Early in October, Evelyn went down to the Earl of Arlington's (then Lord Chamberlain) at Euston, in company with Sir Thomas Clifford, to join the royal party. Lord Henry Howard arrived soon after and prevailed on Mr. Evelyn to accompany him to Norwich, promising to convey him back after a day or two.-"This," says he, "as I could not refuse I was not hard to be persuaded to, having a desire to see that famous scholar and physitian, Dr. T. Browne, author of the Religio Medici,' and Vulgar Errors,' &c., now lately knighted. Thither then went my lord and I alone, in his flying chariot with six horses; and by the way, discoursing with me of severall of his concernes, he acquainted me of his going to marry his eldest sonn to one of the king's natural daughters by the Dutchesse of Cleaveland, by which he reckon'd he should come into mighty favour.

6

"Next morning I went to see Sir Tho. Brown (with whom I had some time corresponded by letter, tho' I had never seen him before). His whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collections, especially medails, books, plants, and natural things. Amongst other curiosities, Sir Thomas had a collection of the eggs of all the foule and birds he could procure, that country (especialy the promontary of Norfolck) being frequented, as he said, by severall kinds, which seldome or never go farther into the land, as cranes, storkes, eagles, and variety of water-foule. He led me to see all the remarkable places of this ancient citty, being one of the largest, and certainly, after London, one of the noblest of England, for its venerable cathedrall, number of stately churches, cleanesse of the streetes, and buildings of flints, so exquisitely headed and squared, as I was much astonished at; but he told me they had lost the art of squaring the flints, in which they once so much excell'd, and of which the churches, best houses, and walls, are built. The castle is an antique extent of ground, which now they call Marsfield, and would have been a fitting area to have placed the ducal palace on. The suburbs are large, the prospects sweete, with other amenities, not omitting the flower gardens, in which all the inhabitants excel. The fabric of stuffs brings a vast trade to this populous towne.”

In the succeeding year, 1672, the name of Sir Thomas occurs as having given his testimony, in the following terms, to the extraordinary precocity of Wotton, afterwards the friend of Bentley :

"I do hereby declare and certify, that I heard Wm. Wotton, son to Mr. Henry Wotton, of Wrentham, of the age of six years, read a stanza in Spencer very distinctly, and pronounce

it properly. As also some verses in the 1st Eclogue of Virgil, which I purposely chose out, and also construe the same truly. Also some verses in Homer, and the Carmina Aurea of Pythagoras, which he read well and construed. As he did also the 1st verse of the 4th ch. of Genesis in Hebrew, which I purposely chose out.

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'July 20, 1672.

"THO. BROWNE."

In the same year, in compliance with the request of Anthony Wood, the Oxford historian, Sir Thomas communicated, through his friend John Aubrey, some information respecting Dr. Lushington, his former tutor, and several other persons, together with those few biographical particulars respecting himself, which have formed the basis of all subsequent notices of him. These letters were detected in the Ashmolean Museum, by Mr. Black, with some others: one from Sir Thomas to Lilly, the astrologer, and two to Ashmole, in reference principally to Dr. John Dee and his son, Dr. Arthur Dee, who resided for many years on terms of the kindest friendship with Browne at Norwich, and there died. Sir Thomas, in these letters, bears testimony most unequivocally to the sincerity of Dr. Arthur Dee's belief in the power of alchymy to transmute the baser metals into gold and silver; which he assured Sir Thomas he had “ocularly, undeceivably, and frequently" beheld. He was even on the point of going to the continent in pursuit of such riches, had not the death of the artist, with whom he was about to hazard his property, most opportunely prevented him.

Sir Thomas had also another zealous alchymist among his correspondents, in the person of one of his earliest friends, Sir Robert Paston, with whom he corresponded from 1663 to 1672, principally on experiments which Sir Robert was making in alchymy. Blomfield speaks of this gentleman as "a person of good learning, who, travelling into foreign countrys, collected many considerable rarities and curiosities, and being an accomplished fine gentleman, entertained King Charles II., his queen, and the Duke of York at Oxnead, with the nobility that attended them."

But though Sir Thomas was willing enough to afford all the assistance in his power to those who sought it, in pursuit of astrology and alchymy (as on every other subject within his range), it does not follow, nor do his writings justify our supposing, that he placed any reliance on the one, or entertained any hopes from the other, of those pseudo-sciences; which, indeed, ought rather to be regarded as the cradles of astronomy and chemistry. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have been at one time on the hunt after the philosopher's stone: and he himself owned that it was his pursuit of the idle and vain study of astrology, which led him into the love of astronomy.

Lord

Bacon speculated on the making of gold; but this, it is contended, arose from his lofty conceptions of the yet untried resources of experimental science.

The remaining ten years of Sir Thomas's life afford us few incidents of importance or interest. His leisure seems to have been very considerably occupied with rendering professional and literary assistance to his son Edward; with whom he kept up a constant correspondence to the very close of his life.

The marriage of Dr. Edward Browne, in 1672, had settled him in London; and he naturally availed himself of every means, whether derived from his own exertions, or from the celebrity of his father's name, to extend his connexions, which were already considerable. In the summer of 1673 he went to Germany with Sir Joseph Williamson and Sir Leoline Jenkins, the English plenipotentiaries who were sent over to Cologne to negotiate a treaty of peace between England, France, and Holland.

Having terminated his travels (which he never subsequently resumed), he soon brought out his first account of them in 4to. under his father's advice, and, four years afterwards, published a second collection. They were very well received. In 1675 he was chosen, on the 14th June, Lecturer in Chirurgeon's Hall, Sir Nathaniel Herne being then Master; and, on the 29th July, Fellow of the College of Physicians. From this time we are constantly meeting with evidence, in the Correspondence, of the large assistance he received from his father, in the preparation of his lectures; which it seems gave very general satisfaction, and did him great credit.

In the following year Sir Thomas sustained a domestic affliction in the death of his daughter Mary, about twenty-four years of age. It may be supposed that she did not die under her father's roof, from the fact of her burial not occurring in the register of the parish in which he resided. My information is derived from Blomfield, who enumerates, among "the stones below the rails, in the church of St. Peter's, Norwich, one to the memory of Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Browne, Knt., 1676." In 1678, I find an instance of Browne's compliance with a custom very prevalent with authors in his day, that of prefixing to their works recommendatory letters from persons of literary eminence. King's Vale Royal of Chester contains such a letter, signed Thomas Browne, and supposed to be Sir Thomas's. In the present year he addressed a brief note of cautious recommendation to Mr. John Browne, a surgeon residing at Norwich, who had published a work on Preternatural Tumours. This gentleman afterwards became surgeon to the King, to whom he paid his court, by publishing, in 1684, a book entitled, Adenochoiradelogia, or a Treatise of Glandules, and the Royal Gift of Heal

ing them. In this work he relates a number of marvellous cases of cure in one of which Sir Thomas makes rather a prominent figure. He was not living to contradict the story, or even to disclaim his participation in the Vulgar Error of believing in such royal miracles. We find from his letters that he was in the habit of giving medical certificates, to such as wished to be touched, that their cases were genuine. But this would involve no opinion as to the efficacy of the touch;-and probably, in the present instance he only believed in that of the journey.

In the same year he subscribed towards building a new library in Trinity College, Cambridge, at the instance of the masters and seniors of that College, who, in their letter" urged the following argument: We doubt not but that God will bless the rest of your substance the better for what you shall conferr towards this; and we shall pray that he may, &c. &c."

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The following is the story adverted to:-"Being in the society of many persons of quality I had this remarkable following observation from an eminent person of this strange cure. A noncomformist's child in Norfolk, being troubled with scrophulous swellings, the late deceased Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich being consulted about the same, his majesty being then at Breda or Bruges, he advised the parents of the child to have it carried over to the King (his own method being used ineffectually): the father seemed very strange at his advice, and utterly denied it, saying the touch of the King was of no greater efficacy than any other man's. The mother of the child, adhering to the doctor's advice, studied all imaginable means to have it over, and at last prevailed with her husband to let it change the air for three weeks or a month; this being granted, the friends of the child that went with it, unknown to the father, carried it to Breda, where the King touched it, and she returned home perfectly healed. The child being come to its father's house, and he finding so great an alteration, enquires how his daughter arrived at this health, the friends thereof assured him, that if he would not be angry with them, they would relate the whole truth; they having his promise for the same, assured him they had the child to the King, to be touched, at Breda, whereby they apparently let him see the great benefit his child received thereby. Hereupon the father became so amazed, that he threw off his nonconformity, and exprest his thanks in this method; 'Farewell to all dissenters, and to all nonconformists if God can put so much virtue into the King's hand as to heal my child, I'll serve that God and that King so long as I live with all thankfulness."" Browne's Adenochoiredelogia, 3rd part, p. 187-9.

Nearly a century later, the avowal (or seeming avowal) of a belief in this kingly gift cost poor Carte the historian his annual subsidy from the chamber of London. See Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 495, where is collected much curious information on the point. So general was the belief in Charles II.'s reign, that no fewer than 92,107 persons are asserted by Browne, to have been "touched" from 1660 to 1683. See Tables at the end of his work.

d “Preserved in the Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson, 391.”

In the same MS. I also find the acknowledgment of £12 subscribed "towards the building of a new school in the College near Winton," where his education commenced. Kennet has preserved another instance of his public spirit; he contributed £130 to the repairs of Christ Church, Oxford.

It was probably about 1680 that Sir Thomas completed his Repertorium, or Account of the Tombs and Monuments in the Cathedral Church of Norwich, by continuing it up to the time. The basis of the work was a sketch hastily drawn up, 20 years previously, on the information of "an understanding singing man, 91 years old;" not under the impulse of an antiquarian taste (which he has himself informed us he did not possess), but in order to preserve some remembrance of the many monumental antiquities, which blind and barbarous zeal had mutilated or destroyed. The reckless character of these ravages has been exhibited in a description made on the spot, and at the moment, by one who suffered, in his person, property, and health, from a lawless rabble,-perpetrating, in the sacred name of liberty, the most outrageous deeds of despotism. Bp. Hall, in his Hard Measure, has given a most touching account of the brutal treatment which he experienced from the republicans of his day,treatment which acquired a deeper degradation and a fouler stain from the very elevation and purity of his own character: Browne attended him for many years, and even to his dying hour; a fact which the editor of the volume containing the account to which I advert, has noticed in these quaint and simple terms. e Kennet's Register, p. 345.

f

The Shaking of the Olive Tree. The remaining Works of that incomparable prelate, Joseph Hall, D.D. late Lord Bishop of Norwich. With some Specialities of Divine Providence in his Life, noted by his own hand. Together with his Hard Measure, written also by himself, 4to. Lond. 1660. Curll, in publishing the Repertorium, has most appropriately though inaccurately prefixed the following quotation from this work, which I shall insert here, verbatim :—

"It is no other than tragical to relate the carriage of that furious sacriledge, whereof our eyes and ears were the sad witnesses under the authority and presence of Linsey, Tofts the sheriffe, and Greenwood; Lord, what work was here, what clattering of glasses, what beating down of walls, what tearing up of monuments, what pulling down of seates, what wresting out of irons and brass from the windows and graves, what defacing of armes, what demolishing of curious stone-work, that had not any representation in the world, but only of the cost of the founder, and skill of the mason, what toting and piping upon the destroyed organ pipes, and what a hideous triumph on the market day before all the countrey, when in a kind of sacrilegious and profane procession, all the organ pipes, vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden crosse, which had been newly sawne downe from over the greenyard pulpit, and the service books and singing books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the publick market place; a leud wretch