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Mont Blanc, Ascent of-See Ascent.
Milton-North British Review,
Marlboro', Duke of Blackwood's Magazine, 447
Macaulay, Thomas Babington-Bentley's Mis-
cellany,

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526
MISCELLANEOUS.-Powerful Effect of Imagination,
19; The German Universities, 35; Memoirs of Alex
ander Dumas, 59; Mrs. Sherwood, 94; The Grove
of Academus, 113; The Public Debts and Standing
Armies of the European States, 133; Good Winning
Hands, 198; Universities of Edinburgh, 215; Jet
and Jet Ornaments, 237; An Indian Sword-Player,
279; A Sketch of Mazzini, 282; The Last Argu-
ment, 307; Sleep, 364: Mr. Catlin's Scheme, 426;
Turner's Facility of Painting, 464; The Lyttleton
Letters, 498; Alexandre Dumas' Memoirs, 510;
New work by Hartley Coleridge, 514; Juggernaut,
530; Monument to the Author of Hudibras, 540;
A Smoking Collection, 544.

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545

268

Submarine Telegraph-Blackwood's Magazine, 95
Skellig Rock, Visit to—Bentley's Miscellany, 221
Scottish Cavalier of the Olden Time-Tait's
Magazine,

Stuart, Mary-Westminster Review,
Shell-Fish, their Ways and Works-Westmin-
ster Review,

Smith, Albert's, Ascent of Mont Blanc-See
Ascent.

Sterling, John-Eliza Cook's Journal,
St. Petersburgh, fete days at-See Fete.
Stephen's History of France-See France.
Sweden, Pictures of Sharpe's Magazine,

T.

Taylor, Henry, Dramas of-Blackwood's Ma-
gazine,

Telegraph, the Submarine-See Submarine.
Thorwalsden's First Love-Chambers' Edin-
burgh Journal,

Turner, the late Joseph Mallord William-Fra
ser's Magazine,

U. V. W.

. 238

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ECLECTIC MAGAZINE

OF

FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

JANUARY, 1852.

From the Quarterly Review.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.*

To the minds of most men the word Norfolk is suggestive merely of turkeys, partridges, and the four-course shift of husbandry; while to the ladies it conjures up visions of crapes, bombazines, lustres-all the endless combinations of cotton, wool, and

silk.

With those ideas there is an end of Norfolk to the world at large. This corner of Old England has no landscape of renowned beauty or grandeur to attract the tourist; though in the wild, the curious, and even the romantic, it may be richer than is suspected. It has not the thinnest vein of subterranean wealth resembling that which converts a sweet little Welsh valley, or a breezy Scotch upland, into a seeming Pandemonium. It is not enriched on the fiendish condition of having to breathe an atmosphere of diluted soot and coal-dust as a fine-certain on the continuance of its prosperity, but is for weeks and months illumined by sunshine to which the white-lights of the Opera are but as shadows. Nor has it been made the scene of any remarkably glorious "demonstration," which would bring it prominently before the *Sir Thomas Browne's Works, including his Life and Correspondence. Edited by S. Wilkin,

F.LS. 4 vols. 1836.

VOL XXV. NO. L

national eye in newspaper columns. It is a quiet, homely, regular-living province, decidedly open to the reproach of being some modicum of years behind-hand. It is little visited, except for straightforward business purposes. A few summer immigrants come from the adjoining inland counties, for the sake of Yarmouth jetty and its sandy beach. The musical festival brings down some outlandish amateurs, who, while in the fine old city of Norwich, doubtless fancy themselves at the ἔσχατα χθονός; and who would find their impression remarkably confirmed if they had the courage to penetrate as far as the unfrequented line of coast-to Winterton, Horsey, Salthouse, or Snettisham. An excursion thither is a most complete and exhilarating escape from the cut-and-dried wellbehaved people whom Eöthen describes as "the sitters in pews."

Should any stranger wish really to explore the sister provinces once so dear to Sir Thomas Browne, he cannot get on without some knowledge of their language, and therefore we have placed on our list two glossaries, both careful and also spirited worksfor even glossaries may show life. Moor's was put together with great zeal and good-.

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will, under the vivid impressions of a return home after twenty-years' absence in India. Forby, on the contrary, passed all his days within the boundaries of East Anglia; yet his Vocabulary, unluckily but a fragment, is enlivened with a heartiness that is no less delightful. The reverend author committed the imprudence of taking a warm-bath, to which he was unaccustomed, without the presence of an attendant; fainting, as supposed, he was found drowned. His friend and pupil, Mr. Dawson Turner, of Great Yarmouth, has prefaced the posthumous work with a pleasing memoir.

Browne had made a slight beginning in his "Tract viii.-Of Languages, and particularly of the Saxon Tongue." In the course of it he observes:-"It were not impossible to make an original reduction of many words of no general reception in England, but of common use in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East Angle countries; which to effect, the Danish language, new and more ancient, may prove of good advantage." But he uses some local terms passim, as snast, the burnt portion of the wick of a candle (iii. 178). Forby is only to be blamed for having spoken of his subject in an unduly apologetic tone. If, as he truly asserts, after much prolix and elaborate criticism by the annotators on the old poets, and especially Shakspeare, "a difficulty often remained as it was found, which an East Anglian clown would have solved at first sight or hearing "-he should have seen no need to anticipate a cold reception-as if, "being merely oral, and existing among the unlettered rustics of a particular district, provincial language were of little concern to general readers, of still less to persons of refined education, and much below the notice of philologists." But the truth is, that Englishmen, instead of being proud of their county vernacular, as they ought, are mostly ashamed of it. An Italian, although he may use a perfect bocca Romana in polite society, would en no account forget his home dialect, whether it be the vocalic Venetian, the harsh and aspirated Tuscan, or the Neapolitan mishmash of transplanted "roots." Dialectic Italian is not thought low and vulgar; it has its dictionaries, its standard works, and the patronage of the upper classes; but an educated Englishman, instead of being proud to converse with his rustic neighbors in their own idiom, would have it thought that he was born nowhere. If, in the warmth of debate, a phrase, or tone, indicative of his native spot escapes his lips, he blushes like a school-girl; as if he had uttered naughty words, and not

the very language of Ben Jonson, Shakspeare, or Chaucer. The study of Moor should re-assure many such timid gentlemen. The weakness, too, is as ineffectual as it is unworthy. Not one man in a thousand but can be detected to have had a home, however much he may mince and Londonize his talk.

The Icenic archaisms collected by Forby are still alive and current in 1851. It is to be wished that some competent hand would set about supplying his omissions. He "cannot forbear figuring to himself some plain, unpretending, old-fashioned yeoman, who has been unmercifully rallied upon his Norfolk or Suffolk talk, lighting by chance upon this book, and discovering that he speaks a great deal more good English than either he or his corrector Bestius was aware of." Some of the Norfolk talk, however, is very tolerable French. Thus, paryard, the yard by the barn-door where the farm-animals are kept, though derived by Forby from par, an enclosed place, is clearly the pailler, or strawyard, which some Norman brought into the country. He could not mistake about plancher, a boarded floor, and refers us to the planched gate in "Measure for Measure." Some words in his list strike us as scarcely dialectic; e. g., poorly, in the sense of ailing, and onto-upon. Others fascinate by their apt expressiveness, as plumpendicular; laldrum, an egregious simpleton a fool and a half; mush, guardedly silent; pample, to trample lightly. A child pamples upon a bed in a garden newly raked, or upon a floor newly washed. A heavy-heeled fellow slods over either. Some expressions seem to be Malapropic rather than Icenic :-e. g., refuge potatoes, a currency of air, and circulating windows. To terrify is not to frighten, but to tease, to annoy. Sheep are 'nationly terrified by the flies. A young woman, on som proposition being made to her, replies, "Sir, I ha' n't no projections." Another suitor gains a hearing by the promise that he will not contain you long. An entired tradesman inclines having anything more to do with business: he 'oon't be bull-ringled, nor yet made a hoss-fair on no longer-that he oon't.

One grand characteristic of the East Anglian dialect, which cannot be divested of its ludicrousness even by classical authority, is the system of abbreviation, by which certain phrases are compressed almost into nothingness.

A farmer's spouse will procustize my husband down to m'usban. Lord Wodehouse must submit to have his title smoothed into Wuddus. We can call to mind numer

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ous utterances of Forby's examples, such as | Mr. Wilkin is a very treasury of provincial muckup for muck-heap, sidus for sideways, antiquities, manners, and natural history. wammel-cheese for one meal (of milk) cheese, shunt for should not, cup for come up, and k'ye thinder for look ye yonder. "Howstrew?" (How is it true?) asks a skeptical listener: Strewsgodsin'evn!" is the profane reply. But Shakspeare uses dup for do ope. Doff and don are still great staples with the modern-antique melodramatists. "But all these,' says Forby, "are tight, compact condensations of two, or at most three short words. Some are on a larger scale." Take this. A girl employed on a task commonly allotted to boys, called herself a galcobaw-a word which might puzzle the most learned East Anglian philologist. It was found to mean a girlcow-boy.

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Although it is now more than two hundred years since Browne settled in Norwich, his name is still inseparable from much that must ever be of interest to both the city and the county. Besides his examples of the respectable if not venerable Icenic phraseology, there is his "Account of Birds found in Norfolk" (iv. 313), enabling the naturalist to discover what species have been driven off by cultivation and increased population. Thus Cranes are often seen here in hard winters, especially about the champian and fieldy part" now, they never make their appearance. His Ichthyological Discourse is worth referring to, if only for the record, Salmon no common fish in our rivers, though many are taken in the Ouse; in the Bure, or North river; in the Waveny, or South river; in the Norwich river but seldom, and in the winter. But four years ago, fifteen were taken at Trowse Mill, at Christmas." (iv. 384.) It is of some interest to know that two hundred years have not altered the character of certain local species. "Oysters, exceeding large, about Burnham and Hunstanton, whereof many are eaten raw; the shells being broken with cleavers; the greater part pickled, and sent weekly to London and other parts." That he made even a brief list of Fossil Remains (iv. 454) shows that he was in advance of an age which supposed such things to be Nature's abortive failures. His Hydriotaphia arose out of "The Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk." The Vulgar Errors have been enriched by native materials; and the correspondence given by

*As thus: "Two neat pickles may be contrived, the one of oysters stewed in their own vinegar, with thyme, lemon-peel, onion, mace, pepper; adding Rhenish wine, elder vinegar, three or four pickled cucumbers."-iv. 453.

Of the edition of Sir Thomas Browne, which cost Mr. Wilkin the labor of nearly twelve years, Southey often expressed his very warm approbation-and more than once he promised a reviewal, but died re infectâ. Were not the multiplicity of the laureate's tasks so well known, we might wonder, as well as regret, that he did not execute his project. His mind would have thoroughly sympathized with Browne's in all that related to the dulce est desipere in loco. Both of them would assuredly interpret locus to be any passage or subject around which it was their pleasure to gambol and curvet. The 'Doctor," in one of his freakish moods, would receive with an approving grin, rather than sift with stern criticism, Sir Thomas's speculation whether painters and sculptors are not wrong in representing Adam with the usual umbilical dimple-" seeing that he was not born of woman," and, therefore, could not be impressed with the scar that is so ornamental to all the rest of mankind. Nor would he have quarrelled with the list. of empirical remedies for the gout, which Browne drew up for the use of those "unsatisfied with the many rational medicines ;"

such as "Wear shoes made of a lion's skin," and "Try the way of transplantation; give poultices taken from the part unto dogs, and let a whelp lie in bed with you;" nor with "Museum Clausum, containing rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any man now living:" the very first of hich, as a fair specimen, is "A poem of Ovidius Naso, written in the Getick language; found wrapt up in wax, at Sabaria, on the frontiers of Hungary, where there remains a tradition that he died in his return towards Rome from Tomos, either after his pardon or the death of Augustus."-T is sweet to trifle now and then: Southey's trifling with Browne would have been a perfect Saturnalia of learned misrule.

Sir Thomas, then, though born in London (1605), belongs eminently to East Anglia. After a liberal education at Winchester and Oxford, he settled at Norwich as a physician, in 1636, and retained an extensive practice in the city and county to the end of his life. In 1641 he married "Mrs. Dorothy Mileham, of a good family in Norfolk." In 1642, his Religio Medici was surreptitiously printed, and therefore there appears to us a slight anachronism in Dr. Johnson's remarks

"This marriage could not but draw the raillery of contemporary wits upon a man,

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