The Major Works (English Library) (64 page)
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Authors: Sir Thomas Browne
30
. Kepler is quoted from his
Gesammelte Werke
, ed. Max Caspar (Munich, 1940), VI, 299; and Einstein, from Cecil J. Schneer,
The Search for Order
(1960), p. 368.
31
. Jeremy Bernstein,
Einstein
(1973), Ch. XVI.
32
.
Seriatim
: Symonds (
§228
); Lamb, as reported by Hazlitt, in the latter’s
Complete Works
, ed. P.P. Howe (1933), XVII, 124; and De Quincey (
§§185
,
174
). De Quincey is expressly commenting on the passage beginning ‘Now since these dead bones…’ (below, p. 306).
34
.
The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks
, ed. W.H. Gilman and A.R. Ferguson (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), III, 219.
37
. ‘Wie nun Gott der Schöpffer gespielet/ also hat er auch die Natur / als sein Ebenbildt lehren spielen / und zwar eben das Spiel / das er ihr vorgespielet’ (
Tertius interveniens
[Frankfurt, 1610], § 126; in
Werke
[as before, note 30], IV, 246, and in W. Pauli,
The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler
, trans. Priscilla Silz in
The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche
[1955], p. 172). The tradition is outlined by Hugo Rahner,
Man at Play
(1965); cf. Warnke on ‘Art as Play’ (
§ 124
).
38
. The figure derives, we have been reminded, ‘from
quinqueunciae
or five-twelfths of a unit of weight of measure, and was used by the Romans to denote an arrangement of five trees in the form of a rectangle, four occupying the corners, one the centre, like the cinque-point on a die, so that a massing of quincunxes produces long rows of trees with the effect of lattice-work’ (
§ 300
: see also the diagram reproduced below,
p. 323
).
39
. From Dee’s prefatory address to Sir Henry Billingsley’s translation of Euclid’s
Elements
(1570). Critics who espouse numerology have hesitated to enroll Browne in their ranks, aware that his laughter would undermine their efforts – witness the amusing reviews of their excesses by William Nelson in
Renaissance News
, XVIII (1965), 52–7, and Douglas
Bush in ‘Calculus Racked Him’, in his
Engaged and Disengaged
(Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 58–66.
40
. Frank L. Huntley (
§303
). A similar problem is posed by Milton’s joint publication of
Paradise Regained
and
Samson Agonistes
(1671) – now also solved, notably by Balachandra Rajan in
The Prison and the Pinnacle
(Toronto, 1973), pp. 82–100.
41
. As I argue in the introduction to my edition of
John Milton: Selected Prose
(Penguin Books, 1974).
42
. R.W. Ketton-Cremer, ‘Sir Thomas Browne Prescribes’,
TLS
, 2 November 1971 (p. 700)
43
. Below, pp. 104, 159, 73, 134. Browne’s ‘doublets’ are fully discussed by Huntley and Warren (
§§ 198
,
234
).
44
.
Κ
, III, 4. While endorsing the general acceptance of the Bible’s influence on Browne, I cannot accept the large claims often made (e.g. by §§193, 216) about the influence of Dante. Suffice it that Browne was intimately acquainted with Dante, as he was with the Elizabethan dramatists led by Shakespeare (§§231–2). If a direct influence must be sought, I would much rather emphasize that of ‘le bon Rabelais’.
45
.
The Sermons of John Donne
, ed. G.R. Potter and E.M. Simpson (Berkeley, 1959), IV, 167. On Herbert’s response to the Bible, see my edition of
The English Poems of George Herbert
(Everyman’s University Library, 1974).
47
. Bennett (
§176
) and Winny (as
above, note 1
); respectively.
50
. Dr Johnson sensed the point of contact instinctively, for his description of Browne’s style as ‘a mixture of heterogeneous words,… terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another’ (below, p. 508), is not unlike his remark in
The Life of Cowley
that in Donne and his heirs ‘the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together’.
52
. Huntley (
§ 198
). So, too, the ‘echo’ in
A Letter to a Friend
is the epistolary art of St Paul; in
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, it is the concept of the Scale of Nature; and so on.
53
. Howell and Bennett (§§ 254, 176); respectively.
55
.
Apud
John M. Shaw,
Christian Doctrine
(1953), p. 294.
58
. Cf. ‘Far back on the side of the head,… you will at last see a lash-less eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt’s eye; so out of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head… Moreover… the peculiar position of the whale’s eyes, effectively divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ imparts… This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes’ (Ch. 74).
59
.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1956), p. 215.
1
. i.e. printing. The ‘perversion’ alludes to the numerous anti-royalist pamphlets of the 1630s.
2
. i.e. in
UA
(see headnote, above).
3
. None of these related discourses survive.
4
. Contrary.
6
. ‘that speaks figuratively, or by tropes’ (Blount).
8
. Keck noted the eloquent proverb: ‘It is a common speech (but onely amongst the unlearned sort)
Ubi tres medici, duo Athei’
– i.e. of every three physicians, two are atheists. But the charge was a wild exaggeration (cf.
§69
: Ch. XII, ‘The Physician as Atheist’).
9
. Scientific.
10
. Impartiality.
11
. i.e. Protestant.
12
. The Church Fathers of the first five centuries, especially St Augustine, were the guiding lights of the Reformation.
13
. Luther was a miner’s son.
14
. Mark 6.2–3 (‘From whence hath this man these things?… Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary…’ etc.).
15
. ‘Resolvers’ (Coleridge). Browne’s adverse view of Roman Catholics is soon transformed into a tolerant attitude unique by any seventeenth-century standards.
16
. Reproaches.
17
. Corrected from: ‘I should loose mine arme rather then violate a church window, demolish an image, or deface’ (
MSS
.).
18
. Memorial.
19
. ‘A Church Bell that tolls every day at 6. and 12. of the Clocke, at the hearing whereof every one in what place soever either of house or street betakes him to his prayer, which is commonly directed to the
Virgin
’ (Browne marg.).
20
. i.e. disapproving of.
21
. The council at Trento in Northern Italy (1545–63), and the synod at Dordrecht in Holland (1618–19), determined the theological horizons of Catholicism and Calvinism respectively.
22
. ‘In theire quarrells with Pope Paul the fifth’ (
MSS. marg
., in
M
) – i.e. when Venice was excommunicated in 1606 for repudiating papal authority.
23
. i.e. satires. See
below, p. 408, note 96
.
26
. Who solved the riddle of the Sphinx.
27
. ‘That looseth it selfe in Greece and riseth againe in Sicilie’ (
MSS. marg
., in
M
).
29
. ‘A revolution of certaine thousand yeares when all things should returne unto their former estate and he be teaching againe in his schoole as when he delivered this opinion’ (Browne marg.). Cf. Plato,
Timaeus
, 39.
30
. i.e. many cynics, and as many misanthropists.
31
. The ‘error’ is mortalism, else psychopannychism; and widely disseminated as it was, obliged Calvin to write a treatise to refute it (1542). See
§§18
,
261
,
272
.
32
. The second ‘error’ is known as apocatastasis (‘restoration’) – i.e. the eventual redemption of the damned inclusive of Satan. See
§263
.
33
. Said by Jeremy Taylor in the seventeenth century to be ‘at worst but a wrong error upon the right side of charity’ (
§343
). Coleridge in annotating Browne observed: ‘Our church with her characteristic Christian Prudence does not enjoin Prayer for the Dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature it belongs to a private aspiration; and being conditional, like all religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish – an act of natural piety sublimed by Christian Hope, that shares in the light and meets the diverging rays, of Faith, though it be not contained in the Focus’.
34
. The next section (# 8) was not in
UA
.
35
. Matthew 24.11: ‘many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many’.
36
. The disciples of Arius, who denied the divinity of Christ.
37
. Temperamentally inclined.
38
. Organisation. Also used of the divine government of the world.
39
. i.e. medieval scholastic philosophy.
40
. ‘The inmost skin which incloseth the braine’ (Bullokar). Throughout this section, ‘mystery’ is used in its theological sense as ‘a truth beyond the reach of human reason but divinely revealed and hence a part of human knowledge’ (
§260
).
41
. Cf. Romans 11.33: ‘O the depth [in the Vulgate
O altitudo
] of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past finding out!’ The verse is quoted by Bacon in
The Advancement of Learning
: ‘in divinity many things must be left abrupt, and concluded with this:
O altitudo sapientiae et scientiae Dei
!’ etc. (II, xxv, 13).
42
. Browne invariably deploys ‘recreation’ in its twofold meaning of creation anew, and of pleasure (
§§31
,
272
). See above,
p. 41
.
43
. ‘It is certain because it is impossible’ (
Of the Body of Christ
, V).
44
. i.e. of the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14.15 ff.).
45
. John 20.29.
46
. i.e. prefigurations of Christ in the Old Testament. Cf. below,
p. 376, note 61
.
47
. St Paul in Ephesians 6.16 (‘the shield of faith’).
48
. Browne consistently opposes ‘definition’ – a term suggesting limitations – to mysteries, metaphors, enigmas, and the like (
§260
). ‘Platonick’ is used not only in the sense of a generalised mystical abstraction; it suggests also Plato’s direct implication in the mysteries here recounted: ‘it is not improbable, he learned these and other mystical expressions in his Learned Observations of Ægypt’ (below,
p. 378
).
49
. The description of God as ‘a sphere whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere’ (Browne marg., quoted in Latin) is a time-honoured commonplace frequently quoted during the Renaissance and certainly much favoured by Browne (
§199
; cf.
§98
). On Hermes Trismegistus see above,
p. 30
.
50
. ‘… that
the soul is man’s angel and God’s body
[according to Paracelsus], rather than
entelechy
[i.e. the essence of actual being, according to Aristotle’s
On the Soul
, 412a]; that
Light is the shadow of God
[according to Ficino], rather than
actual transparency
[as in
On the Soul
, 418b]…’ The statements demonstrate Browne’s distaste for definitions (see previous page,
note 48
).
