We
are come to most cordially welcome you, sir!
are come to most cordially welcome you, sir!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v05 - Bro to Cai
I sot down in the pit, took out
my spectacles and commenced peroosin the evenin's bill. The
awjince was all-fired large & the boxes was full of the elitty of
New York. Several opery glasses was leveled at me by Gotham's
fairest darters, but I didn't let on as tho I noticed it, tho mebby
I did take out my sixteen-dollar silver watch & brandish it
round more than was necessary. But the best of us has our
weaknesses & if a man has gewelry let him show it.
As I was
peroosin the bill a grave young man who sot near me axed me
if I'd ever seen Forrest dance the Essence of Old Virginny.
«He's immense in that,” sed the young man.
« He also does a
fair champion jig,” the young man continnered, “but his Big
Thing is the Essence of Old Virginny. " Sez I, “Fair youth, do
you know what I'd do with you if you was my sun ? ”
“No," sez he.
“Wall,” sez I, “I'd appint your funeral to-morrow arternoon,
& the korps should be ready. You're too smart to live on this
yerth. ”
He didn't try any more of his capers on me. But another
pussylanermuss individooul in a red vest and patent leather
boots told me his name was Bill Astor & axed
to lend
me
V-155
## p. 2466 (#26) ############################################
2466
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
corn.
him 50 cents till early in the mornin. I told him I'd probly
send it round to him before he retired to his virtoous couch, but
if I didn't he might look for it next fall as soon as I'd cut my
The orchestry was now fiddling with all their might &
as the peeple didn't understan anything about it they applaudid
versifrusly. Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller
or More of Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The
seene is laid in Veniss.
Otheller was a likely man & was a
ginral in the Veniss army. He eloped with Desdemony, a darter
of the Hon. Mr. Brabantio, who represented one of the back
districks in the Veneshun legislater. Old Brabantio was as mad
as thunder at this & tore round considerable, but finally cooled
down, tellin Otheller, howsoever, that Desdemony had come it
over her par, & that he had better look out or she'd come it
over him likewise. Mr. and Mrs. Otheller git along very com-
fortable-like for a spell. She is sweet-tempered and lovin -a
nice, sensible female, never goin in for he-female conventions,
green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats. Otheller is a good
provider and thinks all the world of his wife. She has a lazy
time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin. Desde-
mony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands
with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git
Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work
& upsets the Otheller family in most outrajus stile.
Iago falls
in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money
at poker. (Iago allers played foul. ) He thus got money enuff to
carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is
selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever feller & a orficer
in Otheller's army.
He liked his tods too well, howsoever, &
they floored him as they have many other promisin young men.
Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slily throwin his
whiskey over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl
& allows that he can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy
before breakfast, without sweatin a hair. He meets Roderigo
& proceeds for to smash him. A feller named Mentano under-
takes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated person runs his sword
into him. That miserble man, lago, pretends to be very sorry
to see Mike conduck hisself in this way & undertakes to smooth
the thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a drawn sword
& wants to know what's up. Iago cunningly tells his story &
Otheller tells Mike that he thinks a good deal of him but that
## p. 2467 (#27) ############################################
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
2467
he cant train no more in his regiment. Desdemony sympathises
with poor Mike & interceds for him with Otheller. Iago makes
him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of Mike than
she does of hisself. Otheller swallers lagos lyin tail & goes to
makin a noosence of hisself ginrally. He worries poor Desde-
mony terrible by his vile insinuations & finally smothers her to
deth with a piller. Mrs. Iago comes in just as Otheller has
finished the fowl deed & givs him fits right & left, showin
him that he has been orfully gulled by her miserble cuss of a
husband. Iago cums in & his wife commences rakin him down
also, when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him a spell & then cuts
a small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iago pints to
Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile onto
his countenance. Otheller tells the peple that he has dun the
state some service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a
thing as they can for him under the circumstances, & kills his-
self with a fish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do.
This is a breef skedule of the synopsis of the play.
Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before
me all the time he was actin &, when the curtin fell, I found
my spectacles was still mistened with salt-water, which had run
from my eyes while poor Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane -
Betsy Jane! let us pray that our domestic bliss may never be
busted up by a Iago!
Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage.
He gits
five hundred dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had
such a Forrest in my Garding!
Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA
IN
IN THE fall of 1856 I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate
sitty in the State of New York.
The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was
loud in her prases.
1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks
in my usual flowry stile, what was my skorn & disgust to see a
big burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of
the Lord's Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscariot by the feet and
drag him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound
hiin as hard as he cood.
## p. 2468 (#28) ############################################
2468
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
“What under the son are you abowt ? ” cried I.
Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here
fur? ” & he hit the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the
hed.
Sez I, “You egrejus ass that air's a wax figger--a represen-
tashun of the false 'Postle. ”
Sez he, “ That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you,
old man, that Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with im-
punerty by a darn site! ” with which observashun he kaved in
Judassis hed. The young man belonged to i of the first famerlies
in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson
in the 3d degree.
Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
AFFAIRS ROUND THE VILLAGE GREEN
A
ND where are the friends of my youth? I have found one of
'em, certainly. I saw him ride in a circus the other day
on a bareback horse, and even now his name stares at me
from yonder board-fence in green and blue and red and yellow
letters. Dashington, the youth with whom I used to read the
able orations of Cicero, and who as a declaimer on exhibition
days used to wipe the rest of us boys pretty handsomely out-
well, Dashington is identified with the halibut and cod interests
drives a fish-cart, in fact, from a certain town on the coast
back into the interior. Hurburtson - the utterly stupid boy — the
lunkhead who never had his lesson, he's about the ablest lawyer
a sister State can boast. Mills is a newspaper man, and is just
now editing a Major General down South. Singlingson, the sweet-
faced boy whose face was always washed and who was never
rude, he is in the penitentiary for putting his uncle's autograph
to a financial document. Hawkins, the clergyman's son, is an
actor; and Williamson, the good little boy who divided his bread
and butter with the beggar-man, is a failing merchant, and
makes money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke Short
Sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly
supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment
in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly
tossed. Be sure the Army is represented by many of the friends
of my youth, the most of whom have given a good account of
themselves.
## p. 2469 (#29) ############################################
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
2469
But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather
of a failure. He plays on the guitar and sings love-songs. Not
that he is a bad man - a kinder-hearted creature never lived,
and they say he hasn't yet got over crying for his little curly-
haired sister who died ever so long ago.
But he knows nothing
about business, politics, the world, and those things. He is dull
at trade — indeed, it is the common remark that “Everybody
cheats Chalmerson. ” He came to the party the other evening
and brought his guitar. They wouldn't have him for a tenor in
the opera, certainly, for he is shaky in his upper notes; but if
his simple melodies didn't gush straight from the heart! why,
even my trained eyes were wet! And although some of the girls
giggled, and some of the men seemed to pity him, I could not
help fancying that poor Chalmerson was nearer heaven than any
of us all.
Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company.
MR. PEPPER
From Artemus Ward: His Travels)
M
Y ARRIVAL at Virginia City was signalized by the following
incident:
I had no sooner achieved my room in the garret of the
International Hotel than I was called upon by an intoxicated
man, who said he was an Editor. Knowing how rare it is for
an Editor to be under the blighting influence of either spirituous
or malt liquors, I received this statement doubtfully. But I said:
«What name? ”
“Wait! ” he said, and went out.
I heard him pacing unsteadily up and down the hall outside.
In ten minutes he returned, and said, "Pepper! ”
Pepper was indeed his name. He had been out to see if he
could remember it, and he was so flushed with his success that
he repeated it joyously several times, and then, with a short
laugh, he went away.
I had often heard of a man being so drunk that he didn't
know what town he lived in,” but here was a man so hideously
inebriated that he didn't know what his name was.
I saw him no more, but I heard from him. For he published
a notice of my lecture, in which he said that I had a dissipated
air!
## p. 2470 (#30) ############################################
2470
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
HORACE GREELEY'S RIDE TO PLACERVILLE
From (Artemus Ward: His Travels)
WA
noon.
THEN Mr. Greeley was in California, ovations awaited him
at every town. He had written powerful leaders in the
Tribune in favor of the Pacific Railroad, which had greatly
endeared him to the citizens of the Golden State. And there-
fore they made much of him when he went to see them.
At one town the enthusiastic populace tore his celebrated
white coat to pieces and carried the pieces home to remember
him by.
The citizens of Placerville prepared to fête the great jour-
nalist, and an extra coach with extra relays of horses was char-
tered of the California Stage Company to carry him from Folsom
to Placerville -- distance, forty miles. The extra was in some
way delayed, and did not leave Folsom until late in the after-
Mr. Greeley was to be fêted at seven o'clock that evening
by the citizens of Placerville, and it was altogether necessary that
he should be there by that time. So the Stage Company said
to Henry Monk, the driver of the extra, "Henry, this great
man must be there by seven to-night. ” And Henry answered,
“The great man shall be there. "
The roads were in an awful state, and during the first few
miles out of Folsom slow progress was made.
“Sir,” said Mr. Greeley, are you aware that I must be in
Placerville at seven o'clock to-night?
“I've got my orders! ” laconically replied Henry Monk.
Still the coach dragged slowly forward.
“Sir,” said Mr. Greeley, “this is not a trifling matter. I must
be there at seven ! »
Again came the answer, “I've got my orders! »
But the speed was not increased, and Mr. Greeley chafed
away another half-hour; when, as he was again about to remon-
strate with the driver, the horses suddenly started into a furious
run, and all sorts of encouraging yells filled the air from the
throat of Henry Monk.
«That is right, my good fellow,” said Mr. Greeley. I'll
give you ten dollars when we get to Placerville. Now we are
going! ”
They were indeed, and at a terrible speed.
## p. 2471 (#31) ############################################
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
2471
Crack, crack! went the whip, and again that voice” split the
air, «Get up! Hi-yi! G'long! Yip-yip. ”
And on they tore over stones and ruts, up hill and down, at
a rate of speed never before achieved by stage horses.
Mr. Greeley, who had been bouncing from one end of the
stage to the other like an India-rubber ball, managed to get his
head out of the window, when he said: --
Do-on't-on't-on't you-u-u think we-e-e-e shall get there by
seven if we do-on't-on't go so fast ? ”
"I've got my orders! ” That was all Henry Monk said. And
on tore the coach.
It was becoming serious. Already the journalist was extremely
sore from the terrible jolting -and again his head might have
been seen from the window. ”
“Sir,” he said, “I don't care-care-air if we don't get there at
seven.
"I've got my orders! ” Fresh horses forward again, faster
than before— over rocks and stumps, on one of which the coach
narrowly escaped turning a summerset.
“See here! ” shrieked Mr. Greeley, “I don't care if we don't
get there at all. ”
“I've got my orders! I work fer the California Stage Com-
That's wot I work fer. They said, 'Get this man
through by seving' An' this man's goin' through, you bet!
Gerlong! Whoo-ep! ”
Another frightful jolt, and Mr. Greeley's bald head suddenly
found its way through the roof of the coach, amidst the crash of
small timbers and the ripping of strong canvas.
"Stop, you — maniac! ” he roared.
Again answered Henry Monk:-
"I've got my orders! Keep your seat, Horace ! »
At Mud Springs, a village a few miles from Placerville, they
met a large delegation of the citizens of Placerville, who had
come out to meet the celebrated editor, and escort him into
town, There was a military company, a brass band, and a six-
horse wagon-load of beautiful damsels in milk-white dresses, rep-
resenting all the States in the Union. It was nearly dark now,
but the delegation was amply provided with torches, and bonfires
blazed all along the road to Placerville.
The citizens met the coach in the outskirts of Mud Springs,
and Mr. Monk reined in his foam-covered steeds.
pany, I do.
## p. 2472 (#32) ############################################
2472
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
"Is Mr. Greeley on board ? ” asked the chairman of the com-
mittee.
“He was, a few miles back ! ” said Mr. Monk. “Yes,” he
added, looking down through the hole which the fearful jolting
had made in the coach-roof, “Yes, I can see him! He is there ! »
Mr. Greeley,” said the chairman of the committee, present-
ing himself at the window of the coach, "Mr. Greeley, sir!
We
are come to most cordially welcome you, sir! - Why, God bless
me, sir, you are bleeding at the nose!
"I've got my orders! ” cried Mr. Monk. "My orders is as
follows: Git him there by seving! It wants a quarter to seving.
Stand out of the way! ”
“But, sir,” exclaimed the committee-man, seizing the off-
leader by the reins, "Mr. Monk, we are come to escort him into
town! Look at the procession, sir, and the brass-band, and the
people, and the young women, sir! ”
“I've got my orders ! » screamed Mr. Monk. My orders don't
say nothin' about no brass bands and young women. My orders
says, "Git him there by seving. ' Let go them lines ! Clear the
way there! Whoo-ep! KEEP YOUR SEAT, HORACE! ” and the coach
dashed wildly through the procession, upsetting a portion of the
brass band, and violently grazing the wagon which contained
the beautiful young women in white.
Years hence, gray-haired men who were little boys in this
procession will tell their grandchildren how this stage tore
through Mud Springs, and how Horace Greeley's bald head ever
and anon showed itself like a wild apparition above the coach-
roof.
Mr. Monk was on time. There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley
was very indignant for a while: then he laughed and finally pre-
sented Mr. Monk with a brand-new suit of clothes. Mr. Monk
himself is still in the employ of the California Stage Company,
and is rather fond of relating a story that has made him famous
all over the Pacific coast. But he says he yields to no man in
his admiration for Horace Greeley.
## p. 2473 (#33) ############################################
2473
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
(1605-1682)
BY FRANCIS BACON
HEN Sir Thomas Browne, in the last decade of his life, was
asked to furnish data for the writing of his memoirs in
Wood's 'Athenæ Oxonienses,' he gave in a letter to his
friend Mr. Aubrey in the fewest words his birthplace and the places
of his education, his admission as “Socius Honorarius of the College
of Physitians in London, the date of his being knighted, and the
titles of the four books or tracts which he had printed; and ended
with «Have some miscellaneous tracts which may be published. ”
This account of himself, curter than
many an epitaph, and scantier in details
than the requirements of a census-taker's
blank, may serve, with many other signs
that one finds scattered among the pages
of this author, to show his rare modesty
and effacement of his physical self. He
seems, like some other thoughtful and
sensitive natures before and since, averse
or at least indifferent to being put on
record as an eating, digesting, sleeping,
and clothes-wearing animal, of that species
of which his contemporary Sir Samuel
Pepys stands as the classical instance, and SIR THOMAS BROWNE
which the newspaper interviewer of our
own day — that “fellow who would vulgarize the Day of Judg-
ment” — has trained to the most noxious degree of offensiveness.
Sir Thomas felt, undoubtedly, that having admitted that select
company —«fit audience though few) — who are students of the
Religio Medici' to a close intimacy with his highest mental pro-
cesses and conditions, his «separable accidents,” affairs of assimila-
tion and secretion as one may say, were business between himself
and his grocer and tailor, his cook and his laundress.
The industrious research of Mr. Simon Wilkin, who in 1836 pro-
duced the completest edition (William Pickering, London) of the lit-
erary remains of Sir Thomas Browne, has gathered from all sources
- his own note-books, domestic and friendly correspondence, allusions
of contemporary writers and the works of subsequent biographers -
## p. 2474 (#34) ############################################
2474
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
all that we are likely, this side of Paradise, to know of this great
scholar and admirable man.
The main facts of his life are as follows. He was born in the
Parish of St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October,
1605 (the year of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically
admitted by a granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, “was a tradesman, a
mercer, though a gentleman of a good family in Cheshire” (generosa
familia, says Sir Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of
his son's temperament, a devout man with a leaning toward mysti-
cism in religion, is shown by the charming story Mrs. Littleton tells
of him, exhibiting traits worthy of the best ages of faith, and more
to be expected in the father of a mediæval saint than in a prosperous
Cheapside mercer, whose son was to be one of the most learned and
philosophical physicians of the age of Harvey and Sydenham:—“His
father used to open his breast when he was asleep and kiss it in
prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost
would take possession there. ” Clearly, it was with reverent memory
of this good man that Sir Thomas, near the close of his own long
life, wrote:–«Among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one
hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents; that inod-
esty, humility, patience, and vera
eracity lay in the same egg and came
into the world with thee. ”
This loving father, of whom one would fain know more, died in
the early childhood of his son Thomas. He left a handsome estate
of £9,000, and a widow not wholly inconsolable with her third por-
tion and a not unduly deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman,
Sir Thomas Dutton, -a knight so scantily and at the same time so
variously described, as a worthy person who had great places,” and
“a bad member” of “mutinous and unworthy carriage,” that one is
content to leave him as a problematical character.
The boy Thomas Browne being left to the care of guardians, his
estate was despoiled, though to what extent does not appear; nor
can it be considered greatly deplorable, since it did not prevent his
early schooling at that ancient and noble foundation of Winchester,
nor in 1623 his entrance into Pembroke College, Oxford, and in due
course his graduation in 1626 as bachelor of arts. With what special
assistance or direction he began his studies in medical science, cannot
now be ascertained; but after taking his degree of master of arts in
1629, he practiced physic for about two years in some uncertain
place in Oxfordshire. He then began a course of travel, unusually
extensive for that day. His stepfather upon occasion of his official
duties under the government “shewed him all Ireland in some vis-
itation of the forts and castles. ” It is improbable that Ireland at
that time long detained a traveler essentially literary in his tastes.
## p. 2475 (#35) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2475
Browne betook himself to France and Italy, where he appears to
have spent about two years, residing at Montpellier and Padua, then
great centres of medical learning, with students drawn from most
parts of Christendom. Returning homeward through Holland, he
received the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of
Leyden in 1633, and settled in practice at Halifax, England.
At this time — favored probably by the leisure which largely
attends the beginning of a medical career, but which is rarely so
laudably or productively employed, - he wrote the treatise Religio
Medici,' which more than any other of his works has established
his fame and won the affectionate admiration of thoughtful readers.
This production was not printed until seven years later, although
some unauthorized manuscript copies, more or less faulty, were in
circulation. When in 1642 “it arrived in a most depraved copy at
the press,” Browne felt it necessary to vindicate himself by publish-
ing a correct edition, although, he protests, its original intention
was not publick: and being a private exercise directed to myself,
what is delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me than an
example or rule unto any other. ”
In 1636 he removed to Norwich and permanently established him-
self there in the practice of physic. There in 1641. he married
Dorothy Mileham, a lady of good family in Norfolk; thereby not
only improving his social connections, but securing a wife of such
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. ” Such at least was the view of an inti-
mate friend of more than forty years, Rev. John Whitefoot, in the
Minutes) which, at the request of the widow, he drew up after Sir
Thomas's death, and which contain the most that is known of his
personal appearance and manners. Evidently the marriage was a
happy one for forty-one years, when the Lady Dorothy was left
mastissima conjux, as her husband's stately epitaph, rich with many
an issimus, declares. Twelve children were born of it; and though
only four of them survived their parents, such mortality in carefully
tended and well-circumstanced families was less remarkable than it
would be now, when two centuries more of progress in medical sci-
ence have added security and length to human life.
The good mother — had she ngt endeared herself to the modern
reader by the affectionate gentleness and the quaint glimpses of
domestic life that her family letters reveal — would be irresistible
by the ingeniously bad spelling in which she reveled, transgressing
even the wide limits then allowed to feminine heterography.
It is noteworthy that Dr. Browne's professional prosperity was
not impaired by the suspicion which early attached to him, and soon
## p. 2476 (#36) ############################################
2476
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
deepened into conviction, that he was addicted to literary pursuits.
He was in high repute as a physician. His practice was extensive,
and he was diligent in it, as also in those works of literature and
scientific investigation which occupied all snatches of time,” he
says, “as medical vacations and the fruitless importunity of uroscopy
would permit. ” His large family was liberally reared; his hospitality
and his charities were ample.
In 1646 he printed his second book, the largest and most operose
of all his productions: the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into
Vulgar and Common Errors,' the work evidently of the hora subsecive
of many years. In 1658 he gave to the public two smaller but
important and most characteristic works, Hydriotaphia' and 'The
Garden of Cyrus. ' Beside these publications he left many manu-
scripts which appeared posthumously; the most important of them,
for its size and general interest, being Christian Morals. ?
When Sir Thomas's long life drew to its close, it was with all the
blessings “which should accompany old age. His domestic life had
been one of felicity. His eldest and only surviving son, Edward
Browne, had become a scholar after his father's own heart; and
though not inheriting his genius, was already renowned in London,
one of the physicians to the King, and in a way to become, as after-
ward he did, President of the College of Physicians. All his daugh-
ters who had attained womanhood had been well married. He lived
in the society of the honorable and learned, and had received from
the King the honor of knighthood. *
Mr. John Evelyn, carrying out a long and cherished plan of see-
ing one whom he had known and admired by his writings, visited
him at Norwich in 1671. He found Sir Thomas among fit surround-
ings, “his whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of
rarities, and that of the best collections, especially medails, books,
* As for this business of the knighting, one hesitates fully to adopt Dr. John-
son's remark that Charles II. (had skill to discover excellence and virtue to
reward it, at least with such honorary distinctions as cost him nothing. ” A
candid observer of the walk and conversation of this illustrious monarch finds
room for doubt that he was an attentive reader or consistent admirer of the
(Religio Medici, or (Christian Morals); and though his own personal history
might have contributed much to a complete catalogue of Vulgar Errors,
Browne's treatise so named did not include divagations from common decency
in its scope, and so may have failed to impress the royal mind. The fact
is that the King on his visit to Norwich, looking about for somebody to
knight, intended, as usual on such occasions, to confer the title on the mayor
of the city; but this functionary,- some brewer or grocer perhaps, of whom
nothing else than this incident is recorded, - declined the honor, whereupon
the gap was stopped with Dr. Browne.
## p. 2477 (#37) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2477
never
.
plants, and natural things. ”* Here we have the right background and
accessories for Whitefoot's portrait of the central figure:
“His complexion and hair
answerable to his name, his stature
moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but ei oápkos;
seen to be transported with mirth or dejected with sadness; always cheerful,
but rarely merry at any sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest, and
when he did, apt to blush at the levity of it: his gravity was natural
without affectation. His modesty
visible in a natural habitual blush,
which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any
observable cause.
So free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that
he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he
was so, it was always singular and never trite or vulgar. ”
A man of character so lofty and self-contained might be expected
to leave a life so long, honorable, and beneficent with becoming dig-
nity. Sir Thomas's last sickness, a brief but very painful one, was
"endured with exemplary patience founded upon the Christian philos-
ophy,” and “with a meek, rational, and religious courage,” much to
the edification of his friend Whitefoot. One may see even a kind of
felicity in his death, falling exactly on the completion of his seventy-
seventh year.
He was buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where his
monument still claims regard as chief among the memorabilia of that
noble sanctuary. t
At the first appearance of Browne's several publications, they
attracted that attention from the learned and thoughtful which they
have ever since retained. The Religio Medici' was soon translated
into several modern languages as well as into Latin, and became
* These two distinguished authors were of congenial tastes, and both cul-
tivated the same Latinistic literary diction. Their meeting must have occas-
ioned a copious effusion of those long-tailed words in osity and ation »
which both had so readily at command or made to order. It is regrettable
that Evelyn never completed a work entitled 'Elysium Brittannicum) which he
planned, and to which Browne contributed a chapter (Of Coronary Plants. ”
It would have taken rank with its author's (Sylva) among English classics.
+In the course of repairs, «in August, 1840, his coffin was broken open
by a pickaxe; the bones were found in good preservation, the fine auburn
hair had not lost its freshness. ” It is painful to relate that the cranium was
removed and placed in the pathological museum of the Norwich Hospital,
labeled as the gift of some person (name not recalled), whose own cranium
is probably an object of interest solely to its present proprietor. «Who knows
the fate of his own bones ?
We insult not over their ashes,” says Sir
Thomas. The curator of the museum feels that he has a clever joke on the
dead man, when with a grin he points to a label bearing these words from
the (Hydriotaphia): – «To be knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls
made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our
enemies, are tragical abominations escaped in burning burials. ”
## p. 2478 (#38) ############################################
2478
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
the subject of curiously diverse criticism. The book received the
distinction of a place in the Roman Index Expurgatorius,' while from
various points of view its author was regarded as Romanist, an
atheist, a deist, a pantheist, and as bearing the number 666 some-
where about him.
A worthy Quaker, a fellow-townsman, was so impressed by his
tone of quietistic mysticism that he felt sure the philosophic doctor
was guided by “the inward light,” and wrote, sending a godly book,
and proposing to clinch his conversion in a personal interview. Such
are the perils that environ the man who not only repeats a creed in
sincerity, but ventures to do and to utter his own thinking about it.
From Browne's own day to the present time his critics and com-
mentators have been numerous and distinguished; one of the most
renowned among them being Dr. Johnson, whose life of the author,
prefixed to an edition of the Christian Morals) in 1756, is a fine
specimen of that facile and effective hack-work of which Johnson
was master. In that characteristic way of his, half of patronage,
half of reproof, and wholly pedagogical, he summons his subject
to the bar of his dialectics, and according to his lights adminis-
ters justice. He admits that Browne has great excellencies and
“uncommon sentiments, and that his scholarship and science are
admirable, but strongly condemns his style: “It is vigorous, but
rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; 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. ”
Behemoth prescribing rules of locomotion to the swan! By how
much would English letters have been the poorer if Browne had
learned his art of Johnson!
Notwithstanding such objurgations, some have supposed that the
style of Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon
that of Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism
sometimes disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an
elaborate balancing of antitheses in the same period, -- these are
qualities which the two writers have in common. But the resem-
blance, such as it is, is skin-deep. Johnson is a polemic by nature,
and at his best cogent and triumphant in argument. His thought is
carefully kept level with the apprehension of the ordinary reader,
while arrayed in a verbal pomp simulating the expression of some-
thing weighty and profound. Browne is intuitive and ever averse to
controversy, feeling, as he exquisitely says, that many have too
rashly charged the troops of error and remain as trophies unto the
enemies of truth. A man may be in as just possession of the truth
as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender. ” Calmly philosophic,
he writes for kindred minds, and his concepts satisfying his own
intellect, he delivers them with as little passion as an Æolian harp
## p. 2479 (#39) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2479
answering the wind, and lingers not for applause or explanation.
His being
« Those thoughts that wander through eternity,"
he means that we too shall “have a glimpse of incomprehensibles,
and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch. ”
How grandly he rounds his pregnant paragraphs with phrases
which for stately and compulsive rhythm, sonorous harmony, and
sweetly solemn cadences, are almost matchless in English prose, and
lack only the mechanism of metre to give them the highest rank as
verse.
«Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the
grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omit-
ting ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of his nature;) ( When
personations shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over; when
reality shall rule, and all shall be as they shall be forever:” — such
passages as these, and the whole of the Fragment on Mummies,' one
can scarcely recite without falling into something of that chant which
the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson seems to enforce.
That the Religio Medici? was the work of a gentleman before
his thirtieth year, not a recluse nor trained in a cloister, but active
in a calling which keeps closest touch with the passions and frailties
of humanity, seems to justify his assertion, I have shaken hands
with delight [sc. by way of parting] in my warm blood and canic-
ular days. ” So uniformly lofty and dignified is its tone, and so.
austere its morality, that the book might be taken for the fruit of
those later and sadder years that bring the philosophic mind.
Its
frank confessions and calm analysis of motive and action have been
compared with Montaigne's: if Montaigne had been graduated after a
due education in Purgatory, or if his pedigree had been remotely
crossed with a St. Anthony and he had lived to see the fluctus
decumanus gathering in the tide of Puritanism, the likeness would
have been closer.
«The Religio Medici,” says Coleridge, is a fine portrait of a
handsome man in his best clothes. " There is truth in the criticism,
and if there is no color of a sneer in it, it is entirely true. Who
does not feel, when following Browne into his study or his garden,
that here is a kind of cloistral retreat from the common places of
the outside world, that the handsome man is a true gentleman and
a noble friend, and that his best clothes are his every-day wear?
This aloofness of Browne's, which holds him apart in the still air
of delightful studies,” is no affectation; it is an innate quality. He
thinks his thoughts in his own way, and the style is the man”
never more truly than with him. One of his family letters mentions
the execution of Charles I. as a “horrid murther, and another speaks
## p. 2480 (#40) ############################################
2480
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
as
of Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything intended for the
public eye is there an indication that he lived in the most tumultu-
ous and heroic period of English history. Not a word shows that
Shakespeare was of the generation just preceding his, nor that Milton
and George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, numerous as are the par-
allels in their thought and feeling and in his, were his contempo-
raries. Constant and extensive as are his excursions into ancient
literature, it is rare for him to make any reference to writers of his
own time.
Yet with all his delight in antiquity and reverence for the great
names of former ages, he is keen in the quest for new discoveries.
His commonplace books abound in ingenious queries and minute
observations regarding physical facts, conceived in the very spirit of
our modern school:-“What is the use of dew-claws in dogs? ” He
does not instantly answer, a schoolboy in this Darwinian day
would, “To carry out an analogy; but the mere asking of the ques-
tion sets him ahead of his age. See too his curious inquiries into the
left-footedness of parrots and left-handedness of certain monkeys and
squirrels. The epoch-making announcement of his fellow-physician
Harvey he quickly appreciates at its true value: “his piece De
Circul. Sang. ,' which discovery I prefer to that of Columbus. ” And
here again a truly surprising suggestion of the great results achieved
a century and two centuries later by Jenner and Pasteur - concerning
canine madness, whether it holdeth not better at second than at
first hand, so that if a dog bite a horse, and that horse a man, the
evil proves less considerable. ” He is the first to observe and describe
that curious product of the decomposition of flesh known to modern
chemists as adipocere.
He is full of eager anticipation of the future. "Join sense unto
reason,” he cries, and experiment unto speculation, and so give life
unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos.
What
libraries of new volumes after-times will behold, and in what a new
world of knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few
ages may joyfully declare. ”
But acute and active as our author's perceptions were, they did
not prevent his sharing the then prevalent theory which assigned to
the devil, and to witches who were his ministers, an important part
in the economy of the world. This belief affords so easy a solution
of some problems otherwise puzzling, that this degenerate age may
look back with envy upon those who held it in serene and comfort-
able possession.
It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief Justice
Hale in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two women,
should have called Dr. Browne, apparently as amicus curia, to give
## p. 2481 (#41) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2481
his view of the fits which were supposed to be the work of the
witches. He was clearly of the opinion that the Devil had even more
to do with that case than he has with most cases of hysteria; and
consequently the witches, it must be said, fared no better in Sir
Matthew Hale's court than many of their kind in various parts of
Christendom about the same time. But it would be unreasonable for
us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply culpable because, while
he showed in most matters an exceptionally enlightened liberality of
opinion and practice, in this one particular he declined to deny the
scientific dictum of previous ages and the popular belief of his own
time.
The mental attitude of reverent belief in its symbolic value, in
which this devout philosopher contemplated the material world, is
that of inany of those who have since helped most to build the
structure of Natural Science. The rapturous exclamation of Linnæus,
“My God, I think thy thoughts after thee! ) comes like an antiph-
onal response by “the man of flowers to these passages in the
(Religio Medici? : « This visible world is but a picture of the invisi-
ble, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal
shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible
fabric. ” “Things are really true as they correspond unto God's con-
ception; and have so much verity as they hold of conformity unto
that intellect, in whose idea they had their first determinations. )
his. Bacon
FROM THE RELIGIO MEDICI
I
Could never divide myself from any man upon the difference
of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agree-
ing with me in that from which within a few days I should
dissent myself. I have no genius to disputes in religion, and
have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a
disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the
weakness of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed, 'tis
good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and
establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below
our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons
may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our
own. Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to
take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity: many from the
V-156
## p. 2482 (#42) ############################################
2482
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
as
ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal for truth,
have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain
trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just
possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender;
'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to hazard
her on a battle: if therefore there rise 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 own reason is his best Edipus, and will,
upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds where-
with the subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and
tender judgments. In philosophy, where truth seems double-
faced, there is no more paradoxical than myself: but in
divinity I love to keep the road; and though not in an implicit,
yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the Church, by
which I move, not reserving any proper poles or motion from the
epicycle of my own brain: by these means I leave no gap for
heresy, schisms, or errors.
man
As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties
in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they
never stretched the pia mater of mine: methinks there be not
impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith; the deep-
est mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated, but
maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose
myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O altitudo!
'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those
involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with Incarnation
and Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and
my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of Ter-
tullian, “Certum est quia impossibile est. ” I desire to exercise
my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and vis-
ible objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better
for seeing Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red
Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself
and am thankful that I live not in the days of miracles, that I
never saw Christ nor his disciples; I would not have been one
of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ's
patients on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my faith
been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing
pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easy and
## p. 2483 (#43) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2483
necessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath exam-
ined: I believe he was dead and buried, and rose again; and
desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate him
in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this much to believe; as
we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they only had
the advantage of a bold and noble faith who lived before his
coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could
raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities.
In my solitary and retired imagination,
“Neque enim cum lectulus aut me
Porticus excepit, desum mihi”.
a
I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contem-
plate Him and his attributes who is ever with me, especially
those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity: with the one I
recreate, with the other I confound my understanding; for who
can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof with-
out an ecstasy ? Time we may comprehend: it is but five days
older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world;
but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give
such an infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an
essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it
puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares
not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a creature that
can comprehend him; it is a privilege of his own nature: I am .
that I am, was his own definition unto Moses; and it was
short one, to confound mortality, that durst question God or
ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have and
shall be; but in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and
therefore that terrible term predestination, which hath troubled
so many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in
respect to God no prescious determination of our states to come,
but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the
instant that he first decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indi-
visible and all together, the last trump is already sounded, the
reprobates in the flame and the blessed in Abraham's bosom.
St.
my spectacles and commenced peroosin the evenin's bill. The
awjince was all-fired large & the boxes was full of the elitty of
New York. Several opery glasses was leveled at me by Gotham's
fairest darters, but I didn't let on as tho I noticed it, tho mebby
I did take out my sixteen-dollar silver watch & brandish it
round more than was necessary. But the best of us has our
weaknesses & if a man has gewelry let him show it.
As I was
peroosin the bill a grave young man who sot near me axed me
if I'd ever seen Forrest dance the Essence of Old Virginny.
«He's immense in that,” sed the young man.
« He also does a
fair champion jig,” the young man continnered, “but his Big
Thing is the Essence of Old Virginny. " Sez I, “Fair youth, do
you know what I'd do with you if you was my sun ? ”
“No," sez he.
“Wall,” sez I, “I'd appint your funeral to-morrow arternoon,
& the korps should be ready. You're too smart to live on this
yerth. ”
He didn't try any more of his capers on me. But another
pussylanermuss individooul in a red vest and patent leather
boots told me his name was Bill Astor & axed
to lend
me
V-155
## p. 2466 (#26) ############################################
2466
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
corn.
him 50 cents till early in the mornin. I told him I'd probly
send it round to him before he retired to his virtoous couch, but
if I didn't he might look for it next fall as soon as I'd cut my
The orchestry was now fiddling with all their might &
as the peeple didn't understan anything about it they applaudid
versifrusly. Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller
or More of Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The
seene is laid in Veniss.
Otheller was a likely man & was a
ginral in the Veniss army. He eloped with Desdemony, a darter
of the Hon. Mr. Brabantio, who represented one of the back
districks in the Veneshun legislater. Old Brabantio was as mad
as thunder at this & tore round considerable, but finally cooled
down, tellin Otheller, howsoever, that Desdemony had come it
over her par, & that he had better look out or she'd come it
over him likewise. Mr. and Mrs. Otheller git along very com-
fortable-like for a spell. She is sweet-tempered and lovin -a
nice, sensible female, never goin in for he-female conventions,
green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats. Otheller is a good
provider and thinks all the world of his wife. She has a lazy
time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin. Desde-
mony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands
with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git
Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work
& upsets the Otheller family in most outrajus stile.
Iago falls
in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money
at poker. (Iago allers played foul. ) He thus got money enuff to
carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is
selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever feller & a orficer
in Otheller's army.
He liked his tods too well, howsoever, &
they floored him as they have many other promisin young men.
Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slily throwin his
whiskey over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl
& allows that he can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy
before breakfast, without sweatin a hair. He meets Roderigo
& proceeds for to smash him. A feller named Mentano under-
takes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated person runs his sword
into him. That miserble man, lago, pretends to be very sorry
to see Mike conduck hisself in this way & undertakes to smooth
the thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a drawn sword
& wants to know what's up. Iago cunningly tells his story &
Otheller tells Mike that he thinks a good deal of him but that
## p. 2467 (#27) ############################################
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
2467
he cant train no more in his regiment. Desdemony sympathises
with poor Mike & interceds for him with Otheller. Iago makes
him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of Mike than
she does of hisself. Otheller swallers lagos lyin tail & goes to
makin a noosence of hisself ginrally. He worries poor Desde-
mony terrible by his vile insinuations & finally smothers her to
deth with a piller. Mrs. Iago comes in just as Otheller has
finished the fowl deed & givs him fits right & left, showin
him that he has been orfully gulled by her miserble cuss of a
husband. Iago cums in & his wife commences rakin him down
also, when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him a spell & then cuts
a small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iago pints to
Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile onto
his countenance. Otheller tells the peple that he has dun the
state some service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a
thing as they can for him under the circumstances, & kills his-
self with a fish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do.
This is a breef skedule of the synopsis of the play.
Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before
me all the time he was actin &, when the curtin fell, I found
my spectacles was still mistened with salt-water, which had run
from my eyes while poor Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane -
Betsy Jane! let us pray that our domestic bliss may never be
busted up by a Iago!
Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage.
He gits
five hundred dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had
such a Forrest in my Garding!
Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA
IN
IN THE fall of 1856 I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate
sitty in the State of New York.
The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was
loud in her prases.
1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks
in my usual flowry stile, what was my skorn & disgust to see a
big burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of
the Lord's Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscariot by the feet and
drag him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound
hiin as hard as he cood.
## p. 2468 (#28) ############################################
2468
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
“What under the son are you abowt ? ” cried I.
Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here
fur? ” & he hit the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the
hed.
Sez I, “You egrejus ass that air's a wax figger--a represen-
tashun of the false 'Postle. ”
Sez he, “ That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you,
old man, that Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with im-
punerty by a darn site! ” with which observashun he kaved in
Judassis hed. The young man belonged to i of the first famerlies
in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson
in the 3d degree.
Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company, New York.
AFFAIRS ROUND THE VILLAGE GREEN
A
ND where are the friends of my youth? I have found one of
'em, certainly. I saw him ride in a circus the other day
on a bareback horse, and even now his name stares at me
from yonder board-fence in green and blue and red and yellow
letters. Dashington, the youth with whom I used to read the
able orations of Cicero, and who as a declaimer on exhibition
days used to wipe the rest of us boys pretty handsomely out-
well, Dashington is identified with the halibut and cod interests
drives a fish-cart, in fact, from a certain town on the coast
back into the interior. Hurburtson - the utterly stupid boy — the
lunkhead who never had his lesson, he's about the ablest lawyer
a sister State can boast. Mills is a newspaper man, and is just
now editing a Major General down South. Singlingson, the sweet-
faced boy whose face was always washed and who was never
rude, he is in the penitentiary for putting his uncle's autograph
to a financial document. Hawkins, the clergyman's son, is an
actor; and Williamson, the good little boy who divided his bread
and butter with the beggar-man, is a failing merchant, and
makes money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke Short
Sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly
supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment
in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly
tossed. Be sure the Army is represented by many of the friends
of my youth, the most of whom have given a good account of
themselves.
## p. 2469 (#29) ############################################
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
2469
But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather
of a failure. He plays on the guitar and sings love-songs. Not
that he is a bad man - a kinder-hearted creature never lived,
and they say he hasn't yet got over crying for his little curly-
haired sister who died ever so long ago.
But he knows nothing
about business, politics, the world, and those things. He is dull
at trade — indeed, it is the common remark that “Everybody
cheats Chalmerson. ” He came to the party the other evening
and brought his guitar. They wouldn't have him for a tenor in
the opera, certainly, for he is shaky in his upper notes; but if
his simple melodies didn't gush straight from the heart! why,
even my trained eyes were wet! And although some of the girls
giggled, and some of the men seemed to pity him, I could not
help fancying that poor Chalmerson was nearer heaven than any
of us all.
Copyrighted by G. W. Dillingham and Company.
MR. PEPPER
From Artemus Ward: His Travels)
M
Y ARRIVAL at Virginia City was signalized by the following
incident:
I had no sooner achieved my room in the garret of the
International Hotel than I was called upon by an intoxicated
man, who said he was an Editor. Knowing how rare it is for
an Editor to be under the blighting influence of either spirituous
or malt liquors, I received this statement doubtfully. But I said:
«What name? ”
“Wait! ” he said, and went out.
I heard him pacing unsteadily up and down the hall outside.
In ten minutes he returned, and said, "Pepper! ”
Pepper was indeed his name. He had been out to see if he
could remember it, and he was so flushed with his success that
he repeated it joyously several times, and then, with a short
laugh, he went away.
I had often heard of a man being so drunk that he didn't
know what town he lived in,” but here was a man so hideously
inebriated that he didn't know what his name was.
I saw him no more, but I heard from him. For he published
a notice of my lecture, in which he said that I had a dissipated
air!
## p. 2470 (#30) ############################################
2470
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
HORACE GREELEY'S RIDE TO PLACERVILLE
From (Artemus Ward: His Travels)
WA
noon.
THEN Mr. Greeley was in California, ovations awaited him
at every town. He had written powerful leaders in the
Tribune in favor of the Pacific Railroad, which had greatly
endeared him to the citizens of the Golden State. And there-
fore they made much of him when he went to see them.
At one town the enthusiastic populace tore his celebrated
white coat to pieces and carried the pieces home to remember
him by.
The citizens of Placerville prepared to fête the great jour-
nalist, and an extra coach with extra relays of horses was char-
tered of the California Stage Company to carry him from Folsom
to Placerville -- distance, forty miles. The extra was in some
way delayed, and did not leave Folsom until late in the after-
Mr. Greeley was to be fêted at seven o'clock that evening
by the citizens of Placerville, and it was altogether necessary that
he should be there by that time. So the Stage Company said
to Henry Monk, the driver of the extra, "Henry, this great
man must be there by seven to-night. ” And Henry answered,
“The great man shall be there. "
The roads were in an awful state, and during the first few
miles out of Folsom slow progress was made.
“Sir,” said Mr. Greeley, are you aware that I must be in
Placerville at seven o'clock to-night?
“I've got my orders! ” laconically replied Henry Monk.
Still the coach dragged slowly forward.
“Sir,” said Mr. Greeley, “this is not a trifling matter. I must
be there at seven ! »
Again came the answer, “I've got my orders! »
But the speed was not increased, and Mr. Greeley chafed
away another half-hour; when, as he was again about to remon-
strate with the driver, the horses suddenly started into a furious
run, and all sorts of encouraging yells filled the air from the
throat of Henry Monk.
«That is right, my good fellow,” said Mr. Greeley. I'll
give you ten dollars when we get to Placerville. Now we are
going! ”
They were indeed, and at a terrible speed.
## p. 2471 (#31) ############################################
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
2471
Crack, crack! went the whip, and again that voice” split the
air, «Get up! Hi-yi! G'long! Yip-yip. ”
And on they tore over stones and ruts, up hill and down, at
a rate of speed never before achieved by stage horses.
Mr. Greeley, who had been bouncing from one end of the
stage to the other like an India-rubber ball, managed to get his
head out of the window, when he said: --
Do-on't-on't-on't you-u-u think we-e-e-e shall get there by
seven if we do-on't-on't go so fast ? ”
"I've got my orders! ” That was all Henry Monk said. And
on tore the coach.
It was becoming serious. Already the journalist was extremely
sore from the terrible jolting -and again his head might have
been seen from the window. ”
“Sir,” he said, “I don't care-care-air if we don't get there at
seven.
"I've got my orders! ” Fresh horses forward again, faster
than before— over rocks and stumps, on one of which the coach
narrowly escaped turning a summerset.
“See here! ” shrieked Mr. Greeley, “I don't care if we don't
get there at all. ”
“I've got my orders! I work fer the California Stage Com-
That's wot I work fer. They said, 'Get this man
through by seving' An' this man's goin' through, you bet!
Gerlong! Whoo-ep! ”
Another frightful jolt, and Mr. Greeley's bald head suddenly
found its way through the roof of the coach, amidst the crash of
small timbers and the ripping of strong canvas.
"Stop, you — maniac! ” he roared.
Again answered Henry Monk:-
"I've got my orders! Keep your seat, Horace ! »
At Mud Springs, a village a few miles from Placerville, they
met a large delegation of the citizens of Placerville, who had
come out to meet the celebrated editor, and escort him into
town, There was a military company, a brass band, and a six-
horse wagon-load of beautiful damsels in milk-white dresses, rep-
resenting all the States in the Union. It was nearly dark now,
but the delegation was amply provided with torches, and bonfires
blazed all along the road to Placerville.
The citizens met the coach in the outskirts of Mud Springs,
and Mr. Monk reined in his foam-covered steeds.
pany, I do.
## p. 2472 (#32) ############################################
2472
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE
"Is Mr. Greeley on board ? ” asked the chairman of the com-
mittee.
“He was, a few miles back ! ” said Mr. Monk. “Yes,” he
added, looking down through the hole which the fearful jolting
had made in the coach-roof, “Yes, I can see him! He is there ! »
Mr. Greeley,” said the chairman of the committee, present-
ing himself at the window of the coach, "Mr. Greeley, sir!
We
are come to most cordially welcome you, sir! - Why, God bless
me, sir, you are bleeding at the nose!
"I've got my orders! ” cried Mr. Monk. "My orders is as
follows: Git him there by seving! It wants a quarter to seving.
Stand out of the way! ”
“But, sir,” exclaimed the committee-man, seizing the off-
leader by the reins, "Mr. Monk, we are come to escort him into
town! Look at the procession, sir, and the brass-band, and the
people, and the young women, sir! ”
“I've got my orders ! » screamed Mr. Monk. My orders don't
say nothin' about no brass bands and young women. My orders
says, "Git him there by seving. ' Let go them lines ! Clear the
way there! Whoo-ep! KEEP YOUR SEAT, HORACE! ” and the coach
dashed wildly through the procession, upsetting a portion of the
brass band, and violently grazing the wagon which contained
the beautiful young women in white.
Years hence, gray-haired men who were little boys in this
procession will tell their grandchildren how this stage tore
through Mud Springs, and how Horace Greeley's bald head ever
and anon showed itself like a wild apparition above the coach-
roof.
Mr. Monk was on time. There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley
was very indignant for a while: then he laughed and finally pre-
sented Mr. Monk with a brand-new suit of clothes. Mr. Monk
himself is still in the employ of the California Stage Company,
and is rather fond of relating a story that has made him famous
all over the Pacific coast. But he says he yields to no man in
his admiration for Horace Greeley.
## p. 2473 (#33) ############################################
2473
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
(1605-1682)
BY FRANCIS BACON
HEN Sir Thomas Browne, in the last decade of his life, was
asked to furnish data for the writing of his memoirs in
Wood's 'Athenæ Oxonienses,' he gave in a letter to his
friend Mr. Aubrey in the fewest words his birthplace and the places
of his education, his admission as “Socius Honorarius of the College
of Physitians in London, the date of his being knighted, and the
titles of the four books or tracts which he had printed; and ended
with «Have some miscellaneous tracts which may be published. ”
This account of himself, curter than
many an epitaph, and scantier in details
than the requirements of a census-taker's
blank, may serve, with many other signs
that one finds scattered among the pages
of this author, to show his rare modesty
and effacement of his physical self. He
seems, like some other thoughtful and
sensitive natures before and since, averse
or at least indifferent to being put on
record as an eating, digesting, sleeping,
and clothes-wearing animal, of that species
of which his contemporary Sir Samuel
Pepys stands as the classical instance, and SIR THOMAS BROWNE
which the newspaper interviewer of our
own day — that “fellow who would vulgarize the Day of Judg-
ment” — has trained to the most noxious degree of offensiveness.
Sir Thomas felt, undoubtedly, that having admitted that select
company —«fit audience though few) — who are students of the
Religio Medici' to a close intimacy with his highest mental pro-
cesses and conditions, his «separable accidents,” affairs of assimila-
tion and secretion as one may say, were business between himself
and his grocer and tailor, his cook and his laundress.
The industrious research of Mr. Simon Wilkin, who in 1836 pro-
duced the completest edition (William Pickering, London) of the lit-
erary remains of Sir Thomas Browne, has gathered from all sources
- his own note-books, domestic and friendly correspondence, allusions
of contemporary writers and the works of subsequent biographers -
## p. 2474 (#34) ############################################
2474
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
all that we are likely, this side of Paradise, to know of this great
scholar and admirable man.
The main facts of his life are as follows. He was born in the
Parish of St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October,
1605 (the year of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically
admitted by a granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, “was a tradesman, a
mercer, though a gentleman of a good family in Cheshire” (generosa
familia, says Sir Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of
his son's temperament, a devout man with a leaning toward mysti-
cism in religion, is shown by the charming story Mrs. Littleton tells
of him, exhibiting traits worthy of the best ages of faith, and more
to be expected in the father of a mediæval saint than in a prosperous
Cheapside mercer, whose son was to be one of the most learned and
philosophical physicians of the age of Harvey and Sydenham:—“His
father used to open his breast when he was asleep and kiss it in
prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost
would take possession there. ” Clearly, it was with reverent memory
of this good man that Sir Thomas, near the close of his own long
life, wrote:–«Among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one
hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents; that inod-
esty, humility, patience, and vera
eracity lay in the same egg and came
into the world with thee. ”
This loving father, of whom one would fain know more, died in
the early childhood of his son Thomas. He left a handsome estate
of £9,000, and a widow not wholly inconsolable with her third por-
tion and a not unduly deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman,
Sir Thomas Dutton, -a knight so scantily and at the same time so
variously described, as a worthy person who had great places,” and
“a bad member” of “mutinous and unworthy carriage,” that one is
content to leave him as a problematical character.
The boy Thomas Browne being left to the care of guardians, his
estate was despoiled, though to what extent does not appear; nor
can it be considered greatly deplorable, since it did not prevent his
early schooling at that ancient and noble foundation of Winchester,
nor in 1623 his entrance into Pembroke College, Oxford, and in due
course his graduation in 1626 as bachelor of arts. With what special
assistance or direction he began his studies in medical science, cannot
now be ascertained; but after taking his degree of master of arts in
1629, he practiced physic for about two years in some uncertain
place in Oxfordshire. He then began a course of travel, unusually
extensive for that day. His stepfather upon occasion of his official
duties under the government “shewed him all Ireland in some vis-
itation of the forts and castles. ” It is improbable that Ireland at
that time long detained a traveler essentially literary in his tastes.
## p. 2475 (#35) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2475
Browne betook himself to France and Italy, where he appears to
have spent about two years, residing at Montpellier and Padua, then
great centres of medical learning, with students drawn from most
parts of Christendom. Returning homeward through Holland, he
received the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of
Leyden in 1633, and settled in practice at Halifax, England.
At this time — favored probably by the leisure which largely
attends the beginning of a medical career, but which is rarely so
laudably or productively employed, - he wrote the treatise Religio
Medici,' which more than any other of his works has established
his fame and won the affectionate admiration of thoughtful readers.
This production was not printed until seven years later, although
some unauthorized manuscript copies, more or less faulty, were in
circulation. When in 1642 “it arrived in a most depraved copy at
the press,” Browne felt it necessary to vindicate himself by publish-
ing a correct edition, although, he protests, its original intention
was not publick: and being a private exercise directed to myself,
what is delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me than an
example or rule unto any other. ”
In 1636 he removed to Norwich and permanently established him-
self there in the practice of physic. There in 1641. he married
Dorothy Mileham, a lady of good family in Norfolk; thereby not
only improving his social connections, but securing a wife of such
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. ” Such at least was the view of an inti-
mate friend of more than forty years, Rev. John Whitefoot, in the
Minutes) which, at the request of the widow, he drew up after Sir
Thomas's death, and which contain the most that is known of his
personal appearance and manners. Evidently the marriage was a
happy one for forty-one years, when the Lady Dorothy was left
mastissima conjux, as her husband's stately epitaph, rich with many
an issimus, declares. Twelve children were born of it; and though
only four of them survived their parents, such mortality in carefully
tended and well-circumstanced families was less remarkable than it
would be now, when two centuries more of progress in medical sci-
ence have added security and length to human life.
The good mother — had she ngt endeared herself to the modern
reader by the affectionate gentleness and the quaint glimpses of
domestic life that her family letters reveal — would be irresistible
by the ingeniously bad spelling in which she reveled, transgressing
even the wide limits then allowed to feminine heterography.
It is noteworthy that Dr. Browne's professional prosperity was
not impaired by the suspicion which early attached to him, and soon
## p. 2476 (#36) ############################################
2476
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
deepened into conviction, that he was addicted to literary pursuits.
He was in high repute as a physician. His practice was extensive,
and he was diligent in it, as also in those works of literature and
scientific investigation which occupied all snatches of time,” he
says, “as medical vacations and the fruitless importunity of uroscopy
would permit. ” His large family was liberally reared; his hospitality
and his charities were ample.
In 1646 he printed his second book, the largest and most operose
of all his productions: the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into
Vulgar and Common Errors,' the work evidently of the hora subsecive
of many years. In 1658 he gave to the public two smaller but
important and most characteristic works, Hydriotaphia' and 'The
Garden of Cyrus. ' Beside these publications he left many manu-
scripts which appeared posthumously; the most important of them,
for its size and general interest, being Christian Morals. ?
When Sir Thomas's long life drew to its close, it was with all the
blessings “which should accompany old age. His domestic life had
been one of felicity. His eldest and only surviving son, Edward
Browne, had become a scholar after his father's own heart; and
though not inheriting his genius, was already renowned in London,
one of the physicians to the King, and in a way to become, as after-
ward he did, President of the College of Physicians. All his daugh-
ters who had attained womanhood had been well married. He lived
in the society of the honorable and learned, and had received from
the King the honor of knighthood. *
Mr. John Evelyn, carrying out a long and cherished plan of see-
ing one whom he had known and admired by his writings, visited
him at Norwich in 1671. He found Sir Thomas among fit surround-
ings, “his whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of
rarities, and that of the best collections, especially medails, books,
* As for this business of the knighting, one hesitates fully to adopt Dr. John-
son's remark that Charles II. (had skill to discover excellence and virtue to
reward it, at least with such honorary distinctions as cost him nothing. ” A
candid observer of the walk and conversation of this illustrious monarch finds
room for doubt that he was an attentive reader or consistent admirer of the
(Religio Medici, or (Christian Morals); and though his own personal history
might have contributed much to a complete catalogue of Vulgar Errors,
Browne's treatise so named did not include divagations from common decency
in its scope, and so may have failed to impress the royal mind. The fact
is that the King on his visit to Norwich, looking about for somebody to
knight, intended, as usual on such occasions, to confer the title on the mayor
of the city; but this functionary,- some brewer or grocer perhaps, of whom
nothing else than this incident is recorded, - declined the honor, whereupon
the gap was stopped with Dr. Browne.
## p. 2477 (#37) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2477
never
.
plants, and natural things. ”* Here we have the right background and
accessories for Whitefoot's portrait of the central figure:
“His complexion and hair
answerable to his name, his stature
moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but ei oápkos;
seen to be transported with mirth or dejected with sadness; always cheerful,
but rarely merry at any sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest, and
when he did, apt to blush at the levity of it: his gravity was natural
without affectation. His modesty
visible in a natural habitual blush,
which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any
observable cause.
So free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that
he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he
was so, it was always singular and never trite or vulgar. ”
A man of character so lofty and self-contained might be expected
to leave a life so long, honorable, and beneficent with becoming dig-
nity. Sir Thomas's last sickness, a brief but very painful one, was
"endured with exemplary patience founded upon the Christian philos-
ophy,” and “with a meek, rational, and religious courage,” much to
the edification of his friend Whitefoot. One may see even a kind of
felicity in his death, falling exactly on the completion of his seventy-
seventh year.
He was buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where his
monument still claims regard as chief among the memorabilia of that
noble sanctuary. t
At the first appearance of Browne's several publications, they
attracted that attention from the learned and thoughtful which they
have ever since retained. The Religio Medici' was soon translated
into several modern languages as well as into Latin, and became
* These two distinguished authors were of congenial tastes, and both cul-
tivated the same Latinistic literary diction. Their meeting must have occas-
ioned a copious effusion of those long-tailed words in osity and ation »
which both had so readily at command or made to order. It is regrettable
that Evelyn never completed a work entitled 'Elysium Brittannicum) which he
planned, and to which Browne contributed a chapter (Of Coronary Plants. ”
It would have taken rank with its author's (Sylva) among English classics.
+In the course of repairs, «in August, 1840, his coffin was broken open
by a pickaxe; the bones were found in good preservation, the fine auburn
hair had not lost its freshness. ” It is painful to relate that the cranium was
removed and placed in the pathological museum of the Norwich Hospital,
labeled as the gift of some person (name not recalled), whose own cranium
is probably an object of interest solely to its present proprietor. «Who knows
the fate of his own bones ?
We insult not over their ashes,” says Sir
Thomas. The curator of the museum feels that he has a clever joke on the
dead man, when with a grin he points to a label bearing these words from
the (Hydriotaphia): – «To be knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls
made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our
enemies, are tragical abominations escaped in burning burials. ”
## p. 2478 (#38) ############################################
2478
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
the subject of curiously diverse criticism. The book received the
distinction of a place in the Roman Index Expurgatorius,' while from
various points of view its author was regarded as Romanist, an
atheist, a deist, a pantheist, and as bearing the number 666 some-
where about him.
A worthy Quaker, a fellow-townsman, was so impressed by his
tone of quietistic mysticism that he felt sure the philosophic doctor
was guided by “the inward light,” and wrote, sending a godly book,
and proposing to clinch his conversion in a personal interview. Such
are the perils that environ the man who not only repeats a creed in
sincerity, but ventures to do and to utter his own thinking about it.
From Browne's own day to the present time his critics and com-
mentators have been numerous and distinguished; one of the most
renowned among them being Dr. Johnson, whose life of the author,
prefixed to an edition of the Christian Morals) in 1756, is a fine
specimen of that facile and effective hack-work of which Johnson
was master. In that characteristic way of his, half of patronage,
half of reproof, and wholly pedagogical, he summons his subject
to the bar of his dialectics, and according to his lights adminis-
ters justice. He admits that Browne has great excellencies and
“uncommon sentiments, and that his scholarship and science are
admirable, but strongly condemns his style: “It is vigorous, but
rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; 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. ”
Behemoth prescribing rules of locomotion to the swan! By how
much would English letters have been the poorer if Browne had
learned his art of Johnson!
Notwithstanding such objurgations, some have supposed that the
style of Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon
that of Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism
sometimes disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an
elaborate balancing of antitheses in the same period, -- these are
qualities which the two writers have in common. But the resem-
blance, such as it is, is skin-deep. Johnson is a polemic by nature,
and at his best cogent and triumphant in argument. His thought is
carefully kept level with the apprehension of the ordinary reader,
while arrayed in a verbal pomp simulating the expression of some-
thing weighty and profound. Browne is intuitive and ever averse to
controversy, feeling, as he exquisitely says, that many have too
rashly charged the troops of error and remain as trophies unto the
enemies of truth. A man may be in as just possession of the truth
as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender. ” Calmly philosophic,
he writes for kindred minds, and his concepts satisfying his own
intellect, he delivers them with as little passion as an Æolian harp
## p. 2479 (#39) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2479
answering the wind, and lingers not for applause or explanation.
His being
« Those thoughts that wander through eternity,"
he means that we too shall “have a glimpse of incomprehensibles,
and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch. ”
How grandly he rounds his pregnant paragraphs with phrases
which for stately and compulsive rhythm, sonorous harmony, and
sweetly solemn cadences, are almost matchless in English prose, and
lack only the mechanism of metre to give them the highest rank as
verse.
«Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the
grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omit-
ting ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of his nature;) ( When
personations shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over; when
reality shall rule, and all shall be as they shall be forever:” — such
passages as these, and the whole of the Fragment on Mummies,' one
can scarcely recite without falling into something of that chant which
the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson seems to enforce.
That the Religio Medici? was the work of a gentleman before
his thirtieth year, not a recluse nor trained in a cloister, but active
in a calling which keeps closest touch with the passions and frailties
of humanity, seems to justify his assertion, I have shaken hands
with delight [sc. by way of parting] in my warm blood and canic-
ular days. ” So uniformly lofty and dignified is its tone, and so.
austere its morality, that the book might be taken for the fruit of
those later and sadder years that bring the philosophic mind.
Its
frank confessions and calm analysis of motive and action have been
compared with Montaigne's: if Montaigne had been graduated after a
due education in Purgatory, or if his pedigree had been remotely
crossed with a St. Anthony and he had lived to see the fluctus
decumanus gathering in the tide of Puritanism, the likeness would
have been closer.
«The Religio Medici,” says Coleridge, is a fine portrait of a
handsome man in his best clothes. " There is truth in the criticism,
and if there is no color of a sneer in it, it is entirely true. Who
does not feel, when following Browne into his study or his garden,
that here is a kind of cloistral retreat from the common places of
the outside world, that the handsome man is a true gentleman and
a noble friend, and that his best clothes are his every-day wear?
This aloofness of Browne's, which holds him apart in the still air
of delightful studies,” is no affectation; it is an innate quality. He
thinks his thoughts in his own way, and the style is the man”
never more truly than with him. One of his family letters mentions
the execution of Charles I. as a “horrid murther, and another speaks
## p. 2480 (#40) ############################################
2480
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
as
of Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything intended for the
public eye is there an indication that he lived in the most tumultu-
ous and heroic period of English history. Not a word shows that
Shakespeare was of the generation just preceding his, nor that Milton
and George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, numerous as are the par-
allels in their thought and feeling and in his, were his contempo-
raries. Constant and extensive as are his excursions into ancient
literature, it is rare for him to make any reference to writers of his
own time.
Yet with all his delight in antiquity and reverence for the great
names of former ages, he is keen in the quest for new discoveries.
His commonplace books abound in ingenious queries and minute
observations regarding physical facts, conceived in the very spirit of
our modern school:-“What is the use of dew-claws in dogs? ” He
does not instantly answer, a schoolboy in this Darwinian day
would, “To carry out an analogy; but the mere asking of the ques-
tion sets him ahead of his age. See too his curious inquiries into the
left-footedness of parrots and left-handedness of certain monkeys and
squirrels. The epoch-making announcement of his fellow-physician
Harvey he quickly appreciates at its true value: “his piece De
Circul. Sang. ,' which discovery I prefer to that of Columbus. ” And
here again a truly surprising suggestion of the great results achieved
a century and two centuries later by Jenner and Pasteur - concerning
canine madness, whether it holdeth not better at second than at
first hand, so that if a dog bite a horse, and that horse a man, the
evil proves less considerable. ” He is the first to observe and describe
that curious product of the decomposition of flesh known to modern
chemists as adipocere.
He is full of eager anticipation of the future. "Join sense unto
reason,” he cries, and experiment unto speculation, and so give life
unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos.
What
libraries of new volumes after-times will behold, and in what a new
world of knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few
ages may joyfully declare. ”
But acute and active as our author's perceptions were, they did
not prevent his sharing the then prevalent theory which assigned to
the devil, and to witches who were his ministers, an important part
in the economy of the world. This belief affords so easy a solution
of some problems otherwise puzzling, that this degenerate age may
look back with envy upon those who held it in serene and comfort-
able possession.
It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief Justice
Hale in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two women,
should have called Dr. Browne, apparently as amicus curia, to give
## p. 2481 (#41) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2481
his view of the fits which were supposed to be the work of the
witches. He was clearly of the opinion that the Devil had even more
to do with that case than he has with most cases of hysteria; and
consequently the witches, it must be said, fared no better in Sir
Matthew Hale's court than many of their kind in various parts of
Christendom about the same time. But it would be unreasonable for
us to hold the ghost of Sir Thomas deeply culpable because, while
he showed in most matters an exceptionally enlightened liberality of
opinion and practice, in this one particular he declined to deny the
scientific dictum of previous ages and the popular belief of his own
time.
The mental attitude of reverent belief in its symbolic value, in
which this devout philosopher contemplated the material world, is
that of inany of those who have since helped most to build the
structure of Natural Science. The rapturous exclamation of Linnæus,
“My God, I think thy thoughts after thee! ) comes like an antiph-
onal response by “the man of flowers to these passages in the
(Religio Medici? : « This visible world is but a picture of the invisi-
ble, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal
shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible
fabric. ” “Things are really true as they correspond unto God's con-
ception; and have so much verity as they hold of conformity unto
that intellect, in whose idea they had their first determinations. )
his. Bacon
FROM THE RELIGIO MEDICI
I
Could never divide myself from any man upon the difference
of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agree-
ing with me in that from which within a few days I should
dissent myself. I have no genius to disputes in religion, and
have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a
disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the
weakness of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed, 'tis
good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and
establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below
our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons
may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our
own. Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to
take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity: many from the
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2482
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
as
ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal for truth,
have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain
trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just
possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender;
'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to hazard
her on a battle: if therefore there rise 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 own reason is his best Edipus, and will,
upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds where-
with the subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and
tender judgments. In philosophy, where truth seems double-
faced, there is no more paradoxical than myself: but in
divinity I love to keep the road; and though not in an implicit,
yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the Church, by
which I move, not reserving any proper poles or motion from the
epicycle of my own brain: by these means I leave no gap for
heresy, schisms, or errors.
man
As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties
in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they
never stretched the pia mater of mine: methinks there be not
impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith; the deep-
est mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated, but
maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose
myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O altitudo!
'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those
involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with Incarnation
and Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and
my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of Ter-
tullian, “Certum est quia impossibile est. ” I desire to exercise
my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and vis-
ible objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better
for seeing Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red
Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself
and am thankful that I live not in the days of miracles, that I
never saw Christ nor his disciples; I would not have been one
of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ's
patients on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my faith
been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing
pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easy and
## p. 2483 (#43) ############################################
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
2483
necessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath exam-
ined: I believe he was dead and buried, and rose again; and
desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate him
in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this much to believe; as
we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they only had
the advantage of a bold and noble faith who lived before his
coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could
raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities.
In my solitary and retired imagination,
“Neque enim cum lectulus aut me
Porticus excepit, desum mihi”.
a
I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contem-
plate Him and his attributes who is ever with me, especially
those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity: with the one I
recreate, with the other I confound my understanding; for who
can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof with-
out an ecstasy ? Time we may comprehend: it is but five days
older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world;
but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give
such an infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an
essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it
puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares
not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a creature that
can comprehend him; it is a privilege of his own nature: I am .
that I am, was his own definition unto Moses; and it was
short one, to confound mortality, that durst question God or
ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have and
shall be; but in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and
therefore that terrible term predestination, which hath troubled
so many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in
respect to God no prescious determination of our states to come,
but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the
instant that he first decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indi-
visible and all together, the last trump is already sounded, the
reprobates in the flame and the blessed in Abraham's bosom.
St.
