SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S URN-BURIAL,* THERE is a conversation recorded by
Hazlitt in which he and Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt and others of that familiar coterie took part, the subject being "Persons one would wish to have seen." Lamb seems to have been as whimsical and genially contradictory as usual. It was taken for granted that the first persons he would choose to see would be Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke, and when he die- tented, Shakespeare's and Milton's names were proposed, only to meet with another quaint objection. " I shall guess no more,' said A—. Who is it, then, you would like to see "in his habit as he lived," if you had your choice of the whole range of English literature ? ' " Whereupon, to the surprise of all present, Lamb promptly named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney. Hazlitt proceeds to give Lamb's reasons for so whimsical a choice, but he allows that it is difficult to record words spoken twenty years since, and he puts pompous phrases into Lamb's mouth that would have ill-accorded with his habitual stammer. "When I look," he is supposed to have said of Sir Thomas Browne, "at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition, the Urn-Burial, I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure ; or it is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I wonld invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it." it was to this particular work that Charles Lamb alluded in his essay on "The Two Races of Men," the men who borrow and the men who lend. He points pathetically to a space in his bookshelf. " That slight vacuum in the left-hand case—two shelves from the ceiling—scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser—was whilom the commodious resting-place of Browne on Urn-Burial. C. will hardly allege that be knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and -was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties." We can imagine how Lamb's friends adopted Lamb's friendships for those half-forgotten worthies, and we would fain look on the volume of Browne's works lent to Coleridge, and returned "enriched with annotations." Where is its resting-place ? Who owns it now ? Has it passed over to America with the rest of Lamb's papers and manuscripts? The small volume just issued by the Chiswick Press is a reprint of the text of the first edition of Hydriotaphia, pub- lished in octavo in 1658, to which has been added marginal illustrations and corrections that appeared in the second edition. There is an introduction and notes by Sir John Evans, and the original title-page of the first edition is reproduced ; but Sir Thomas Browne's treatise on Brampton Urns is substituted for the Garden of Cyrus, as being a natural adjunct to his Urn-Burial, though not pub- lished till after his death in 1712. The frontispiece is a very bad copy of the original engraving by Van der Gucht. As the late Mr. 3. A. Symonds has said, "Hydriotaphia is a work which calls for no explanatory comment. The design is simple, the intention plain, the erudition singular, the language sustained on a majestic note of eloquence;" and he goes on to point out the rare qualities of style, here" displayed in rich maturity and heavy-scented blossom." Dr. Johnson thought it more curious than useful, and was evidently a little contemptuous that so much learning had been expended on " Norfolcian urns ; " he calls Sir Thomas Browne's style a "tissue of many languages," but goes on to confess that he enriched our philosophical diction and used uncommon words to express very uncommon ideas. Coleridge complains of his "hyper-latiniem," but Milton had already largely made use of Latin idioms, and Browne used his inventive powers to coin words whenever he needed them to fill spaces in his rolling, sonorous sentences. The Urn-Burial is the best proof we have of Browne's wide reading and his ex- traordinary memory, of which his friend, Dr. Whitefoot, has left a record that, "though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, [it] was capacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remembered all that was remarkable in any book that he had read; and not only knew all persons again that he had ever seen at any distance of time, but remembered the circum- stances of their bodies and their particular discourses and speeches." It is the harvest of a great store of learning, gathered from Jewish, Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek and Roman, Eastern and Western sources, on the different
• Brown's Tirn•Bwrial and Brampton Urns. Chiswick Pres,,
methods of interment or disposal of dead bodies, the text of his discourse being the discovery of urns containing burnt bones in a field near Old Walsinghum. Modern antiquaries, according to Sir John Evans, can tell at a glance that these urns were of Saxon origin, but the learned doctor believed them to be Roman, and their exact date matters little to the reader of Hydriotaphia, who knows that it is, as Dr. Johnson says, "like other treatises of antiquity, rather for curiosity than use." The form is so dignified, so rich in poetical imagery, and inlaid with so many polished literary gems, that we care comparatively little for the substance or argument. It is difficult to speak of this work without bor- rowing some of its author's quaint and lavish phraseology.
It matters little "what time the persons of these Ossuaries entred the famous Nation of the dead," their epitaph is written in glowing, living words that time has not dimmed nor the hand of man effaced. Sooner or later, we must all find out that "there is nothing strictly immortall but immor- tality.;" and in our own insignificance we console ourselves with the old doctor's reasoning : "To be namelesse in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Ca,naanitish woman lives more happily without a name than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good theef than Pilate ? "
We learn of the man himself from his first book, Religio Medici, which is a curious rambling record of his personal beliefs and innermost thoughts. Dr. Whitefoot tells us that though Browne was excellent company and always cheerful, yet he was rarely heard to laugh or to "break a jest." Be seems to have been reserved and silent, though his sensitive nature betrayed itself by a habit of sudden and swift blushing. In common therefore with all reserved natures, he expressed himself more easily and fully on paper, and relieved his brain crowded with an "exuberance of knowledge and plenitude of ideas," by jotting down his thoughts as the spirit moved him. He tells us that he admires " the mystical way of Pythagorai and the magic of numbers," and believes in astrology, alchemy, palmistry, and witchcraft. Unfortunately, this last belief led him to assist in the trial and condemnation of two witches in 1664, at Bury St. Edmund's, when the opinion of BO learned a man no doubt influenced Sir Matthew Hale's verdict. He had a deep sense of religion tinged with superstition, and an immense amount of faith. We gather that his cast of mind was mystical and philoso- phical rather than polemical or political. He prides himself on not being proud, but charitable, affable, and forgiving, and, disclaiming intolerance or antipathies, declares that he hates nothing and nobody except the devil. Modern writers are surprised that his books contain no hint of the troubled times through which England was passing,—no echo of the Revolu- tion or the Commonwealth. Browne was probably anxious to live unmolested ; as he says in Religio Medici, "Scholars are men of peace ; " and a partisan pen in those days gained for its owner a dangerous notoriety. The earliest extant speci- mens of his correspondence are dated about 1660, and it may be possible that he considered it prudent to destroy letters written before that date. Wilkins says there is no doubt that "in perilous times Dr. Browne had steadily adhered to the Royal cause," and that his knighthood was a reward for his loyalty. In a letter to his son, "Honest Tom," written in January, 1660-61, Sir Thomas Browne says : "Yesterday was an humiliation and fast kept to divert the judgements of God upon us and our posteritie for the abominable murther of King Charles I. ; " and elsewhere he describes the great rejoicings at the Coronation and "Cromwell hangd and burnt everywhere, whose bead is now upon West- minster Hall, together with Ireton and Bra,dshaws." Among the letters are allusions to a favourite little grandson, son of Dr. Edward Browne, that show us the philosopher and his wife in a homely and domestic light. Dame Dorothy Browne, whose spelling does not equal her sentiments, writes to her daughter-in-law: "I bless God wee ar all in helth, and Tomey much longing for his bridles ; " and she adds in a postscript to her husband's next letter, " Tomey have receved his clones, and is much delighted, and sends you and his mother and grandmother clutty and thanckes, and meanes to war them cad ally." There are a few letters from Evelyn relating to a projected work in which he' besought the learned doctor's help. In one he says :—" In my philosophico-medicall garden you can impart to me extraordinary assistances, as likewise in my coronary chapter." And Sir Thomas wrote a treatise of " Garlands and Coronary and Garland Plants," which was intended as a contribution to Elysium Brittanicum, but the work was never completed. Evelyn notes in his diary during ft flying v sit to Norwich in 1671 :—" Next morning I went to see Sir Thomas Browne (with whom I had sometimes corre- sponded by letter, tho' I had never seen him before). His whole house and gardens being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collection, especialy
books, plants, and natural things."
Sir Thomas Browne died at Norwich in 1882 on his seventy- seventh birthday,—a coincidence of dates that he himself would have noted with much interest, as the rounding of a circle. He was buried in the old Church of St. Peter Mancroft, where his own and his wife's monuments still face each other on the north and south sides of the chancel. In August, 1840, his coffin-lid was accidentally broken open by a workman. We are told of auburn hair still adhering to the skull, which was shown in the museum at Norwich. It is strange that one who meditated so deeply on the transitory duration of monuments and the great mutations of the world should have exemplified in his own relics his words to Thomas Le Gros,--" But who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried P who bath the Oracle of his ashes, or whether they are to be scattered "
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