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in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheepwalk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece, but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means, small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hama dryades, aönides, fauni, nymphæ, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and “thorough reformations" that can happen between this and Plato's great year.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 1605-1682.

ONE of the most original as well as learned men of the reign of Charles [I., was Sir Thomas Browne. He was born in London in 1605, and in 1623 ne entered Oxford, intending to devote himself to the study of medicine. Having taken his degree, he practised physic for some time in Oxfordshire. He then went abroad, and travelled in France, Italy, and Holland; and at Leyden he took the degree of doctor of physic. Returning to England in 1634, he settled at Norwich, and on account of his great reputation as a physician, he was, a few years after, made honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London. He was knighted in 1671 by Charles II., in his progress through Norwich, with singular marks of consideration; and died in 1682.

The following are the principal productions of Sir Thomas Browne:1. "The Religio Medici, or the Religion of a Physician." It is divided into two parts; the first containing his confession of faith, that is, all his curious religious opinions and feelings; the second, a confession of charity; that is, all his human feelings.1 2. His "Pseudodoxia Epidemica," more generally known by the title of "Browne's Vulgar Errors." This is the most popular of all his works. He treats his subject very methodically, dividing the whole into seven books, considering the various errors as they arise from minerals and vegetables, animals, man, pictures, geography, philosophy, and history. Notwithstanding the singularity and quaintness which pervade this work, it is one that displays great learning and penetration, and is very interesting. 3. Another production was entitled " Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial; or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk." "In this work," says an able critic,2 « Sir Thomas Browne hath dared to take the grave itself for his theme. He deals not with death as a shadow, but as a substantial reality. He dwells not on it as a mere cessation of life-he treats it not as a terrible negation-but enters on its discussion as a state with its own solemnities and pomps."

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Dr. Johnson has described Browne's style with much critical acumen. "It is," says he, "vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; it is deep, but

1 Of this, Dr. Johnson, in his life of Browne, thus remarks: "The Religio Medici was no sooner published, than it excited the attention of the public by the novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language."

2 For an interesting notice of this singular work, see Retrospective Review, i. 84. Read, also, some remarks on our author in Hazlitt's “Age of Elizabeth.”

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 had 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. His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriate to one "rt, and drawn by violence into the service of another.” 1

THOUGHTS ON DEATH AND IMMORTALITY.

In a field of Old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not far from one another: not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described; some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion; besides, the extraneous substances, like pieces of small boxes, or combs handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of opal.

That these were the urns of Romans, from the common custom and place where they were found, is no obscure conjecture; not far from a Roman garrison, and but five miles from Brancaster, set down by ancient record under the name of Brannodunum; and where the adjoining town, containing seven parishes, in no very different sound, but Saxon termination, still retains the name of Burnham; which being an early station, it is not improbable the neighbor parts were filled with habitations, either of Romans themselves, or Britons Romanised, which observed the Roman customs.

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What song the sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarianism: not to be resolved by man, not easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their relics,

1 But Dr. Johnson himself did not scruple to transfer to his own pages many of Browne's ponder · ous words; for, as Cumberland truly says of him,

"He forced Latinisms into his lines,

Like raw, undrill'd recruits."

"Sir Thomas Browne is among my first favorites. Rich in various knowledge, exuberant in con. ceptions and conceits; contemplative, imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and hyper-lativistic."-Coleridge.

they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.

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But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives, that burnt the temple of Diana! he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon, without the favor of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best. of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of posthumous

memory.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave; solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names, and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. Innocent's 1 churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt; ready to be any thing in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.2

Hydriotaphia.

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PRIDE.

I thank God amongst those millions of vices I do inherit and nold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to charity, the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil,——— pride; a vice whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable, but in its nature not circumscribed with a world; I have escaped

1 In Paris, where bodies soon consume

2 A stately mausoleum, or sepulchra pile, built by Adrianus in Rome, where now standeth the castle of St. Angeio

it in a condition that can hardly avoid it; those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections that advance and elevate the conceits of other men, add no feathers into mine. I have seen a grammarian tour and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride in the construction of one ode, than the author in the composure of the whole book. For my own part, besides the jargon and patois of several provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet I protest I have no higher conceit of myself, than had our fathers before the confusion of Babel, when there was but one language in the world, and none to boast himself either linguist or critic. I have not only seen several countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography of their provinces, topography of their cities, but understood their several laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself, as I behold in nimbler and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their nests. I know the names, and somewhat more, of all the constellations in my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner that could only name the pointers and the North star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my country, and of those about me; yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside; for indeed heads of capacity, and such as are not full with a handful, or easy measure of knowledge, think they know nothing till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only know they know not any thing.1

1 SOLILOQUIES OF THE OLD PHILOSOPHER AND THE YOUNg Lady.

"Alas!" exclaimed a silver-headed sage, "how narrow is the utmost extent of human knowledgel how circumscribed the sphere of intellectual exertion! I have spent my life in acquiring knowledge, but how little do I know! The farther I attempt to penetrate the secrets of nature, the more I am bewildered and benighted. Beyond a certain limit, all is but confusion or conjecture: so that the advantage of the learned over the ignorant consists greatly in having ascertained how little is to be known.

"It is true that I can measure the sun, and compute the distances of the planets; I can calculate their periodical movements; and even ascertain the laws by which they perform their sublime revo lutions: but with regard to their construction, to the beings which inhabit them, of their condition and circumstances, whether natural or moral, what do I know more than the clown?

"I remark that all bodies, unsupported, fall to the ground: and I am taught to account for this by the law of gravitation. But what have I gained here more than a term? Does it convey to my mind any idea of the nature of that mysterious and invisible chain which draws all things to a common centre? I observed the effect, I gave a name to the cause; but can I explain or comprehend it? "Pursuing the tract of the naturalist, I have learned to distinguish the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms: and to divide them into their distinct tribes and families:-but can I tell, after all this toil, whence a single blade of grass derives its vitality?—could the most minute researches enable me to discover the exquisite pencil that paints and fringes the flower of the field?have I ever detected the secret that gives their brilliant dye to the ruby and the emerald, or the art that enainels *he delicate shell?

'Alas! then, what have I gained by my laborious researches but an humiliating conviction of my

As a specimen of his worst Latinized English, we give the following from his "Vulgar Errors." He notices the custom of foretelling events by spots upon the nails in this curious manner :

That temperamental dignotions, and conjecture of prevalent humors, may be collected from spots in our nails, we are not averse to concede. But yet not ready to admit sundry divinations, vulgarly raised upon them.

And again:

Of lower consideration is the common foretelling of strangers from the fungous parcel about the wicks of candles; which only signifieth a moist and pluvious ayr about them, hindering the avolation of the light and favillous particles.

IZAAK WALTON. 1593-1683.

IZAAK WALTON, the "Father of Angling," was born at Stafford, in 1593. Of his early education little is known; but having acquired a moderate competency in business in London, as a linen-draper, he retired from business in 1643, at the age of fifty, and lived forty years after, in uninterrupted leisure dying in 1683, in the ninetieth year of his age, exhibiting a striking proof how much calm pursuits, with a mind pure and at ease, contribute to prolong the period of human existence.

Walton is celebrated as a biographer, and particularly as an angler. His first work was the "Life of Dr. John Donne," published in 1640. On the death of Sir Henry Wotton, he published a collection of his works, with a life prefixed. His next life was that of Dr. Richard Hooker, author of the "Ecclesiastical Polity;" and soon after he wrote the life of George Herbert.

All

weakness and ignorance of how little has man, at his best estate, to boast? what folly in him to glory in his contracted powers, or to value himself upon his imperfect acquisitions ?"

"Well !” exclaimed a young lady, just returned from school, "my education is at last finished: indeed it would be strange, if, after five years' hard application, any thing were left incomplete. Happily that is all over now; and I have nothing to do but to exercise my various accomplishments. "Let me see!-as to French, I am mistress of that, and speak it, if possible, with more fluency tnan English. Italian I can read with ease, and pronounce very well; as well, at least, and better, than any of my friends; and that is all one need wish for in Italian. Music I have learned till I am perfectly sick of it. But, now that we have a grand piano, it will be delightful to play when we have company. I must still continue to practise a little;—the only thing, I think, that I need now to improve myself in. And then there are my Italian songs! which everybody allows I sing with taste, and, as it is what so few people can pretend to, I am particularly glad that I can.

"My drawings are universally admired; especially the shells and flowers; which are beautiful, certainly; besides this, I have a decided taste in all kinds of fancy ornaments.

"And then my dancing and waltzing! in which our master himself owned that he could take me no further!-just the figure for it, certainly; it would be unpardonable if I did not excel.

"As to common things, geography, and history, and poetry, and philosophy, thank my stars, I have got arough them all! so that I may consider myself not only perfectly accomplished, but also thoroughly well informed.

"Well, to be sure how much have I fagged through; the only wonder is, that one head can con tain it all!"

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