the Familiar to the Beautiful, and not disdaining' to suck divi⚫nity from the flowers of nature.' He cannot allow ugliness to a toad or bear-and ' éven that vulgar and tavern music, which 'makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in him a deep fit ⚫ of devotion and a profound contemplation of the FIRST COMPOSER. There is in it an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of 'the whole world and creatures of God-such a melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding.' It is from such hints and suggestions of thought that Browne, as Wordsworth, plumes his wings and raises himself beyond the visible diurnal sphere.' A temperament somewhat common to both was in both fed by similar political tenets, and theological veneration;-apart from the anxious and exciting cares of men, who struggle actively with or against the multitude. The Religio Medici is one of the most beautiful prose poems in the language; its power of diction, its subtlety and largeness of thought, its exquisite conceits and images, have no parallel out of the writers of that brilliant age, when Poetry and Prose had not yet divided their domain, and the Lyceum of Philosophy was watered by the Ilissus of the Nine.

It is difficult to conceive a deep and a just thought more eloquently expressed than in the following words :-' Nature is not ' at variance with art nor art with nature-they being both the 'servants of His Providence. Art is the perfection of nature. 'Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a 'chaos. Nature hath made one world and art another. 'belief all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.'

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We cannot refuse to our readers, well known as it is to many, that noble piece of egotism, in which all believers in our spiritual immortality may share : For my life it is a miracle of thirty 'years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, ' and would sound to common ears like a fable.* For the world

This boast, which Dr Johnson could not explain, and even the super-refining Sir Kenelm Digby took literally, evidently refers not to external and bodily adventures, but to the progress and operations of the soul. Nor, while in this passage the author alludes to such moral and spiritual mysteries as have been wrought within himself, does he mean to imply that his life has been more miraculous than that of another; since in a former passage (Rel. Med., vol. ii., p., 21), he utters the same sentiment, but applies it generally. We carry,' he says with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and 'her prodigies in us, etc. It is not because, as Dr Johnson imagines, Browne thought himself distinguished from all the rest of his species, but because he thought himself like them, that he calls his life a miracle.

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'I count it not an inn but a hospital, and a place not to live but to die in. The world that I regard is myself, it is the microcosm of my own frame, that I can cast mine eye on for the other I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. . . . The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part ⚫ within us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not 'my mind. That surface that tells the heavens it hath an end, 'cannot persuade me I have any... Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm or little world, I find myself something ⚫ more than the great (one). There is surely a piece of divinity in us-something that was before the heavens, and owes no ⚫ homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God ' as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much, hath ⚫ not his introduction or first lesson, and hath yet to begin the ⚫ alphabet of man.'

Coleridge and others have spoken of the egotism of Browne ; but Browne was not an egotist, though he wrote one work which, not composed for publication, but as a closet confession of his own opinions, was necessarily egotistical. It is rather remarkable, on the contrary, that, despite the great success of the Religio Medici and the delicious temptation to go on in the same strain which a man incurs when he has once made the world a confident, and finds it listen to all he says of himself, it concluded, as it began, his self-dissections. His tale once told, Browne seems to have felt, like Goethe, after the composition of his Werther,—as if he had unburdened his mind of anxious secrets; the confession was made and the absolution given. He wrote the book while young, unsettled, and unmarried. Youth is generally an egotist. Most young gentlemen and young ladies, if they write at all, write greatly about themselves. A settled life, household cares and affections, scatter their thoughts insensibly over a wider surface; and sentiment becomes less intense and more diffused.

The Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or 'Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors,' was Browne's second, and from its extent and elaborate learning, perhaps his most important work. It is, indeed, in this performance, that we lose sight, in great measure, of the ideal and extravagant poet, and find ourselves with the sober and laborious scholar. The style has little, if

Thus, in the very passage built upon the assertion that his life is a miracle, he says that he who understands not thus much has yet to begin the alphabet ' of man.'

any, of the eccentric flights, or stately music of the knight's other works. It is, indeed, dry, quaint, and pedantic, as was the peculiarity of the day; but has not the ornament and digressions which form, elsewhere, the peculiarities of the writer. It is evident that, as he himself says in his preface, he addresses his pen unto the knowing and leading past of learning.' The work properly consists of two main divisions; the one devoted to the correction of such errors (mostly in chemistry or natural history) as he encountered in his professional pursuits; the other to the examination of miscellaneous matters which came before him in his capacity of a curious and indefatigable student. In the first, it is noticeable how much his profession served to sober and restrain the wild and speculative temper he displays in all else. That profession made, indeed, the great link between himself and the common world-it tied him down to the Practical: the moment he gets rid of it he is in the seventh heaven. In his remarks as a chemist and naturalist, we cannot but observe a habit of cautious and zealous experiment. Many of the then popular fallacies he refutes with plain common sense, or by the testimony of actual experience; and his observations and inductions contain the outline and suggestion of some of the important discoveries of modern science. The fatal and unexplored errors of the alchymists, indeed, occasionally vitiate his most ingenious arguments; and these he sufficiently venerated, not, in some instances, to submit their dogmas to that test of experiment, which he enforced towards authorities not a whit less equivocal. In natural history, also, his passion for the marvellous breaks out at times. He stoutly rejects the basilisk and the griffin; but he believes it not impossible that elephants may have spoken rationally; and says, with earnest pleasantry,' that 'to those who would attempt to teach animals the art of speech, 'the dogs and cats that usually speak unto witches, may afford some encouragement.'

* We ourselves have witnessed an example of the curious and credulous exaggeration which has construed certain articulations in animals into rational speech. Some time since, in travelling through Italy, we heard, in grave earnest, from several Italians, of the prodigy of a Pomeranian dog that had been taught to speak most intelligibly by Sir William Gell. Afterwards, in visiting that accomplished and lamented gentleman at Naples, we requested to hear an animal possessed of so unusual a gift. And, as the friends of the urbane scholar can bear witness, the dog undoubtedly could utter a howl, which, assisted by the hand of the master in closing the jaw at certain inflections, might be intelligibly construed into the words, Damn grandmamma!' Such a dog, with such an anathema in his vocabulary, would have hanged any witch in England three centuries ago.

VOL. LXIV. NO. CXXIX.

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The nature of the more miscellaneous essays may be conjectured from the following titles:

In Book IV. (on many popular and received tenets concerning man), That Jews stink,'-' On Pigmies.'

In Book V. (of many things questionable as they are commonly described in pictures), ' Of the Picture of Dolphins,'Of the Picture of Haman Hanged,' etc.

In the Seventh Book (of popular and received tenets, chiefly historical, and some deduced from the Holy Scriptures)- Of Methuselah.' 'That a Man hath one Rib less than a Woman.' Of the Wish of Philoxenus to have the Neck of a Crane,' etc. With these, however, are interspersed many of more gravely philosophical, and antiquarian importance; such as The River Nilus,' the Origin of Gypsies,' Of the Blackness of Negroes,' etc.

Nor are we to suppose that in many of those subjects which now seem to us so obsolete and frivolous, Sir Thomas Browne was engaged in attacking errors without life and defence. Scarce the absurdest delusion he demolished but had its stubborn champion; and every inch of the bridge, from Fable to Truth, was fought with all the knight-errantry of men who see in ignorance the beloved country in which they were born, and for which they are contented to die. No invaders ever found patriots so desperate, as a man who attacks a prejudice finds the peaceful possessors of its realm. Error lives in the hearts of its subjects; it is the most venerated and beloved of monarchs. Thus Sir Thomas Browne could not even assert, in opposition to the ancients, that garlick did not hinder the attraction of the loadstone, but what an antagonist started up to declare that the ancients could not be mistaken; and, therefore, they must have had a stronger kind of garlick than is with us!' Another critic (whose lucubrations are, however, confined to manuscript *), in opposition to Browne's scepticism as to the existence of griffins, clenches the question by asserting that he has himself seen a griffin's-claw. Yet both these commentators were men, not of the ignorant multitude, but of the learned few. Alexander Ross (the first referred to) is in many of his notions even more enlightened than Browne. The Pseudodoxia is the Book of Popular Fallacies' of the sixteenth century; not so valuable, perhaps, from the subjects it embraces, as the spirit in which it is conceived-a spirit of bold, but not irreverent scepticism, built upon experimental induction.

In the Garden of Cyrus' and the treatise on Urn Bu'rial' we again see the dreaming and poetical mind that breathes

* Sir Hamon L'Estrange, quoted Vol. II. p. 173.

its beauty through the Religio Medici. Of the main object of the Garden of Cyrus' we have already spoken. Of the ingenuity and learning with which the idea is followed out through innumerable forms, it is impossible to convey an adequate conception. The genius of the author never proceeds to conclusions in a straight line of argument; it undulates and serpentines through a landscape of fertile images, wherever it can find a sunbeam, or repose upon flowers. With what grace and eloquence this remarkable writer has in the following passage* availed himself of an old Aristotelean sentence the reader will judge:- Light that makes things seen makes some things 'invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the ⚫ stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were • created above the horizon with the sun, or there was not an eye ⚫ to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we 'find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is ⚫ but the dark Simulachrum, and light but the shadow of God.' † Both in the Garden of Cyrus' and the Urn Burial,' the author has resort to the ancient scholastic art of exalting as much as possible the nature of his theme by the grandeur of the exordium. In the first, mindful of his own profession, he observes upon its antiquity and sacred origin, that physick may plead high from that medical act of God in casting so deep a sleep upon our first parent; and chirurgery find its whole art in that ' one passage concerning the rib of Adam.' Yet (preferring, as in duty bound, the dignity of the theme to that of the author) he proceeds to remark that even medicine can have no rivalry 'with garden contrivance and herbary; for if Paradise were 'planted the third day of the creation, as wiser divinity concludeth, the nativity thereof was too early for horoscopy. Gar'dens were before gardeners, and but some hours before the earth.' In like manner our author commences the • Urn Burial' by making the world itself a grave. • That great antiquity, America, lay buried for thousands of years, and

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a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us.' It is injustice to the spirit of such passages to consider them merely

*

Garden of Cyrus, Vol. III. p. 436.

It was said by Aristotle that light is the shadow of God.' And the passage in the text is but a series of the most poetical illustrations of that sublime aphorism.