Sir Thomas Browne · 1 of 6

The Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

THOUGH the writer of the following Essays seems to have had the fortune common among men of letters, of raising little curiosity after his private life, and has, therefore, few memorials preserved of his felicities or misfortunes; yet, because an edition of a posthumous work appears imperfect and neglected, without some account of the author, it was thought necessary to attempt the gratification of that curiosity which naturally inquires, by what peculiarities of nature or fortune eminent men have been distinguished, how uncommon attainments have been gained, and what influence learning has had on its possessors, or virtue on its teachers.

Sir Thomas Browne was born at London, in the parish of St. Michael in Cheapside, on the 19th of 0ctober, MDCV. His father was a merchant of an antient family at Upton in Cheshire. Of the name or family of his mother, I find no account.

Of his childhood or youth, there is little known; except that he lost his father very early; that he was, according to the common fate of orphans, defrauded by one of his guardians; and that he was placed for his education at the school of Winchester.

His mother, having taken three thousand pounds, as the third part of her husband’s property, left her son, by consequence, six thousand; a large fortune for a man destined to learning, at that time when commerce had not yet filled the nation with nominal riches. But it happened to him as to many others, to be made poorer by opulence; for his mother soon married Sir Thomas Dutton, probably by the inducement of her fortune; and he was left to the rapacity of his guardian, deprived now of both his parents and therefore helpless and unprotected.

He was removed in the beginning of the year MDCXXIII from Winchester to Oxford; and entered a gentleman-commoner of Broadgate-Hall, which was soon afterwards endowed, and took the name of Pembroke-College, from the Earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of the University. He was admitted to the degree of bachelor of arts, January 31, MDCXXVI-VII; being, as Wood remarks, the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most, can with little better, than that it may long proceed as it began.

Having afterwards taken his degree of master of arts, he turned his studies to physick, and practised it for some time in Oxfordshire; but soon afterwards, either induced by curiosity, or invited by promises, he quitted his settlement, and accompanied his father-in-law, who had some employment in Ireland, in a visitation of the forts and castles, which the state of Ireland then made necessary.

He that has once prevailed on himself to break his connexions of acquaintance, and begin a wandering life, very easily continues it. Ireland had, at that time, very little to offer to the observation of a man of letters: he, therefore, passed into France and Italy; made some stay at Montpellier and Padua, which were then the celebrated schools of physick; and returning home through Holland, procured himself to be created Doctor of Physick at Leyden.

When he began his travels, or when he concluded them, there is no certain account; nor do there remain any observations made by him in his passage through those countries which he visited. To consider, therefore, what pleasure or instruction might have been received from the remarks of a man so curious and diligent, would be voluntarily to indulge a painful reflection, and load the imagination with a wish, which, while it is formed, is known to be vain. It is, however, to be lamented, that those who are most capable of improving mankind, very frequently neglect to communicate their knowledge; either because it is more pleasing to gather ideas than to impart them, or because to minds naturally great, few things appear of so much importance as to deserve the notice of the publick.

About the year MDCXXXIV, he is supposed to have returned to London; and the next year to have written his celebrated treatise, called Religio Medici, “The Religion of a Physician,” which he declares himself never to have intended for the press, having composed it only for his own exercise and entertainment. It, indeed, contains many passages, which, relating merely to his own person, can be of no great importance to the publick: but when it was written, it happened to him as to others, he was too much pleased with his performance, not to think that it might please others as much; he, therefore, communicated it to his friends, and receiving, I suppose, that exuberant applause with which every man repays the grant of perusing a manuscript, he was not very diligent to obstruct his own praise by recalling his papers, but suffered them to wander from hand to hand, till at last, without his own consent, they were in MDCXLII given to a printer.

This has, perhaps, sometimes befallen others; and this, I am willing to believe, did really happen to Dr. Browne: but there is, surely, some reason to doubt the truth of the complaint so frequently made of surreptitious editions. A song, or an epigram, may be easily printed without the author's knowledge; because it may be learned when it is repeated, or may be written out with very little trouble: but a long treatise, however elegant, is not often copied by mere zeal or curiosity, but may be worn out in passing from hand to hand, before it is multiplied by a transcript. It is easy to convey an imperfect book, by a distant hand, to the press, and plead the circulation of a false copy as an excuse for publishing the true, or to correct what is found faulty or offensive, and charge the errors on the transcriber’s depravations.

This is a stratagem, by which an author panting for fame, and yet afraid of seeming, to challenge it, may at once gratify his vanity, and preserve the appearance of modesty; may enter the lists, and secure a retreat: and this, candour might fuller to pass undetected as an innocent fraud, but that indeed no fraud is innocent; for the confidence which makes the happiness of society, is in some degree diminished by every man whose practice is at variance with his words.

The Religio Medici was no sooner published than it excited the attention of the publick, by the novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language.

What is much read, will be much criticised. The Earl of Dorset recommended this book to the perusal of Sir Kenelm Digby, who returned his judgment upon it, not in a letter, but a book; in which, though mingled with some positions fabulous and uncertain, there are acute remarks, just censures, and profound speculations; yet its principal claim to admiration is, that it was written in twenty-four hours, of which part was spent in procuring Browne’s book, and part in reading it.

Of these animadversions, when they were not yet all printed, either officiousness or malice informed Dr. Browne; who wrote to Sir Kenelm with much softness and ceremony, declaring the unworthiness of his work to engage such notice, the intended privacy of the composition, and the corruptions of the impression; and received an answer equally gentle and respectful, containing high commendations of the piece, pompous professions of reverence, meek acknowledgments of inability, and anxious apologies for the hastiness of his remarks.

The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life. Who would not have thought, that these two luminaries of their age had ceased to endeavour to grow bright by the obscuration of each other: yet the animadversions thus weak, thus precipitate, upon a book thus injured in the transcription, quickly passed the press; and Religio Medici was more accurately published, with an admonition prefixed “to those who have, or shall peruse the observations upon a former corrupt copy;” in which there is a severe censure, not upon Digby, who was to be used with ceremony, but upon the Observator who had usurped his name: nor was this invective written by Dr. Browne, who was supposed to be satisfied with his opponent’s apology; but by some officious friend zealous for his honour, without his consent.

Browne has, indeed, in his own preface, endeavoured to secure himself from rigorous examination, by alleging, that “many things are delivered rhetorically, many expressions merely tropical, and therefore many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the rigid test of reason.” The first glance upon his book will indeed discover examples of this liberty of thought and expression: “I could be content (says he) to be nothing almost to eternity, if I might enjoy my Saviour at the last.” He has little acquaintance with the acuteness of Browne, who suspects him of a serious opinion, that any thing can be “almost eternal,” or that any time beginning and ending is not infinitely less than infinite duration.

In this book, he speaks much, and, in the opinion of Digby, too much of himself; but with such generality and conciseness as affords very little light to his biographer: he declares, that, besides the dialects of different provinces, he understood six languages; that he was no stranger to astronomy; and that he had seen several countries: but what most awakens curiosity, is his solemn assertion, that “His life has been a miracle of thirty years; which to relate, were not history but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable.”

There is, undoubtedly, a sense, in which all life is miraculous; as it is an union of powers of which we can image no connexion, a succession of motions of which the first cause must be supernatural: but life, thus explained, whatever it may have of miracle, will have nothing of fable; and, therefore, the author undoubtedly had regard to something, by which he imagined himself distinguished from the rest of mankind.

Of these wonders, however, the view that can be now taken of his life offers no appearance. The course of his education was like that of others, such as put him little in the way of extraordinary casualties. A scholastick and academical life is very uniform; and has, indeed, more safety than pleasure. A traveller has greater opportunities of adventure; but: Browne traversed no unknown seas, or Arabian deserts: and, surely, a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpellier and Padua, and at last take his degree at Leyden, without anything miraculous. What it was, that would, if it was related, found so poetical and fabulous, we are left to guess; I believe, without hope of guessing rightly. The wonders probably were transacted in his own mind: self-love, co-operating with an imagination vigorous and fertile as that of Browne, will find or make objects of astonishment in every man’s life: and, perhaps, there is no human being, however hid in the crowd from the observation of his fellow-mortals, who, if he has leisure and disposition to recollect his own thoughts and actions, will not conclude his life in some sort a miracle, and imagine himself distinguished from all the rest of his species by many discriminations of nature or of fortune.

The success of this performance was such, as might naturally encourage the author to new undertakings. A gentleman of Cambridge, whose name was Merryweather, turned it not inelegantly into Latin; and from his version it was again translated into Italian, German, Dutch, and French; and at Strasburg the Latin translation was published with large notes, by Lennus Nicolaus Moltfarius. Of the English annotations, which in all the editions from. MDCXLIV accompany the book, the author is unknown.

Of Merryweather, to whose zeal Browne was so much indebted for the sudden extension of his renown, I know nothing, but that he published a small treatise for the instruction of young persons in the attainment of a Latin stile. He printed his translation in Holland with some difficulty. The first printer to whom he offered it, carried it to Salmasius, “who laid it by (says he) in state for three months,” and then discouraged its publication: it was afterwards rejected by two other printers, and at last was received by Hackius.

The peculiarities of this book raised the author, as is usual, many admirers and many enemies; but we know not of more than one professed answer, written under the title of “Medicus medicatus,” by Alexander Ross, which was universally neglected by the world.

At the time when this book was published, Dr. Browne resided at Norwich, where he had settled in MDCXXXVI, by the persuasion of Dr. Lushington his tutor, who was then rector of Barnham Westgate in the neighbourhood. It is recorded by Wood, that his pratice was very extensive, and that many patients resorted to him. In MDCXXXVII he was incorporated Doctor of physick in Oxford.

He married in MDCXLI Mrs. Mileham, of a good family in Norfolk; “a lady” (says Whitefoot) 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.”

This marriage could not but draw the raillery of contemporary wits upon a man, who had just been wishing in his new book, “that we might procreate, like trees, without conjunction;” and had lately declared, that “the whole world was made for man, but only the twelfth part of man for woman;” and that “man is the whole world, but woman only the rib or crooked part of man.”

Whether the lady had been yet informed of these contemptuous positions, or whether she was pleased with the conquest of so formidable a rebel, and considered it as a double triumph, to attract so much merit, and overcome so powerful prejudices; or whether, like most others, she married upon mingled motives, between convenience and inclination; she had, however, no reason to repent: for she lived happily with him one and forty years; and bore him ten children, of whom one son and three daughters outlived their parents: she survived him two years, and passed her widowhood in plenty, if not in opulence.

Browne having now entered the world as an author, and experienced the delights of praise and molestations of censure, probably found his dread of the publick eye diminished; and, therefore, was not long before he trusted his name to the criticks a second time: for in MDCXLVI he printed Enquiries into vulgar and common errors; a work, which as it arose not from fancy and invention, but from observation and books, and contained not a single discourse of one continued tenor, of which the latter part rose from the former, but an enumeration of many unconnected particulars, must have been the collection of years, and the effect of a design early formed and long pursued, to which his remarks had been continually referred, and which arose gradually to its present bulk by the daily aggregation of new particles of knowledge. It is, indeed, to be wished, that he had longer delayed the publication, and added what the remaining part of his life might have furnished: the thirty-six years which he spent afterwards in study and experience, would doubtless have made large additions to an “Enquiry into vulgar errors.” He published in MDCLXXIII the sixth edition, with some improvements; but I think rather with explications of what he had already written, than any new heads of disquisition. But with the work, such as the author, whether hindered from continuing it by eagerness of praise, or weariness of labour, thought fit to give, we must be content; and remember, that in all sublunary things, there is something to be wished, which we must wish in vain.

This book, like his former, was received with great applause, was answered by Alexander Ross, and translated into Dutch and German, and not many years ago into French. It might now be proper, had not the favour with which it was at first received filled the kingdom with copies, to reprint it with notes partly supplemental and partly emendatory, to subjoin those discoveries which the industry of the last age has made, and correct those mistakes which the author has committed not by idleness or negligence, but for want of Boyle's and Newton's philosophy.