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find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions, like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets, or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries who we were, and have new names given us, like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.

tion of oracles, and Friar Bacon's brazen | temporally considereth all things. Our fathers head that spoke. He very worthily labors, likewise, to set right the minds of the uneducated common people, on the river Nile, "theme of many fables," and makes some very sage observations and discoveries respecting the aged and venerable Methuselah. He deems the romantic wish of the ancient Philoxenus (that he might have the neck of a crane) worthy of a dissertation, and indulges his imaginative and conjecture-loving mind in threading some of the mysterious mazes of Gipsy history.

From all this variety of disquisition we get an idea, it is true, of the singular cast and complexion of the author's mind-an insight of his "hidden life" and his peculiar intellectual constitution, such as we could less clearly obtain from the Religio Medici alone. We need to take it into the account, therefore, in forming a conception of Browne's intellectual character, and even in rightly understanding and justly estimating that earlier work itself. But to accept it as a type of his genius, would be manifestly an error.

Strictly characteristic-full of sublime contemplations and manifold learning-as is the Hydiotaphia, it is not, perhaps, much nearer to a true representation of the distinctive qualities of this celebrated scholar. The subject is one that admits of no general unfolding of the author's inner self. Modes of burial and funeral ceremonies appropriately attach to themselves a degree of importance, since they nearly touch the affections and the self-meditations of all human beings. The occasion which such topics afford for moralizing, of a grand and elevated description, could not have fallen to a better pen than that of Sir Thomas Browne. Some of the noblest and most eloquent passages of all, occur in this work. Especially those characteristic words upon Oblivion, (we can quote but a part, though the full effect cannot be obtained without the whole,) we remember, first stole over our own mind like the harmonies of some solemn and wonderful music, far away in the distance,-to haunt the memory, at intervals, forever afterward.

"Circles and right lines," says he, "limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium of time, which

"To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they know more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan; disparaging of his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself, who cares to subsist, like Hippocrates' patients, or Achilles' horses, in Homer, under naked which are the balsam of our memories, the ennominations, without deserts and noble acts, telechia and soul of our subsistences? To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more

happily without a name than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than Pilate?

"But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity: who can but pity the founder of the pyramids ? Herostratus lives, that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it: time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse; confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon, without the favor of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable men forgot than any that stand remembered in the Without the favor of the account of time?

everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

“..... Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smart

est strokes of affliction leave but short smart

upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and into stones are fables. sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days; and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes

of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act, something remarkable in such variety of beings; and, enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory to their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egytian mummies, which time or Cambyses hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise :— Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharoah is sold for balsams."

The "Christian Morals" would seem to be designed especially as a legacy to the young, whose character is unformed, and to whom the world is new and untried. Embodying as it does a rich fund of mental experience, we may draw from it much in confirmation or elucidation of what is elsewhere less perfectly exhibited. It is replete with maxims of true wisdom-nor does it want the brilliancy of setting and the occasional smoothness of polish, which are found in the earlier and more general works.

To speak of the Religio Medici as strictly a confession of the religious faith of a physician, would be to narrow the work within limits to which it was never meant to be confined. It oversteps the boundaries so prescribed, in the direction of almost every other great topic of human contemplation, and so becomes a general record of the inner experience and observation of a scholar. It is as such a work, that it has attained, and still maintains, a universal reputation. Without any technical theology, and in no sense controversial or proselytic, it becomes, in its religious aspect alone, deeply interesting to all for whom the great concerns of human life, and the higher destinies of man, afford any subject for earnest and solicitous inquiry. The title itself is captivating, for the very reason that the medical profession have in general so little repute, (not altogether justly,) for any particular relish of the loftier range of spiritual contemplations, and for the considerations that transcend the region of matter.

We accordingly look for no insane rhapsodies-for none of the ecstatic raptures of an Ignatius Loyola or a St. Theresa-for none of the sickly "experiences" of a John Bunyan. Morbid fanaticism and morose religionism, we well know, could have no place in the mind of a man so educated, and bred to such habits. Browne was trained in the Church of England, and accustomed to sober views of its nature, doctrines, and polity. Christianity was not to him a bundle of wild and enthusiastic notions, nor the Christian life an unceasing effort after self-torture and distortion. To that part of the world with whom religion is something to be exhibited, and worn for a show-a matter to be inconsiderately obtruded upon everybody's notice, and forced into every incongruous connection with everything to which it has no proper relation-Browne might very naturally appear as anything but a religious

man.

"For my religion," he admits, therefore, at the very outset, " there be several circumstances that might persuade the world I have none at all." And that such always has been, always will be, and always ought to be, the judgment of certain people respecting the most truly religious men, we regard as a circumstance no less fortunate than it is inevitable. A religion that can be paraded with effect, and made available for the admiration of the vulgar, is a very different affair from that to which we have ever applied the name, or ever mean to. And if any reader has been so rash as to take up this book of Sir Thomas Browne, expecting to find in it a gratification for any sickly craving of this sort, or from so unworthy a motive as seeking a subject for ridicule in the blind and ignorant observations of a sombre religionist, he probably encountered a startling disappointment.

We have said that the real life of the scholar is mainly hidden-that in external, palpable incidents, it is barren and unimportant. Could we but have the interior history of such a man as John Milton, or Jeremy Taylor, or of one of the chief philosophers of ancient times, we might well dispense with whole libraries else, that would, indeed, in such a case, become useless. Shakspeare, in his Sonnets, is thought to have given us some transient glimpses of what had gone on in his spirit, unseen by all

eyes, and scarcely surmised, perhaps, by those most nearly about him. But those few gleams do little more than to reveal the immense sum of experience to which all clue is cut off. The works of this kind are rare and of little consequence; nor can the Religio Medici be assumed as anything more than a very remote (though agreeable) approximation-that rather suggests what might have been done by the author, and what we could have most heartily wished him to do, than satisfies the curiosity and strong desire which it awakens. The style of this, as of all other works of Sir Thomas Browne, is peculiar, and has been a topic of much animadversion. That its peculiarities are not in any sense attributable to the period at which he wrote, will at once be seen by comparison with contemporary authors, such as Owen Felltham, Abraham Cowley, and John Milton. It has an elevated and independent tone, indeed, like the prose of Milton, but without any of its rich harmony and evenly sustained grandeur. Both are characterized by much learning, both have given currency to many words new-coined from the Latin and Greek. But that which with Milton seems to have sprung spontaneously from his own creative genius, deeply familiarized with those ancient languages, in Browne can hardly escape the imputation of pedantry. And though the quaintness with which he is justly charged seemed to have become an easy and regular habit, it has still an air of affectation, to which we are obliged to extend some degree of forbearance. That a writer should avoid any eccentricities of manner, in so far as it is possible, is a no less evident requisite to good standing in letters than to a favorable reception in society. Egotism of manner as well as of speechand much more any degree of indifference to the sentiments and feelings of those about us that exceeds this-amounts to positive impoliteness, and betrays the want of a gentle disposition and breeding. Browne's offences of style do not, by any means, amount to such a degree of enormity. There is nothing in his writings like a studied contempt of conventional forms, or an attachment to oddity for its own sake. And though he is certainly chargeable with some degree of egotism, we cannot attribute it to him as a predominating

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characteristic-softened and shadowed as it is, by a respectful deference to the opinions of others, and a mild and habitual charity. A high self-respect is easily mistaken by the undiscriminating for an irrational vanity and conceit; and the Religio Medici, which exhibits this objectionable trait rather more strongly than any of his subsequent works, can well be excused for all such appearances, on the ground that a work of the character therein proposed could not be made to assume a form which should preclude a large amount of personality.

That this work was never intended to be given to the public, until after it was published without any formal sanction of the author, is doubtless too broad a statement to be strictly correct. It has every internal appearance of having been intended, sooner or later, for at least a wider circulation than amongst his own particular friends; nor does it need to be defended from any defects on such a ground.

The obscurity of many of his expressions and the remoteness of his allusions, in some cases, are features of his style that grow directly and unavoidably out of his own peculiar nature. Of a reserved habit, manifestly, and a covert manner of thinking, his writing must necessarily partake of those qualities. The plane of his life was elevated far above the mass of men about him. However universal his charity, his sympathy went not with the multitude. An austere dignity, a heroic virtue, and a lofty contemplation, shut out from his mind one half of the great interests of the human race, and tended to foster a serene and exalted self-admiration. He speaks more than once of the "retired and solitary imagination," which was the prevailing temper and condition of his mind; and even while disavowing "that father-sin, pride," discloses quite plainly enough that he entertained an exalted and habitual sense of superiority. What lofty aims he proposed to himself, and with what a steady, ever-constant purpose, he set about the attainment of what he deemed the highest perfection of human nature, may be easily gathered from certain precepts laid down in his "Christian Morals." There is a heroism about such a scheme of life, and such a devotion to true manliness, which we cannot but admire, little as its

coldness and austerity win upon our | dred to genius essentially is,) in a large

affection.

tion.

sense, superior to his time, and unsusceptible-encased in the pride of exalted aspira"Live unto the dignity of thy nature, and tion of any decisive influence therefrom. leave it not disputable at last, whether thou hast been a man; or since thou art a composi-ature of two centuries ago with that of the Any one who has compared the litertion of man and beast, how thou hast predominantly passed thy days, to state the denominaBe not under any brutal metempsychosis while thou livest, and walkest about erectly under the scheme of man. Let thy thoughts be of things which have not entered into the hearts of beasts; think of things long past and long to come; acquaint thyself with the choragium of the stars, and consider the vast expansion beyond them. Let intellectual optics give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy head; ascend unto invisibles; fill thy spirit with spirituals, with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with the honor of God; without which, though giants in wealth and dignity, we are but dwarfs and pigmies in humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank in that triple division of mankind, heroes, men, and beasts. For though human souls are said to be equal, yet there is no small inequality in their operations; some maintain the allowable station of men, many are far below it; and some have been so divine, as to approach the apogeum of their natures, and to be in the confinium of spirits."*

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Such was the mood to which Browne himself had attained: a stately dignity, little warmed by sympathy with human hearts, and looking down with pity upon the inferior in culture and station. My conversation," he says, "I do acknowledge austere, my behavior full of rigor, sometimes not without morosity." We are not, therefore, surprised to find him saying, after avowing a "general charity" for all men, and a love for everything, (" but the devil :")—" If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude." The common affections of humanity flowed not through his heart; the pulses of common sympathy which have universally vibrated through the soul of genius, never beat in his bosom. This was in some sense a fault of his time and place; but it was not from custom that it had possession of his mind, for he was, (as everything kin

* Christian Morals, III, 14.

present, very readily marks a grand distinction between the two periods, both in the level from which the work issues, and the tone with which its contemplations are uttered. Literature has grown democratic. The masses of humanity, before overlooked, and left entirely out of the reckoning, now assume an importance that almost overshadows the rest of mankind. We do not refer alone to such writers as Dickens, or Carlyle. We speak of the general tone of a large share of the current literature. That the tendency in this direction is so strong as to have already become vicious, and to render a reaction necessary, we firmly believe. To Sir Thomas Browne, the vulgar were simply vulgar: the wearing of a human shape, so far from being a redeeming circumstance, but added to their disgrace, in his view, from unavoidable contrast with the dignity and refinement becoming in

true men.

A certain amount of sympathy with the struggling millions of humanity, whose life is one continual toil, and whom hardship and sorrow perpetually encompass, is indispensable to the highest qualities of the scholar, no less than to true genius. Without it, none knows how to touch those common chords, whose vibration alone is universal fame, and by means of which, and not otherwise, the author gains a permanent abode in the hearts of mankind. From hence we can understand why Browne always has had, and always will have, from his many admirers, few to love him heartily, and treasure him in their affections.

Yet the author of Religio Medici was by no means an inveterate hater. All his attempts at hatred take anything but a serious turn. He owes a particular spite to "the devil," (the only creature of God, he admits, that is properly hateful,) and intimates that it would afford him a specialdelight to be permitted to propose to him a few hard questions. For instance, in speaking of the world's final destruction: "To determine the day and year," says he, "of this inevitable time, had been an excellent query

therefore, to find him saying that "in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof." Mysterious and incomprehensible as it is, our dreams may become our truest instructors in self-knowledge, and they are often the revelators of many a natural

to have posed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology." We like this quaint humor of the austere scholar, as it occasionally breaks out in the midst of his most serious disquisitions, hardly conscious, doubtless, to himself, and unexpected by the reader. This humor, however, such as it is, never finds an object among the low and every-quality and innate propensity, which habit day concerns of vulgar life; it never ventures to meddle with a subject less sublime than the fallen archangel; and that, too, only in his more dignified peculiarities. Southey could find an unfailing source of fun in the hoofs and tail of this distinguished personage, but to Sir Thomas Browne, there never occurred a train of meditation which was not altogether too grave to be intermingled with such grotesque diversion.

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That Browne had, in the common acceptation of the term, any real humor, cannot properly be asserted. There is nothing of the playful in him. His reader is taken by surprise at such an allusion as this: "I ever hear a passing-bell, though in my mirth—." We pause, and vainly attempt to figure to ourselves what sort of levity that might be, in which it were possible for such a one to bear any part. "I have shaked hands with delight, in my warm blood and canicular days," he says elsewhere, but in such a manner as to leave us to infer that those were, to his mind, only seasons of vanity, long since passed, and never very heartily embraced. From the time he becomes known to the world, and according to all the tokens that remain of his disposition and habits, no one can reasonably take exceptions to his own account of this matter, or perceive the necessity of any great reserve or caution in accepting it as the whole truth. "I was born," says he, "in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company."

Yet a sort of covert, elusive, unconscious humor there is, pervading every part of his writings, the most serious no less than the apparently trivial-subtle, hard to designate or even understand-but always to be taken into the account as an essential ingredient of his style of thought and expression. It is no strange thing,

has rendered latent, and which in the waking life of our spirit have come to be perpetually dormant. This element of humor, which might, under a different development, have acquired a predominating influence in the mind of Browne, now moves "many fathom deep," like the spirit that followed the ship of the Ancient Mariner-constantly felt-ever unseen and obscure.

The Religio Medici comprises two grand divisions-the first of which seems to be devoted to the author's Faith; the second develops his notions of Charity. His peculiar conceptions of the nature and province of faith are worthy of especial notice. To give assent to that which reason approves, is to him a very small matterfaith comes in only where the judgment ceases to give assent, and has its chief and noblest work, where reason even enters her contradictory protest. Indeed, he complains that "there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith."

It might be a very natural inquiry here, by what law his faith is squared, or how he shall know what to receive as true, and what to reject as false-allowing to the voice of reason not so much as a veto. Yet the whole tenor of his life, and the general cast of his mind, plainly enough answer the query, and thereby help us to a glimpse of certain foundation principles of his belief. The established order, both in Church and State, is to him sacred and unquestionable. Dream as he might, on other matters, he seems never to have conceived the possibility of a greater social perfection, or of a form of religious belief and worship better adapted to the wants of human nature. Existing institutions were therefore a law to his faith, so perfect and inappellable, that even with all his wild vagaries-his speculations upon the final cause of eclipses, and his wanton reveries over the oracles of old-he never once overstepped (scarcely ventured even to reach)

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