concerning his practice, it is safest to trust the evidence of others. Where these testimonies concur, no higher degree of historical certainty can be obtained; and they apparently concur to prove, that Browne was a zealous adherent to the faith of Christ, that he lived in obedience to his laws, and died in confidence of his mercy. I should be glad to know the authority of the following assertion attributed to Dr. Johnson:-"I remember the remark of Sir Thomas Browne, Do the Devils lie?' No; for then hell could not subsist." -Croker's Johnson, vol. iv. p. 152. SUPPLEMENTARY MEMOIR. SCARCELY a trace remains of the earlier events of Browne's life ; nor are we possessed of any memorials whatever, from his own pen, respecting those travels and various adventures which preceded his residence at Norwich. An interesting piece of autobiography must, therefore, have perished; for it is impossible to suppose that he travelled without observing, or that he observed without recording. And, although (as Johnson has remarked) "he traversed no unknown seas or Arabian deserts," Browne was not the man to have visited even 66 France and Italy, or resided at Montpellier and Padua," without having stored his note-books with much that would have amply repaid the perusal. Besides which, his family connections were sufficient to have provided him with introductions to foreigners of character and eminence, of which he would eagerly have availed himself. To all these we should have been introduced, and everything worth remembering in his intercourse with them would have been preserved. It has, indeed, been conjectured, that "he was an absent and solitary man; " but I can by no means adopt this I refer to a series of papers in the Athenæum, No. 93, 1829, entitled The Humourists, the first of which is devoted to Sir Thomas Browne; from which I subjoin the following passage :-"We have endeavoured to rescue Sir Thomas Browne from the imputation of being merely a curious thinker,' while we have ever admitted that the philosopher and the homourist are strangely blended in his character. Of his domestic manners and relations little is known. But we may conjecture, from various passages in his works, that the same melancholy enthusiasm and eternal speculation which appear in them, tinged, also, with sad and solemn colours, his daily habits. In all likelihood, he was an absent and solitary man, extracting the food of serious contemplation from all objects indifferently, and busied in perpetual abstractions. Ceremonious in observing times and seasons, as reverencing the inner mysteries of custom. Attached to old manners, as apprehending hidden wisdom in their properties, and as connecting him with remembrance and speculations on the past; curious, probably, in casting the fashion of uncertain evil, and, therefore, little inclined to innovation. He was at once Sir : opinion on the contrary, I am persuaded, that his social deportment must have been distinguished by the kindliest courtesy; and, though "free from loquacity," he was too ardent in the pursuit of knowledge, not to have improved to the utmost every opportunity of increasing his stores, by conversation with those who were capable of enriching them. I am satisfied, in short, that had his earlier journals been preserved, they would have exhibited him to us as a traveller, in just as striking a point of view, as that in which "his diligence and curiosity," his originality of thought and fervour of feeling, and the creative richness of his fancy, have placed him under other characters. Nor do we find either journals, or correspondence (except a very few letters on scientific or literary subjects), to guide us through the first twenty years of his residence at Norwich. To account for this almost total absence of autobiographical memoranda, I have sometimes felt inclined to 'suspect, that Browne might have occasionally indulged himself in the expression of opinions relating to the political aspect of affairs in his own country, which his subsequent position, especially when the civil war actually broke out led him to think it most prudent to suppress. For though a royalist, he was utterly averse to all that was arbitrary, especially in matters of religion; and, therefore, might have seen much to disapprove in the measures of the court, as well as in the subsequent outrages of the popular party, which he was very likely, both in his private memoranda and in his confidential correspondence, to have denounced in terms which would have rendered him obnoxious to both parties, if "the liberty of those times had committed them to the press." But let this pass as an idle speculation: it is just as useless to regret the want of these materials, as it is to conjecture whether they ever existed, or what has become of them. We have them not; and must, therefore, proceed to do our best without them. It appears, that when Browne left the university, he took up his first residence somewhere (we are not informed where) in Oxfordshire, and practised physick probably for about two years, from the end of 1629 or beginning of 1630. He then Roger de Coverley, directing the psalmody of the village church, and the melancholy humourist of Milton,— "Whose lamp at midnight hour Is seen in some high lonely tower, commenced his travels, by visiting Ireland with his father-inlaw, Sir Thomas Dutton. Mr. Le Neve, in his pedigree of the Browne family, has (erroneously) called this gentleman Sir Ralph Dutton. The epithet bestowed on him by Mrs. Lyttleton' does not agree with the account which Dr. Birch has given of a Sir Thomas Dutton, whom he elsewhere affirms to be the individual here spoken of; the same Sir Thomas Dutton who killed Sir Hatton Cheke in a duel." In allusion to which, very possibly, it was that Browne composed the following lines, preserved in MS. Sloan. 1869 : 66 Diseases are the arms whereby b"A worthy person."-See her account of her father, in Preface to the Life. In his Life of Prince Henry, 8vo. Lond. 1760, p. 199, 200; where he gives a letter from Sir Edward Cecil, commander of "the English forces employed in the war about the succession to the deceased Duke of Cleves, written on the 29th of July, 1610, from the camp before Juliers, to Prince Henry, relating to the progress of the siege; in which letter is the following passage :- -I am only unhappy in one thing, that the mutinous and unworthy carriage of Sir Thomas Dutton, whom your highness was pleased to favour beyond his merit, hath from time to time disturbed the course of the service; having even, at his first arrival here, braved me at the head of the troops, daring to tell me, to my face, that it seemed his majesty had given me a commission to abuse men, when there was nothing in question but the doing of the duty of a captain, which he ought not to dispute amongst us, seeing it was the first time that even he or his company came into the field amongst us; and ever since, in all meetings, he hath disputed my commission and authority so far, and with so much scorn, that, though hitherto, in respect to your highness, I have contained myself: yet seeing that now again, in a public assembly, he hath contemptibly spoken of my commission, and, upon base advantage, hurt Sir Hatton Cheke, his colonel, who took upon him the defence of it, I most humbly beseech your highness will be rather pleased to allow of that which justice here shall allot him; presuming that your highness's princely judgment will find it expedient that I be discharged of such a bad member, which, in the heat of his majesty's service, dare contest with me, and be content, upon any terms, to murder his commander."" Dr. Birch adds, in a note, that Sir Hatton Cheke was, soon after the surrender of Juliers, killed in a duel, on Calais sands, by Sir Thomas Dutton. The Biographia Britannica says, "that he enjoyed an honourable post in the government of Ireland:" what this post was he does not say, nor can I. In a copy of Christian Morals, presented by Dr. Johnson to Birch, is this memorandum, in the handwriting of the latter. Men, for me, again shall chime Let me be Abel, and not Cain. From the same biographer I learn that Sir Thomas died May 16th, 1634; so that Browne's mother was probably left a widow the second time. His continental travels in France, Italy, and Holland, immediately followed his Irish tour, and the whole may be supposed to have occupied about two years, terminating in his return to England, after having obtained his degree of M.D. in the university of Leyden, in 1633. He then settled, there is reason to believe, as a physician, at Shipden Hall, near Halifax. In such a spot, and especially at the commencement of his professional career, he must have had considerable leisure; which it is very natural to suppose he would endeavour to improve, by reviewing and preparing some memento of the events of his past life. We may regard Religio Medici as the result of such retrospect; for though not pretending to the character of a narrative, it makes frequent allusion to incidents and conversations which had occurred in the course of his travels, and exhibits to us the impressions made on him by the imposing ceremonies of the Romish Church, which he had witnessed abroad. It was not, however, Browne's object to draw up a narrative; but to compose "a treatise upon. the spirit and form of his religious belief, and it may claim (as one of his reviewers has well saide) a high rank among the fairest monuments of English mind." It has always appeared to me, that it was Browne's great aim, in the conduct of his understanding, and in the regulation of his feelings, to assign just limits to the respective jurisdictions of faith and reason; asserting, on the one hand, his right to the free exercise of his understanding on those subjects of which it is the legitimate province of reason to judge; but, on the other hand, submitting both intellect and feeling wherever the decisions of revelation have commanded the exercise of faith. This was his rule; and if he fell into false philosophy, it was less through the fallacy of his reason than the erroneous and overstrained application of his rule. For example he too hastily deemed the language of scripture opposed to the tenets of Copernicus; and, therefore, rejected instead of examin e Athenæum, 1829, No. 93. |