Sir Thomas Browne and his Religio Medici | Page 7

are to be come upon in the Introduction to the
Pseudodoxia. And, with all our immense advances in method and in
discipline: in observation and in discovery: no true student of nature
and of man can afford to neglect the extraordinary catalogue of things
which are so characteristically treated of in Sir Thomas Browne's great,
if, nowadays, out-grown book. For one thing, and that surely not a
small thing, we see on every page of the Pseudodoxia the labour, as Dr.
Johnson so truly says, that its author was always willing to pay for the
truth. And, as Sir Thomas says himself, a work of this nature is not to
be performed upon one leg, or without the smell of oil, if it is to be duly
and deservedly handled. It must be left to men of learning and of
science to say how far Sir Thomas has duly and deservedly handled the
immense task he undertook in this book. But I, for one, have read this
great treatise with a true pride, in seeing so much hard work so liberally
laid out according to the best light allowed its author in that day. As Dr.
Johnson has said of it, 'The mistakes that the author committed in the
Pseudodoxia were not committed by idleness or negligence, but only
for want of the philosophy of Boyle and Newton.' Who, then, will gird
up his loins in our enlightened day to give us a new Pseudodoxia after
the philosophy of Bacon and Boyle and Newton and Ewald and Darwin?
And after Sir Thomas's own philosophy, which he thus sets forth before
himself in this and in all his other studies: 'We are not magisterial in
opinions, nor have we dictator-like obtruded our conceptions: but, in
the humility of inquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them to
more ocular discerners. And we shall so far encourage contradiction as
to promise no disturbance, or re- oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously
or captiously refute us. And shall only take notice of such whose
experimental and judicious knowledge shall be employed, not to
traduce or extenuate, but to explain and dilucidate, to add and ampliate,
according to the laudable custom of the ancients in their sober

promotions of learning. Unto whom, notwithstanding, we shall not
contentiously rejoin, or only to justify our own, but to applaud or
confirm his maturer assertions; and shall confer what is in us unto his
name and honour; ready, for our part, to be swallowed up in any worthy
enlarger: as having our aid, if any way, or under any name, we may
obtain a work, so much desired, and yet desiderated, of truth.' Shall this
Association, I wonder, raise up from among its members, such a
worthy successor and enlarger of Sir Thomas Browne?
The title, at least, of the _Urn-Burial_ is more familiar to the most of us
than that of the Pseudodoxia. It was the chance discovery of some
ancient urns in Norfolk that furnished Sir Thomas with the occasion to
write his Hydriotaphia. And that classical book is only another
illustration of his enormous reading, ready memory, and intense
interest in everything that touches on the nature of man, and on his
beliefs, habits, and hopes in all ages of his existence on this earth. And
the eloquence and splendour of this wonderful piece is as arresting to
the student of style as its immense information is to the scholar and the
antiquarian. 'The conclusion of the essay on Urn-Burial,' says Carlyle,
'is absolutely beautiful: a still elegiac mood, so soft, so deep, so solemn
and tender, like the song of some departed saint--an echo of deepest
meaning from the great and mighty Nations of the Dead. Sir Thomas
Browne must have been a good man.'
The Garden of Cyrus is past all description of mine. 'The Garden of
Cyrus must be read. It is an extravagant sport of a scholar of the first
rank and a genius of the first water. 'We write no herbal,' he begins, and
neither he does. And after the most fantastical prose-poem surely that
ever was written, he as fantastically winds up at midnight with this: 'To
keep our eyes longer open were but to act our antipodes. The huntsmen
are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.'
At which Coleridge must incontinently whip out his pencil till we have
this note of his on the margin: 'What life! what fancy! what
whimsicality! Was ever such a reason given for leaving one's book and
going to bed as this, that they are already past their first sleep in Persia,
and that the huntsmen are up in America?'

Sir Thomas Browne has had many admirers, and his greatest admirers
are to be found among our foremost