before the elements, and which owes no homage unto the sun.’ And again, ‘We carry with us the wonders we seek without us. There is all Africa and all its prodigies in us all. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.’ And again, ‘There is another way of God’s providence full of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods: that serpentine and crooked line: that cryptic and involved method of His providence which I have ever admired. Surely there are in every man’s life certain rubs, and doublings, and wrenches, which, well examined, do prove the pure hand of God. And to be true, and to speak out my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my own life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and a mass of mercies. And those which others term crosses, and afflictions, and judgments, and misfortunes, to me they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection.’ And in the Christian Morals: ‘Annihilate not the mercies of God by the oblivion of ingratitude. Make not thy head a grave, but a repository of God’s mercies. Register not
only strange, but all merciful occurrences. Let thy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementoes and asterisks of acknowledgment. And to be complete and to forget nothing, date not His mercy from thy nativity: look beyond this world, and before the era of Adam. And mark well the winding ways of providence. For that hand writes often by abbreviations, hieroglyphics, and short characters, which, like the laconism on Belshazzar’s wall, are not to be made out but by a key from that Spirit that indited them.’ And yet again, ‘To thoughtful observers the whole world is one phylactery, and everything we see an item of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God.’ How any man, not to speak of one of the wisest and best of men, such as Samuel Johnson was, could read all that, and still stagger at Sir Thomas Browne holding himself to be a living miracle of the power, and the love, and the grace of God, passes my understanding.
We have seen in his own noble words how Sir Thomas Browne’s life appeared to himself. Let us now look at how he appeared to other observing men. The Rev. John Whitefoot, the close and lifelong friend of Sir Thomas, has left us this lifelike portrait of the author of Religio Medici. ‘For a character of his person, his complexion
and his hair were answerable to his name, his stature was moderate, and his habit of body neither fat nor lean, but ευσαρκος. In his habit of clothing he had an aversion to all finery, and affected plainness. 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. 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. And of the 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. His memory, though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was capacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remembered all that was remarkable in any book he ever read. He had no despotical power over his affections and passions, that was a privilege of original perfection, but as large a political power over them as any stoic or man of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment that he hath very rarely been known to have been overpowered with any of them. His aspect and conversation were grave and sober; there was never
to be seen in him anything trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss as any man in it, when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study: so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing. He attended the public service very constantly, when he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were in town. Read the best English sermons he could hear of with liberal applause: and delighted not in controversies. His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and sound faith of God’s providence, and a meek and humble submission thereto. I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much: and the last words 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 him many repulses in the defence of patients; but when his own time came, he submitted with a meek, rational, religious courage.’
Taking Sir Thomas Browne all in all, Tertullian, Sir Thomas’s favourite Father, has
supplied us, as it seems to me, with his whole life and character in these so expressive and so comprehensive words of his, Anima naturaliter Christiana. In these three words, when well weighed and fully opened up, we have the whole author of the Religio Medici, the Christian Morals, and the Letter to a Friend. Anima naturaliter Christiana.
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The Religio Medici was Sir Thomas Browne’s first book, and it remains by far his best book. His other books acquire their value and take their rank just according to the degree of their ‘affinity’ to the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne is at his best when he is most alone with himself. There is no subject that interests him so much as Sir Thomas Browne. And if you will forget yourself in Sir Thomas Browne, and in his conversations which he holds with himself, you will find a rare and an ever fresh delight in the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas is one of the greatest egotists of literature—to use a necessary but an unpopular and a misleading epithet. Hazlitt has it that there have only been but three perfect, absolute, and unapproached egotists in all literature—Cellini, Montaigne, and Wordsworth. But why that fine critic leaves out Sir
Thomas Browne, I cannot understand or accept. I always turn to Sir Thomas Browne, far more than to either of Hazlitt’s canonised three, when I want to read what a great man has to tell me about himself: and in this case both a great and a good and a Christian man. And thus, whatever modification and adaptation may have been made in this masterpiece of his, in view of its publication, and after it was first published, the original essence, most genuine substance, and unique style of the book were all intended for its author’s peculiar heart and private eye alone. And thus it is that we have a work of a simplicity and a sincerity that would have been impossible had its author in any part of his book sat down to compose for the public. Sir Thomas Browne lived so much within himself, that he was both secret writer and sole reader to himself. His great book is ‘a private exercise directed solely,’ as he himself says, ‘to himself: it is a memorial addressed to himself rather than an example or a rule directed to any other man.’ And it is only he who opens the Religio Medici honestly and easily believing that, and glad to have such a secret and sincere and devout book in his hand,—it is only he who will truly enjoy the book, and who will