seasons, as reverencing the inner mysteries of custom. Attached to old manners, as apprehending hidden wisdom in their properties, and as connecting him with remembrance and specu- lations on the past ; curious, probably, in casting the fashion of uncertain fvil, and, therefore, little inclined to innovation. He was at o»ce fcii: SXXVUl SUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIE. opinion : on the contrary, I am persuaded, that his social deport- ment must have been distinguished by the kindliest courtesy ; and, though " free from loquacity," he was too ardent in the pursuit of knowledge, not to have improved to the utmost every opportunity of increasing his stores, by conversation with those who were capable of enriching them. I am satisfied, in short, that had his earlier journals been preserved, they would have exhibited him to us as a traveller, in just as striking a point of view, as that in which "his diligence and curiosity," his origin- ality of thought and fervour of feeling, and the creative richness of his fancy, have placed him under other characters. Nor do we find either journals, or correspondence (except a very few letters on scientific or literary subjects), to guide us thi'ough the first twenty years of his residence at Norwich. To account for this almost total absence of autobiographical memo- randa, I have sometimes felt inclined to suspect, that Browne might have occasionally indulged himself in the expression of opinions relating to the political aspect of affairs in his own country, which his subsequent position, especially when the civil war actually broke out led him to think it most prudent to sup- press. For though a royalist, he was utterly averse to all that was arbitrary, especially in matters of religion ; and, therefore, might have seen much to disapprove in the measures of the court, as well as in the subsequent outrages of the popular party, which he was very likely, both in his private memoranda and in his confidential correspondence, to have denounced in terms which would have rendered him obnoxious to both parties, if " the liberty of those times had committed them to the press." But let this pass as an idle speculation : it is just as useless to regret the want of these materials, as it is to conjecture whether they ever existed, or what has become of them. We have them not ; and must, therefore, proceed to do our best without them. It appears, that when Browne left the university, he took up his first residence somewhere (we are not informed where) in Oxfordshire, and practised physiek probably for about two years, from the end of 1629 or beginuiug of 1630. He then Eiger de Coverley, directing the psalmody of the village church, and tha n~.3lancholy humourist of Milton, — ' Whose lamp at midnight hour Is seen in some high lonely tower, ^Vhere he may oft outwatch the bear With thrice great Hennes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to imfold What worlds, or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook, &c.' " SUPPLEMEKTART MEMOIR. XXXIT commenced liis travels, by visiting Ireland with his father-in- law, Sir Thomas Button. Mr. Le Neve, in his pedigree of the Browne family, has (erroneously) called this gentleman Sir Ralph Button. The epithet bestowed on him by Mrs. Lyttleton'' does not agree with tlie account which Dr. Birch has given" of a Sir Thomas Button, whom he elsewhere affirms to he the individual here spoken of ; " the same Sir Thomas Button who killed Sir Hatton Cheke in a duel."*^ In aUusion to which, very possibly, it was that Browne composed the following lines, pre- served in MS. Sloan. 1869 :— Diseases are the arms whereby We naturally do fall and die. What furie is't to take a death part. And rather than by nature, die by art. '' "A worthy person." — See her account of her father, in Preface to the Life. <= In his Life of Prince Henry, 8vo. Lond. 1760, p. 199, 200 ; where he gives a letter from Sir Edward Cecil, commander of " the English forces employed in the war about the succession to the deceased Duke of Cleves, written on the 29th of July, 1610, from the camp before Juliers, to Prince Henry, relating to the progress of the siege ; in which letter is the following passage : — ' I am only unhappy in one thing, that the mutinous and unworthy carriage of Sir Thomas Dutton, whom your high- ness was pleased to favour beyond his merit, hath from time to time disturbed the course of the service ; having even, at his first arrival here, braved me at the head of the troops, daring to teU me, to my face, that it seemed his majesty had given me a commission to abuse men, when there was nothing in question but the doing of the duty of a captain, which he ought not to dispute amongst us, seeing it was the first time that even he or his company came into the field amongst us ; and ever since, in all meetings, he hath disputed my commission and authority so far, and with so much scorn, that, though hitherto, in respect to your highness, I have contained myself : yet seeing that now again, in a public assembly, he hath contemptibly spoken of my com- mission, and, upon base advantage, hurt Sir Hatton Cheke, his colonel, who took upon him the defence of it, I most humbly beseech your high- ness will be rather pleased to allow of that which justice here shall allot him ; presuming that your highness'a princely judgment will find it expedient that I be discharged of such a bad member, which, in the heat of his majesty's service, dare contest with me, and be content, upon any terms, to murder his commander. ' " Dr. Birch adds, in a note, that Sir Hatton Cheke was, soon after the surrender of Juliers, killed in a duel, on Calais sands, by Sir Thomas Dutton. The Biographia Bntannica Bays, "that he enjoyed an honourable post in the government of Ireland :" what this post was he does not say, nor can I. ■^ In a copy of Christian Morals, presented by Dr. Johns.'^n to Birch, is this memorandum, in the handwriting of the latter. si SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIR. Men, for me, again shall chime To Jared's or Mathuselah's time. That thread of life the Fates do twine Their gentle hands shall clip, not mine. let me never know the cruel And heedless villany of duel ; Or if I must that fate sustain, Let me be Abel, and not Cain. From tlie same biographer I learn that Sir Thomas died May 16th, 1634 ; so that Browne's mother was probably left a widow the second time. His continental travels in France, Italy, and Holland, imme- diately followed his Irish tour, and the whole may be supposed to have occupied about two years, terminating in his return to England, after having obtained his degree of M.D. in the university of Leyden, in 1633. He then settled, there is reason to believe, as a physician, at Shipden HaU, near Halifax. In such a spot, and especially at the commencement of his professional career, he must have had considerable leisure ; which it is very natural to suppose he would endeavour to im- prove, by reviewing and preparing some memento of the events of his past life. We may regard Religio Medici, as the result of such retrospect ; for though not pretending to the character of a narrative, it makes frequent allusion to incidents ai^d conversa- tions which had occurred in the course of his travels, and exhibits to us the impressions made on him by the imposing ceremonies of the Romish Church, which he had witnessed abroad. It was not, however, Browne's object to draw up a narrative ; but to compose " a treatise upon the spirit and form of his religious belief, and it may claim (as one of his reviewers has well said"") a high rank among the fairest monuments of English mind." It has always appeared to me, that it was Browne's great aim, in the conduct of his understanding, and in the regulation of his feelings, to assign just limits to the respec- tive jurisdictions of faith and reason ; asserting, on the one hand, his right to the free exercise of his understanding on those subjects of which it is the legitimate province of reason to judge ; but, on the other hand, submitting both intellect and feeling wherever the decisions of revelation have commanded the exer- cise of faitli. This was his rule ; and if he fell into false philo- sophy, it was less through the fallacy of his reason than the erroneous and overstrained application of his rule. For example he too hastily deemed the language of scripture opposed to the tenets of Copernicus ; and, therefore, rejected instead of examin- e Athenwum, 1829, No. 93. gUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIE. xlj mg them. He found witches and enchantments mentioned in the Bible, as well as various forms of spiritual existence and agency ; all these he therefore placed at once among the articles of his faith, scarcely allowing his reason either to investigate the meaning of terms, or even to enquire whether that which was permitted in those days might not, like miracles, long ago have ceased to exist. To advocate the principle just stated, and thus (as Browne quaintlj^ says) endeavour to " compose those feuds and angry dissensions between affection, faith, passion," was his object in his first and most celebrated work ; in which we admire no less " the universal charity of his spirit, the catholic humanity of his feelings, and his strong assurance of hopeful faith," than that force of genius and fervour of imagination, those glowing sentences, and noble flights of fancy, with which it abounds. It is not improbable, however, that the leisure, so favourable to the accomplishment of this work, was more ample than suited his professional aspirations ; and inclined him to seek for a wider sphere of action. This was soon supplied by liis migration, after a residence of about three years, to Norwich ; whither, as Anthony a Wood informeth his readers, he " was induced in 1637 to remove, by the persuasions of Dr. Thomas Lushington, formerly his tutor, then rector of Burnham Westgate, in Norfolk. Whitefoot does not mention Dr. Lushington, but attributes his removal to the joint solicitations of Sir Nicholas Bacon, of GUlingham, Sir [or rather Dr.] Justinian Lewyn,' and Sir Charles Le Gros, of Crostwick.s Both these accounts, I have no doubt, are correct ; and the question immediately arises, why did these men take so lively an interest in the affairs of Browne ? His acquaintance with Dr. Lushington is explained by Wood ; it was a college connexion ; — and I believe that of the others to have been the same. They were all probably at coUege toge- ther, and I suspect Dr. Lushington to have been tutor to more than one of the party : Mr. Bacon held him in such high regard and admiration, that he pubUshed a work of his on Logick in 1650, when he was living in obscurity, and subsisting on his pen, having been deprived of his spiritualities. From the anxiety thus evinced by both tutor and friends to place Browne within ' I find Justinian Lewyn, LL.D., mentioned as commissary in the archdeaconries of Norfolk and Norwich in 1633 and 1660 ; but no Sir J. L.^See Blomfield, ii. 474. s This was the father of Thomas Le Gros, Esq., to whom Hydrio- taphia was dedicated. The grandfather, Sir Thomas, was knighted by James, in 1603. The Biograjjhia Britannica says, on what authority ] know not, that the grandson was afterwards knighted. The writer, prot>ably, confounded the two. xlii SUPPLEME2TTAIIT MEMOIR. their reacli, we are entitled to infer that his university career was distinofuished by that attractive amenity of disposition which conduced not less than his rare intellectual qualijications to secure him the attachment and admiration of all who knew him. It was possibly in compliance with the suggestions of these friends, that Browne, in a few months after he settled at Norwich, was incorporated Doctor of Physick at Oxford, July 10, 1637. " When settled at Norwich," says WTiitefoot, " he was miich resorted to for his admirable skill in physick :" and we may presume, that the zealous recommendations of his powerful friends were not wanting to bring him into notice. In short, the advantages of connexion with which he started in this county were very considerable ; and he was well calculated to improve them to the utmost. He very soon contracted an alliance with a family of some antiquity and well connected in the county, by marrying, in 1641, Dorothy, the fourth daughter of Edward Mileham, Esq., of Burlingham St. Peter, and grand-daughter (as I suppose) of John Hobart, Esq. By this marriage Dr. Browne's connexions were greatly extended, his father's family being numerous. I have not been able to trace his collateral alliances, but he asserts a relationship to several families of note in the county : — for example, those of Hobart, Townsend, Astley, &c. and it is highly probable that his marriage was the connecting hnk. The unexpected publication of Beligio Medici in the following year, his avowal of it, aiid his consequent correspondence with Digby, contributed no little to his fame and success. From that time he took that distinguished rank among the literary men of his day, which he ever after maintained. Respecting the occasion and circumstances of this his first appearance before the public, I shall say nothing here, having already spoken of it in my preface to the Beligio Medici. No sooner was the book printed, than the public commenced operations upon it. Merryweathcr'' placed it more fully before the continental critics, by his excellent *■ This gentleman was of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and became B.D. before 16.52, in which year is dated "Some short IHrections for a Student in the University ;" a MS. in the Bodleian, by him. Johnson attributes to him the authorship of "a small treatise for the instruction ot young persons in the attainment of a Latin stile." Mr. Crossley pointed out to me some years ago the following article in the catalogue of Mr. Ford, a Manchester bookseller, for 1811 : — "No. 11,701 : Directions for the Latin Towjue, by the Author of Reiigio Medici (Sir Thomas Broiine), VERY SCARCE, and not in his collected Works; 4«. 6rf. Z*indon, 16S1." In all probability this was the work spoken of, writttu not by the author, but by the translator of J{el. Med. STJPPLEMENTAET MEMOIE. Xliii version into Latin, printed at Ley den in 1644, and immediately reprinted at Paris. In the foUowiug year came forth. Eoss'a Medicus Medicatus, of which Johnson drily remarks, that it was " universally neglected by the world." Editions with copious annotations soon appeared, — by Moltke in Latin in 1652, and Keck in English two years later ; and these were followed at short intervals by translations into several of the modern languages of Europe. No less various were the opinions expressed. By one of the translators Browne was announced in the preface as a Catholic ; by another, as a Protestant : while the Holy See settled the question by consigning him to i\\e Index Ejcpurgatorius. From Samuel Duncon, a member of the Society of Friends, resident at Norwich, he received a most obliging communication, in which the writer seems to have been led, by some passages in Rel. Med., to entertain hopes of winning Browne over to his own opinions. It would, indeed, seem singular, that in the narrow compass of this little volume, Browne should have so expressed himself as to be claimed for a bi'other by such antipodes to each other as Roman Cathohcs and Quakers : — did we not consider, that in some of their vital characteristicks, these extremes in practice may be said to have almost met in point of principle. It is not difficult to find passages in which the author has indulged himself in expressions so imaginative, if not hyperbolical, as to lead easily to conclusions the very reverse of his real sentiments. Dr. Jortin' has happily selected an instance in this remarkable passage : — " Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason, with that odd resolution I learned of TertuUian, Certum est, quia impossihile est. I am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, &c." '' To this Abp. Tillotson had alluded when he said,' " I know not what some men may find in themselves ; but I must freely acknowledge, that I could never yet attain to that bold and hardy degree of faith, as to believe any thing for this reason — because it ivas im2)ossihle. So that I am very far from being of his mind, that wanted not only mot^e difficulties, but even impossibilities, in the Christian reHgion, to exercise his faith upon." " But by impos' sibilities," replies Jortin, " Sir Thomas Browne, as well as TertuUian, meant seeming, not real, impossibilities : and what he says should be looked upon as a verbum ardens, a rhetorical flourish, and a trial of skill with Tertullian ; in which, however, he had little chance to come off superior. Both of them were lively and ingenious ; but the African had a warmer complexion ' In his Remarks on Tillotson. — Tracts, v. i. p. 373. '' Rel. Med. ' Sermon 140th, v( I iii. xliv STJPPLEMEIfTART MEMOIR. than tlie Briton. Tillotson, however, judging that the Papists would make an ill use of this, and such passages as this, in Protestant writers, was willing to pass a gentle animadversion upon it. Sir Kenelm Digby, a Roman Catholic, who criticisea several things in the Iteligio Medici, yet gives his loud approba- tion to these pious salhes. ' I am extremely pleased with him, when he saith, there are not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith, &c.' Extremely pleased, without question ; and full of hopes, that this young author might at last unreason himself into implicit belief, and go over to the church which would feed his hungry faith with a sufficient quantity of impossi- bilities ! — Tendimus in Latium ! " In the Biographia Brit. there is a short critique on the work from a MS. entitled A Century of Short Characters of Books and Authors : but it does not seem to me to deserve insertion. In the mean time, so industriously was Browne employed in completing and arranging his materials (the accumulation, no doubt, of many years), that in 1646 he published the first edition of his great work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica ; which speedily attracted the notice of those who had attacked his former book. Ross again took the field in his Arcana Microcosmi, ^'c. and with him a new adversary, Robinson, who published a pedantic book with a suitable title : — Endoxa, or a Calm Ventilation, Sfc. Against these the following remark seems to have been levelled by Richard Whitlock," who enumerates, " among writers, first some that write to eat ; — inke must earn ale, and three-penny ordi- narys ; write they must, against things or men, sparing neither Bacons, Harveys, Digbys, Brownes, or any the like — of Improve- ment College, &c." It is to be supposed, too, that a number of private communications were made to our author on his two books, the far greater part of which were complimentary ; and few have reached us. Some I have omitted, especially five Latin letters from Isaac Grruter (who translated some of Lord Bacon's works), respecting a projected (but never accomplished) Latin translation of Pseudodoxia. On the continent our author received great attention : so early as 1645 did the foreign critics notice Beligio Medici. Many broadly accused him of atheism, and more asserted his piety. The curious reader wiU find particulars of the controversy in Niceron, Bayle, Kippis, &c." Dr. Aikin, in speaking of these "■ In his Zootomia, or Ohsen'ations on the Present Manners of the Ew/lish, r2mo. Lond. 1654, p. 232. " Niceron, Nouvelles de la Itepuhlique de Lettres. Avril, 1684. Acta £ruditorum, Sup. vol. i. Leips. 1692. Bayle, (Euvren Diverse^, 3 vola. fol. vol. i. p. 'Z5. Binrfr. Brit. p. 629, note G. Wagner, Examen E^cmhticus Athcisnu Speculativi, 4to. Tubing. 1677, c. v. p. 11. Budf SUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIR. xlv critics, says: — " The German divines treated [the Beligio Medici"] with severe censure ; and more theologico represented the author as an infidel, and even an Atheist, though abnost every page displays the fervour of his piety, and the docihty of his belief." Respecting Pseudodoocia, " the judicious Morhof speaks with all possible marks of approbation and esteem: — ' No modern author,' says he, ' has treated this subject more accurately or copiously. In his first book he learnedly enquires into the general causes of error ; and in his succeeding books he not only discourses of the mistakes wliich are crept into natural philosophy, but such also as have corrupted history, theology, mechanic arts and physick.' Reimman says," 'As he excelled in theoretical and practical divinity, so he shone no less in philosophy, wherein he emulated Hercules; and undertaking by his Pseud. Ej). to clear the sciences from error, he fell nothing short of the other's labour, in cleansing the Augean stable.'" Niceron remarks, that "it is an excellent work and contains abundance of curious things." Amidst the attacks of his enemies, and commendations of his admirers, the reputation of Browne became so established and extended, that he was appUed to on all hands for professional, literary, and scientific advice and assistance, and as he delighted to oblige and assist others, his leisure, it may be readily imagined, became very soon too fully occupied to leave him much opportunity for further authorship. Among the earliest of these correspondents was Dr. Henry Power, who afterwards attained considerable eminence as a physician at Halifax. I apprehend that the long letter of pro- fessional recommendation, inserted from Biogr. Britan. and which is there said to have been first published by Dr. Massey, was addressed to Dr. Power. He seems for many years to have kept up his intercourse vrith Browne, who probably communi- cated much curious information ; though, unfortunately, we are not enabled to refer to his letters for proof. Some MSS. of Power's remain in the British Museum, and he is known by several works, especially by one on experimental philosophy. It was probably in 1650, or soon after, that Browne was enabled to open a communication with Iceland, through the medium of one to whom he had rendered valuable professional assistance. He addressed some enquiries to Theoaore Jonas, dens, Theses Theolorjic(t de Atheismo et Superstitione, p. 136. Reimman, Hist. Univers. Athdsmi, p. 448. Reimman, Bibliothecce Theologica Catalogns, 2 torn. 12mo. Hildesice, 1731, p. 1052. Morhof, Polyhistor, cwa J. A. Fabricii, 3 torn. 4to. Lubecw, 1747, torn. iii. lib. v. § 10 Elice Fredericl Heisteri Apologia pro Medicis : Arnstel. 1736, 8vo. ° Hist. Univ. Atheismi, p. 448. Xlvi SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIE. minister of Hitterdale, in Iceland, respecting the natural history and geography, &c. of that island, and the diseases to which its inhabitants were liable. Several very agreeable letters were sent in reply by his reverend friend, who has therein placed himself in a most amiable point of view. From these materials Browne drew up, for the Iloyal Society, a few years after, his sketch of that singular and then almost unknown spot. Another of Browne's correspondents, and one of his personal friends in the county, was Sir Hamon L'Estrange, of Hunstan- ton, a man of real love for natural history, and most zealous in its pursuit. From him Browne received, in Jan. 1653, a letter, enclosing a most substantial proof of the estimation in which his works were held — a MS. of eighty-five pages of Observations on the Pseuclodoxia : some of them highly interesting. This MS. is preserved in No. 1830 of the MS. Sloan. I have given some extracts. About the same time he appears to have rendered some assistance to a botanist of considerable note (or as Wood calls him), a noted herbalist of his day — Mr. William How, commonly called Dr. How; who, after having served as a captain in King Charles the First's cavalry, took up his residence in London, first in Lawrence Lane, then in Milk Street, as a physician, though he does not seem to have qualified by taking a degree. How was distinguished among the earlier English botanists for his love of the science, and for his published contri- butions to it. Some local catalogues, enumerating the plants of certain districts in England, had already been published by Dr. Johnson, the learned editor of Gerard's Herbal ; but How was the first who brought out a general list of the plants of Great Britain, as distinguished from those of foreign countries : imder the title of Phi/tologia Britannica, natales exhibens indi- genarum stirpmm sjjonte emer gentium, 12mo. Loudon, 1650. In 1655 he edited a portion, which had fallen into his hands, of Lobel's MSS. for his projected large work, entitled, "Illustra- tiones Plantarum :" of which Parkinson had used another portion in his Thcafrum, Botanicum. From a letter, which he ad- dressed to Dr. Browne in that year, it would appear, that he contemplated, and had made considerable preparation for, another botanical work ; but his death, which took place a year after- wards, prevented its completion. The said letter must be admitted abundantly to justify the character given of this writer by Dr. Richard Pulteney :■' it is, indeed, written "in a flowery and bombast stile," and in terms so affectedly figurative, that it seems not at all clear, whether he is speaking of a botanical work P In his Sketches of the Progress of Botany in Englxnd, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1790, vol. i. p. 173. StrPPLEMENTA-BT MEMOIE. xlvii which he was writing, or of a botanical garden which he waa engaged in superintending. Perhaps it was a catalogue rai- sonne either of his own garden or of some other in which he was concerned. Browne's learning and science, however, soon added to his acquaintance two of the most distinguished men of his day — Evelyn and Sir Wm. Dugdale. In 1657, through the interven- tion of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Eobert Paston, created Earl of Yarmouth in 1673, a correspondence commenced between Browne and Evelyn. The latter being much interested with his favourite pursuit of gardening, and just then busily occupied in preparing for the press a work to be entitled Elysium Britan- nicum, sought the assistance of our author, as a man well known for his extensive acquaintance with natural history ; and we have sufficient evidence that Browne's contributions were con- siderable : — The tract, Of Garlands, Sfc, and probably the Observations on Grafting, were written for the use of Evelyn. It is, however, very much to be regretted, that so little of their correspondence has descended to us ; for we must suppose that it was kept up for many years. Evelyn's Silva contains an extract from a communication received in 1664, which I shall insert here, though somewhat out of the order of date. " But whilst I am on this period, see what a Tilia that most learned and obliging person Sir Thomas Browne, of Norwich, describes to me in a letter just now received. " An extraordinaiy large and stately Tilia, Linden, or Lime- tree, there groweth at Depeham in Norfolk, ten mUes from Norwich, whose measure is this : — The compass, in the least part of the trunk or body, about two yards from the ground, is at least eight yards and a half; about the root, near the earth, sixteen yards ; about half a yard above that, near twelve yards in circuit; the height, to the uppermost boughs, about thirty yards. This surmounts the famous Tilia of Zurich, in Swit- zerland ; and uncertain it is, wla-liur in any Tilicetum, or Lime- walk, abroad, it be considerably exceeded : yet was the first motive I had to view it, not so much the largeness of the tree, as the general opinion that no man could ever name it ; but I found it to be a Tilia fcemina ; and (if the distinction of Bau- hinus be admitted, from the greater and lesser leaf) a Tilia platy- phyllos or latifolia ; some leaves being three inches broad ; but, to distinguish it from others in the country, I called it Tilia colosscea Depehamensis."'^ ■i Hunter'' s Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 196. This celebrated Linden tree stood upon the property of Mr. Amias ; it was cut down nearly a centui^ ago. xlviii STJPPLEMENTAET MEMOIE. I think it very probable, that Browne derived frorc his distin- guished correspondent some hints which availed him in his Garden of Cyrus, which he published in the year 1658, with Hydriotaphia. In this latter work he announced his discovery of the singular substance, called by the French chemists adipo- cire, and which M. Du Petit Thouars, the writer of the article Brotone, in the Biographie Universelle, thus mentions : — On y trouve, entre autres, la premiere observation sur la substance sin- guliere provenant de la decomposition des cadavres, retrouvee depuis, par Fourcroy, dans le cimetiere des Innocents, a Paris, et connue maintenant sous le nom d'adipocire." — See vol. vi. 62. Towards the close of the same year, 1658, Sir WiUiam Dug- dale applied to Dr. Browne for critical as well as historical and scientific contributions to his work, On Embanhing and Drain- ing, then in progress. And several of their letters are preserved. Sir William has acknowledged his obligations to his learned and zealous friend, in the following passage, at p. 175 of his work : — " Touching which kind of urne buriall see further in that excel- lent discourse of the learned Dr. Thomas Browne, of Norwich (printed at London in An. 1658), from whom I acknowledge to have received much direction for my better guidance in this pre- sent work." And to show that this was not a mere compliment, it will be sufficient to compare Browne's critical remarks, m reply to Sir WiUiam Dugdale's enquiries respecting the meaning of the term paludibiis emuniendis, used by Tacitus in speaking of the labour to which the Britons were compelled by their Soman con- querors, with Dugdale's remarks thereon, at p. 17 of his work. But it is time to take up the thread of his domestic history. As years passed on, there arose other claims, which not even his professional avocations, added to the pursuits of Uterature, the wide and increasing range of his acquaintance, and the conduct of a correspondence whose limits were daily extending, could enable him to evade or resist. His family was large, and rapidly coming into life ; and they must have more and more engrossed his thoughts and his care. We have, it must be lamented, but scanty means of judging what was his system of management and education ; though it is probable, that if he erred, it was not in the exercise of too great austerity. His ambition was, their accomplishment ; and there is sufficient evidence that he spared neither expense nor trouble, neither admonition, exam- ple, nor encouragement, to attain it. One remarkable feature in his plan is, however, very evident, that he did not keep them at home ; but endeavoured to form them to habits of independence, and to give them, in a wide sense, a knowledge of the -world, by sending them abroad. Some of his daughters visited France, BUPPLEMENTART MEMOIR. xlix though, in all probability, they were accompanied by himself. We have a single and imperfect allusion to a visit which he paid to Holland, on which occasion, I suspect that one or more of his daughters accompanied him, going probably or returning through France. But he certainly must be considered to have put his system in practice at rather an early age, and in a most perilous manner, when he sent his second son, Thomas, to France in 1660, at the age of fourteen, and sent him thither alone. We are not told that he had any particular plan of education in view for the boy in so doing, nor have we the intimation of any special motive which led to it. He exhorted him, in his letters, to learn all he could, to take notice of every thing remarkable, " to cast ofi' pudor rusticus," to put on a " commendable boldness," and to " have a good handsome garb of his body." It is, moreover, to be especially observed, how earnestly he enjoins him to "hold firm to the Protestant religion, and be diligent m going to church :" " be constant," he adds, " not negligent in your daily private prayers, and habituate your heart in your tender days unto the fear and reverence of God." Excellent as is the advice, it must be apprehended that he did not place his boy in circum- stances the most favourable to its adoption, when he sent him, 80 young, and unattended, amidst such scenes as he would be sure to meet with. Probably he contemplated, if he had not resolved on, the profession into which his son afterwards entered, and deemed it essential to his excelling therein, that he should early learn to " shift for himself." If so, the event justified the plan, for it seems that his boy did not fail to acquire that laudable boldness and freedom of carriage which his father was anxious to see in him, and which he told him, " he that learneth not in France travelleth in vain." He was a spirited and talented yoimg man, and wovdd, in all probability, have risen to eminence, had he lived. He was remarkable, withal, for kindness and frank- ness of disposition. His " Tour in Derbyshire,"^ for there is inter- nal evidence that he wrote that journal), sufficiently shows that he had acquired some taste for adventure, and was ready enough to play his part. The greater part of the following year he passed at college, and at the close of 1664, entered the navy. With his eldest son, whom he destined for his own profession, Browne somewhat modified his plan, though it was substantially similar. He sent him abroad, but not at so early an age ; choos- ing, probably, to keep his education in his own hands, or, at least, within reach of his own control. With this view, after passing through the Free School at Norwich, Edward was sent to Cambridge, where he entered at Trinity College, Oct. 27, 1657, and took the degree of bachelor in physic in the middle of 1663. ' With his brother Edward, towards the close of the year 1662. 1 SUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIE. In the autumn of 1663 he returned to Norwich, and probably commenced his professional studies with his father, who seema to have infused into him some portion of his own spirit, if we may judge from the diligence with which Edward devoted him- self to the study of his profession, and to the collateral pursuits of comparative anatomy and natural history. He spent the win- ter of 1663-4 in Norwich; and his journal, describing the amuse- ments of the city at that period, is interesting. Mr. Henry Howard, afterwards sixth Duke of Norfolk (grandson of the celebrated Thomas, Earl of Arundel, who made those splendid collections which have immortalized him), then resided there ; and his munificence and urbanity are evinced by the frequency of the parties given at the Duke's palace, as well as by the free- dom of access which young Browne obtained to them. But the public spirit of Mr. Howard vied with the splendour of his en- tertainments. He purchased, and devoted to the amusement of the public, the gardens in King Street, which were long after- wards (and, as I am assured by Dr. Sutton, of Norwich, even within his recollection) designated " My Lord's Gardens." In the spring of 1664, Mr. Edward Browne commenced his foreign travels, first spending a short time among his relations and friends in London. And here he seems to have formed his first acquaintance with the family of Dr. Terne, whose daughter he afterwards married. He took up his residence, while in Lon- don, at the house of his relation, Mr. Barker, in Clerken^ell, where his sister Ann was then living. Here he met " Madam Fairfax," probably the mother of Mr. Henry Fairfax,* whom his sister Ann afterwards married, and who was the grandson of Thomas, Lord Viscount Fairfax. He also mentions his "dear sister Cottrell " as being of the party ; and says that he after- wards " waited upon Madam Cottrell home to her house in St. James his Park, &c." Hence I concluded, perhaps too hastily, that Sir Charles Cottrell married a daughter of Sir Thomas Browne. More probably it was a son of Sir Charles's ; but I cannot give the slightest authority for the conjecture beyond tJie present passage. From London he proceeded to Paris, and ' Henry Fairfax, Esq., of Burlington, in the county of York, second son of Thomas, Lord Viscount Fairfax, of Emely, in Ireland, married Frances, the only daughter of Henry Barker, of Hurst, Esq. ; and died in 1656, leaving his widow (this Madam Fairfax, as I suppose), who was buried at Hurst, March 25, 1668-9. They had three children, Henry (who married Ann Browne), John (mentioned by Dr. Edward Browne), and Frances. Thus is the relationship of the Fairfax and Barker families made out ; but how Mr. Barker became the cousin of Edward Browne, before his sister's marriage to Mr. Fairfax, does not appear. SUPPLEMEKTAEY MEMOIR. li thence to Italy, visiting Genoa, Eome, Naples, Bolo.2:na, Venice, and Padua, returning to Paris througli Aries, Montpellier, Thoulouse, and Rochelle. He travelled in company with. Sir William Trumbull (afterwards Secretary of State), Sir Samuel Tuke, Sir Christopher Wren, and other distinguished characters. At Paris he incidentally became acquainted with Guy Patin, one of his father's earliest criticks, who received him with great urbanity, and spoke in the most courteous terms of his father. A portion of this tour has been printed at the end of the folio edition of his Travels} The whole is preserved in his journal, MS. Sloan. 1906, and is printed partly from the just-mentioned iournal, and partly from his letters in MS. Sloan. 1868. The last letter of the series is dated Paris, Sep. 3l), 1665 ; soon after which I suppose him to have returned to Norwich. I find him incorporated of Merton College, Oxford, June 16, 1666 ; and in the following year, July 4, 1667, he took his doctor's degree. In the same year he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society ; — whether from the influence of his father's name, or from his own recently formed acquaintance with Dr. Wren, Mr. Ray and other distinguished fellows, we are not told. It is, however, highly probable, that his admission into that learned body had some connexion with his determination to renew his travels, and even induced him ultimately to extend them (in opposition to his father's decidedly expressed wish) to countries peculiarly rich in those natural productions to which the society's attention was then directed. In August, 1668, he commenced those travels which have contributed so much, and on the whole 80 justly, to his reputation. For though he did not inherit his father's high intellectuality, he was, like him, ardent in pursuit of knowledge, and strongly attached to the studies to which he made his travels principally subservient : and his literary attain- ments, as might be supposed, were considerable. But above all, he was an accurate observer and a veracious narrator of what he met with. He was, in short, a conscientious traveller, not sup- plying from imagination what was wanting in the reality. His pen was under the guidance of his senses ; not carried away by his fancy. Hence, notwithstanding the somewhat contemptuous terms in which his travels are mentioned by Dr. Johnson, who neither understood nor cared for the subjects on which Browne wrote, he acquired by his work, and has retained to the present day, a character for which travellers are not proverbial : — viz. ' It is singular, that in Biog. Brit, though this journey is meEtioned, it is expressly asaerted that Dr. Edward Browne was never abroad tiU 1668. VCL. 1. J •lii SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIR, that whatever he has related, may be received with implicit con- fidence. Having embarked at Yarmouth on the 14th August he Unded at Rotterdam ; and thence proceeded through Delft, tlie Hague, Leyden, and Haarlem, to Amsterdam ; through Utrecht, Bois- leduc, Breda, and Dort, to Flushing, and up the Scheldt by Antwerp, Brussels, and Maestricht to Aix-la-Chapelle, which he reached on the 7th Oct. Fron " Aken," he went direct through Juliers to the Rhine ; along which river he travelled from Cologne to Bingeu, Mayence, and Frankfort ; and thence, pass- ing through Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Nurnberg, E-atisbon, and Lintz, he reached Vienna on the 20th November. There he passed the winter of 16G8-9 ; visiting and examining every object within and around it, worthy liis notice ; and making excursions in several directions. The Imperial Museum and Library were his great attractions ; and his acquaintance with Peter Lambecius, the librarian, gave him special facilities. Through his influence he was allowed the privilege of withdrawing books to his lodgings. He speaks of the Emperor Leopold, as a man of considerable literary attain- ments, and a patron of learning and learned men. Lambecius was in the habit of suggesting books for his Imperial master's reading, and it happened on one occasion, that he put Religio Medici into the Emperor's hands, wherewith, says Browne," " the Emperor M-as exceedingly pleased, and spake very much of it unto Lambecius, insomuch that Lambecius asked me whether I knew the author, he being of my own name, and whether he were living. And when he understood my near relation to him, he became more kind and courteous than ever, and desired me to send him that book in the original English, which he would put into the Emperor's library, and presented me with a neat little Latin book, called Princeps in Compendio, written by the Emperor's father, Ferdinandus the Third." Dr. Browne also re- ceived from Lambecius a curious catalogue of some hundreds of alchymical manuscripts, for the Royal Society, with the remark- ably liberal permission to have any of them copied in Vienna, or even brought into England for transcription. He was so for- tunate as to obtain also introductions to individuals of high rank, from several of whom he received great kindness. He es])ocially mentions Counts Lesly and Souches, the latter of whom afforded him essential assistance during his travels, in the capacity of governor of the fortress of Leopoldstadt. While at Vienna, ho received a communication from Dr. Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, requesting such " Travels, folio, p. 141. STTPPLEMENTAEY MEMOIB. liii information as lie might be able to obtain for them in the course of his proposed Hungarian excursion. For his guidance a paper was enclosed, which we find printed at large in tJue Philosophical Transactions," under the following title : — " Directions and in- quiries as they were sometime since recommended by the pub- lisher to the care of the ingenious and learned Dr. Edward Browne (son to that deservedly famous physician Dr. Thomas Browne, and Fellow of the Royal Society), travelling in Ger- many, Hungary, Turkey, &c." To these queries. Dr. Browne gave very copious answers, which were also printed at large in the Transactions. Very early in the spring of 1669 Browne made an excursion through Baden and Manuersdorf, across the Newsidler Sea to Eaab and Komora, and thence, after visiting the marble quarry at Dotis, he went by Leopoldstadt to the gold, silver, and copper mines of Cremnitz, Schemnitz, Newsol, &c. and returned to Vienna in the middle of April. His next excursion was through Styria, Carinthia, &c. to see the Zirchnitzer lake and quicksilver mines at Idria, whence, after again visiting Vienna and Padua, he returned to the Imperial capital at the close of July. His last excursion was to visit the Ottoman court, which was then held at Larissa in Thessaly. This occupied from the 1st of Sep- tember to the end of October, when he regained Vienna, to take a final leave of it. Early in November he started on his journey homeward, through Prague and Dresden, at which latter city he took particular notice of the Elector of Saxony's collections, both in natural history, mechanics, and works of art. He then visited the silver and sulphur mines of Freiburg, and after pass- ing through Leipsig and Magdeburg, he embarked at Hamburg, and reached England at the close of the year 1669. Nor was this safe return of his son from long and distant travels the only circumstance which enlivened Dr. Browne's fireside this Christmas. His family circle had at the same time to welcome a further addition to its numbers, in the marriage of his daughter Anne, to Henry Fairfax, Esq.'' and their arrival at Norwich. The visit seems either to have been protracted, or repeated ; — for I find in St. Peter's, Norwich, the registers of the birth and burial of their first child. Barker Fairfax, on the 30th of August and 5th of September, 1670. Their subsequent residences were at Shiplake, near Henley, in Oxfordshire, and lastly at Hurst,'' a scat on the borders of Wiltshire and Berkshire, inherited from the Barkers. " Phil. Trans. No. Ivili. p. 1159. ^ The grandson of Thomas Lord Viscount Fairfax. ■^ Hurst — a parish comprising the liberties of "SVliistley-IIurst (hund. Chariton), Newland and Winnersk (hund. Sonning), co. Berks j and d 2 iiv SrPPLEMENTART MEMOIE. Dr. Edward Browne soon proceeded to London, where, after some hesitations, he determined to fix his permanent residence. On the 30th of April, 1672, he married Henrietta Susan, the daughter of Dr. Christopher Terne, a physician of eminence, and lecturer at Chirurgeon's Hall in 1662-3,^ who lived in Lime- street. There Dr. E. Browne resided till the decease of his father-in-law, Dec. 31st, 1673 : soon after which time he removed to Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, where he remained during the rest of his father's hfe. Having thus pursued the history of Dr. Browne's family, uninterruptedly, to the death of his younger son and marriage of his elder son and daughter, comprising nearly fourteen years, from 1660 to 1673, I must now return to collect and arrange the scattered passages of his own life during the same period. In introducing the earliest and most remarkable of these, I cannot help observing, that the striking influence which has sometimes been exerted on the institutions, the history, or the character of an entire age, by the genius of one man, or the importance of a single event, may occasionally be paralleled by the effect which a solitary action or incident has produced upon the character or estimation of an individual. Such an incident occurred in the history of Sir Thomas Browne in the year 1664 ; and it is not a little singular that his principal biographers, Whitefoot, Jolin- son, and Kippis, have all passed over, in silence, a circumstance M hich has unquestionably given rise to more reflections on his character, both for discernment aiui feeling, than any other cir- cumstance in his life. I refer to the part which he took in the trial of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, at Bury St. Edmund's, on the 10th March, before Sir Matthew Hale, then Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. I shall introduce it in the words of Dr. Aikin : — " Fancy and feeling," says he in his biography of Browne, " were, in his mind, predominant over judgment, and his tendency to superstition and enthusiasm is plainly evinced by other instances. He was fully possessed with the belief of the existence of invisible beings, hokUng an intermediate rank between the human and angelic natures ; favoured the notion of guardian angels ; was persuaded of the reality of apparitions, and of diabolical illusions ; and affirms, from his own knowledge, the certainty of witchcraft. This last article of his belief was not so harmless as his other fanciful opinions ; for Dr. Hutchinson, in his sensible Essay on Witchcraft, animadverting upon a trial that of Broad Hintnn (Hund. Amesbury), co. Wilts. An hospital waa founded here by William Barker, Esq. (who died in 1685), for eight poor, to whom he gave 3s. 6d. weekly. ^ See Pepy 's Mtmoirs, p. 204. STJPPLEMENTAET MEMOIR. Iv of two supposed criminals before Lord Chief Justice Hale, at St. Edmuad's Bury, in 1664, mentions that ' Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, the famous physician of his time, was in court, and was desired by my Lord Chief Baron, to give his judgment in the case : and he declared, that he was clearly of opinion that the fits tvere natural, but heightened by the Devil's co-operating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies.' And he added, that ' in Denmark there had lately been a great discovery of witches, who used the very same way of afflicting persons, by conveying pins into them.' This declara- tion, from a man of such authority, was thought to have had no small influence in occasioning the condemnation of the wretched victims, whose execution was one of the latest instances of the kind, by which the English annals are disgraced." — Aikin's Biographical Dictionary. The reflection conveyed in the remarks of Dr. Aikin has been echoed and re-echoed ; and this solitary incident has gone far in the estimation of many, who in other respects have held Browne in the highest admiration, to detract from his character as an acute and philosophical investigator of deep-rooted and long- established errors, and to place him rather among those who, while they can detect and will condemn the false philosophy and extravagant notions of others, are yet led, by mere caprice or prejudice, obstinately to defend opinions just as absurd, and perhaps far more pernicious. But let us be cautious and slow to pronounce judgment on such a man. In the first place, it must surely be admitted that he had nothing whatever to do with the justice or injustice of the law which made witchcraft a capital offence. Hutchinson, therefore, has committed a flagrant injustice in attempting to make him accountable for the blood of these women. — Can I with a safe conscience acquit a man whom I beUeve to be proved guilty, solely because I deem the law unjust which makes his ofience capital ? — Can my conscientious verdict make me a party to the injustice of that law ? — Most certainly not. So must not Browne be condemned for giving his opinion, on the sole ground " that it was a case of blood." It must be shown, either that he was wrong in believing that witchcraft had ever existed ; or, if this cannot in the very teeth of scriptuee, be shown, then, secondly, it must be proved that he was wrong in his opinion that cases of witchcraft still existed; or, thirdly, that he erroneously deemed the present to be a genuine instance of it. On the first of these questions, be it remembered, his biographer (Dr. Aikin) stood on very diflerent ground from that occupied either by Browne or by the great man before whom he was examined, These believed, firmly and literally, the witchcraft and sorcery, Ivi SrPPLEMEjS'TART MEMOIB. and incantatious, as well as the demoniacal possessions related in the Bible. And, from their regarding alleged cases of witchcraft in their days as being liable to investigation, and open to evidence, it is clear that they knew of no proof satisfactory to their minds, that what existed in the days of the Bible, had at any subsequent period totally and universally ceased. We know that Browne had previously considered this question. More than 20 years before, he had published his conviction thereon in these terms : — " for my part, I have always believed, and do now know, that there are witches," and in one of his common-place books there occurs a passage on possession and witchcraft, beginning with a similar assertion, — " we are no way doubtful that there are witches, &c." He believed, in short, on the highest of all testi- mony, that witchcraft had existed : and — in the absence of either argument or evidence satisfactory to him that it had at some defined period altogether ceased — he also believed that it still existed. These sentiments he declared openly, and has been the victim of his opinions, as every man must expect to be, who does not flinch from their avowal. But they were opinions, as I have elsewhere remarked, which he held in great and jjood company ; — in common with Bacon, Bishop Hall, Baxter, Hale," Lavater, &c. &c. Dr. Browne was admitted Socius Honorarius of the College of Physicians, cum multis aliis, in the December of 16(54; — Init for some reason, which appeareth not, he did not receive his diploma tiU July 6, 1665. In the year 1 666 Browne presented to the Eoyal Society some fossil bones found at Winterton, on the coast of Norfolk ; — then a much greater rarity than they have since been, and perhaps the more valued, as they were less understood. " " The judge in giving his direction to the jury, told them, that he would not repeat the evidence unto them, least by so doing, he should wrong the evidence on one side or on the other. Only this he acquainted them that they had two things to inquire after. First, whether or no these children were bewitched ? Secondly, whether the prisoners at the bar were guilty of it ? — - " That there were such creatures as witches he made no doubt at all ; first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much. Secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime. And such hath been the judgment of this kingdom, as appears by that act of parliament which hath pro- vided punishments proportionable to the quality of the offence. And desired them strictly to observe their evidence ; and desired the great God of heaven to direct their hearts in this weighty tiling they had in liand ; for to condemn the innocent, and to let the guilty go free, were both an abomination to the Lord."— Trya^ of Witches, p. 102. SrPPLEMEXTAKT MEMOIE. ivii Hooke mentions the fact in his Posthumous Works, and 1 record it, though unimportant, in order to show Browne's early connexion with the Eoyal Society, as a correspondent, though (probably from local considerations) he never became a fellow. The next correspondence of interest in w hich Browne engaged was in 1()G8, with Dr. Christopher Merrett, librarian to the College of Physicians ; who had brought out, in 1666 and 1667, two editions (or rather re-impressions) of his Phiax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarutn : and was contemplating a third. In an auspicious moment he sought the assistance of Browne, who had been most industriously employed in collecting mate- rials for an account of the Natural History of Norfolk, at the request of some friend. But that friend having died, the work remained unfinished ; and the collectanea were placed at the dis- posal of Dr. Merrett. But, unhappily, Browne's liberal readiness to render his knowledge serviceable to others, here failed of its object. Either superseded by the more learned labours of Eay and Willoughby, or laid aside on account of the perplexities in which its author became involved with the College of Phj'si- cians, the Pinax never attained an enlarged edition. He pre- ferred to contribute to the labours of those whom he considered better naturalist than himself; and in his third attempt thus to render his observations useful he had somewhat better success. He placed his materials, including a number of coloured draw- ings, at the disposal of Eay, the father of systematic natural history in Great Britain, who has acknowledged the assistance he derived from him in his editions of Willoughby's Omit ho- logy and Ichthyology, especially the former. But Browne, it seems, found it more easy to lend than to recover such mate- rials ; for he complains, several years afterwards, that these drawings, of whose safe return he was assured, both by Eav and by their mutual friend, Sir Philip Skippon, had not been sent back to him. On the 28th of September, 1671, Charles II., who had been carousing with his profligate court, at Newmarket, made an excur- sion to Norwich, attended by the Queen, the Dukes of York, Monmouth, and Buckingham, and others of his nobility. It would appear from Blomfield's account, that the king was not content to leave the city without knighting some one, and therefore, on Mr. Mayor's declining the honour, it was con- ferred upon Browne. After relating other particulars of the king's progress, — his visit to Mr. Howard, his attendance on divine service at the cathedral, his review of the trained bands, his feasting in the New Hall, at an expense of £900 to the city, and his visits to Blickling, Oxnead, and Eainham, the historian informs us that " when his majesty was at the New Iviii SUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIK. Hall, he was earnest to have knighted the mayor, who as earnestly begged to be excused ; but at the same time, con- ferred the honour on that deserving physician. Dr. Thomas Browne, &c." The fact however probably was, that though the literary celebrity of Browne must have been well known, his loyalty was the crowning excellence in the eyes of Charles. In perilous times. Dr. Browne had steadily adhered to the royal cause. He was one of the 432 principal citizens who, in 1643, refused to subscribe towards a fund for regaining the town of Newcastle. Charles was not hkely to have been igno- rant of this, and he had the good feeling to express his sense of it, by a distinction, which was no doubt valuable as well as gratifying to Sir Thomas Browne. It is remarkable that he has never recorded it, and only once made a slight allusion to it, in his Repertorium ; where, among royal visits to Norwich, he mentions that of Charles II., adding, " of which I had parti- cular reason to take notice." But though he never boasted of his distinction, I strongly suspect that he has left a costly memorial of it. In the drawing room of the house in which he lived, there is, over the mantel-piece, and occupying the entire space to the ceiling, a most elaborate and richly orna- mented carving of the royal arms of Charles the Second : — who will undertake to disprove my assertion, that this was placed there by Sir Thomas, to express his loyalty, and to com- memorate his knighthood?'' In Matthew Stevenson's Poems, 12mo. 1673, there is a long poem on this progress of Charles II. into Norfolk, in which the honour conferred on Browne is thus noticed. " There the King knighted the so famous Browne, Whose worth and learning to the world are known," &c, '• In support of this position, I ought perhaps to point out the house in which I suppose Browne to have resided. Blomfield asserts that he lived where Dr. Howman then lived ; and that he succeeded Aid. Anguish in that house. I have ascertained, by reference to title-deeds, that the last house at the southern extremity of the Gentleman's Walk, Hajanarket, in the parish of St. Peter Man- croft, Norwich (which has for very many years been occupied as a china and glass warehouse, and whicli tradition has always asserted to have been Sir Thomas Browne's residence), belonged in Blomfield's time, to Dr. Howman. Still further I find that "Sep. 22, 1650, Katherine, the wife of Mr. Alex. Awjidsh, was buried in St. Peter's ; and that, July 26, 16.54, Mr. Alex. Anguish wcis there buried, from St. Julian's Parish. The earliest register of a birth in Browne's family in St. Peter's, occurs in Nov. 1650. I conclude, therefore, that the Alderman left the parish on the decease of his wafe, and that Browne took immediate possession of his house. — Of Browne's previous residence, I regret to siiy 1 find not tlie smallest tr.^ce. srPPLEMEXTART MEMOIR. lix Early in October, Evelyn went down to the Earl of Arling- ton's (then Lord Chamberlain) at Euston, in compaay with Sir Thomas Clifford, to join the royal party. Lord Henry Howard arrived soon after and prevailed on Mr. Evelyn to accompany him to Norwich, promising to convey him back after a day or two. — "This," says he, "as I could not refuse I was not iiard to be persuaded to, having a desire to see that famous scholar and physitian, Dr. T. Bro\\ne, author of the ' Meligio Medici,' and ' YuJ(jar Errors,' &c., now lately knighted. Thi- ther then went my lord and I alone, in his flying chariot with six horses ; and by the way, discoursing with me of severall of his concernes, he acquainted me of his going to marry his eldest sonn to one of the king's natural daughters by the Dutchesse of Cleaveland, by which he reckon'd he should come into mighty favour. " Nest morning I went to see Sir Tho. Brown (with whom I had some time corresponded by letter, tho' I had never seen him before). His whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collections, especially medails, books, plants, and natural things. Amongst other curiosities. Sir Thomas had a collection of the eggs of all the foule and birds he could procure, that country (especialy the promontary of Norfolck) being frequented, as he said, by severall kinds, which seldome or never go farther into the land, as cranes, storkes, eagles, and variety of water-foule. He led me to see all the remarkable places of tliis ancient citty, being one of the largest, and certainly, after London, one of the noblest of England, for its venerable cathedrall, number of stately churches, cleanesse of the streetes, and buildings of flints, so exquisitely headed and squared, as I was much asto- nished at ; but he told me they had lost the art of squaring the flints, in which they once so much excell'd, and of which the churches, best houses, and walls, are built. The castle is an antique extent of ground, which now they call Marsfield, and would have been a fitting area to have placed the ducal palace on. The suburbs are large, the prospects sweete, with other ame- nities, not omitting the flower gardens, in which all the inha- bitant'i excel. The fabric of stuffs brings a vast trade to this populous towne." In the succeeding year, 1672, the name of Sir Thomas occurs as helving given his testimony, in the following terms, to the extraordinary precocity of Wotton, afterwards the friend of Bentley : — *' I do hereby declare and certify, that I heard Wm. Wotton, son to Mr. Henry Wotton, of Wrentham, of the age of six years, read a stanza in Spencer very distinctly, and pronounce IX SUPPLEMENTAUT MEMOIE. it properly. As also some verses in the 1st Eclogue of Virgil, which I purposely chose out, and also construe the same truly. Also some verses in Homer, and the Carmiiia Aurea of Pytha- goras, which he read well and construed. As he did also the 1st verse of the 4th ch. of Genesis in Hebrew, which I pur- posely chose out. "July 20, 1672. " Tho. Browne." In the same year, in compliance with the request of Anthony Wood, the Oxford historian. Sir Thomas communicated, through Lis friend John Aubrey, some information respecting Dr. Lush- ington, his former tutor, and several other persons, together with those few biographical particulars respecting himself, which have formed the basis of all subsequent notices of him. These letters were detected in the Ashmolean Museum, by Mr. Black, with some others : one from Sir Thomas to Lilly, the astrologer, and two to Ashmole, in reference principally to Dr. John Dee and his son. Dr. Arthur Dee, who resided for many years on terms of the kindest friendship with Browne at Norwich, and there died. Sir Thomas, in these letters, bears testimony most unequivocally to the sincerity of Dr. Arthur Dee's belief in the power of alchymy to transmute the baser metals into gold and silver ; which he assured Sir Thomas he had "ocvdarly, undeceivably, and frequently" beheld. He was even on the point of going to the continent in pursuit of such riches, had not the death of the artist, with whom he was about to hazard his property, most opportunely prevented him. Sir Thomas had also another zealous alchymist among his correspondents, in the person of one of his earliest friends. Sir Robert Paston, with whom he corresponded from 1663 to 1672, principally on experiments which Sir Robert was making in alchymy. Blomfield speaks of this gentleman as " a person of good learning, who, travelling into foreign countrys, collected many considerable rarities and curiosities, and being an accom- plished fine gentleman, entertained King Charles II., his queen, and the Duke of York at Oxnead, with the nobility that attended them." But though Sir Thomas was willing enough to afford all the assistance in his power to those who sought it, in pursuit of astrology and alchymy (as on every other subject within his range), it does not foUow, nor do his writings justify our sup- posing, that he placed any reliance on the one, or entertained any hopes from the other, of those pseudo-sciences ; which, indeed, ought rather to be regarded as the cradles of astro- nomy and chemistry. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have been at one time on the hunt after the philosopher's stone : and he himself owned that it was his pursuit of the idle and vain study of astrology, which led him into the love of astronomy. Lord SUPPLEMEKTART MEMOIE. 1x1 Bacon speculated on the making of gold ; but this, it is con- tended, arose from his lofty conceptions of the yet untried resources of experimental science. The remaining ten years of Sir Thomas's life afford us few incidents of importance or interest. His leisure seems to have been very considerably occupied with rendering professional and literary assistance to his son Edward ; with whom he kept up a constant correspondence to the very close of his life. The marriage of Dr. Edward Browne, in 1672, had settled him in London ; and he naturally availed himself of every means, whether derived from his own exertions, or from the celebrity of his father's name, to extend his connexions, which were already considerable. In the summer of 1673 he went to Germany with Sir Joseph Williamson and Sir Leoline Jenkins, the Enghsh plenipotentiaries who were sent over to Cologne to negotiate a treaty of peace between England, France, and Holland. Having terminated his travels (which he never subsequently resumed), he soon brought out his first account of them in 4to. under his father's advice, and, four years afterwards, published a second collection. They were very well received. In 1675 he was chosen, on the 14th June, Lecturer in Chirurgeon's Hall, Sir Nathaniel Heme being then Master ; and, on the 29th July, FeUow of the College of Physicians. From this time we are constantly meeting with evidence, in the Correspondence, of the large assistance he received from his father, in the prepara- tion of his lectures ; which it seems gave very general satisfaction, and did him great credit. In the following year Sir Thomas sustained a domestic afflic- tion in the death of liis daughter Mary, about twenty-four years of age. It may be supposed that she did not die under her father's roof, from the fact of her burial not occurring in the register of the parish in which he resided. My information is derived from Blomfield, who enumerates, among " the stones below the rads, in the church of St. Peter's, Norwich, one to the memory of Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Browne, Knt., 1676." In 1678, 1 find an instance of Browne's compliance with a custom very prevalent with authors in his day, — that of prefixing to their works recommendatory letters from persons of literary eminence. Kings Vale Royal of Chester contains such a letter, signed Thomas Broivne, and supposed to be Sir Thomas's. In the present year he addressed a brief note of cautious recommen- dation to Mr. John Browne, a surgeon residing at Norwich, who had pubUshed a work on Preternatural Tumours. This gentle- man afterwards became surgeon to the King, to whom he paid his court, by pubhshing, in 1684, a book entitled, Adenochoirade- logia, or a Treatise of Glandules, and the Boyal Gift of HeaU kii SrPPLEMENTAHT MEMOIE. ing them. In this work he relates a number of marvellous cases of cure : in one of which Sir Thomas makes rather a prominent figure."^ He was not living to contradict the story, or even to disclaim his participation m the Viclgar Error of believing in Buch royal miracles. We find from his letters that he was in the habit of giving medical certificates, to such as wished to be touched, that their cases were genuine. But this would involve no opinion as to the eificacy of the touch ; — and probably, in the present instance he only believed in that of the journey. In the same year he subscribed towards building a new library in Trinity College, Cambridge, at the instance of the masters and seniors of that College, who, in their letter'' urged the follow- ing argument : " We doubt not but that God will bless the rest of your substance the better for what you shall conferr towards this ; and we shall pray that he may, &c. &c." ' The following is the story adverted to : — " Being in the society of many persons of quality I had this remarkable following observation from an eminent person of this strange cure. A noncomformist's child in Norfolk, being troubled with scrophulous swellings, the late deceased Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich being consulted about the same, his majesty being then at Breda or Bruges, he advised the parents of the child to have it carried over to the King (his own method being used ineffectually) : the father seemed very strange at his advice, and utterly denied it, saying the touch of the King was of no greater eflScacy than any other man's. The mother of the child, adhering to the doctor's advice, studied all imaginable means to have it over, and at last pre- vailed with her husband to let it change the air for three weeks or a month ; this being granted, the friends of the child that went with it, unknown to the father, carried it to Breda, where the King touched it, and she returned home perfectly healed. The child being come to its father's house, and he finding so great an alteration, enquires how his daughter arrived at this health, the friends thereof assured him, that if he would not be angry with them, they would relate the whole truth ; they having his promise for the same, assured him they had the child to the King, to be touched, at Breda, whereby they apparently let him see the great benefit his child received thereby. Hereupon the father became so amazed, that he threw off his nonconformity, and exprest his thanks in this method ; ' Farewell to all dissenters, and to all noncon- formists : if God can put so much virtue into the King's hand as to heal my child, I'll serve that God and that King so long as I live with all thankfulness.'" Browne's A dcnochoircdelor/ia, 3rd part, p. 187-9. Nearly a century later, the avowal (or seeming avowal) of a belief in this kingly gift cost poor Carte the hi.storian his annual subsidy from the chamber of London. See Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 495, where is collected much curious information on the point. So general wiis the belief in Charles II. 's reign, that no fewer than 92,107 persons •re asserted by Browne, to have been "touched" from 1660 to 1683. See Tables at the end of his work. " Preserved in the Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson, 391." SUPPLEMEXTAET MEMOIE. IXIU In the same MS. I also find the acknowledgment of £12 eubscribed " towards the building of a new school in the College near Winton," — where his education commenced. Kennet" has preserved another instance of his public spirit ; he contributed £130 to the repairs of Christ Church, Oxford. It was probably about 1680 that Sir Thomas completed his Itepertorium, or Account of the Tombs and Monuments in tlie Cathedral Church of Norwich, by continuing it up to the time. The basis of the work was a sketch hastily drawn up, 20 years previously, on the information of " an understanding singing man, 91 years old;" not imder the impulse of an antiquarian taste (which he has himself informed us he did not possess), but in order to preserve some remembrance of the many monumental antiquities, which blind and barbarous zeal had mutilated or destroyed. The reckless character of these ravages has been exhibited in a description made on the spot, and at the moment, by one who suffered, in his person, property, and health, from a lawless rabble, — perpetrating, in the sacred name of liberty, the most outrageous deeds of despotism. Bp. Hall, in his Hard Measure, has given a most touching account of the brutal treat- ment which he experienced from the republicans of his day, — treatment which acquired a deeper degradation and a fouler stain from the very elevation and purity of his own character : Browne attended him for many years, and even to \\\^ dying hour ; a fact which the editor of the volume containing the account to which I advert,' has noticed in these quaint and simple terms. * Rennet's Register, p. 345. ' The Shaking of the Olive Tree. Theremaimnf/ Works of that incom- parable prelate, Joseph Hall, D.D. late Lord Bikliop of Norwich. With some Specialities of Divine Providence in his Life, noted hy his own hand. Together with his Hard Measure, written also by himself, 4to. Lond. 1660. Curll, in publishing the Repertorium, has most appropriately though inaccurately prefixed the following quotation from this work, which I shall insert here, verhatim, : — • "It is no other than tragical to relate the carriage of that furious sacriledge, whereof our eyes and ears were the sad witnesses under the authority and presence of Linsev, Tofts the sheriffe, and Greenwood ; Lord, what work was here, what clattering of glasses, what beating down of walls, what tearing up of monuments, what pulling down of seates, what wresting out of irons and brass from the windows and graves, what defacing of armes, what demolishing of curious stone-work, that had not any representation in the world, but only of the cost of the founder, and skill of the mason, what toting and piping upon the destroyed organ pipes, and what a hideous triumph on the market day before all the coTintrey, when in a kind of sacrilegious and profane procession, all the organ pipes, vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden crosse, which had been newly sawne downe from over the green- yard pulpit, and the service books and singing books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the publick market place ; a leud wretch IxiV SUPPLEMENTARY MBMOIR. " After his prevailing iufirmities had wasted all the strengths of" nature, and the arts of his learned and excellent physician, D. Browne of Norwich (to whom, under God, we and the whole chui'ch are ingaged for many years preserving his life as a bless- ing to us), — after his fatherly reception of many persons of honour, learning, and piety, who came to crave his dying prayers and benedictions, — he roused up his dying spirits, to a heavenly confession of his faith, which ere he could finish, his speech was taken from him, so that we cannot here insert it." At the close of the same year Sir Thomas's daughter Elizabeth married Capt. George Lyttleton, the 12th and youngest son of Sir Thomas Lyttleton, Bart, afterwards major in Prince George of Denmark's regiment of dragoons ; who died in 1717, at Windsor, in the 77th year of his age. This was probably thought a desirable alliance ; but it deprived Sir Thomas of a daughter who had resided with him far longer than any other of his chil- dren, and of whom he has expressed himself in terms of very high commendation. She went to reside in the island of Guern- sey, where the captain then had some military employment. Sir Thomas had now the satisfaction of seeing his son Edward daily adding to his honours, his connexions, and his practice. In 1678 he had been chosen Censor of the College of Physicians ; an office which he again filled in 1685 and 1686. In 1680 he attended the dying illness of the celebrated Earl of Rochester, at Woodstock Park : as well as that of the Marquis of Dorchester, a patron and amateur of the medical profession, and a Fellow of the College of Pliysicians ; who had long been his great friend ; to whom he had dedicated his first travels in 1672 ; and with whom he had sufficient influence to prevail on his lordship to bequeath his Hbrary to the college. We also find among Dr. Browne's patients, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Aylesbury, Sir Joseph Williamson, &c. In February, 1682, he was engaged to translate the life of Themistocles, for an edition of Plutarch's Lives, of which the first volume was published in 1683 ; and for the second of which, iu the following year, he translated that of Sertorius. In this occupation, also, he enjoyed the advantage of his father's assistance ; the sheets being successively transmitted walking before the train, in his cope trailing in the dirt, with a service book in his hand imitating in an impious scorne the tune, and usurping the words of the letany used formerly in the church : neer the publick crosse, all these monuments of idolatry must be sacrificed to the fire, not without much ostentation of a zealous joy in discharging ordinance to the cost of some who jirofessed how much they har. longed to see that day. Neither was it any newes uj)on this guild-day to have the cathedrall now open on all sides to be filled with muskatiers, wayting for the majors returne, drinking and tobacconing as freelyas if it had turne'd alehouse." TJte Shahitig of the Olive Tree, ikc. p. 03. SUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIB. IxV to Noinrich for revision. On the 7tli of September, 1682, lie was appointed, by the express recommendation of his royal master. Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, on the death of Sir John Micklethwayte. He entered upon the duties of this office with characteristick dihgence, and, as it appears, in his accustomed reliance upon the aid of his father ; to whom, on the 3rd of Oct., he addressed the last letter which has come down to us ; com- municating some particulars relative to the appointment, and requesting his advice as to the hospital practice. Ever prompt as Sir Thomas was to comply with such applications, especially from his son, it may be doubted whether he was permitted to do so in the present instance : — for on the 19th of the same mor ';h, the day on which he completed his 77th year, a severe attack of cholick terminated the life of this great man, after a few days' illness. He left considerable property, real as well as personal ; which he had devised three years before his decease in the following will : — Becemh. 2, 1679. In the name of God, Amen. I, Thomas Brotune, Knight and Dr. of JPhysick, of the citty of Norwich, do maTce this my last will and testament. Imprimis, I giue and bequeath vnto my deare ivife, Dame Dorothie Broione, all my Lands, Leases, and Tenements, all my bonds, bills, moueahles, money, plate, jeioells, and all my goods whatsoeuer, thereby to haue a provision for her- self, and make liberall maintenance and portions for my deare daughters, Elizabeth Browne and Frances Browne. Excepting such lands and tenements as were assigned and made ouer vnto my Sonne Edward Browne upon marriage, and to bee entered upon a yeare after my decease. Item, I appoynt and make my wife. Dame Dorothie Browne, my sole executrix, and give her power to sell all leases, all my goods moueables, mony, plate, Jewells, hands, and all goods valuable whatsoeuer, for the the prouision of herself and of my daughters Elizabeth and Frances Browne, and for the payment of my debts, legacies, and charitable gifts, wheretoith she is fully acquainted, and will, I douht not, performe my tvill therein. And if it shall please God that my loife Dame Dorothie should dye before mee, then I make my daughters, Elizabeth and Frances Broione, my executrixes, and giue them the same enjoyment and power in my estate as I haue before giuen vnto my wife, Dame Dorothie. This is my last will and testa- ment, which I haue tvritt with my owne hand, and confirmed it vnth my hand and scale. Thomas Beowne. JNicho : BicTcerdilce Anthony Mingay Aug. Briggs, Junior. Of the two daughters named in this will, only one (Frances) remained single at the time of his death. Whether she married Ixvi SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIR. afterwards or not I cannot say with certainty. In tlie pedigfree drawn up by Le Neve — among the daughters of Mr. Fairfax are enumerated two of the name Frances, both married, the latter to Mr. Bosville, a Yorkshire gentleman. This I suppose to have been the daughter of Sir Thomas, and to have been confounded by Le Neve with his grand-daughter. But I cannot biing any evidence whatever to support my suggestion, which must, there- fore, remain mere hypothesis. His widow. Lady Dorothy, sur- vived him httle more than two years. Her monument is in St. Peter's church. It is very remarkable, that although Sir Thomas Browne had forty children and grand-children (including those who were so by marriage), yet, in the second generation, within thirty years after his decease, the male line became extinct ; and of the third generation, none survived their infancy, excepting in the family of his eldest daughter, Anne; of whose eight children, none left any descendents but the third daughter, Frances Fairfax, married to the Earl of Buchau ; whose daughter, Lady Frances Erskine, married the celebrated Colonel Gardener, killed at Preston-pans in 1745 ; — whose grandson was the late Lord Erskine, one of the most splendid ornaments of the English bar, created Lord Chan- cellor in 1806 ; and from whom are thus lineally descended Henry David, the present and 12th Earl of Buchan, and David Montagu, the present and 2nd Lord Erskine of Kestormel Castle. None of Dr. E. Browne's numerous family left any children. Eight died unmanned, the greater part in their infancy. Of the remaining three, Susannah, the eldest daughter, died soon after her marriage to Arthur Moore, Esq., M.P. for Grantham, and was buried with her two infant daughters at Northfleet. Thomas, the eldest son, and Anne, the sixth daughter, survived their father. Thomas resided for many years at Norwich with his grandfather ; whose correspondence is not a little erJivened by the very orthographic postscripts of Dame Dorothy, touching this her most especial favourite and grandson, " litle Tomey ;" setting forth his excellencies and defects, his demeanors and misdemeanors, his maladies, and his literary progress. Of the doings and writings of " litle Tomey " I can find very little to record. He took his doctor's degree in medicine;, and probably practised with his father. He was a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and in 1699 was admitted F.H.S. In 1698 he married his tK>usin Alethea, fourth and youngest daughter of his uncle, Henry Fairfax, Esq. ; but she died in 1704, and was buried at Hurst, leaving no children. His own death occurred in 1710, in a manner much to be deplored, if we may credit the account given in Le Neve's pedigree of the family. But that document exhibits so many inaccuracies, that we may» SUPPLEMENTAET MEMOIE. IxTll in charity, hope the story is not true. However this may be, he was in every respect a man so ^eatly inferior both to his father and grandfather, that tlie first Une of the Horatian apostrophe, " ^tas parentum, pejor avis, tulit nos nequiorcs," may not unfitly be applied to him, though we must omit the " mox daturas, Sfc.;" as his race ended with himself. Anne, the sixth daughter of Dr. Edward Browne, married Owen Brigstocke, Esq., of Llechdenny, co. Carmarthen. But his great grandson, Augustus Brigstocke, Esq., of Blaenpant, CO. Cardigan, has done me the favour, in reply to my enquiries, to inform me, that she had no children ; and that his ancestor's family was the result of his second marriage to Mary, only daughter and sole heiress of Francis Gwynne, Esq. of Glyn Abbey, M.P. The writer of the memoir of Dr. Edward Browne, in the Bio- graphia Britannica, has collected some further particulars respecting him, to which the enquirer is referred. In the parish church of Northfleet are inscriptions to his memory and that of his son ; followed by an extract from his will, bequeathing his Northfleet estate equally between the College of Physicians and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in the event (which soon happened) of failure of heirs to his son and daughter. There are also inscriptions to his three daughters, Susanna, Henrietta, and Mary. The library and manuscripts of Sir Thomas passed into the hands of his son and grandson ; on whose decease his library was sold by auction.^ But the far greater portion of his MSS. together with those added by his son, were sold, I suppose, to Sir Hans Sloane. A catalogue of them is preserved in the Bodleian Library ; by means of which, with the help of Sir Hans Sloane's MS. catalojfue of his own immense collections, I have succeeded in identifying nearly all the articles, in our National Library at the British Museum. I shall subjoin, in conclusion, a paper, which was pointed out to me by John Chambers, Esq. of Norwich, and wjiich seems to possess some claim to be regarded as a document of authority. ? The following advertisement of the sale is from the Gentleman's Magazine for 1830, pt. i. p. 515 :— "Sir Thos. Browne, Dec. 26, 1710. A catalogue of the libraries of the learned Sir Thomas Brown, and his son Dr. Brown, deceased, consisting of many very valuable and un- common books in most faculties and languages, with choice manuscripts, which will befjin to be sold by auction at the Black Boy Coffee-house, in Ave-Mary Lane, near Ludgate. on Monday, the 8th of January next, beginning everj* Monday at 4 o'clock till the sale is ended. Catalogues are delivered at most booksellers in London, at the two Universities, and at the filace of sale, price 6d." A copy of this catalogue exists in the British Museum. VOL. ) e Ixviii SUPPLEMENTAKT MEMOIE. TO THE EDITOE OF THE EUROPEAN MAGAZINE. Sir, — In a copy of the wm-lcs of Sir Thomas Brown, jtrinted in 1686, vihich formerly hdonged to Dr. White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, 1 find the following memorandum, in the hand-wnting of that prelate. It contains circumstances not generally known, and may afford some infor- mation to the readers of the European Magazine. I am, dx., C. D. "Memdum. In the time of my waiting at Windsor, in the latter part of Nov. 1712, Mrs. Littleton, a daughter of Sir Thomas Brown, of Norwich, lent me a short account and character of her father, written by John Whitefoot, a minister well acquainted with him, the same person who preacht and publisht a funeral sermon for Bishop Hall. It was contained in one sheet, 4to. beginning thus. 'Had my province been only to preach a funeral sermon for this excellent person, &c. ' " All the matter of fact contained in the said account were in these words : — [/ omit the bishop's epitome, having already printed at large, in John- son's Life, the whole account of Whitefoot, from which it was abridged.^ " Thus ended the account, and after it was written by Mrs. Littleton. ' This was part of the life of Sir Thomas Brown, by that learned and good man, Mr. John Whitefoot.' And then foUows, in the same hand of Mrs. Littleton. ' His father dying left him young ; his mother took her thirds, which was three thousand pounds, and married Sir Thomas Dutton. a worthy person, who had great places. The executors took care of his education at Winchester school and Oxford. He lived some time in Montpellier and Padua. His father-in-law shewed him all Ire- land in some visitation of the forts and castles. He was born Oct. 19, 1605. He died Oct. 19, 1682, 77 years of age. His father used to open his breast when he was asleep, and kiss it in prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost would take possession there. His pictin-e is at the Duke of Devonshire's house in Picca- dilly, in his mother's lap. His father, mother, brother, and sisters, in it. A family picture, his father being nearly related to that countess of Devonshire whose picture is in the first room with her three sons by her, and very like to Sir Thomas Brown's father, as the servants shew to persons who go to see the picture, which is so good painting, that my lord duke values it at four hundred pounds.' " Memdm. The said Mrs. Littleton reports that the MSS. papers of her father were in the hands of her late brother Dr. Edward Brown, who lent them in a box to Dr. Tliomas Tenison, vicar of St. Martin's, in the reign of King James II., and that she herself, at her brother's request, went to fetch home the box, and accordingly brought it back, and de- livered it to her brother, who soon after complained that he misst the choicest papers, which were a continuation of his Relicio Medici, drawn up in his elder years, and which his son Dr. Brown had now intended to publish. She went back to Dr. Tenison, and desired him to look for those papers, which he could not find, but she hopes they may be stiil recovered, either as mislaid by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or by her brother, whose only daughter is married to Mr. Brigst t:k, a member of the House of Commons. "^^'w;'. Mag. vol. xl. p. 89. PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA, ENQUIRIES INTO VEBT MANY RECEIVED TENETS AND COMMONLY PRESUMED TRUTHS, WHICH EXAMINED PROVE BUT VULGAR AND COMMON ERKOES. NINTH EDITION. WITH ADDITIOKS FEOM MSS. IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, AND NOTES BT DEAN WREN, E. W. BRATLET, JLN. F.L.S., AND OTHERS, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1646. Ex lihris colligere qvoe iirodiderunt authores longe est periculosissimum ; rerum ipsarum cognitio vera e rebus ipsis est. — Jul. Scaligeb, EDITOR'S PREFACE TO PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA. If the conception and plan of the present work is not to be ascribed to the mental activity of its author alone, — if we are not to regard it solely as the result of his own native and irre- pressible thirst for knowledge, and of that unrelenting spirit of investigation which led him to scrutinize every position before he admitted it ; if, in short, we are to allow, that Sir Thomas Browne might have been, in some degree, impelled to this un- dertaking by the suggestions of another, may we not with great probability attribute the impulse to the opinions expressed by Lord Bacon as to the Use of Doubts, and the advantages which might result from drawing up a Calendar of Doubts, Falsehoods, and Popular Errors ? In support of this conjecture, I will insert some of those opinions (from Mr. BasU Montagu's Lec- tures on Bacon, with whicli I have been favoured by that gentleman, at the request of my kind friend Mr. Amyot), with Mr. Montagu's remarks. " ' The recording and proposing of doubts hath in it a two-fold use. One, that it munites and fortifies philosophy against error, when that which is not altogether so clear and evident is not defined and avouched (lest error should beget error), but a judgment upon it is suspended and not definitive.' — It will be seen in a future lecture, that Lord Bacon enumerates a tendency to hasty assent among the idols of the understanding by which we are diverted from the truth. In this place, he contents him- self with incidentally noticing, that a record of doubts has a tendency to prevent the influence of this idol. — ' The other, that the entry of doubts, and recording of them, are so many sponges which continually draw and suck unto them an increase and improvement of knowledge ; whereby it comes to pass that those things which, without the suggestion of doubts, had been slightly and without observation, passed over, are, by occasion of such dubitations, more seriously and attentively considered.' — Lord Ixxii editoe's preface Bacon, in various parts of bis works, admonishes us of our duty to keep our minds open to improvement, and not to admit as truths what may be either false, or only a proper subject for Joubts. He warns us in his doctrine of the idols of the under- etanding, that, from our love of truth, we are anxious to possess it, and too ready to imagine ourselves enriched by the possession of counterfeit, instead of real coin. He says — ' The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavour and extremely covet, that it may not be pensile ; but that it may light upon something fixed and immoveable, on which, as on a firmament, it may support itself in its swift motions and disqiiisitions. Aristotle endeavours to prove that, in all motions of bodies, there is some point quiescent, and very elegantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed, and bare up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the world, whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like manner, men do earnestly seek to have some Atlas, or axis of their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some measure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the imderstanding, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven. An impatience of doubt, and an unadvised haste of assertion, without due and mature supension of the judgment, is an error in the conduct of the understanding. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action, commonly spoken of by the ancients ; of which the one was a plain and smooth way in the lieginning, but in the end impassable ; — the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplations : — if a man will begin in certainties, he shall end in doubts ; but if he be content to begin with doubts, and have patience a while, he shall end in certainties. * * * Wherefore I report as deficient a calendar of dubitations, or problems in nature, and approve the undertaking of such a work as a profitable pains ; so care be had that, as knowledge daUy grows up (which certainly will come to pass if men hearken unto us), such doubts as be clearly discussed, and brought to resolu- tion, be rased out of the catalogue of problems. It would be a "very profitable course to adjoin to the calendar of doubts and non-liquets, a calendar of falsehoods, and of popular errors, now passing unargued in natural history and opinions, that sciences be no longer distempered and debased by them.' " Since Lord Bacon's time, there have been publications on vulgar errors, or erroneous opinions received as truths by the community. The first was published in the year 1646, by Sir Thomas Browne. It is entitled, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many received Tenets, and commonly received Truths, by Sir TJiomas Browne, Knt. M.D. (From his preface it will be found, that before Lord Bacon's time, as I conceive. TO PSEUDODOXIA. Ixxiil but certainly before the time of Sir Thomas Browne, there were other works upoa this subject.) Of this work, Mr. Jeremy Bentham, in his work on Fallacies, says, ' Vulgar Errors is a denomination which, from a work on this subject by a physician of name in the 17th century, has obtained a certain degree of celebrity. Not the moral (of which the political is a department), but the physical was the field of the errors, which it was the object of Sir Thomas Browne to hunt out and brmg to view ; but of this restriction, no intimation is given by the words of which the title of his work is composed.' It is rather interesting to see that antipathy to improvement in the time of Sir Thomas Browne was, as it is, and to a certain extent ever will be, so rife, that he thought it expedient to guard against such prejudices by an amulet to charm priests, physicians, and philosophers." — Mr. Montagus MSy By whatever inducements, however, we may suppose Browne to have been stimulated to the production of the Pseudodoxia Epidemiea, few will hesitate to admit that he was peculiarly qualified for the task. It was in his very nature to inquire (as I have remarked), and he was not content to receive any thing, without scrutiny, — except in matters of faith. The exception may be given in his own words. " In philosophy, where truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than my- self ; but in divinity, I love to keep the road : and, though not in an implicit, yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the church, by which I move, not reserving any proper poles, or motion from the epicycle of my own brain."' Again : — " where the scripture is silent, the church is my text ; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment ; where both are silent,"'' &c. If we add to these passages the following avowal, — " I am, I confess, natu- rally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms superstition,"' — we are furnished with the true key to explain his beUef in witchcraft, and Satanic influence, as well his partiality for the Ptolemaic system of the universe. He regarded these all as being to a certain extent, subjects of revelation ; and therefore"" to be received implicitly. But every thing not so supported, fell under the process of his excruciation. His very curious and extensive reading, — his daily and ardent pursuit of every branch of natural history, — the labour he was constantly willing (as Dr. Johnson observes)" to pay for truth, in patient and reiterated experiments '' " See his prefivce, in which he Bays, ' we cannot expect the frown of theology herein, &c. &c.' to the end of the paragraph." ' Rd. Med. ^ Rel. Med. ' Rel. Med. ■" See this ground stated by his annotator Dean Wren, who with still greater vehemence advocated Browne's astronomical behe£ " In his Life of Browne, vol. L Ixxiv EDITORS PBKPAOE upon even the most trifling or absurd questions, — togethei ■with the ready access, which his great celebrity and extended ac- quaintance procured him, to tlae collections and observations of the literary and scientific men of hit, day; all these supplied him with copious materials for the exercise of his inquisitive propen- sities. Every doubt was brought to the test of experiment and examination. His Commoii-jjiace Books exhibit abundant evi- dence that he tn;sted nothing to memory, but noted down, at the moment they struck him, the exijeriments and inquiries he deemed necessary to be made, together with results as they arose. That this process of accumulation began early in life, is evident from the date of his first edition; while subsequent alterations, and the constant accessions of new matter,"" (some even now first printed) may serve to convince us, that thiough- out life he continued, as the constantly increasing " diversion " of his business or acquaintance allowed him opportunity, to en- rich his treasui-y of doubts and speculations. Ijet us now proceed to enumerate the editions and translations which have appeared. The First Edition is in pot folio, with the following title-page.'' Fseudodoxia J^j^idemica : or, inquiries into very many received Tenets, and cominonly presumed Trutns. By Thorii'is Browne, Dr. of Physich. Jul. Scaliy. Jix libris colliyere quae prodide- runt autho.es, longe est periculosisslmum ; rerum ij^sartim cog- ultio vera e rebus ipsis est. London, Frinted by T. II. for Edward Dod, and are to he sold in Ivie Lane. I(j46. On the leaf opposite the title is Boivname's Imprimatur.'* The Second Edition is the handsomest, as to typography, which has hitherto appeared. It is in foolscap folio. The title i?,, Fsfududoxia, ike. (as before); Second Editimi, corrected and ■much enlarged by the author, 2'ogether with some Marginal (Jbseroations, and a Table alphabeticall at the end. London, Frinted by A. Miller, for Ldw. Dod and Nath. Ehins, at the Gunne in Ivie Lane. 1650. The Third Edition, with some additions, appeared in folio, in p These alterations and additions are pointed out in the notes to the present edition. Thoy occur cliiefly in the iind and Hrd editions, and in the Gth, the last which tlie autiior revised. The 4th and .5th editions differ little from the 8rd. '' DoicnaiUKS Imprimatur.'] "March the Hth, 1G45. I have perused these learned Animudversions upon the Common Tenets and Opinions t)t Men in former and in thi se present times, entitled Fseudodoxia Epidemica ; and finding tiiem much transcending vulgar conceipt, and adorneil with great variety ol matter, and multiplicity of reading, I approve them as very wortliy to be printed and pnldished. "JOUiJ DoWNAME." TO PSEUDODOXIA. IxXV 1658. It is printed on the model of the second, but is very interior. The Fourth Edition was printed in the same year, in 4to. with the Hydriotaphia and Garden of Cyrus — two Discourses which had just appeared in 8vo. The title is Pseudodoxia, &c. The Fourth Edition, with Marginal Observatioits, and a Table Alpha- betical. Whereunto are now added two Discourses : — the one of Urn Burial, or Sepulchrall Urns, lately found in Norfolk: the other, of the Garden of Cyrus, or Network Phintations of the Antients. Both newly written by the same Author. Ax libris, ifec. London, Printed for Edward Dod, and are to be sould by Andrew Crook, at the Green Dragon in Paul's Church-yard. 1658. No sooner had Dod brought out this edition, so enriched, than Ekins, his former partner, printed, in double column, not only the Tracts appended by Dod, but also Eeligio Medici : — and thus, in 1659, produced, as altogether new, liis unsold copies of the 3rd edition, with these enrichments, preceded by this title-page: — Eeligio Medici: ivhereunto is added a Discourse of the bepulchrall Urns, lately found in Norfolk. Together with the Garden of Cyrus ; or the Quincunciall Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mistically Considered. With sundry Observations. By Thomas Brown, Doctour of Physick, Printed for the good of the Commonwealth ; — the whole set forth with anew title-page to the volume, calling it IJte Last Edition, with the date 1659. The Fifth Edition, in 4to. by the Assigns of Dod, in 1669, is nearly a reprint of his Fourth, and contains the two Discourses. It is remarkable for having a portrait (the first, I believe, which appeared) of the author ; but so different from all others 1 have seen, that it is not easy to suppose them to have had a common original. Mr. Ottley, of the British Museum, has had the kindness to give me his opinion as to the engraver, that it may probably have been executed by John Dunstall. The Sixth Edition, published by Ekins, under the author's especial superintendence, and with his final revision and im- provements,' and the last which appeared during his life-time, came out in 1672, in 4to. with this title: — Pseudodoxia, &c.. The Sixth and last Edition, corrected and enlarged by the Author, with many Explanations, Additions, and Alterations throughout. Together with many nfiore Marginal Observa- tions, and a Table Alphabetical at the end. London, Printed hy J. R. for Nath. Ekins. 1672. A portrait by Van Hove * As declared in the Postscript. Of this edition there were larg* paijer$. lixvi editor's peefa.ce accompani'id it ; which, in all probability, had a common ori^ ginal with all the subsequent portraits : — viz. that of Van der Bane, published with the Miscellany Tracts, in 1683 — that of White, with the Works, in 1686 — that of Van der Gucht, with the Posthumoxis Works, in 1712 — that of Trotter, in Malcolm's Lives of Topographers — together with a Dutch 4to. print, which probably accompanied a Dutch translation of the Works. In 1686, Abp. Tenison published the folio volume, which contained the Seventh Edition of Pseudodoxia, Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Quincunx, together with the Miscellany Tracts, which he had himself first edited in 1 683 (but of whicn many copies have a reprint title with the date 1684), with this title, in red and black ink. I know of but three translations of Pseudodoxia: two of which are those of Grundal and Knorr, in 1668 and 1680 ; the third is a French translation, in 2 vol. 12mo. of the seventh edition." I cannot say by whom it was made, unless by Peter Briot, the translator of E.icault'8 Ottoman Empire, and several other works into French. Watt mentions an edition of the Works of Browne in Latin, in 1682 ; but I have never seen it, nor any other mention of it. Peti, a mathematician, who wrote on comets, is mentioned as having translated some part into Latin ; and Isaac Gruter^ cor- responded with Sir Thomas, respecting a translation which he was preparing ; but which I believe never appeared. In 1652 our old enemy, Alexander Ross, again took up arms, and made an attack at the same time on our author, and on Lord Bacon, Dr. Harvey, and others, in his Arcana MierocosmiJ " With this title : — Essai sur les Erreurs Populaire-i, ou Examen de plasieurs Opinions revues comme vrayes, qui tont fausses ou douteuses. Traduit de I'Anr/lois de Thorn. Brown, Chevalier et Docteur en Medecine. Nouvelle edition revue et corrigee. Ex libris, tix. Jul. Scalig. A Paris, chez Briasson, Rue Saint Jacques, a la Science et d, I'Ange Gardien. MDccxxxvin. Avec A jyprobationet privilege du Roy. My copy of this work has also reprint titles, with the date 1753. * Gruter published several of Lord Bacon's pieces in Latin ; and Abp. Tenison in his Baconiana (Lond. 1679, sra. 8vo.) has given, at p. 221, several Latin letters on the subject, from Isaac Gruter to Dr. Rawley. 5" A rcana Microcosmi : or, 77ie hid Secrets of Man's Body discovered ; in an Anatomical Duel between Aristotle and Galen concerning ttie Parts thereof : as also by a discovery of the Strange and marvellous Diseases, ■^Symjitomes, and Accidents of Man's Body. With a Refutation of Doctw Brown's Vulgar Errors, t/ie Lord Bacon's Natural History, and Doctw TO PSEUDODOXIA. llXVi. To assail at once three such men, must be admitted as a proof that Alexander was not wanting in spirit ; and to say the truth, there is much amusement to be found in the volume.* He ad- heres to antiquity, " through thick and thin," as John Gilpin hath it ; but in his very blunders and wrongheadedness, he often shows a quaintness and humour which not a little atones for them. The next, and I believe the only other attack which appeared in print, was the Still Gale of John Robinson, '' a pompous and somewhat coxcombical personage, who calls himself " nis fellow Harry's Book de Generatione, Comenius, and Others; whereto is annexed a Letter from Doctor Pr. to the Author, and his Answer thereto, touching Doctor Ilarvy's Booh de Generatione. By A . R. London. " Dr. Kippis remarks, that " the Arcana is far from being so mean a piece as many have represented it. There is in it a great deal of vanity, and more spleen ; but withal there wants not truth, learning, And some sawse." '' He published in 1649 a work entitled Miscellaneous Propositions itnd Qvbceres, by J. R. Dr. in Physick in Norwich — with this motto : Fabricanda Fabri Fimus, enclosed in a wreath. London, Printed for R. Roydo7i, at the Angel in Ivie Lane. That they are truly Miscel- laneous, will be sufficiently proved by their enumeration : — 1. of a Church. 2. of Ministers. 3. of Sacraments. 4. of Adam. 5. of Marriage. 6. of Sympathy. 7. of an Egge. 8. of Swimming or Floating. 9. of Remedies. 10. of Telesmes. From this work it appears, that he was an Independent, in his opinions on church govern- ment, and the ministerial ofl&ce. He held marriage to be a civil, not a religious institution. He seems to have been a person of some acute- ness, and his belief in Satanic agency, resembled that of his fellow citizen Sir Thomas, as appears by his last chapter on " Telesmes, " whose eflfect in removing Epidemical diseases, "if any," he would ascribe " unto the Prince of the Air." This work he translated into Latin and published with two additional pieces, under the following title : — Endoxa seu Questionum quarundam Miscellanearmn examen probabile, ut et Lapis ad Altare, sive Exploratio Locorum paucorum difficiliorum S. ScripturcB, una cum Pseudodoxice Epidemicce Ventilatione tranquilla, per Johannem Robinsonum, M.D. (here occurs a rude wood-cut of 3 faces, with this rnotto :) Sunt varice quamvis fades mentcsque alienee, Unus fit cordis nexus amove boni. Londini, <£'c. 1656. Two years afterwards the work made its appearance, with slight alterations, in English, under this title : — Endoxa, or some probable Inquiries into Truth, both Divine and Humane : together with a Stone to the A Itar, or short Disquisitions on a few difficult places of Scripture ; as also a Calm Ventilation of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, by John Robinson, Doctor of Physick, Translated and Aurf mented by the Author. {Four faces in a heart.) Though divers heads ; faces averse you see ; Yet, for truth's sake, they all in heart agree. London, Printed by J. Streater, for Francis Tylor, 1658. bsxviii editor's preface citizen and collegian." There was little in this gale to ruffle a far more excitable antagonist than Sir Thomas ; and it seems to have died away unnoticed. The present Edition is printed from the folio of 1686, and all the important variations of that edition, from preceding ones, are pointed out in notes. The fifth book contains some pages of new matter, from the MSS. in the British Museum. In speaking of the notes which accompany it, I must first mention those marked Wr. They were written by Dr. Chris- topher Wren, Dean of Windsor, and father of the architect of St. Paul's, on the margins of a copy of the first edition. This copy, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, caught the attention of my very kind friend Dr. Bliss, who enabled me to obtain a transcript of the entire notes. I hope that in print- ing nearly the whole of these notes, I shall be allowed to have really enhanced both the interest and the value of this edition, by adding the very curious commentary of a learned and dis- tinguished contemporary. In extent of reading, as well as in acuteness, the commentator was probably far inferior to Browne ; but he went beyond him, though at the same time strongly resembling him, in a certain superstitious tinge of feeling, and in love of the marvellous ; he was inclined to believe in astrology ; and was a regarder of dreams ; of which a very curious instance is recorded in the Tarentalia, as having been written by him on the margin of Aubrey's Miscellanies, cap. V. p. 52."= He, moreover, admired Sir Thomas for being (like himself) a stout adherent to the falling fortunes of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. Browne has enumerated in his preface several works simi- lar and anterior to his own.'^ Several others may here be " "Sir C. W. being at his father's home, anno 1651, at Knoyle, Wilts, dreamt that he saw a fight in a great market-place, which he knew not, where some were flying, and others pursuing ; and among those that fled, he saw a kinsman of his, who went into Scotland to the king's army. They heard in the country that the king was come into England, but whereabout he was they could not tell. The next night his kinsman came to his father's at Knoyle, and was the first that brought the news of the fight at Worcester, fought Sep. 3. " When Sir C. W. was at Paris, about 1665, he was taken ill and feverish, made but little water, and had a pain in his reins : he sent for a physician, who advised him to let blood, thinking he had a pleurisy ; but bleeding much disagreeing with his constitution, he would defer it a day longer ; that night he dreamt that he was in a place where jialm- trees grew (suppose Egypt), and that a woman in a romantick habit reached him dates. The next day he sent for dates, which cured him of the pain in his reins." ** Respecting Primrose, De Vulfji Errovibus, I may add that his first TO PSEUDODOXIA. Lsxix mentioned ; though many have very probably escaped my notice. Espagne John d*. Erreurs Populaires en Points Generanx qui concernent I'intelligence de la Reliction. To this work there is no date, nor do I find it in the British Museum, which con- tains several other of his works. He was a French Protestant di\'ine of the 17th century. IIEPIAMMA 'EniAH'MION: or. Vulgar Errors in practice censured. Also the Art of Oratory, composed for the benefit of young students, cap. 8vo. Lond. jRoyston, 1659, pp. 112. The Yulgar Errours inpractice censured are, 1. That of reproach- ing red-naired men. 2. That of censuring some professions. 3. That of reproaching the feminine sex. 4. The neglect of many writers to defend the deity of Christ. 5. The vanity of epitaphs. 6. The running from one extreme in religion to another. 7. The common practice of railing against an adversary. Kalph BatteD. Vulgar Errors in Divinity Removed, Lond. 8vo. 1683, containing, with title, &c. pp. 152. These relate to, 1. E-eprobation. 2. Kingly government. 3. God's house and service in it. 4. Man's will. 5. Man's redemption. 6. Praying by the Spirit. Two works on popular superstitions, viz. Traits des Supersti- tions, by M. Thiers, published in 1679, and L'Histoire Critique des pratiques superstitieuses qui ont seduit les peuples, et embar- rasse les Savans, by Pierre Le Brun, published in 2 vols, at Kouay, in 1702 and 1732, — were pubUshed together in 1733 in one vol. fol. with plates. One of these gives several figures of mand?^akes. Fovargue Stephen. A New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors, 8vo. pp. 202, Camb. 1767. A work of slight pretension, and of slender merit ; introduced by a preface somewhat flippant and in bad taste. Two of his errors had been already noticed by Sir Thomas Browne, and many of the rest are by no means generally received opinions. Vulgar Errors, Lond. Debrett [8vo. 1784.] A political pam- phlet against Mr. Pitt, at the time of the coahtion between Lord North and Mr. Fox. The " Errors" enumerated are six : — 1. That the union between Lord North and Mr. Fox was in- terested, and without any public spirit to support it. 2. That Mr. Fox's India bill was a violation of charters. 3. That it was a confiscation of property. 4. That, in the issue of this con- test, the people will take part against the House of Commons. 5. That the king must succeed in the struggle by dissolving edition was in Latin, Amst. 1639 : — it was that which Wittie translated : subsequent editions appeared, and in 1668 one very much enlarged at Botterdam ; it was this which De Eostagny translated. Ixxx editoe's peeface parliament. 6. That the opposition to the present ministerfl Las been carried on with violence. These six positions the author terms " Vulgar Errors," and professes to disprove. A notice of some Vulgar Errors, as to points of law, will be found in Barrinqton on the Statutes, 4to. 1775, p. 474. s.w. London, June 17, 1835. In the Sloanian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 1839, there is a very neatly-written MS. extending to 85 pages, 4to., of Observations on Ps. Ep. which is proved to have proceeded from the pen of Sir Hamon L'Estrange. The knight commences by thus expressing his admiration of hia author : — " Boterus, magnifying the latitude of the pope's power, sayes that he hath una jurisditione che no conosce oriente, ' a command that knows no east,' and another dedicates a booke to the king of Spaine, thus, 'To the great king, to whom the sun never sets.' I cannot but praedicate the vast expanse of the Dr.'s learning, reading, and knowledge, from the cedar to the hyssope." He then begins his observations by pointing out, in Browne's chapter on magnetism and the compass, several remarks which had not been made by previous writers ; — Borough, Normfin, or Gilbert. He goes on successively to notice Browne's remarks on electricity, flies in amber, white powder, and the rose of Jericho. After noticing, in connection with this last topic, several marvellous stories of omens, apparitions, and miracles, (among which this one, told to the writer by the old Countess of Arundel, respecting her father, Lord Dacre of the North, that he had a pasture on the scite of an old abbey, and that his sheep never failed, if within that scite, to produce twins:) — he thus proceeds. "And I see no ban- against mee to think that in the dayes of darkness and ignorance of popery, some cloysterers might truck with the devil (att a deare rate) for an ape's trick (as witches do) for the showing, effecting, and continuance of such pranks and toyes, whereby to acquire a stupendous reputation of working miracles (of which they were not a little ambitious,) to drawe affection, respect, and honour, to their religion and profession, and to celebrate the place with a mark and character of extraordinary sanctity for the future," p. 6, After touch- ing upon Deer casting their hoi-ns, he mentions, on the subject of Griffins, having seen in Sir Rob. Cotton's library a griffin's daw, p. 7. Discussing the story of the ostrich swallowing iron, he mentions having seen one eat pellets of chewed paper as large as a walnut. He gives also, as a parallel, the following sior^' ; — " About 1638, as I walked London streets, I sawe the picture of a strange fowle hang out upon a " and my selfe, with one or two more then in company, went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great • A burnt hole occurs here in MS. TO l-SEUDODOXlA. IxXXl fowle, somewhat bigger than the largest turkey-cock, and so legged ami footed, but shorter and thicker, and of a more erect shape, coulourd before like the breast of yong cock fesan, and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo, and in the ende of a chimney in the chamber there lay an heap of large pebble stones, whereof hee gave it many in our sight, some as bigg as nutmegs, and the keeper told us shee eate them, conducing unto digestion ; and though I remember not how far the keeper was questioned herein, yet I am confident that afterwards he cast them all agayne." He goes on to mention other instances of birds swallowing stones, &c. for the same purpose — which he concludes to be the most probable solution of the alleged fact that the ostrich (or estridge, as he calls it,) swallowing iron, pp. 8 — -12. Then follows a lengthened notice of the five kinds of one-homed animals noticed by Browne ; — the Indium, ox and ciss, the oryx, rhinoceros, and monoceros. His opinion is that three " might exist ; some one or more of several sorts of monsters in nature, through some errour or vitiosity in generation or conception, which might bear one home ; and such a creature once seen might multiply fast enough in report, and (ex traduce) naturalists readily follow one another, as wild geese flye." He concludes the unicorn of Job to be the rhinoceros, after many pages of careful and argumentative exami- nation of his " shape and strength, and the seate, position, and portage of his home," pp. 13 — 26. At p. 27, we find the notice (adverted to in his letter to Browne) of the whale, beginning thus : " In June, 1626, a whale was cast up upon my shoare or sea liberty, Bometyme parcel of the possessions of the abbey of Ramsey, &c." Notices of the dolphin, the toad arid spider, seal, dottrel, basilisk, twallows in mud, tfcc. occupy from p. 28 to p. 46 : — from the last of ■which I must extract the following very lively incident — " About 16 or 20 years since, upon a hot, bright, and cleare daye, (a little before noone,) hapning in the midst of March, as I leaned over my garden wall, and looking steadfastly into my mote, (which is on that syde very cleare, leane, and hungry water,) I espied sundry small creatures (of a dark or dusky coulour, longwise shaped, and of forme of beetle or scarabee) to rise out of the mud from the bottom of the mote to the topp of the water, and some of them to settle themselves speedily downe againe into the mud, others to rayse themse.rres above the water five or six inches, others a foote, others more, and some some yards, with a slanting or sloaping mount, and a like descent and falling downe hastened to the bottome ;' and being much pleased with this speculation, I hastily rann unto mine house, and called out mine eldest Sonne, (then a man growne and of yeares,) both to participate and bee a witnesse of this discovery ; wee observed againe as before, and att last (among sundry essayes of many of these creatures, we perceived ' I must suspect that the Knight was deceived, probably by reflec- tion, as to " these creatures " (which must be supposed the larvae of libdlula, or dragon flies,) having mounted out of the water before they acquired their wings — or having returned into the water after they had once taken their leave of it. bxxii editor's peeface to pseudodoxia. one of them to rise from the bottom to the top of the water, and found iteelfe so full sunned and perfected as it raysed it selfe above the water, and after two or three turnes and circinations in the ayre, it mounted cleane out of sight," p. 40. He proceeds to remark on the passenger falcon, (p. 42, 43,) toads found in oaks, shell stones, (Pholas,) p. 44, St. Hierome, p. 46, and last, but not least, Pope Joan, whose existence he believes, and devotes the remaining forty pages of his paper to a most learned and ingenious examination of the arguments for and against the story — and still further to a discussion of the sense in which those Apocalyptic passages are to be understood — in which the whore of Babylon is foretold and denounced, concluded by a courteous expression of personal respect to many who are of that fciith, pp. 47—85. TO THE READER. "Would truth dispense, we could be content, with Plato, that knowledge were but remembrance ; that intellectual acquisition were but reminiscential evocation, and new im- pressions but the coloiu'ishing of old stamps which stood pale in the soul before.' For (what is worse) knowledge is made by oblivion, and, to purchase a clear and warrantable body of truth, we must forget and part with much we know; — our tender enquiries taking up learning at large, and, to- gether with true and assured notions, receiWng many, where- in our reviewing judgments do find no satisfaction. And, therefore, in this encyclopgedie and round of knowledge, like the great and exemplary wheels of heaven, we must observe two circles ; that, while we are daily carried about and whirled on by the swing and rapt of the one, we may maintain a natural and proper course in the slow and sober wheel of the other. And this we shall more readily perform, if we timely survey our knowledge ; impartially singling out those encroachments which junior compliance and popular credulity hath admitted. Whereof at present we hare en- deavoured a long and serious adviso ; proposing not only a large and copious list, but from experience and reason" at- tempting their decisions. And first we crave exceeding pardon in the audacity of the attempt ; humbly acknowledging a work of such concern- ment unto truth, and difiiculty in itself, did well deserve the conjunction of many heads. And surely more advantageous had it been unto truth, to have fallen into the endeavours of ' the colom-ish'nr/, tt-c] "The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours ; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear.'' — Locke. a TO THE EEADEK. aome co-operating advancers, that might have performed it to the life, and added authority thereto ; which the privacy of our condition, and unequal abilities cannot expect. Whereby notwithstanding we have not been diverted ; nor have our solitary attempts been so discouraged, as to despair the favourable look of learning upon our single and unsup- ported endeavoui's. Nor have we let fall our pen upon discouragement of con- tradiction, unbelief, and difficulty of dissuasion from radi- cated beliefs, and points of high prescription ; although we are very sensible how hardly teaching years do learn, what roots old age contracteth unto errors, and how such as are but acorns in our younger brows grow oaks in our elder heads, and become inflexible unto the powerfuUest arm of reason. Although we have also beheld, what cold requitals others have found in their several redemptions of truth ; and how their ingenuous enquiries have been dismissed with cen- sure, and obloquy of singularities.^ Some consideration we hope from the course of our pro- fession, which though it leadeth us into many truths that pass undiscerned by others, yet doth it disturb their com- munications, and much inteiTupt the office of our pens in their well-intended transmissions. And therefore surely in this work attempts will exceed performances ; it being com- ])osed by snatches of time, as medical vacations, and the fruitless importunity of uroscopy* would permit us.^ And therefore also, perhaps it hath not found that regular and constant style, those infiUible experiments, and those as- sured determinations, which the subject sometime I'cquireth, and might be expected from others, whose quiet doors and unmolested hours aftbrd no such distractions. Although whoever shall indifterently perpend the exceeding difficulty, which either tlie obscurity of the subject or unavoidable paradoxology must often put upon the attemptor, he will easily discern a work of this nature is not to be performed upon one legg ; and should smell of oyle, if duly and de- servedl}' handled. * Inspection of urines. * Although we have also behdd, tix'.] Nota juatam Doctoris querimo- uiam. — Wi: * /''uitless Laportwnity, tfcc] See book i. chap. ?.. TO THE READEE. 3 Our first intentions, considering the common interest of truth, resolved to propose it unto the Latin republick and equal judges of Europe, but, owing in the first place this service unto our country, and therein especially imto its ingenuous gentry, we have declared ourselves in a language best conceived. Although I confess the quality of tlie sub- ject wiU sometime carry us into expressions beyond mere English apprehensions."* And, indeed, if elegancy still pro- ceedeth, and English pens maiutaia that stream we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall, within few years, be fain to learn Latin to imderstand English, and a work wiU prove of equal facility in either.* Nor have we ad- dressed our pen or style unto the people, (whom books do not redress, and [who] are this way incapable of reduction,) but unto the knowing and leading part of learning. As well understanding (at least probably hoping) except they be watered from higher regions, and fructifying meteors of knowledge, these weeds must lose their alimental sap, and wither of themselves. AVhose conserving influence could our endeavours prevent, we shoidd trust the rest unto the scythe of time, and hopeful dominion of truth. AVe hope it wiU not be unconsidered, that we find no open tract, or constant manuduction in this labyrinth, but are ofttimes fain to wander in the America and luitravelled parts of truth.^ For though, not many years past. Dr. Primrose hath made a learned discourse of Vulgar Errors in Physick,* yet have we discussed but two or three thereof ■* expressions beyond, tfr.] That our naturall English consistes for the moste parte of monosyllables, as appeares by the names of all creatures in our tounge and all our actions, and in all the parts of our bodye, except such things as wee have borrowed from other nations. Scarce one word of ten, in our common talke, is of more than one syllable. In this very shorte note which conteynes sixty words, there bee not above eleven (and those of Latin derivation) which are not (all of them) monosyllables. — Wr. ^ ue shall icithin, d-c] To which desirable end, it must be confessed, Browne has, in this work, used his best endeavours. — Crossley, in London Mag. vol. iv. p. 436. ^ America, 'FIKM:iTr OF HUMAX NATURE. 11 and feminine faculties ; or whether the tree in the midst of the garden, were not that part in the centre of the body, in which was afterward the appointment of circumcision in males, we leave it unto the thalmudist.^ AVhether there were any pohcy in the devil to tempt them before the con- junction, or whether the issue, before tentation, might in justice have sutfered with those after, we leave it unto the lawj^er. Whether Adam foreknew the advent of Christ, or the reparation of his error by his Saviour ; how the execu- tion of the curse should have been ordered, if, after Eve had eaten, Adam had yet refused ; whether, if they had tasted the tree of life, before that of good and evil, they had yet suffered the curse of mortality ; or whether the efficacy ot the one had not overpowered the penalty of the other, we leave it unto God. For he alone can truly determine these, and all things else ; who, as he hath proposed the world unto our disputation, so hath he reserved many things unto his owTi resolution ; whose determination we cannot hope from flesh, but must with reverence suspend unto that great day, whose justice shall either condemn our curiosities, or resolve oiu- disquisitions. Lastly, man was not only deceivable in his integrity, but the angels of light in all tlieir clarity.^ He that said, he would be like the highest, did err, it' in some way he con- ceived not himself so already : but in attempting so high an effect from himself, he misunderstood the nature of God, and held a false apprehension of his o\vn ; whereby vainly attempting not only insolencies, but impossibilities, he de- ceived himself as low as hell. In brief, there is nothing in- fallible but God, who cannot possibly err. For things are really true, as they correspond unto His conception •] and * whether the tree, <£'c.] See the Count de Gahalk, p. 54, Lond. 1714. This is the theory of Hadrian Beverland's celebrated work, De Peccato originali, 1679, Svo. It may be observed by the way, as a fact not generally known, that many curious papers and MSS. of this singular writer, throwing great light on that period of his life which he passed in England, may be found in the British Museum. — /. C. ® Man was not only deceivable, etc.] More correctly, " not only was man deceivable in his integrity, but the angels of light in all their clarity. ' For things are really true as they correspond, those who consulted them. ■* For as though there were ajcminalit,/ in urine.] See Primrose's Vul- gar Errors, translated by Wittie, p. 64. — /. Or. ' the Devil of Delphos.] Meaning the oracle of Apollo, at Delphos. ® Saitimbancoes.] Mountebanks : saltare in banco. "^ quacksalvers.] Originally those who made, sold, or applied oint- ments or oils ; salve-quacks. Applied to travelling quacks or charlatans. * Wei-e ^Esop alive, the Piazza and Pont Neuf, ct-c] Alluding probably to ^sop's fable of the "Astrologer and Traveller," and meaning to intimate that the Piazza and Pont Neuf would have suggested to the fabulist abundant materials for fresh apologues. ^ 0/ Cabala with the stars.] " Possessed of the key to their secrets." Cabbala, a Hebrew word signifying ira(i;'CE [bOOX I. doctriue. Virgil, so much beholding unto Horner,^ hath not his name in all his works ; and Pliny, who seems to borrow many authors out of Dioscorides, hath taken no notice of him. I wish men were not still content to plume themselves with others' feathers. Fear of discovery, not single ingenuity,'' aftbrds quotations rather than transcrip- tions ; wherein, notwithstanding, the plagiarism of many makes little consideration,^ whereof though great authors may complain, small ones cannot but take notice.^ Fourthly, while we so eagerly adhere unto antiquity, and the accounts of elder times, we are to consider the fabulous condition thereof. And that we shall not deny, if we call to mind the mendacity of Greece, from whom wee have received most relations ; and that a considerable part of ancient times was by the Greeks themselves termed fxudiKur, that is, made up, or stufted out with fables.'' And surely the ^ leliolding unto Homer.'] " Very corruptly written," says Johnson, " iov beholden, held in obligation, from the Dutch , sive de incredibilibus, whereof some part is yet extant. ^ Orpheus' Harp, e Civitate Dei, 1. xvi. c. 9. ^ the solid reason.'] This is a golden rule, worthye to be written in marble and golde. For as among those that have the persons of men in adoration, and (for something they admire in them) swallow all that they say as gospel, truth is manye times silentlye smothered, and sometimes violently and furiously not only opposed but oppressed ; soe among sober men, and such as entertaine and embrace truth, wherever they find her, shee sodenly advances them to such a hight of honor and reputation, that they become the leaders of learninge and know- ledge to after ages, and that deservedly. — II r. ^ did write an excellent tract, Sc] In the first edition, "did write an excellent tract, in Dutch, of the Verity of Christian Religion, am", hath since contracted the same into six books in Latin." " Grotius, while a prisoner in the castle of Lou vain, wrote, hi the Dutch language, ' A Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion.' He afterwards enlarged it, and translated it, so enlarged, into Latin." — Butler's lAfi of Givtius, p. 148. CHAP. VII.] ADUERENCE V VTC AUTHORITY. 55 Hippocrates averring that it exceedeth not the tenth;"* Adrian, the emperor, in a solemn process, determined for Aristotle, but Justinian many years after took in with Hippocrates, and reversed the decree of the other. Thus have councils not only condemned private men, but the decrees and acts of one another. So Galen, after all his veneration of Hippocrates, in some things hath fallen from him ; Avicen in many from Galen ; and others suc- ceeding from him. And although the singularity of Para- celsus be intolerable, who sparing only Hippocrates, hath reviled not only the authors, but almost all the learning that went before him f yet it is not much less injurious unto knowledge, obstinately and inconvincibly to side with * Thus Aristotle, dkc] Although Aristotle (in his Jlist, Animal, vii. cap. 4,) gives instances in which the period of human gestation extends to the eleventh month, he evidently considers them as extreme cases, and agrees with Hippocrates in regarding the tenth as very generally the extreme limit. See his De Gcnerat. Animal. 1. iv. c. 4. In this opinion they are borne out by the general consent of modem authority both physical and judicial. The doubt indeed is whether even that limit is not too wide. From the Medical Jurisprudence of Dr. Paris and Fonblanque, where the subject will be found most elaborately treated —it appears that although there exists a very general opinion among lawyers and medical men, that the period may be protracted to ten calendar months, it is a point scarcely admitting of proof : and many high authorities reject the opinion as untenable. " Each side ia supported by a considerable list of partisans, and we perceive that upon this occasion the two celebrated medico-jurisconsults of France are op- posed to each other ; Mahon having associated his name with those of Bohn, Hebensteit, Astruc, Mauriceau, De La Motte, Rwderer, and Baudelocque, who reject the belief inretarded deliver^/ as impossible, and contrary to the immutable law of nature ; while the name of Foderi ranges with those who support the contrary opinion, as Teichmeyer, Heister, Albert, Vallentini, Bartholin, Haller, Antoine Petit, Lictaud, Vicq d'Azyr, and Capuran, also Dr. Hamilton, who may boast of the 6U^\>oTt oi Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Pliny." {Medical Jurispji'udence, vol. i. p. 247.) — By the law of Scotland, as stated by Paris and Fon- blanque, a child born ten months after the death of the father is con- sidered as legitimate ; and the civil code of France decrees three hundred days, or fen months, to be the most distant period at which the legitimacy of a birth shall be allowed. — Br. * although the singularity of Paracelsus be intolerable, M:US. >'ICANDEn. 67 deserves indeed to live for ever, not only for the elegancy of the text, but the excellency of the comment, lately per- formed by Salmasius, under the name of Plinian Exer- citations. 8. Athena^us,^ a delectable author, and very various, and justly styled by Casaubon, Grrsecorum Plinius. There is extant of his, a famous piece, under the name of Deipnoso- phista, or Coena Sapientium, containing the discourse of many learned men, at a feast provided by Laurentius. It is a laborious collection out of many authors, and some whereof are mentioned no where else. It containeth strange and singular relations, not without some spice or sprinkling of all learning. The author was probably a better gram- marian than philosopher, dealing but hardly with Aristotle and Plato, and betrayeth himself much in his chapter De Curiositate AristoteUs. In brief, he is an author of excellent use, and may with discretion be read rmto great advantage; and hath therefore well deserved the comments of Casaubon and Dalecampius. But being miscellaneous in many things, he is to be received with suspicion ;^ for such as amass all relations must erre in some, and may without offence be un- beKeved in many. 9. We will not omit the works of Xicander, a poet of good antiquity ; that is, his Theriaca, and Alexipharmaca, translated and commented by Gorrseus : for therein are contained several traditions, and popular conceits of venom- ous beasts ; which only deducted, the work is to be em- braced, as containing the first description of poisons and their antidotes, whereof Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, have made especial use in elder times ; and Ardoynus Grevinus, and others, in times more near our own. We might per- haps let pass Oppianus, that famous CUician poet. There are extant of his in Greek, four books of Cynegeticks or Venation, five of Halieuticks or Piscation, commented and published by Eitterhusius ; wherein, describing beasts of * AthencBus.'] A very favourite author with Sir Thomas. See his Remarlcs on Athenceus. * he is to be received with suspicio7i.] We need have noe great sus- pition of him, going under the garde of tliese learned men ; who will not suffer you to bee led by him, into any knowne or suspected error. — Wr. f2 G8 PHILES. nOLY WKITEE8. [bOOK I. venery, and fishes, he hath indeed but sparingly inserted the vulgar conceptions thereof. So that abating the annual mutation of sexes in the hyaena, the single sex in the rhino- ceros, the antipathy between two drums, of a lamb and a wolf's skin, the informity of cubs, the venation of Centaures, the copidation of the murena and the viper, with some few others, he may be read with great delight and profit. It is not without some wonder his elegant lines are so neglected. Surely, hereby we reject one of the best epic poets,* and much condemn the judgment of Antoninus, whose appre- hensions so honoured his poems that, as some report, for every verse he assigned him a stater of gold. 10. More warily are we to receive the relations of Philes, who, in Grreek iambicks, delivered the proprieties of animals ; for herein he hath amassed the vulgar accounts recorded by the ancients, and hath therein especially followed ^lian. And likewise Johannes Tzetzes,'' a grammarian, who, besides a comment upon Hesiod and Homer, hath left us Chiliads de Varia Historia ; wherein delivering the accounts of Ctesias, Herodotus, and most of the ancients, he is to be embraced with caution, and as a transcriptive relator.*^ 11. We cannot, without partiality, omit all caution even of holy writers, and such whose names are venerable unto all posterity. Not to meddle at all with miraculous authors, or any legendary relators, we are not without circumspection to receive some books even of authentic and renowned fathers. So are we to read the leaves of Basil and Ambrose, in their books entituled Hexameron,^ or The Description of the Creation ; wherein, delivering particular accounts of all the creatures, they have left us relations suitable to those of ^lian, Pliny, and other natural writers, whose authorities * That write hexameters, or long verses. ^ Johannes Tzetzes.] Tzetzes ventisossimus. — Wr. * a transcriptive relator. '\ N.B. justissimam censuram. — Wr. * Hcxamerun.] St. Basil and St. Ambrose in their hexameron : in- stead whereof wee have Du Bartas, an elegant and modest writer : justly honoured by (two) excellent poets, his translatores : Hieronymus Vida of Cremona, a second Virgil, who turned him into Latin verse, most smoothlye ; and our Sylvester, a second Spencer, who hath soe linely fitted him with an English garbe, that itt seemes to become him as h.indsomelie, as hisowne native French. — Wr. CHAP. Till.] ALBEETIJS. 69 herein they followed, and from whom, most probably, they desumed their narrations. And the like hath been com- mitted by Epiphanius in his Physiology ; that is, a book he hath left concerning the nature of animals. With no less caution must we look on Isidore, bishop of Seville ; who, having left in twenty books an accurate work De Originihus, hath to the etymology of words superadded their received natures ; wherein, most generally, he consents with common opinions and authors which have delivered them. 12. Albertus, bishop of Ratisbone, for his great learning and latitude of knowledge, surnamed Magnus. Besides divinity, he hath written many tracts in philosophy ; what we are chiefly to receive with caution, are his Natural Tractates, more especially those of minerals, vegetables, and animals, which are indeed chiefly collections out of Aristotle, ^lian, and Pliny, and respectively contain many of our popular errors. A man who hath much advanced these opinions by the authority of his name, and delivered most conceits, with strict enquiry into few. In the same classes may well be placed Viucentius Belluacensis,' or rather he from whom he collected his Speculum Naturale, that is, Gulielraus de Conchis, and also Hortus Sanitatis, and Bartholomeus Glanvil, sirnamed Anglicus, who writ De proprietatibus Rerum. Hither also may be referred Kiranides, which is a collection out of Harpocration, the Grreek, and sundry Arabic writers ; delivering not only the natural but magical propriety of things ; a work as full of vanity as variety, cou- ' Vincentius Belluacensis.] The following statement of the merits of Vincent of Beauvais is given by the late Rev. J. J. Conybeare, in his accountof the