The Major Works (English Library) (82 page)

2
. Browne’s mother Anne was the daughter of Paul Garroway of Acton, Middlesex.

3
. The charge, made in Whitefoot’s earlier sketch of Browne’s life (
below, note 34
) and much exaggerated by Johnson, is no longer accepted. For the actual details, so far as they are known, consult N.J. Endicott,
UTQ
, XXX (1961), 180–210; cf. J.-J. Denonain, ‘Le reître et le jouvenceau’,
Caliban
, new series, I (1965), i, 7–20.

4
. Anthony à Wood, who had written a highly eclectic sketch of Browne’s activities in
Athenæ Oxonienses
(ed. Philip Bliss [1820], IV, 56–9).

5
. i.e. medicine.

6
. The ‘authorised’ edition was published in 1643. See above,
p. 57
.

7
.
Observations upon Religio Medici
, written at a single sitting on 22–23 December 1642, published in 1643, and usually bound with Browne’s work from 1659. Cf.
§343
.

8
. The ‘severe censure’, signed by ‘A.B.’, accuses Digby that
inter alia
he either ‘mistaketh, or traduceth the intention, and (besides a parenthesis sometimes upon the Author) onely medleth with those points from whence he takes a hint to deliver his prepar’d conceptions’. The charges are not altogether unfair.

9
. John Merryweather’s Latin translation was published in 1644. The Dutch version appeared in 1665; the French, in 1668; the German, in 1746 – but the Italian is not extant. The English annotations were attempted by Thomas Keck (
§ 257
).

10
. The French scholar with whom Milton was later to engage in a violent controversy (1651).

11
. For the full title of Ross’s work, see
§265
.

12
. As
below, p. 501, note 28
.

13
. Cf. above,
pp. 148–9
.

14
. Actually twelve.

15
. Dr Johnson errs. The successive editions of
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
display substantial amendments in both matter and manner (see above,
p. 33
).

16
. The Dutch version was published in 1688; the German, in 1680; the French, in 1733 – as well as an Italian one in 1737. For the full title of Ross’s work, see
§294
.

17
. Hardly: see
above, p. 160, note 139
.

18
. The author is unknown.

19
. i.e. the parodic
Batrachomyomachia
usually attributed to Homer (as above,
p. 138, note 22
), the
Culex
of Virgil, the
Muiopotmos
of Spenser, and the
Dies Aestiva, sive de umbra paegnion
(1610) of Jan van de Wouwer.

20
. The first, edited by Thomas Tenison, is the
Certain Miscellany Tracts
(1684); the other, the
Posthumous Works
(1712).

21
. ‘fowling’ and ‘fishing’.

22
. James Howell in
Instructions for Forreine Travell
(1642) actually supports Browne’s contention, not Johnson’s.

23
. As below
p. 547
.

24
. In the philosopher Berkeley’s
Verses on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America
(1752), which include the celebrated line ‘Westward the Course of Empire takes its way…’

25
. i.e.
Christian Morals
(see headnote,
above, p. 481
).

26
. Dr Johnson as an ardent royalist much exaggerates the king’s perception. The true circumstances are noted
above, p. 21
.

27
. Published in 1677; see
§334
.

28
. The ensuing paragraphs (to p. 505) reproduce nearly the sum of John Whitefoot’s ‘Some Minutes for the Life of Sir Thomas Browne’, prefixed to Browne’s
Posthumous Works
(1712), pp. xxvii–xxxi, xxxiii-xxxvii.
Browne himself spoke of the author as ‘my learned and faithfull old freind Mr John Whitefoot, Rector of Heigham and very deserving clark of the convocation for Norfolk’ (in
Repertorium, K
, III, 134).

29
. i.e. possessing fullness of flesh, in good condition.

30
. Elias Hutter’s Nuremberg Polyglot Boble (1599), which included: exts in Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, Latin, German, and French.

31
. i.e. surprising, utterly exceptional.

32
. ‘O grief, you do nothing’: a common expression.

33
. ‘Galen affords riches’: a medical axiom.

34
. Whitefoot’s text adds, ‘… having spent the greatest Part of his Patrimony in his Travels’. A footnote further adds, ‘He was likewise very much defrauded by one of his Guardians’ (see
above, p. 483, note 3
).

35
. The faculty of conjecturing.

36
. Isaac Watts, in
Reliquiae juveniles
(1734).

37
. The reputed ‘stability’ did not become apparent until the later part of the seventeenth century.

38
. i.e. modelling, shaping.

39
. Both ‘arthritical analogies’ and ‘paralogical’ are now obsolete; but ‘commensality’ is still in use. Browne’s other contributions to the language still current, include: antediluvian, electricity, hallucination, incontrovertible, literary, medical, precarious, retrogression, etc. (all in
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
).

40
. Cf.
above, p. 48, note 50
.

41
. Dr Johnson quotes in a footnote from Sir John Davies:

42
. 1 Corinthians 13. 5 and 7.