as any man in it, when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study; so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing."

"Sir Thomas understood most of the European languages, viz. all that are in Hutter's bible, which he made use of. The Latin and Greek he understood critically; the oriential languages, which never were vernacular in this part of the world, he thought the use of them would not answer the time and pains of learning them; yet had so great a veneration for the matrix of them, viz. the Hebrew, consecrated to the Oracles of God, that he was not content to be totally ignorant of it; though very little of his science is to be found in any books of that primitive language. And though much is said to be written in the derivative idioms of that tongue, especially the Arabick, yet he was satisfied with the translations, wherein he found nothing admirable.

"In his religion he continued in the same mind which he had declared in his first book, written when he was but thirty years old, his Religio Medici, wherein he fully assented to that of the church of England, preferring it before any in the world, as did the learned Grotius. He attended the publick service very con

do nothing.] Here Dr. Johnson has omitted the following passages:

"In his papers left behind him, which were many, nothing was found that was vulgar, but all savouring of much ingenuity and curiosity; some of them designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious wits.

"He had ten children by his surviving only wife,* a lady of such a symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism.

"Four of his children survived, a son and three daughters, all of them remarkably partakers of his ingenuity and virtues; who were left behind to propagate that evpvía, that excelled in his person. Though health, grace, and happiness, are no hereditary portions, yet good nature generally is.

"His surviving son was his eldest child, a person of eminent reputation in the city of London; and hath seen the best part of Europe-France, Italy, Lower and High Germany, Croatia, and Greece, as far as Larissa has been in four of the greatest princes' courts that border upon the Mediterranean, viz. that of the Emperor, that of France, the Pope, and the Grand Signior."

* Whose maiden name was Mileham, a gentlewoman of a very considerable family in the county of Norfolk.

+ Dr. Edward Browne, late President of the College of Physicians.

stantly, when he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were in town. Read the best English sermons he could hear of, with liberal applause; and delighted not in controversies. In his last sickness, wherein he continued about a week's time, enduring great pain of the cholick, besides a continual fever, with as much patience as hath been seen in any man, without any pretence of stoical apathy, animosity, or vanity, of not being concerned thereat, or suffering no impeachment of happiness. Nihil agis dolor.

66

His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and a sound faith of God's providence, and a meek and humble submission thereunto, which he expressed in few words. I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much; the last words which I heard from him' were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of God, being without fear. He had oft triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given many repulses in the defence of patients; but when his own turn came, he submitted with a meek, rational, and religious courage.

"He might have made good the old saying of dat Galenus opes, had he lived in a place that could have afforded it. But his indulgence and liberality to his children, especially in their travels, two of his sons in divers countries, and two of his daughters in France, spent him more than a little. He was liberal in his house entertainments, and in his charity; he left a comfortable, but no great estate, both to his lady and children, gained by his own industry, having spent the greatest part of his patrimony* in his travels.

"Such was his sagacity and knowledge of all history, antient and modern, and his observations thereupon so singular, that it hath been said by them that knew him best, that if his profession, and place of abode, would have suited his ability, he would have made an extraordinary man for the privy council, not much inferior to the famous Padre Paulo, the late oracle of the Venetian state.

Though he were no prophet or son of a prophet, yet, in that faculty which comes nearest it, he excelled, i. e. the stochastick,"

* He was likewise very much defrauded by one of his guardians.

stochastick.] On the predictive power expressed by this term, I meet with the following passage in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, 2nd series, vol. ii. 425:-" This faculty seems to be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucydides in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is given as a close translation. 'By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he was super

wherein he was seldom mistaken, as to future events, as well publick as private; but not apt to discover any presages or superstition.

It is observable, that he who in his earlier years had read all the books against religion, was in the latter part of his life averse from controversies. To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections and elude proof, is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly repents. There is a time, when every wise man is weary of raising difficulties only to task himself with the solution, and desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard of contest. There is, perhaps, no better method of encountering these troublesome irruptions of scepticism, with which inquisitive minds are frequently harassed, than that which Browne declares himself to have taken : "If there arise any doubts in my way, I do forget them; or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment and more manly reason be able to resolve them: for I perceive, every man's reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds, wherewith the subtilties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender judgments.'

The foregoing character may be confirmed and enlarged, by many passages in the Religio Medici; in which it appears, from Whitefoot's testimony, that the author, though no very sparing panegyrist of himself, has not exceeded the truth, with respect to his attainments or visible qualities.

There are, indeed, some interior and secret virtues, which a man may sometimes have without the knowledge of others; and may sometimes assume to himself, without sufficient reasons for his opinion. It is charged upon Browne by Dr. Watts, as an

eminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far surpassed all in his deductions of the future from the PAST; or was the best guesser of the future from the past.'* Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered as a science, we can even furnish it with a denomination; for the writer of the life of Sir Thomas Browne, prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour of it for that philosopher, calls it 'the Stochastic,' a term derived from the Greek and from archery, meaning, 'to shoot at a mark.' This eminent genius, it seems, often 'hit the white.' Our biographer declares, that though he were no prophet, yet in that faculty, &c."'

superstition.] End of Whitefoot's Minutes.

* Οἱκείᾳ γὰρ ξυνεσεῖ, καὶ οὔτε προμαθὼν ἐς αὐτὴν οὐδὲν, οὔτ ̓ ἐπιμαθων, τῶν τε παραχρῆμα δι' ἐλαχίστης βουλῆς κράτιστος γνώμων, καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐπιπλεῖστον το γενησομένου ἀριστος εἰκαστής. THUCYDIDES, lib. I.

instance of arrogant temerity, that, after a long detail of his attainments, he declares himself to have escaped "the first and father-sin of pride." A perusal of the Religio Medici will not much contribute to produce a belief of the author's exemption from this father-sin: pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.

As easily may we be mistaken in estimating our own courage, as our own humility; and, therefore, when Browne shows himself persuaded, that “he could lose an arm without a tear, or with a few groans be quartered to pieces," I am not sure that he felt in himself any uncommon powers of endurance; or, indeed, anything more than a sudden effervescence of imagination, which, uncertain and involuntary as it is, he mistook for settled resolution.

"That there were not many extant, that in a noble way feared the face of death less than himself," he might likewise believe at a very easy expense, while death was yet at a distance; but the time will come to every human being, when it must be known how well he can bear to die; and it has appeared, that our author's fortitude did not desert him in the great hour of trial.

It was observed by some of the remarkers on the Religio Medici, that "the author was yet alive, and might grow worse as well as better:" it is, therefore, happy, that this suspicion can be obviated by a testimony given to the continuance of his virtue, at a time when death had set him free from danger of change, and his panegyrist from temptation to flattery.

But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he will not easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men: for there is no science, in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success.

His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas, sometimes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his decisions: on whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately so many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent notions, that he was always starting into collateral considerations: but the spirit and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight; and the reader follows him, without reluctance, thro' his mazes, in themselves flowery and pleasing, and ending at the point originally in view.

To have great excellencies, and great faults, "magnæ virtutes.

nec minora vitia, is the poesy," says our author, "of the best natures." This poesy may be properly applied to the style of Browne: It is vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantick; it is deep, but obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it commands but does not allure: his tropes are harsh, and his combinations uncouth. He fell into an age, in which our language began to lose the stability which it obtained in the time of Elizabeth; and was considered by every writer as a subject on which he might try his plastic skill, by moulding it according to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of this encroaching licence, began to introduce the Latin idiom: and Browne, though he gave less disturbance to our structures and phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotick words; many, indeed, useful and significant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by circumlocution, such as commensality' for the state of many living at the same table; but many superfluous, as a paralogical' for an unreasonable doubt; and some so obscure, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it, as arthritical analogies' for parts that serve some animals in the place of joints.

His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He must, however, be confessed to have augmented our philosophical diction; and in defence of his uncommon words and expressions, we must consider, that he had uncommon sentiments, and was not content to express in many words that idea for which any language could supply a single term.

But his innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy he has many "verba ardentia," forcible expressions, which he would never have found, but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety; and flights which would never have been reached, but by one who had very little fear of the shame of falling.

There remains yet an objection against the writings of Browne, more formidable than the animadversions of criticism. There are passages, from which some have taken occasion to rank him among deists, and others among atheists. It would be difficult to guess how any such conclusion should be formed, had not experience shown that there are two sorts of men willing to enlarge the catalogue of infidels.

It has been long observed, that an atheist has no just reason for endeavouring conversions; and yet none harass those minds which they can influence, with more importunity of solicitation to adopt their opinions. In proportion as they doubt the truth of their own doctrines, they are desirous to gain the attestation