Browne.
Thomas Browne, best known as Sir Thomas Browne, came of a Cheshire family. He was born in London on 19 October, 1605. Early left fatherless, "he was, according to the common fate of orphans," says Dr. Johnson, "defrauded by one of his guardians," who seems to have lacked opportunity to strip the orphan absolutely bare. Browne was educated at Winchester, went on to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, graduated (1629), travelled in Ireland, took a doctor's degree at Leyden; is said to have practised medicine at Halifax, and about 1637 settled at Norwich for the fifty remaining years of his life.
His earliest and probably his most popular book, the "Religio Medici," appears to have been written about 1635-1637. Several transcripts existed; in 1642 one of them, imperfect enough, was printed without Browne's knowledge and consent, and was criticized by Sir Kenelm Digby and others. Browne therefore issued an authorized edition, and the work was extremely successful both in England and on the Continent.
Naturally this confessor of his private ideas about religion was attacked on all sides, as an atheist, a papist, a deist, by the scribblers of the hostile sects. Browne, in fact, was a Christian who did not, as at that time was especially common, regard hatred of all who differed with him about a surplice or a sermon as a holier thing than the virtue of charity.
In his preface he says that almost every man suffers by the Press, and that he "has lived to behold the highest perversion of that excellent invention," the King defamed, the honour of Parliament impaired, a flood of printed falsehoods submerging everything, and carrying erroneous copies of Browne's private papers into the market. Browne opens his work by declaring that, in spite of his profession (and of the proverb, "one doctor out of three is an atheist"), he is a Christian, and a tolerant Christian. "Holy water and crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor abuse my devotion at all. ...I should violate my own arm rather than a church; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour."
At Norwich in the Cathedral the Puritans publicly destroyed and burned all works of art (including the organ), which they were pleased to regard as monuments of idolatry: a bitter sight for Browne. "I have no genius to dispute in religion," says he. As for "sturdy doubts and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us, more of these no man hath known than myself; which I confess I conquered, not in a martial posture, but on my knees". In that world of frenzied pamphleteers, "hating each other for the love of God," the charm and fragrance of Browne's style, the "peace! peace!" which, like Falkland, he "ingeminates," his refined humour, and smiling pitying sympathy, and curiosity about all things knowable, made his book delightful; and delightful to readers tolerant of exquisiteness in manner the "Religio Medici" can never cease to be.
We are astonished, to-day, as much by the things which Browne knows, or believes, as by those which he does not know and does not believe. "I do now know that there are witches" has a surprise in it, but what does he precisely mean by "witches"? "I think at first a great part of philosophy" (science) "was witchcraft." Here he agrees with modern writers who regard magic as an early and uninstructed sort of science. He believes in guardian angels, but his "metaphysics of them are very shallow," and, in modern terms, what he believes in is "the subconscious self". As for hell, "the heart of a man is the place the devils dwell in... Lucifer keeps his court in my breast. Legion is revived in me."
In short this good physician is a mystic: "we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus... we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep; and the slumbering of the body seems to be but the wakening of the soul!" a very old belief of the Greeks.
In "Pseudodoxia Epidemica," "Vulgar Errors" (1646), Browne's manner somewhat resembles that of Burton, but his medley of strange stories, scientific, pseudo-scientific, or plainly superstitious, is even more entertaining and much more carefully and artfully written than "The Anatomy of Melancholy". He consciously aims at harmony and balance of style, and at selecting the right word (le mot propre), while he ranges over all ancient knowledge and modern fable. "Many and false conceptions there are of mandrakes," and Browne thinks but little of them, and less of the false etymologies from which his age had not delivered itself. He is engaged, like the scholar in Lytton's novel "The Caxtons," on a "History of Human Error," and with his humour, sympathy, learning, and irony, he makes a most entertaining book.
His "Urn Burial" with "The Garden of Cyrus" (1658) begins with antiquarianism, and ends with the famous passages on the vanity of desiring "to subsist in lasting monuments". "But Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy" (infimy?) "of his nature." "The Garden of Cyrus" concerning the mystic virtues of the quincunx (like cinq in dice) is more fantastic and Pythagorean. The motto for the posthumously published "Christian Morals" might be selected from one line in its counsels,