Sir Thomas Browne and his Religio Medici | Page 2

keep a note of all that for me. Be courteous and humble in all your conversation, and of good manners: which he that learneth not in France travaileth in vain. When at sea read good books. Without good books time cannot be well spent in those great ships. Learn the stars also: the particular coasts: the depth of the road-steads: and the risings and fallings of the land. Enquire further about the mineral water: and take notice of such plants as you meet with. I am told that you are looked on in the Service as exceeding faithful, valiant, diligent, generous, vigilant, observing, very knowing, and a scholar. When you first took to this manner of life, you cannot but remember that I caused you to read all the sea-fights of note in Plutarch: and, withal, gave you the description of fortitude left by Aristotle. In places take notice of the government of them, and the eminent persons. The merciful providence of God ever go with you, and direct and bless you, and give you ever a grateful heart toward Him. I send you Lucretius: and with it Tully's Offices: 'tis as remarkable for its little size as for the good matter contained in it, and the authentic and classical Latin. I hope you do not forget to carry a Greek Testament always to church: a man learns two things together, and profiteth doubly, in the language and the subject. God send us to number our days, and to fit ourselves for a better world. Times look troublesome: but you have an honest and peaceable profession like myself, which may well employ you, and you have discretion to guide your words and actions. May God be reconciled to us, and give us grace to forsake our sins which set fire to all things. You shall never want my daily prayers, and also frequent letters.' And so on, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his two sons: and out of which a fine picture rises before us, both of Sir Thomas's own student life abroad, as well as of the footing on which the now famous physician and English author stood with his student and sailor sons.
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You might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne's writings and never discover that a sword had been unsheathed or a shot fired in England all the time he was living and writing there. It was the half-century of the terrible civil war for political and religious liberty: but Sir Thomas Browne would seem to have possessed all the political and religious liberty he needed. At any rate, he never took open part on either side in the great contest. Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot metal and the stern stuff of John Milton. All through those terrible years Browne lived securely in his laboratory, and in his library, and in his closet. Richard Baxter's Autobiography is as full of gunpowder as if it had been written in an army-chaplain's tent, as indeed it was. But both Bunyan's Grace Abounding and Browne's Religio Medici might have been written in the Bedford or Norwich of our own peaceful day. All men are not made to be soldiers and statesmen: and it is no man's duty to attempt to be what he was not made to be. Every man has his own talent, and his corresponding and consequent duty and obligation. And both Bunyan and Browne had their own talent, and their own consequent duty and obligation, just as Cromwell and Milton and Baxter had theirs. Enough, and more than enough, if it shall be said to them all on that day, Well done.
'My life,' says Sir Thomas, in opening one of the noblest chapters of his noblest book, 'is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry; and it would sound to common ears like a fable.' Now, as all Sir Thomas's readers must know, the most extraordinary criticisms and comments have been made on those devout and thankful words of his concerning himself. Dr. Samuel Johnson's were not common ears, but even he comments on these beautiful words with a wooden- headedness almost past belief. For, surely the thirty years of schoolboy, and student, and opening professional life that resulted in the production of such a masterpiece as the Religio Medici was a miracle both of God's providence and God's grace, enough to justify him who had experienced all that in acknowledging it to God's glory and to the unburdening of his own heart, so richly loaded with God's benefits. And, how a man of Samuel Johnson's insight, good sense, and pious feeling could have so missed the mark in this case, I cannot understand. All the more