This prophecy, though appearing in English tardily, may be dated from 1667, when the Latin poem was already written.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, 1682.
Dr. Johnson called attention to a tract of Sir Thomas Browne entitled “A Prophecy concerning the Future State of Several Nations,” where the famous author “plainly discovers 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.”[272] The tract is vague, but prophetic.
Sir Thomas Browne was born 19th October, 1605, and died 19th October, 1682. His tract was published two years after his death, in a collection of Miscellanies, edited by Dr. Tenison. As a much-admired author, some of whose writings belong to our English classics, his prophetic prolusions are not unworthy of notice. Among them are the following:—
“When New England shall trouble New Spain;
When Jamaica shall be lady of the isles and the main;
When Spain shall be in America hid,
And Mexico shall prove a Madrid;
…