that we recognise, the same general features. Sir Thomas assures us that
his life, up to the period of the 'Religio Medici,' was 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.' Johnson, with his usual
sense, observes that it is rather difficult to detect the miraculous
element in any part of the story open to our observation. 'Surely,' he
says, 'a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpelier and Padua,
and at last take his degree at Leyden, without anything miraculous.' And
although Southey endeavours to maintain that the miracle consisted in
Browne's preservation from infidelity, it must be admitted that to the
ordinary mind that result seems explicable by natural causes. We must be
content with Johnson's explanation, that, in some sense, 'all life is
miraculous;' and, in short, that the strangeness consists rather in
Browne's view of his own history, than in any unusual phenomena.
Certainly, no man seems on the whole to have slipped down the stream of
life more smoothly. After his travels he settled quietly at Norwich, and
there passed forty-five years of scarcely interrupted prosperity. In the
'Religio Medici' he indulges in some disparaging remarks upon marriage.
'The whole world,' he says, 'was made for man; but the twelfth part of
man for woman. Man is the whole world and the breath of God; woman the
rib and crooked part of man.' He wishes, after the fashion of Montaigne,
that we might grow like the trees, and avoid this foolish and trivial
ceremony; and therefore--for such inferences are perfectly legitimate in
the history of a humorist--he married a lady, of whom it is said that
she was so perfect that 'they seemed to come together by a kind of
natural magnetism,' had ten children, and lived very happily ever
afterwards. It is not difficult, from the fragmentary notices that have
been left to us, to put together some picture of his personal
appearance. He was a man of dignified appearance, with a striking
resemblance, as Southey has remarked, to Charles I., 'always cheerful,
but never merry,' given to unseasonable blushing, little inclined to
talk, but strikingly original when once launched in conversation; sedate
in his dress, and obeying some queer medical crotchets as to its proper
arrangement; always at work in the intervals of his 'drudging practice;'
and generally a sober and dignified physician. From some letters which
have been preserved we catch a view of his social demeanour. He was
evidently an affectionate and liberal father, with good old orthodox
views of the wide extent of the paternal prerogative. One of his sons
was a promising naval officer, and sends home from beyond the seas
accounts of such curiosities as were likely to please the insatiable
curiosity of his parent. In his answers, the good Sir Thomas quotes
Aristotle's definition of fortitude for the benefit of his gallant
lieutenant, and argues elaborately to dissuade him from a practice which
he believes to prevail in 'the king's shipps, when, in desperate cases,
they blow up the same.' He proves by most excellent reasons, and by the
authority of Plutarch, that such self-immolation is an unnecessary
strain of gallantry; yet somehow we feel rather glad that Sir Thomas
could not be a witness to the reception of this sensible, but perhaps
rather superfluous, advice, in the messroom of the 'Marie Rose.' It is
more pleasant to observe the carefulness with which he has treasured up
and repeats all the compliments to the lieutenant's valour and wisdom
which have reached him from trustworthy sources. This son appears to
have died at a comparatively early age; but with the elder son,
Edward--who, like his father, travelled in various parts of Europe, and
then became a distinguished physician--he maintained a long
correspondence, full of those curious details in which his soul
delighted. His son, for example, writes from Prague that 'in the mines
at Brunswick is reported to be a spirit; and another at the tin mine at
Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, which strikes the miners, playeth
on the bagpipe, and many such tricks.' They correspond, however, on more
legitimate inquiries, and especially on the points to be noticed in the
son's medical lectures. Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the fate of
an unlucky 'oestridge' which found its way to London in 1681, and was
doomed to illustrate some of the vulgar errors. The poor bird was
induced to swallow a piece of iron weighing two and a-half ounces,
which, strange to say, it could not digest. It soon afterwards died 'of
a soden,' either from the severity of the weather or from the peculiar
nature of its diet.
In one well-known case Sir Thomas's peculiar theories received a more
unfortunate application; he contributed by his evidence to the death of
the witches tried by Hale in 1664; and one could wish that in this case
his love of the wonderful had been more checked by his sense of humour.
The fact that he was knighted by Charles II. in 1671 is now memorable
only for Johnson's characteristic remark. The lexicographer's love of
truth and loyalty to his pet monarch struggle with each other in the
equivocal compliment to Charles's virtue in rewarding excellence 'with
such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing.' The good
doctor died in 1682, in the seventy-seventh year of age, and met his
end, as we are assured, in the spirit of his own writings. 'There is,'
he admirably says, 'but one comfort left, that, though it be in the
power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest
to deprive us of death.' Most men, for one reason or another, have at
times been 'half in love with easeful death.' Sir Thomas gives his view
more fully in another passage, in which he says, with his usual quaint
and eloquent melancholy, 'When I take a full view and circle of myself,
without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I
do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another
life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat
a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I
could never die, I could not outlive that very thought. I have so abject
a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and
elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to have according to the
dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience
embrace this life, yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death.'
What, after all, one is inclined to ask, is the secret of the strange
charm of Sir Thomas's style? Will you be kind enough to give us the old
doctor's literary prescription, that we may produce the same effects at
will? In what proportions shall we mingle humour, imagination, and
learning? How are we to select the language which will be the fittest
vehicle for the thought? or rather, for the metaphor is a little too
mechanical, what were the magic spells with which he sways our
imaginative moods? Like other spells, we must reply, it is
incommunicable: no real answer can be given even by critics who, like
Coleridge and De Quincey, show something of the same power. Coarser
observers can only point to such external peculiarities as the Latinisms
in which he indulges even more freely than most of his contemporaries.
To Johnson they seemed 'pedantic;' to most modern readers they have an
old-world charm; but in any case we know little more of Sir Thomas when
we have observed that he is capable of using for 'hanging' the
periphrasis 'illaqueation or pendulous suffocation.' The perusal of a
page will make us recognise what could not be explained in a whole
volume of analysis. One may, however, hazard a remark upon the special
mood which is clothed or incarnated in his stately rhetoric. The
imagination of Sir Thomas, of course, shows the generic qualities
roughly described as Northern, Gothic, Teutonic, or romantic. He writes
about tombs, and all Englishmen, as M. Taine tells us, like to write
about tombs. When we try to find the specific differences which
distinguish it from other imaginations of similar quality, we should be
inclined to define him as belonging to a very rare intellectual family.
He is a mystic with a sense of humour, or rather, his habitual mood is
determined by an attraction towards the two opposite poles of humour and
mysticism. He concludes two of his treatises (the 'Christian Morals' and
'Urn Burial') in words expressive of one of these tendencies: 'If any
have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation,
ecstacy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and
ingression into the divine shadow according to mystical theology, they
have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is in a
manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.' Many of Sir Thomas's
reflections, his love in spiritualising external emblems, as, for
example, in the reflections on the quincunx, and the almost sensuous
delight in the contemplation of a mystery, show the same bent. The
fully-developed mystic loses sight of the world and its practical duties
in the rapture of formless meditations; facts become shadows, and
emotions the only realities. But the presence of a mystical element is
the mark of all lofty imaginations. The greatest poet is he who feels
most deeply and habitually that our 'little lives are rounded with a
sleep;' that we are but atoms in the boundless abysses of space and
time; that the phenomenal world is but a transitory veil, to be valued
only as its contemplation arouses or disciplines our deepest emotions.
Capacity for passing from the finite to the infinite, for interpreting
the high instincts before which our mortal nature
'Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised,'
is the greatest endowment of the Shakespeares and Dantes. Mysticism
proper is the abuse of this tendency, which prompts to the impossible
feat of soaring altogether beyond the necessary base of concrete
realities. The mystic temperament is balanced in some great men, as in
Shakespeare, by their intense interest in human passion; in others, as
in Wordsworth, by their profound sense of the primary importance of the
moral law; and in others, as in Jeremy Taylor, by their hold upon the
concrete imagery of a traditional theology; whilst to some, the mystic
vision is strangely blended with an acceptance of the epicurean precept,
Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Sir Thomas Browne seems to
be held back from abandoning himself to the ecstasies of abstract
meditation, chiefly by his peculiar sense of humour. There is a closer
connection than we are always willing to admit between humour and
profanity. Humour is the faculty which always keeps us in mind of the
absurdity which is the shadow of sublimity. It is naturally allied to
intellectual scepticism, as in Rabelais or Montaigne; and Sir Thomas
shared the tendency sufficiently to be called atheist by some wiseacres.
But his humour was too gentle to suggest scepticism of the aggressive
kind. It is almost too free from cynicism. He cannot adopt any dogma
unreservedly, but neither does any dogma repel him. He revels in the
mental attitude of hopeless perplexity, which is simply unendurable to
the commonplace and matter-of-fact intellects. He likes to be balanced
between opposing difficulties; to play with any symbol of worship
without actually worshipping it; to prostrate himself sincerely at many
shrines, and yet with a half smile on his lips. He cannot be a
rhetorician in the ordinary sense of the word; he would have been
hopelessly out of place on the floor of the senate, stirring men's
patriotism or sense of right; for half his sympathy would always be with
the Opposition. He could not have moved the tears or the devotional
ecstasies of a congregation, for he has too vivid a sense that any and
every dogma is but one side of an inevitable antinomy. Strong
convictions are needed for the ordinary controversial successes, and his
favourite point of view is the centre from which all convictions radiate
and all look equally probable. But then, instead of mocking at all, he
sympathises with all, and expresses the one sentiment which may be
extracted from their collision--the sentiment of reverence blended with
scepticism. It is a contradictory sentiment, one may say, in a sense,
but the essence of humour is to be contradictory. The language in which
he utters himself was determined by his omnivorous appetite for every
quaint or significant symbol to be discovered in the whole field of
learning. With no prejudices, nothing comes amiss to him; and the
signature of some mysterious principle may be found in every object of
art or nature. Science in its infancy was still half mystic, and the
facts which he gathered were all tinged with the semi-mythical fancies
of the earliest explorers of the secrets of nature. In an old relic,
recalling 'the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' in a queer
annual, or an ancient fragment of history might be the appropriate
emblem, or something more than the emblem of a truth equally impressive
to the scientific and the poetical imagination. He would have been happy
by the midnight lamp in Milton's 'high lonely tower;' but his humour
would look at the romances which Milton loved rather with the eyes of
Cervantes than of Milton. Their tone of sentiment would be too strained
and highflown; and he would prefer to read of the spirits that are found
'In fire, air, flood, or underground,'
or to try to penetrate the secret of
'Every star that heaven doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew,'
by reading all the nonsense that had been written about them in the dawn
of inquiry. He should be read in a corresponding spirit. One should
often stop to appreciate the full flavour of some quaint allusion, or
lay down the book to follow out some diverging line of thought. So read
in a retired study, or beneath the dusty shelves of an ancient library,
a page of Sir Thomas seems to revive the echoes as of ancient chants in
college chapels, strangely blended with the sonorous perorations of
professors in the neighbouring schools, so that the interferences
sometimes produce a note of gentle mockery and sometimes heighten
solemnity by quaintness.
That, however, is not the spirit in which books are often read in these
days. We have an appetite for useful information, and an appetite for
frivolous sentiment or purely poetical musing. We cannot combine the two
after the quaint fashion of the old physician. And therefore these
charming writings have ceased to suit our modern taste; and Sir Thomas
is already passing under that shadow of mortality which obscures all,
even the greatest, reputations, and with which no one has dwelt more
pathetically or graphically than himself.
If we are disposed to complain, Sir Thomas shall himself supply the
answer, in a passage from the 'Hydriotaphia,' which, though described by
Hallam as the best written of his treatises, is not to my taste so
attractive as the 'Religio Medici.' The concluding chapter, however, is
in his best style, and here are some of his reflections on posthumous
fame. The end of the world, he says, is approaching, and 'Charles V. can
never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.' 'And, therefore,
restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories with present
considerations seems a vanity out of date, and a superannuated piece of
folly. We cannot hope to live as long in our names as some have done in
their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis
too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or
time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by
monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot
hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day,
were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained
in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such
imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of
futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and
cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which
maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.'
If the argument has now been vulgarised in the hands of Dr. Cumming and
his like, the language and the sentiment are worthy of any of our
greatest masters.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Ross, for example, urges that the invisibility of the phoenix is
sufficiently accounted for by the natural desire of a unique animal to
keep out of harm's way.
[6] Mr. Lowell, in 'Shakspeare Once More,' 'Among My Books.'
_JONATHAN EDWARDS_[7]
Two of the ablest thinkers whom America has yet produced were born in
New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The theorists
who would trace all our characteristics to inheritance from some remote
ancestor might see in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin normal
representatives of the two types from which the genuine Yankee is
derived. Though blended in various proportions, and though one may exist
almost to the exclusion of the other, an element of shrewd mother-wit
and an element of transcendental enthusiasm are to be detected in all
who boast a descent from the pilgrim fathers. Franklin, born in 1706,
represents in its fullest development the more earthly side of this
compound. A thoroughbred utilitarian, full of sagacity, and carrying
into all regions of thought that strange ingenuity which makes an
American the handiest of all human beings, Franklin is best embodied in
his own poor Richard. Honesty is the best policy: many a little makes a
mickle: the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt; and--
'Get what you can, and what you get hold;
'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.'