Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honor from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works. Those only magnify him, whose judicious inquiry into his acts and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Every essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of essence and operation. This is the cause I grope after in the works of nature; on this hangs the providence of God. To raise so beauteous a structure as the world and the creatures thereof was but his art; but their sundry and divided operations, with their predestinated ends, are from the treasury of his wisdom."-ii. 18-20.

The reader will perceive that this is the theme and the principle, the working out of which has produced some of the noblest works that adorn our literature. The subject, too, is inexhaustible; as we increase in knowledge, so will it in richness and power. But what are we-what are we like to bethe wiser and the better for such speculations as are about to be quoted?

"Who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend; 'tis but five days older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but, to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning to give such an infinite start forwards as to conceive an end-in an essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary; my philosophy dares not say the angels can do it.... In eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and

at the instant that he first decreed it; for to eter. nity, which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly, when he saith, a thousand years to God are but as one day: for, to speak like a philosopher, those continued instances of time, which flow into a thousand years, make not to him one moment. What to us is to come, to

his eternity is present; his whole duration being but one permanent point, without succession, parts, flux, or division.

"There is no attribute that adds more difficulty to the mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father and Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the world eternal, or how he could make good two eternities. His similitude of a triangle comprehended in a square, doth somewhat illustrate the trinity of our souls, and that the triple unity of

Be

God; for there is in us not three, but a trinity of souls; because there is in us, if not three distinct souls, yet differing faculties, that can and do subsist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are thus united as to make but one soul and substance. If one soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that were a petty trinity. Conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated by the intellect, but actually comprehended in its unity, and that is a perfect trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers. ware of philosophy, is a precept not to be received in too large a sense: for, in this mass of nature, there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of divinity; which, to wiser reasons, serve as luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and, to judicious beliefs, as scales and rundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric."-ii. 15–17.

The ear is tickled by well-contrasted words, and the mind is amused by a phantasmagoria of sublime visions; but, is not the time approaching when efforts to explain the inexplicable will cease to be dignified by the title of wisdom, or even by the more modest appellation of philosophy?

66

It is, we believe, a feeling of this kind, and an understood, if not a formally pronounced verdict of public opinion, which has given to the Pseudodoria Epidemica, or Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, the palm of popularity and the praise of usefulness beyond all the other works of Sir Thomas Browne. Nor do we see it necesBasil Montagu, that the work "is not to be sary to suppose, with Messrs. Wilkin and ascribed to the mental activity of its author alone,"—and that we are not to regard it solely as the result of his own native and irrepressible thirst for knowledge, and of that unrelenting spirit of investigation which led him to scrutinize every position before he admitted it." (ii. 161.) On the contrary, he felt with Sir Hamon L'Estrange that "naturalists readily follow one another, as wild geese fly;" other "learned discourses" professing a similar object, were yet unsatisfactory to his mind; and, therefore, he denotwithstanding the consciousness that “a termined to investigate matters for himself, work of this nature is not to be performed upon one legg; and should smell of oyle, if duly and deservedly handled."-ii. 179.

Such a work was manifestly one of the cessively bewitching and bewitched. They desiderata of literature

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

are both in life, though happily parted from our residence, and from each other, by a running stream.

In the Pseudodoxia Browne revels with delight, abandoning himself sometimes to a reckless orgie of quips and cranks and learned whimsies, to be patterned only in Shakspeare, and yet maintaining throughout a method in his madness. It strikes the reader as being the most sincere of his productions. In the others, he is constantly thinking what may be said upon a subject (of which the hints for his son Edward's lectures and his common-place book are signal proof): here, he is only anxious to have said his say, and eased his mind.

With what gallantry does he vindicate the Hebrew race from the calumny of emitting "a kind of fulsome scent,-as Mr. Fulham with the hazard of life, till he removed into experimented in Italye at a Jewish meeting, the fresh air!"

It is no just reproach against Browne, and no disqualification for his task of sweeping away vulgar errors, that he was not himself wholly free from those of his own age, or the "That Jews stink naturally, that is, that in ages immediately preceding it; that he their race and nation there is an evil savor, is a was, as Mr. Wilkin states, "a stout ad- received opinion we know not how to admit, herent to the falling fortunes of the Ptole- although we concede many points which are of maic astronomy;"--that he believed eels affinity hereto. We will acknowledge that certain might be bred "on or in the back of a cod- odors attend on animals, no less than certain colors; fish ;"-that he did not refuse to "send certhat pleasant smells are not confined unto tificates for the evill for divers to be touched vegetables, but found in divers animals, and some more richly than in plants; and, though the by His Majestie" (i. 259); that "he was problem of Aristotle inquires why no animal persuaded of the reality of apparitions, and of smells sweet beside the pard, yet later discoverdiabolical illusions;" and affirms, "from his ies add divers sorts of monkeys, the civet cat and own knowledge, the certainty of witchcraft." gazela, from which our musk proceedeth. We (i. lxxxii.) As to the king's evil, it must be confess that beside the smell of the species there remembered that people would be touched; may be individual odors, and every man may have a proper and peculiar savor, which, although not -also that the king was accompanied by so perceptible unto man who hath this sense but sundry "chirurgeons and physitians ;" and weak, is yet sensible unto dogs, who hereby can finally, that the church had provided a regu- single out their masters in the dark. We will lar and very solemn ritual for the occasion, not deny that particular men have sent forth a which was used, no doubt, when Queen pleasant savor, as Theophrastus and Plutarch Anne touched Samuel Johnson, and was report of Alexander the Great, and Tzetzes and only dropt from our Prayer Book when the also emit an unsavory odor we have no reason to Cardan do testify of themselves. That some may first Hanoverian king dropt the practice--deny; for this may happen from the quality of resigning it to the purer blood of the exiled Stuarts. But more it is true, though scarcely credible, that there exist (in 1851) rustics who believe in the physical benefit derived from the rite of Confirmation.* And as to the witchcraft--the Appendix to Forby shows the recent existence of the belief. Nay, more than that; we ourselves have had two washerwomen who were suc

*We have conversed with an old woman in Norfolk who gets confirmed over and over again-a often as she can contrive it-it does her so much good!

what they have taken, the fœtor whereof may
discover itself by sweat, &c., as being unmaster-
able by the natural heat of man, not to be
dulcified by concoction beyond an unsavory con-
dition; the like may come to pass from putrid
fevers-and sometimes also in gross and humid
humors, as is often discoverable in malignant
bodies, even in the latitude of sanity-the natural
heat of the parts being insufficient for a perfect
and thorough digestion, and the errors of one
concoction not rectifiable by another.
that an unsavory odor is gentilitious or national
unto Jews, if rightly understood, we cannot well
concede, nor will the information of reason or
sense induce it."-iii. 36.

But

Then follow store of good reasons, which | of families. Not persons merely, but their are shrewdly clenched by this conclusion :- very names, appear and are gone, like the summer wavelets on the sandy beach. Those which do remain, retaining anything of their ancient position, are rarest among the rare. The same result is derived from the inspection of other local lists:—

"And, lastly, were this true, yet our opinion is not impartial; for unto converted Jews, who are of the same seed, no man imputeth this unsavory odor; as though, aromatized by their conversion, they lost their scent with their religion, and smelt no longer than they savored of the Jew."-iii. 41.

In another place the editor is scarcely less courageous than his author. Browne gives a chapter "Of the Pictures of Mermaids," without informing us of his own private belief respecting them. But Mr. Wilkin, in a note, says:

"Unconvinced even by Sir Humphry Davy's grave arguments to prove that such things cannot be, and undismayed by his special detection of the apes and salmon in poor Dr. Philip's undoubted original,' I persist in expecting one day to have the pleasure of beholding-A MERMAID!"—iii. 143.

So far we have seen Sir Thomas before

the public, on the stage. The correspondence and journals which Mr. Wilkin's diligence has produced give us a glimpse behind the scenes; and an interesting peep it is into private life and country manners of old. The establishment of the "London season

" by the facilities of travelling, has spoiled the "seasons" of our large provincial towns, or rather has prevented their having any true season at all. In Browne's days, many of the leading county families had their town houses in Norwich, where they wintered and kept Christmas in aristocratic style. Several of these yet remain under humbler occupancy. In Edward Browne's Journal, we find :

"January 1 [1663-4].--I was at Mr. Howard's, who kept his Christmas at the Duke's Palace, so magnificently as the like hath scarce been seen. They had dancing every night, and gave entertainments to all that would come; hee built up a roome with the bravest hangings I ever saw; his candlesticks, snuffers, tongues, fire-shovels, and irons were silver; a banquet was given every night after dancing; and three coaches were employed to fetch ladies every afternoon, the greatest of which would holde fourteen persons, and cost five hundred pound, without the harnasse, which cost six score more.

"January 4.-I went to Mr. Howard's dancing at night; our greatest beautys were Mdm. Elizabeth Cradock, Eliz. Houghton, Ms. Philpot, Ms. Yallop; afterwards to the banquet, and so home. Sic transit gloria mundi !”

"Even this fragment (of the Index of Harl. MS. Cod. 1109) is not without its value. It shows how many Norfolk families, once entitled to bear arms, are now totally extinct; for where are we to look for the Bolks, Burgullions, Batwellins, Bashpooles, Buttrys, Catts, &c.? That man shall

not abide in honor is further manifest from the fact, that many of these names are now only to be met with in the cottage or the union-house."-Hart, iii. 41.

The correspondence shows that, with all his learned whims, Sir Thomas was not forgetful of the main chance. Good patients are carefully recommended; and a shrewd hint at the same time conveyed to his son, Dr. Edward, the practitioner "in Salisburie Court, next the Golden Balls," and also a lecturer on his art in London :

"DEAR SONNE, My worthy friend Mr. Deane Astley going to London, hee civilly asking mee whether I would send vnto you, I would not omitt to send this letter. Hee hath had a lingering anguish distemper, which hath made him weake

There was some ecceptions last time by his lady, that when shee had visited your wife the visit was not returned."

"One Mrs. Towe, Madame Repps' daughter, of Maltshall, who liveth in London, will come unto you. Shee is a very good woeman, and complains of her eyes, and some breaking out of her face. Lett her knowe that I writ unto you when shee commeth. I think shee liveth in Guildhall Street. If one Mr. Jones, of the Middle Temple, a young man splenicall and hypochondr. cometh unto you, lett him knowe that I mentioned him unto you."

"Mr. Payne, lately an alderman of Norwich, who lives in St. Gyles, his daughter, Mrs. Doughtie, will go to London the next weeke and consult you about the waters and some other infirmities. Shee is a good woeman, and hath a sober, honest gentleman of this countrie to her husband, of whom I will write further in my next, God willing."

The son was equally anxious to secure the fees thus in prospect. "I have not yet heard of the gentleman or gentlewoman you wrote me word of." (i. 227.) He appears, long after his establishment in London, to have received pecuniary aid from his father, as Transit, indeed! A glance through Kirk-well as good patients and hints for their patrick's pages brings strongly to mind the management. The senior says:

transitory nature not only of individuals, but "I beleeve my lady O. Bryan is by this time in

[blocks in formation]

[Jan.

better health and safetie; though hypochond and I are to be treated of, in another lecture, care splenetick persons are not long from complayning, yet they may bee good patients, and may bee borne withal, especially if they bee good natured. A bill is inclosed; espargnez nous autant que vous pourres, car je suis agé, et aye beaucoup d'anxieté et peine de sustenir ma famille.”—i. 269. Later still he

The italics are his own. writes:

"God send you wisedome and providence, to make a prudent use of the moneys you have from me, beside what you gett otherwise. Least repentence come to late upon you, consider that accidental charges may bee alwayes coming upon you, and the folly of depending or hoping to much upon time-turnes yet to come."-i. 297.

Still he was no niggard, either practically or theoretically. The liberal style in which he brought up his family speaks for the one; his opinion may be gathered from the following confidence to his son :

"I am sorry to find that the King of England (Charles II.) is fayne to reduce his howsehold expences to twelve thousand pounds p. annum, especially hee having a farre greater revenue than any of his predecessors. God keepe all honest men from penury and want; men can bee honest no longer than they can give every one his due: in fundo parsimonia seldome recovers or restores a man. This rule is to bee earned by all, utere divitiis tanquam moriturus, et idem tanquam victurus parcito divitiis. So maye bee avoyded sordid avarice and improvident prodigality; so shall not a man deprive himself of God's blessings, nor throwe away God's mercies; so may hee be able to do good, and not suffer the worst of evils."--i.

307.

One more proof of his sagacity in public matters must be given. He was not unlikely to foresee what attempts would be made in the reign of James II., nor willing that his grandchild should be entrapped by the insidious aggressors of those days, so he puts these two sentences together in a letter to Edward: "The players are at the Red Lyon, hard by; and Tom goes sometimes to see a playe. Ut filia tua educetur in religione Anglicana etiam atq. etiam cura."-i.

293.

Browne is continually sending to his son odd curiosities and choice scraps, to stick into his lectures in London. Thus, in "the discourse de aure," may be mentioned how a horse-leech got into the ear of a person of Naples, and how "Severinus found out a good remedie for it."* When the ungues

* Leeches are not desirable inmates either of one's person, or one's parlor. On the front of an old

is taken to have it stated that Hippocrates was so curious as to prescribe "the rule in shorter than the topp of the finger. That cutting the nayle, that it be not longer or barbers of old used to cutt men's nayles is to be gathered from Marshal: lib. iii. ep. 74."

The savans of the College of Surgeons will appreciate the ambition of Browne and ical arrivals of the day :— his son to be the first to describe the zoolog

Fez and Morocco's ambassadour, with his presents "A greater part of our newes is of the King of of lyons and oestridges. [This diplomatic African, as we learn from Evelyn, was the fashionable dark-skinned lion of the day.] There being so them will be brought about to showe, hither, as many oestridges brought over, 'tis likely some of them dye, I beleeve it will bee dissected; they soone as to other parts out of London. If any of have odde feet and strong thighes and legges. Perhaps the king will put 3 or 4 into St. James' Park, and give away the rest to some nobleman." --i. 325.

One of these unhappy bipeds passes into the possession of Dr. Edward, and then father and son go to work with their experiments, about as considerately as old Hopkins the witch-finder would treat the first aged dame that he happened to accost:

Feb. 3 [1681-2].

"DEAR SONNE,-I beleeve you must bee carefull of your ostridge, this returne of cold wether, least it perish by it being bredd in so hot a countrey, and perhaps not seene snowe before, or very seldome, so that I beleeve it must be kept under covert, and have strawe to sitt upon, and water have it observed how it sleepeth, and whether not sett by it to take of, both day and night. Must with the head under the wing, especially in cold hearing bird, like a goose in many circumstances. weather; whether it bee a watchfull and quickIt seems to eat any thing that a goose will feed on, and to love the same green hearbs, lettuce, endive, sorrell, &c. You will bee much at a losse and easie supply by cabbadges, which I forgott to for hearbes this winter, but you may have cheape graines and brinne, or furfure, alone or mixed mention in my last, and graines, all kinds of with water or other liquor. To geese they give oates, &c., moistened with beere, butt sometimes they are inebriated with it. If you give any iron,

it

it will eat a worme, or a very small eel; whether
may be wrapped up in doue or past; perhaps it
will not take it up alone. You may trie whether
it drincks water.
it will drinck milk; and observe in what manner
Aldrov. and Johnstonus write,
that a goose will not eat bay leaves, and that they

motto,
house at Wymondham in Norfolk is carved the

"Nec mihi glis adsit servus, nec hospes hirudo."

[blocks in formation]

"MOST HONORED FATHER,-I received a letter from you this day, wherein were two heads of oestridges. The bill of ours seems to be more flat than of either of those sent in the letter, and the round eare is not exprest in the figures. Ours died of a soden, and so hindred the drawing or delineating of the head and other parts, or making further experiments. We gave it a peece of iron which weighed two ounces and a half, which we found in the first stomack again not at all altered."

[ocr errors]

Mr. Wilkin seems to think that Dr. Edward had encroached too much on his father's permission to travel. The correspondence does not impress us with that view. The knight was desirous that his children should derive every advantage from a foreign tour. He advises economy, but is far from stingy, and insists only on industrious observation. To Thomas he writes, "God bless thee! You may learn handsom songs and aires not by book but by the ear, as you shall hear them sung. I see you are mindful of us, and not idle."-i. 16. He only grudges what he deems to be a useless expenditure: "Beleeve it," he writes to Edward, "no excursion into Pol., Hung., or Turkey, addes advantage or reputation unto a schollar" (i. 166), and directs him accordingly. Thomas he orders to be "as good a husband as possible, and enter not upon any cours of superfluous expense. Remember the camell's back, and be not troubled for anything that other ways would trouble your patience here; be courteous and civil to all; put on a decent boldness, and avoid pudor rusticus, not much known in France."-i. 3. A curious contrast of locomotion in 1662 with that of 1851 is afforded by Edward Browne's travels into the 66 strange, mountainous, misty, moorish, rocky, wild country of Darbishier." What we now quietly and comfortably do in an easy day by ordinary trains, took his "triumvirat" a hard-working week to traverse. The first day they accomplished much, for they "baited at Licham and layed at the King's Head in Linne. The next day morning, after the towne musick had saluted" them, they saw, ate, and drank all sorts of things. The journal is delight

ful from the high glee with which it is written. No adventure comes much amiss. The

great affair of that day, however, was the passage of the Wash :

"Taking a guide, it being somewhat late, wee desired to bee conducted in the nighest way to

Boston. Hee told us there were two waies to passe, either over two short cuts, or else quite over the long Wash, which latter wee chose, partly because it was the nighest, but chiefly for the novelty to us of this manner of travailing at the bottome of the sea; for this passage is not lesse convenient at a flood for navigation than at an ebbe, for riding on horseback out of Norfolk Our convoy made into Lincolnshire.

such haste with his fliing horse, that hee landed us on the banks in Lincolnshire in less than two hours, quite crosse this equitable sea, or navigable land-[true chip of the old block !]-fourteen miles in length.”—i. 23.

[ocr errors]

66

Edward, too, notes the dialect of "Nottinghamshiere.' Very few let us passe without a good e'en, and were very ready to instruct us on our way. One told us our wy lig'd by youn nooke of oakes, and another that wee mun goe strit forth, which maner of speeches not only directed us, but much pleas'd us with the novelty of its dialect." On they go, undismayed, "up mountaine, downe dale," shaken on the backs of their

poore jades," not quite so luxurious as Darwin's "rapid car." One of their companions was a sort of ancient Mr. Briggs, for "a friendly bough, that had sprouted out beyond his fellows over the rode, gave our file leader such a brush of the jacket as it swept him off his horse." Another Briggs, No. 2, was a "most excellent conductour; who yet, for all his hast, fell over his horse's head as he was plunging into some dirty hole, but by good luck smit his face into a soft place of mud, where I suppose he had a mouth full both of dirt and rotten stick, for he seemed to us to spit crow's nest a good while after. If his jaws had met with a piece of the rock, I doubt hee would have spit his teeth as fast." Briggs the first, trusting to fine September weather, " came no better armd against it than with an open'd sleev'd doublet, whose misfortune, though wee could doe no otherwise then much pity, as being the greatest of us all, yet it made us some sport to see what pretty waterworkes the rain had made about him; the spouting of his doublet sleeves did so resemble him to a whale that wee-that could think ourself no other than fishes at that time, swimming through the ocean of water that fell-dare never come nigh him." We

« VorigeDoorgaan »