The Major Works (English Library) (68 page)
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Authors: Sir Thomas Browne
6
. The uneducated.
7
. The reference is probably to the standard abacus with two banks of beads, above and below; so that ‘three or foure men [i.e. gentlemen] together come short’ of the one below, who is worth five (
§258
).
8
. Rich men (literally the gilded ones).
10
. The 1678 edition was the first to add ‘only’ after ‘almes’.
11
. Beggars.
12
. Vegetable physiognomy, as Browne makes clear.
13
. Psalm 147–4 and Genesis 2.19–20, respectively.
14
. Corrected from ‘lines and figures’ (
MSS
.).
16
. i.e. gipsies.
17
. Here reduced from twenty-six because i/j and u/v were commonly regarded as single letters.
18
. i.e. model.
19
. i.e. the copy made necessarily diverges from
the
Copy or ultimate ‘patterne’ which is the Idea of God (as above,
p. 31
).
20
. i.e. the beggar ‘full of sores’ in the parable (Luke 16.20).
21
. The 1643 edition punctuates: ‘the Lawes of Charity in all disputes; so much’ etc. I follow the reading in
MSS., E, M, K
.
22
. ‘Battle of the Frogs and the Mice’, the title of the mock-heroic poem formerly attributed to Homer.
23
. i.e. the mock trial of the relative claims of the Greek letters Sigma and Tau, in Lucian’s
Consonants at Law
.
24
. ‘Whether
Jovis
or
Jupiteris
’ (Browne marg.).
25
. The proverbial ‘To break Priscian’s head’ was said of any violation of the rules of grammar.
26
. ‘Were Democritus still on earth, he would laugh’. So Horace,
Epistles
, II, i, 194.
27
. ‘That cutt a whetstone in two’ (
MSS. marg
., in
M
). So Livy, I, 36.
28
. Large cannon, named after the fatal (but fabled) basilisk.
29
. i.e. the scholars. The personal pronouns immediately following, refer to the princes.
30
. ‘The rebellious Englishman, and the swaggering Scot; the Italian bugger, and the mad Frenchman; the cowardly Roman, and the thieving Gascon; the arrogant Spaniard, and the drunken German’. The lines adapt Sonnet LXVIII in Du Bellay’s
Les Regrets
(
§270
).
31
. Titus 1.12, quoting Epimenides.
32
. Most likely Caligula’s, who wished that the Romans might have had a single neck so that it could be severed at a stroke.
33
. Corrected from ‘hereditary’ (
MSS
.).
34
. Cf. Milton,
Areopagitica
(1644): ‘that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary’ etc. (
Selected Prose
, ed. C.A. Patrides, Penguin Books [1974], p. 213).
35
. i.e. transmission to the mind of a material object’s image; hence ‘derived’ (reflected).
36
. To square or agree.
37
. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20.13).
38
. Browne’s contemporaries did not hesitate similarly to denounce Adam as history’s ‘first Criminal’ (
§ 95
).
39
. ‘I thinke’ was not in
UA
.
40
. A variant of ‘impostors’ (
MSS
.).
41
. In Job 4–5, 8, 11, etc.
42
. i.e. like anything measurable.
43
. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ (Exodus 20.12).
44
. See below,
p. 148
. Coleridge responded to this sentence with a lengthy and passionate outburst (‘I loved
one
Woman; & believe that such a Love of such a Woman is the highest Friendship’ etc.).
45
. i.e. the divine and the human in Christ.
46
. Corrected from ‘zealous oration’ (
MSS
.).
47
. ‘who after he had inveigled his enemy to disclaime his faith for the redemption of his life, did presently poyniard him, to prevent repentance, and assure his eternall death’ (
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, VII, 19).
48
. Corrected from ‘malevolous’ (
MSS
.).
49
. 2 Corinthians 12.7.
50
. i.e. with unbated sword.
51
. The decisive naval battle against the Turkish fleet on 7 October 1571.
52
. i.e. renders me a coward.
53
. The ten lines immediately following (to ‘… any of these’) were not in
UA
.
54
. i.e. copulated with a statue.
55
. ‘pertaining to… monstrous actions of lust’ (Blount;
OED
). The allusion is to the Emperor Tiberius (Claudius Nero Caesar), as reported by Suetonius,
Tiberius
, XLIII.
56
. i.e. discovered by Galileo (1610).
57
. Ordinariness.
58
. Daily.
59
. The macrocosm (cf. above,
p. 103, note 208
).
60
. i.e. once the rebellions are masters.
61
. ‘
Pride
is a more subtle sin then you conceive’, replied Ross in 1645: ‘pride intrudes it selfe amongst our best workes: And have you not pride, in thinking you have no pride?’ But that is precisely Browne’s (
not
the narrator’s) point; and he makes much of it in what ensues.
62
. i.e. tower.
63
. i.e. in the way an ode is constructed.
65
. ‘The description of a countrey’ (Cockeram).
66
. The two stars in the Great Bear pointing nearly to the Pole Star.
67
. Gathered simples (medicinal herbs).
68
. Plato,
Apology
, 21d.
69
.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, VII, 13, dismisses the legend that Homer wasted to death because unable to solve a riddle.
70
. That Aristotle drowned himselfe in Euripus as despairing to resolve the cause of its reciprocation, or ebbe and flow seven times a day… is generally beleeved amongst us’ (ibid.).
71
. Here and in all subsequent references to Janus (see below,
p. 524
), cf. the fundamental principle articulated earlier: ‘In Philosophy… truth seemes double-faced’ (above,
p. 66
).
72
. Ecclesiastes 8.16–17.
73
. Cf. the angels’ ‘intuitive knowledge’, above,
p. 102, note 196
.
74
. Corrected from: ‘I was never yet once, and am resolv’d never to bee married twice’
(MSS.). Religio Medici
, written when Browne was single, was published after his first and only marriage (1641).
75
. Corrected from ‘woman’ (
MSS.; K
).
76
. Corrected from ‘I could wish’ (
MSS
.).
77
. The sentiment was first censured by James Howell in 1645, who thought ‘it was a most unmanly thing’ in Browne ‘to wish that ther wer a way to propagat the world otherwise than by conjunction with women’ (
Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ
, 3rd ed. [1655], I, 308). Other censures followed, e.g. Dr Johnson’s, below,
p. 489
. But the lighthearted tone of the passage suggests that Browne again deploys his ‘soft and flexible sense’ (see above,
p. 21
).
78
. So Hermes Trismegistus affirmed that God is ‘by nature a musician, and… works harmony in the universe at large’ (
Hermetica
, ed. Walter Scott [Oxford, 1924], 1,274–7). The concept is of great antiquity and equal popularity throughout the Renaissance.
79
. Corrected from ‘our’ (
MSS
.).
80
. ‘the first Composer’ is a correction of ‘my Maker’ (
MSS
.).
81
. The passage, according to De Quincey, ‘though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects’. (
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
[1821], Part II).
82
.
Phaedo
, 86b-d.
83
. Inserted here (
MSS
.): ‘it unties the ligaments of my frame, takes mee to peeces, dilates mee out of my selfe, and by degrees (mee thinkes) resolves mee into heaven’.
84
. In his
Annals
: ‘Urbem Romam in principio Reges habuere’ (Browne marg.).
85
. ‘
Pro Archia Poeta
: In qua me non inficior mediocriter esse’ (Browne marg.).
86
. i.e. ponder over astronomical calendars (cf.
above, p. 81, note 104
).
87
. i.e. of heavenly bodies, said to effect disasters on earth.
89
. Matthew 12.31, Mark 3.29, Luke 12.10.
90
. i.e. the divines’.
91
. Conduct. In Milton’s
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
(1643) the word suggests society, association with others.
92
. ‘Great virtues, nor lesser vices’.
93
. Contrast.
94
. ‘Adam, whom I conceave to want a navill, because he was not borne of a woman’ (
MSS. marg
., in
M
). Added Keck: ‘the Author meanes… by a metonymie originall sin’.
96
. ‘Never less lonely than when he was alone’ (Cicero,
On Duties
, III, i, 1).
97
. Co-operation.
98
. See above,
p. 103, note 208
.
99
. See above,
pp. 22
and
52
. The thirteen lines immediately following (to ‘… the Alphabet of man’) were not in
UA
.
100
. i.e. the external appearance of the earth’s finite sphere, as seen from the heavens beyond.
101
. i.e. degrees in the earth’s circle: ‘the number of the Arke’ (arc) mentioned next.
102
. Genesis 1.26–7, etc.
103
. ‘Though the heavens fall, thy will be done’ (cf. the concluding sentence, below,
p. 161
). Inserted just before the Latin phrase (
MSS
.): ‘I have that in mee can convert poverty into riches, transforme adversity into prosperity; I am more invulnerable then Achilles, fortune hath not one place to hit mee;’
104
. Inserted here (
MSS
.): ‘with this I can bee a king without a crowne, rich without a stiver, in heaven though on earth, enjoy my friend, and embrace him at a distance, when I cannot behold him,’ See further
On Dreams
, below,
pp. 473
ff.
105
. Binding.
106
. The ‘ascendant’ is the zodiacal constellation just emerging; and Scorpio, the eighth sign of the zodiac. Browne was born on 19 October.
107
. The ‘melancholy’ temperament of individuals so born, was regarded as indicative of thoughtfulness and imagination – an attitude characteristic of the Florentine Neoplatonists, especially since Ficino was (like Plato) conveniently born under Saturn (
§253
).
108
. Gaiety.
109
. Aristotle,
Of Sleep and Waking
, I (where sleep is said to be ‘a sort of lack of notion’[R]); Galen,
Of Muscular Motion
, II, 4 (see Browne’s paraphrase in the next sentence). The phrase ‘me thinkes’ was not in
UA
(cf. above,
p. 141, note 39
).
110
. Cf. Plotinus on ‘reason’s Prior’ (above,
p. 26
). The eight opening lines of the next section (to ‘… discover it’) were not in
UA
.
111
. The story is actually related of Iphicrates and/or Epaminondas; in Frontinus,
Strategematon
, III, xii, 2–3 (
G1
).
112
. Who, forced by Nero to commit suicide, were permitted to select the manner of their death.
113
. The rest of the sentence reads (
MSS
.): ‘And truly ’tis a fit time for our devotion, and therefore I cannot laie downe my head without an Orizon [i.e. oration], and take my farewell in a colloquie with God’.
