Sir Thomas Browne and his Religio Medici | Page 4

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_.
* * * * *
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 gather
the same gain out of it that its author enjoyed and gained out of it
himself. In short, the properly prepared and absolutely ingenuous
reader of the Religio Medici must be a second Thomas Browne himself.
'I am a medical man,' says Sir Thomas, in introducing himself to us,
'and this is my religion. I am a physician, and this is my faith, and my
morals, and my whole true and proper life. The scandal of my
profession, the natural course of my studies, and the indifference of my
behaviour and discourse in matters of religion, might persuade the
world that I had no religion at all. And yet, in despite of all that, I dare,
without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian.' And if
ever any man was a truly catholic Christian, it was surely Sir Thomas
Browne. He does not unchurch or ostracise any other man. He does not
stand at diameter and sword's point with any other man; no, not even
with his enemy. He has never been