The Major Works (English Library) (67 page)

247
. ‘How terribly changed from that!’ (
Aeneid
, II, 274). Said of Hector, whose shade Aeneas meets in Hades.

248
. i.e. in our children: the ‘fruitfull issue’ just mentioned. On man’s futile efforts to survive on earth, see further
Hydriotaphia
(below,
pp. 261
ff.).

249
. The Book of Life (Revelation 20.15).

250
. ‘Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up with a staffe in his hand to fright away the Crowes’ (Browne marg.). So Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
, I, 43.

251
. Lucan,
Pharsalia
, VII, 819.

252
. Alike long-lived.

253
. ‘The Jewish computacion for 50 yeares’ (
MSS. marg.
, in
M
).

254
. ‘The planet of Saturne makes his revolution once in 30 yeares’ (
MSS. marg.
, in
M
).

255
. The (German) emperors are Rudolph II, Matthias, and Ferdinand II; the four Ottoman emperors: Ahmed I, Mustapha I, Osman II, and Murad IV; and the four Popes: Leo XI, Paul V, Gregory XV, and Urban VIII. The exception is Christian IV of Denmark (d. 1648).

256
. ‘
Dogdayes
. Certain dayes in July and August, so called of the Starre
Canis
, the Dogge: which then rising with the Sun, doeth greatly increase the heate thereof’ (Bullokar).

257
. ‘A french word for Anticks’ (
MSS. marg
., in
M
).

258
. Traditionally said to have been thirty-three (cf. Luke 3.23).

259
. Bend.

260
. The rest of this section, and the whole of the next (#43), were not in
UA
. Inserted here instead (
MSS
.): ‘The course and order of my life would bee a verie death unto others; I use my selfe to all diets, aires, humours, hunger, thirst, heate; [when] cold, I cure not my selfe by heate; when sicke, not by physicke; those that understand how I live may justly say I regard not life, nor stand in feare of Death’.

261
.
On Old Age
, ΧΧΙΠ (84).

262
. Which rejuvenated him at Medea’s intercession (Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, VII, 159 ff.).

263
. Regarded as one of the ultimate constituents of matter.

264
. i.e. ball or skein (of thread).

265
. The generally accepted limit of the world’s history (see
below, p. 308, note 18
).

266
. Who refused to ‘curse God, and die’ (Job 2.9–10).

267
. i.e. compared to.

268
. Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
, I, 8.

269
. The rest of this section was not in
UA
.

270
. i.e. from death (during his incarnate life on earth).

271
. Seneca,
Of Providence
, VI, 7.

272
. ‘That tyme when the moone is in conjunction and obscured by the Sunne, the Astrologers call horæ combustæ (
MSS. marg
., in
M
).

273
. Symbolic senses (
R
).

274
. ‘Remember you are to die’.

275
. Remember the four last things’. The eschatological discourse to the end of Part I (
p. 132
) adapts several traditional concepts (
§96
). Cf. the sermon in Joyce’s
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
, itself indebted to a late seventeenth-century treatise (see
MP
, LVII [1960], 172–98).

276
. Lucan,
Pharsalia
, VII, 814–15.

277
. An important qualification to the widespread belief in the world’s ever-increasing decay (see
§53
).
Hydriotaphia
also dwells on the ‘great mutations of the world’ (below,
pp. 261
ff.), while
The Garden of Cyrus
provides the broader context.

278
. ‘I (
MSS
.), changed to ‘Some’ because the passage departs from the literal interpretation of Genesis 1.

279
. So Milton’s God beholds the newly created world ‘how good, how fair, / Answering his great Idea’ (
Paradise Lost
, VII, 556–7). See
above, p. 31
.

280
. Matthew 24.2 ff., 2 Peter 3.7 ff., etc.

281
. On the theory of accommodation operative here, see
above, p. 21
f.

282
. i.e. convictable.

283
. Matthew 24.36: ‘Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven’. On the prophecy attributed to ‘Elias’ (Elijah), see below,
p. 439, note 31
.

284
. ‘The Oracle of Apollo’ at Delphi (
MSS. marg
., in
M
).

285
. ‘In those dayes there shall come lyers and false prophets’ (Browne marg.). As above,
p. 68, note 35
.

286
. Matthew 24.6.

287
. Luke 21.25 and 1 Thessalonians 5.2, respectively.

288
. ‘that man of sin…, the son of perdition; who… as God sitteth in the temple God, shewing himself that he is God’ (2 Thessalonians 2.3–4; cf. 1 John 2.18).

289
. A discreet reference to the numerous Protestant identifications of the Antichrist with the Pope.

290
. Revelation 6.9–10.

291
. The earlier specific reference (above,
p. 112, note 253
) is now transmuted into the Day of Judgement.

292
. Discriminating, partial.

293
. A proverbial utterance phrased among others by Seneca,
On the Happy Life
, IX, 4.

294
. Seneca,
Moral Letters
, XXV, 5–6; quoting Epicurus.

295
. ibid., CXIII, 31.

296
. Whose ‘impieties’ include a sustained effort to discredit the traditional gods. Cf.
below, p. 311, note 32
.

297
. ‘That is, if nothing remaine after this life’ (Keck).

298
. Chaos (as
above, p. 76, note 84
).

299
. Inserted here (
MSS.
): ‘What is made to bee immortall, nature cannot nor will the voice of God destroy; these bodies wee behold to perish were in their created natures immortall, and liable to death but accidentally, and upon forfeit; therefore they owe not that naturall homage unto death, as other creatures, but may bee restored to immortality by a lesser miracle, and by a bare and easie revocation of the curse returne immortall;’

300
. Dissolved in acid.

301
. i.e. scholastic (cf.
above, p. 69, note 39
).

302
. i.e. the creative man of sense who perceives the truth (as above,
p. 31
). Corrected from ‘suttle’ (
MSS
.).

303
. ‘This was, I believe, some lying Boast of Paracelsus, which the good Sir T. Brown has swallowed for a Truth’ (Coleridge). Not quite; for Browne appears to have consulted an actual if misinterpreted experiment (
M
).

304
. Ezekiel 37.1 ff.

305
. St Paul, whose verses are quoted next (1 Corinthians 2.9 and 2 Corinthians 12.4: see above,
p. 110, note 243
).

306
. Revelation 21.19–21.

307
. 2 Corinthians 12.2.

308
. Which enclosed the moving spheres of Ptolemaic cosmology. Heaven was said to be situated beyond it.

309
. Exodus 33.17 ff. See also above,
p. 104, note 212
.

310
. Luke 16.19 ff.

311
. Telescope.

312
. i.e. external appearances.

313
.
On the Soul
, II, 7.

314
. Revelation 21.8, etc.

315
. See the next section (#51)

316
. Authoritative.

317
. i.e. they burn and melt.

318
. ‘Calcination a chymicall terme for the reduction of a minerall into powder’ (
MSS. marg.
, in
M
). The Biblical reference is Deuteronomy 9.21.

319
. i.e. chemists; but here more properly alchemists.

320
. i.e. altered by heat.

321
. i.e. the universe at large (the macrocosm) which is reflected in the ‘little compendium’ or microcosm of man. Cf. above,
p. 103, note 208
.

322
. The rest of this section was not in
UA
.

323
. i.e. volcanoes.

324
. The host of demonic spirits (cf. Mark 5.9).

325
. Beyond harm.

326
. Corrected from ‘boxe of the eare’ (
P
).

327
. The passage is said to have been ‘obviously inspired’ by Dante,
Inferno
, IV, 31–45, (
§220
).

328
. Cf. Romans 9.20–21. On ‘perpend’ see below,
p. 166, note 3
.

329
.
Nicomachean Ethics
, VIII, x, 1–3, which was said to have been contradicted in Aristotle’s relationship with the tyrant Hermias.

330
. The annual ritual of Venice’s marriage to the sea celebrated her bountiful seaborne empire.

331
. Crates the Cynic (as reported by Diogenes Laertius, VI, 8,

332
. Cf. Ephesians 6.13: ‘take unto you the whole armour of God’ etc.

333
. Hit or thrust (in fencing).

334
. Persons of inferior intelligence.

335
. Cf. Romans 7.19: ‘the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do’.

336
. ‘Chiron, a Centaure’ (
MSS. marg.
, in
M
).

337
. Cf. 1 Timothy 2.3–4 (‘God… will have all men to be saved’) and Matthew 7.14 (‘straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it’).

338
. The next section was not in
UA
.

339
. Strabo’s
Geography
(II, v, 14) likens the known inhabited world to a short cloak spread out (R).

340
. i.e. Protestant.

341
. Mark 13.20 (‘the elect… whom he hath chosen’), etc.

342
. i.e. reformers who demand further reformation, and dissenters.

343
. ‘Atomist’ could be a reference to the fundamentalist sect of the Adamites, or may simply mean ‘materialist’. The ‘Familist’ is a member of the Family of Love, a revolutionary sect of mystics.

344
. Foretell. In the preceding lines, Browne ‘must have had before his mind’ not only Matthew 8.11–12 (‘many shall come from the east and west… in the kingdom of heaven’) but its expansion by Dante in
Paradiso
, XIX, 103 ff., and XX, 133 ff. (
§220
).

345
. i.e. in that he was not baptised. Cf. Romans 2.12.

346
. Corrected from ‘law’ (
MSS
.).

347
. Matthew 19.24: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’.

348
. Luke 12.32.

349
. Widely accepted by Protestants in principle, even as the traditional division into nine orders was consistently opposed (
§94
).

350
. Corrected from ‘much’ (
P; K
).

351
. Philippians 2.12.

352
. Good pleasure, gracious purpose.

353
. John, 8.58.

354
. ‘in some sense’ was not in
UA
.

355
. i.e. the council of the triune Godhead in Genesis 1.26 (‘Let
us
make man in
our
image’). On ‘the Idea of God’ see above,
p. 31
.

356
. The rest of this section was not in
UA
.

357
. ‘onely’ (not in
UA
) was added here to suggest Browne’s reluctance to side with Protestant zealots (‘zeales’) who proclaimed justification solely by faith (
sola fide
) at the expense of good works (‘merit’).

358
. Judges 7.4–7.

359
. Place before. Cf. Matthew 17.20.

1
. The casual reminder that Part II is to be concerned with charity, alerts us in retrospect to the concern of Part I with the other two cardinal virtues, faith and hope. See above,
p. 49
.

2
. ‘peculiar temperament’ (Coleridge).

3
. i.e. England. ‘Climate’ is a belt of the earth’s surface contained between two parallels of latitude (
OED
).

4
. On his return from a visit to Ireland in 1629.

5
. Proverbs 1.7 (‘fools despise wisdom and instruction’), etc. Denunciations of the multitude, commonplace in Browne’s age, include an outburst by the saintly Lancelot Andrewes (
§262
).