Prince Charles took the opportunity of bright moonshine to repass the Rhine; and Noailles, who had early intelligence of his motions, gave him very little disturbance, but contented himself with attacking the rearguard, and, when they retired to the main body, ceased his pursuit.
The king, upon the reduction of Prague, struck a medal, which had on one side a plan of the town, with this inscription:
"Prague taken by the king of Prussia,September 16, 1744;For the third time in three years."
"Prague taken by the king of Prussia,September 16, 1744;For the third time in three years."
"Prague taken by the king of Prussia,September 16, 1744;For the third time in three years."
On the other side were two verses, in which he prayed, "that his conquests might produce peace." He then marched forward with the rapidity which constitutes his military character; took possession of almost all Bohemia, and began to talk of entering Austria and besieging Vienna.
The queen was not yet wholly without resource. The elector of Saxony, whether invited or not, was not comprised in the union of Frankfort; and, as every sovereign is growing less as his next neighbour is growing greater, he could not heartily wish success to a confederacy which was to aggrandize the other powers of Germany. The Prussians gave him, likewise, a particular and immediate provocation to oppose them; for, when they departed to the conquest of Bohemia, with all the elation of imaginary success, they passed through his dominions with unlicensed and contemptuous disdain of his authority. As the approach of prince Charles gave a new prospect of events, he was easily persuaded to enter into an alliance with the queen, whom he furnished with a very large body of troops.
The king of Prussia having left a garrison in Prague, which he commanded to put the burghers to death, if they left their houses in the night, went forward to take the other towns and fortresses, expecting, perhaps, that prince Charles would be interrupted in his march; but the French, though they appeared to follow him, either could not, or would not, overtake him.
In a short time, by marches pressed on with the utmost eagerness, Charles reached Bohemia, leaving the Bavarians to regain the possession of the wasted plains of their country, which their enemies, who still kept the strong places, might again seize at will. At the approach of the Austrian army, the courage of the king of Prussia seemed to have failed him. He retired from post to post, and evacuated town after town, and fortress after fortress, without resistance, or appearance of resistance, as if he was resigning them to the rightful owners.
It might have been expected, that he should have made some effort to rescue Prague; but, after a faint attempt to dispute the passage of the Elbe, he ordered his garrison of eleven thousand men to quit the place. They left behind them their magazines and heavy artillery, among which were seven pieces of remarkable excellence, called "the seven electors." But they took with them their field cannon, and a great number of carriages, laden with stores and plunder, which they were forced to leave, in their way, to the Saxons and Austrians that harassed their march. They, at last, entered Silesia, with the loss of about a third part.
The king of Prussia suffered much in his retreat; for, besides the military stores, which he left every where behind him, even to the clothes of his troops, there was a want of provisions in his army, and, consequently, frequent desertions and many diseases; and a soldier sick or killed was equally lost to a flying army.
At last he reentered his own territories, and, having stationed his troops in places of security, returned, for a time, to Berlin, where he forbade all to speak either ill or well of the campaign.
To what end such a prohibition could conduce, it is difficult to discover: there is no country in which men can be forbidden to know what they know, and what is universally known may as well be spoken. It is true, that in popular governments seditious discourses may inflame the vulgar; but in such governments they cannot be restrained, and in absolute monarchies they are of little effect.
When the Prussians invaded Bohemia, and this whole nation was fired with resentment, the king of England gave orders in his palace, that none should mention his nephew with disrespect; by this command he maintained the decency necessary between princes, without enforcing, and, probably, without expecting obedience, but in his own presence.
The king of Prussia's edict regarded only himself, and, therefore, it is difficult to tell what was his motive, unless he intended to spare himself the mortification of absurd and illiberal flattery, which, to a mind stung with disgrace, must have been in the highest degree painful and disgusting.
Moderation in prosperity is a virtue very difficult to all mortals; forbearance of revenge, when revenge is within reach, is scarcely ever to be found among princes. Now was the time when the queen of Hungary might, perhaps, have made peace on her own terms; but keenness of resentment, and arrogance of success, withheld her from the due use of the present opportunity. It is said, that the king of Prussia, in his retreat, sent letters to prince Charles, which were supposed to contain ample concessions, but were sent back unopened. The king of England offered, likewise, to mediate between them; but his propositions were rejected at Vienna, where a resolution was taken, not only to revenge the interruption of their success on the Rhine, by the recovery of Silesia, but to reward the Saxons for their seasonable help, by giving them part of the Prussian dominions.
In the beginning of the year 1745, died the emperour Charles of Bavaria; the treaty of Frankfort was consequently at an end; and the king of Prussia, being no longer able to maintain the character of auxiliary to the emperour, and having avowed no other reason for the war, might have honourably withdrawn his forces, and, on his own principles, have complied with terms of peace; but no terms were offered him; the queen pursued him with the utmost ardour of hostility, and the French left him to his own conduct and his own destiny.
His Bohemian conquests were already lost; and he was now chased back into Silesia, where, at the beginning of the year, the war continued in an equilibration by alternate losses and advantages. In April, the elector of Bavaria, seeing his dominions overrun by the Austrians, and receiving very little succour from the French, made a peace with the queen of Hungary upon easy conditions, and the Austrians had more troops to employ against Prussia.
But the revolutions of war will not suffer human presumption to remain long unchecked. The peace with Bavaria was scarcely concluded when, the battle of Fontenoy was lost, and all the allies of Austria called upon her to exert her utmost power for the preservation of the Low Countries; and, a few days after the loss at Fontenoy, the first battle between the Prussians and the combined army of Austrians and Saxons, was fought at Niedburg in Silesia.
The particulars of this battle were variously reported by the different parties, and published in the journals of that time; to transcribe them would be tedious and useless, because accounts of battles are not easily understood, and because there are no means of determining to which of the relations credit should be given. It is sufficient that they all end in claiming or allowing a complete victory to the king of Prussia, who gained all the Austrian artillery, killed four thousand, took seven thousand prisoners, with the loss, according to the Prussian narrative, of only sixteen hundred men.
He now advanced again into Bohemia, where, however, he made no great progress. The queen of Hungary, though defeated, was not subdued. She poured in her troops from all parts to the reinforcement of prince Charles, and determined to continue the struggle with all her power. The king saw that Bohemia was an unpleasing and inconvenient theatre of war, in which he should be ruined by a miscarriage, and should get little by a victory. Saxony was left defenceless, and, if it was conquered, might be plundered.
He, therefore, published a declaration against the elector of Saxony, and, without waiting for reply, invaded his dominions. This invasion produced another battle at Standentz, which ended, as the former, to the advantage of the Prussians. The Austrians had some advantage in the beginning; and their irregular troops, who are always daring, and are always ravenous, broke into the Prussian camp, and carried away the military chest. But this was easily repaired by the spoils of Saxony.
The queen of Hungary was still inflexible, and hoped that fortune would, at last, change. She recruited once more her army, and prepared to invade the territories of Brandenburg; but the king of Prussia's activity prevented all her designs. One part of his forces seized Leipsic, and the other once more defeated the Saxons; the king of Poland fled from his dominions; prince Charles retired into Bohemia. The king of Prussia entered Dresden as a conqueror, exacted very severe contributions from the whole country, and the Austrians and Saxons were, at last, compelled to receive from him such a peace as he would grant. He imposed no severe conditions, except the payment of the contributions, made no new claim of dominions, and, with the elector Palatine, acknowledged the duke of Tuscany for emperour.
The lives of princes, like the histories of nations, have their periods. We shall here suspend our narrative of the king of Prussia, who was now at the height of human greatness, giving laws to his enemies, and courted by all the powers of Europe.
Though the writer of the following essays[64]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 and 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 had on its possessours, or virtue on its teachers.
Sir Thomas Browne was born at London, in the parish of St. Michael in Cheapside, on the 19th of October, 1605[65]. His father was a merchant, of an ancient 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[66], 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[67], 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 1623, from Winchester to Oxford[68], 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, 1626-7; 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 wish 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[69], 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[70], 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[71]; 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 be 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 1634[72], 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[73]," 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 1642, 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 errours 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 suffer 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 subtilty 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[74], of which part was spent in procuring Browne's book, and part in reading it.
Of these animadversions, when they were yet not 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 genteel 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 any thing miraculous. What it was that would, if it was related, sound 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, cooperating 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 bid 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[75], 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 Levinus Nicolaus Moltkenius. Of the English annotations, which in all the editions, from 1644, 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 style. He printed his translation in Holland with some difficulty[76]. 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[77], 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 1636, by the persuasion of Dr. Lushington[78], his tutor, who was then rector of Barnham Westgate, in the neighbourhood. It is recorded by Wood, that his practice was very extensive, and that many patients resorted to him. In 1637 he was incorporated doctor of physick in Oxfordf[79].
He married, in 1641, Mrs. Mileham[80], 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[81]upon a man who had just been wishing, in his new book, "that we might procreate, like trees, without conjunction," and had lately declared[82], 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 1646[83], he printed Inquiries into vulgar and common Errours; 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 tenour, of which the latter part arose 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 inquiry into vulgar errours. He published, in 1673, the sixth edition, with some improvements; but I think rather with explication 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.
He appears, indeed, to have been willing to pay labour for truth. Having heard a flying rumour of sympathetick needles, by which, suspended over a circular alphabet, distant friends or lovers might correspond, he procured two such alphabets to be made, touched his needles with the same magnet, and placed them upon proper spindles: the result was, that when he moved one of his needles, the other, instead of taking, by sympathy, the same direction, "stood like the pillars of Hercules." That it continued motionless, will be easily believed; and most men would have been content to believe it, without the labour of so hopeless an experiment. Browne might himself have obtained the same conviction by a method less operose, if he had thrust his needles through corks, and set them afloat in two basins of water.
Notwithstanding his zeal to detect old errours, he seems not very easy to admit new positions, for he never mentions the motion of the earth but with contempt and ridicule, though the opinion which admits it was then growing popular, and was surely plausible, even before it was confirmed by later observations.
The reputation of Browne encouraged some low writer to publish, under his name, a book called[84]Nature's Cabinet unlocked,—translated, according to Wood, from the physicks of Magirus; of which Browne took care to clear himself, by modestly advertising, that "if any man had been benefited by it, he was not so ambitious as to challenge the honour thereof, as having no hand in that work[85]."
In 1658, the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occasion to write Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial, or a Discourse of sepulchral Urns; in which he treats, with his usual learning, on the funeral rites of the ancient nations; exhibits their various treatment of the dead; and examines the substances found in his Norfolcian urns. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. It is scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars he has amassed together, in a treatise which seems to have been occasionally written; and for which, therefore, no materials could have been previously collected. It is, indeed, like other treatises of antiquity, rather for curiosity than use; for it is of small importance to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them into the sea, or which gave them to birds and beasts; when the practice of cremation began, or when it was disused; whether the bones of different persons were mingled in the same urn; what oblations were thrown into the pyre; or how the ashes of the body were distinguished from those of other substances. Of the uselessness of these inquiries, Browne seems not to have been ignorant; and, therefore, concludes them with an observation which can never be too frequently recollected:
"All, or most apprehensions, rested in opinions of some future being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they, which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason; whereby the noblest mind fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions: with these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against the cold potion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt.
"It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain: without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state were but a fallacy in nature: unsatisfied considerators would quarrel at the justness of the constitution, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower, whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferiour creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures; and being framed below the circumference of these hopes of cognition of better things, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment. But the superiour ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able, at last, to tell us we are more than our present selves; and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments."
To his treatise on urn-burial, was added the Garden of Cyrus, or the quincunxial Lozenge, or network Plantation of the Ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically, considered. This discourse he begins with the Sacred Garden, in which the first man was placed; and deduces the practice of horticulture, from the earliest accounts of antiquity to the time of the Persian Cyrus, the first man whom we actually know to have planted a quincunx; which, however, our author is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it in the description of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems willing to believe, and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by the feeders on vegetables before the flood.
Some of the most pleasing performances have been produced by learning and genius, exercised upon subjects of little importance. It seems to have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to show how it could exalt the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things really and naturally great, is a task not only diflicult but disagreeable; because the writer is degraded in his own eyes, by standing in comparison with his subject, to which he can hope to add nothing from his imagination: but it is a perpetual triumph of fancy to expand a scanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from obscure properties, and to produce to the world an object of wonder, to which nature had contributed little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the frogs of Homer, the gnat and the bees of Virgil, the butterfly of Spenser, the shadow of Wowerus, and the quincunx of Browne.
In the prosecution of this sport of fancy, he considers every production of art and nature, in which he could find any decussation or approaches to the form of a quincunx; and, as a man once resolved upon ideal discoveries seldom searches long in vain, he finds his favourite figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, sacred or civil; so that a reader, not watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx.
To show the excellence of this figure, he enumerates all its properties; and finds it in almost every thing of use or pleasure: and to show how readily he supplies what he cannot find, one instance may be sufficient: "though therein," says he, "we meet not with right angles, yet every rhombus containing four angles equal unto two right, it virtually contains two right in every one."
The fanciful sports of great minds are never without some advantage to knowledge. Browne has interspersed many curious observations on the form of plants, and the laws of vegetation; and appears to have been a very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched, with great nicety, the evolution of the parts of plants from their seminal principles.
He is then naturally led to treat of the number five; and finds, that by this number many things are circumscribed; that there are five kinds of vegetable productions, five sections of a cone, five orders of architecture, and five acts of a play. And observing that five was the ancient conjugal, or wedding number, he proceeds to a speculation, which I shall give in his own words: "the ancient numerists made out the conjugal number by two and three, the first parity and imparity, the active and passive digits, the material and formal principles in generative societies."
These are all the tracts which he published. But many papers were found in his closet: "some of them," says Whitefoot, "designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious writers."
Of these, two collections have been published; one by Dr. Tenison, the other, in 1722, by a nameless editor. Whether the one or the other selected those pieces, which the author would have preferred, cannot be known; but they have both the merit of giving to mankind what was too valuable to be suppressed; and what might, without their interposition, have, perhaps, perished among other innumerable labours of learned men, or have been burnt in a scarcity of fuel, like the papers of Pierescius.
The first of these posthumous treatises contains Observations upon several Plants mentioned in Scripture: these remarks, though they do not immediately either rectify the faith, or refine the morals of the reader, yet are by no means to be censured as superfluous niceties, or useless speculations; for they often show some propriety of description, or elegance of allusion, utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in oriental botany; and are often of more important use, as they remove some difficulty from narratives, or some obscurity from precepts.
The next is, of Garlands, or coronary and garland Plants; a subject merely of learned curiosity, without any other end than the pleasure of reflecting on ancient customs, or on the industry with which studious men have endeavoured to recover them.
The next is a letter, on the Fishes eaten by our Saviour with his Disciples, after his Resurrection from the Dead: which contains no determinate resolution of the question, what they were, for, indeed, it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning could supply, consists in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea.
Then follow, Answers to certain Queries about Fishes, Birds, Insects; and a Letter of Hawks and Falconry, ancient and modern; in the first of which he gives the proper interpretation of some ancient names of animals, commonly mistaken; and in the other, has some curious observations on the art of hawking, which he considers as a practice unknown to the ancients. I believe all our sports of the field are of Gothick original; the ancients neither hunted by the scent, nor seemed much to have practised horsemanship, as an exercise; and though in their works there is mention ofaucupiumandpiscatio, they seemed no more to have been considered as diversions, than agriculture, or any other manual labour.
In two more letters, he speaks of the cymbals of the Hebrews, but without any satisfactory determination; and ofrhopalick, or gradual verses, that is, of verses beginning with a word of one syllable, and proceeding by words of which each has a syllable more than the former; as,
"O deus, aeterne stationis conciliator." AUSONIUS.
"O deus, aeterne stationis conciliator." AUSONIUS.
"O deus, aeterne stationis conciliator." AUSONIUS.
And after this manner pursuing the hint, he mentions many other restrained methods of versifying, to which industrious ignorance has sometimes voluntarily subjected itself.
His next attempt is, on Languages, and particularly the Saxon Tongue. He discourses with great learning, and generally with great justness, of the derivation and changes of languages; but, like other men of multifarious learning, he receives some notions without examination. Thus he observes, according to the popular opinion, that the Spaniards have retained so much Latin as to be able to compose sentences that shall be, at once, grammatically Latin and Castilian: this will appear very unlikely to a man that considers the Spanish terminations; and Howell, who was eminently skilful in the three provincial languages, declares, that, after many essays, he never could effect it[86].
The principal design of this letter, is to show the affinity between the modern English, and the ancient Saxon; and he observes, very rightly, that "though we have borrowed many substantives, adjectives, and some verbs, from the French; yet the great body of numerals, auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, which are the distinguishing and lasting parts of a language, remain with us from the Saxon."
To prove this position more evidently, he has drawn up a short discourse of six paragraphs, in Saxon and English; of which every word is the same in both languages, excepting the terminations and orthography. The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phraseology is English; and, I think, would not have been understood by Bede or Elfric, notwithstanding the confidence of our author. He has, however, sufficiently proved his position, that the English resembles its paternal language more than any modern European dialect.
There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one, of artificial Hills, Mounts, or Barrows, in England; in reply to an interrogatory letter of E. D. whom the writers of the Biographia Britannica suppose to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or sir William Dugdale, one of Browne's correspondents. These are declared by Browne, in concurrence, I think, with all other antiquaries, to be, for the most part, funeral monuments. He proves, that both the Danes and Saxons buried their men of eminence under piles of earth, "which admitting," says he "neither ornament, epitaph, nor inscription, may, if earthquakes spare them, outlast other monuments: obelisks have their term, and pyramids will tumble; but these mountainous monuments may stand, and are like to have the same period with the earth."
In the next, he answers two geographical questions; one concerning Troas, mentioned in the acts and epistles of St. Paul, which he determines to be the city built near the ancient Ilium; and the other concerning the Dead sea, of which he gives the same account with other writers.
Another letter treats of the Answers of the Oracle of Apollo, at Delphos, to Croesus, king of Lydia. In this tract nothing deserves notice, more than that Browne considers the oracles as evidently and indubitably supernatural, and founds all his disquisition upon that postulate. He wonders why the physiologists of old, having such means of instruction, did not inquire into the secrets of nature: but judiciously concludes, that such questions would probably have been vain; "for in matters cognoscible, and formed for our disquisition, our industry must be our oracle, and reason our Apollo."
The pieces that remain are, a Prophecy concerning the future State of several Nations; in which Browne plainly discovers his expectation to be the same with that entertained lately, with more confidence, by Dr. Berkeley, "that America will be the seat of the fifth empire;" and, Museum clausum, sive Bibliotheca abscondita: in which the author amuses himself with imagining the existence of books and curiosities, either never in being or irrecoverably lost.
These pieces I have recounted, as they are ranged in Tenison's collection, because the editor has given no account of the time at which any of them were written.
Some of them are of little value, more than as they gratify the mind with the picture of a great scholar, turning his learning into amusement; or show upon how great a variety of inquiries, the same mind has been successfully employed.
The other collection of his posthumous pieces, published in octavo, London, 1722, contains Repertorium; or some account of the Tombs and Monuments in the Cathedral of Norwich; where, as Tenison observes, there is not matter proportionate to the skill of the antiquary.
The other pieces are, Answers to sir William Dugdale's Inquiries about the Fens; a letter concerning Ireland; another relating to urns newly discovered; some short strictures on different subjects; and a Letter to a Friend on the Death of his intimate Friend, published singly by the author's son, in 1690.
There is inserted in the Biographia Britannica, a Letter containing Instructions for the Study of Physick: which, with the essays here offered to the publick, completes the works of Dr. Browne.
To the life of this learned man, there remains little to be added, but that, in 1665, he was chosen honorary fellow of the college of physicians, as a man, "virtute et literis ornatissimus," eminently embellished with literature and virtue; and in 1671, received, at Norwich, the honour of knighthood from Charles the second, a prince, who, with many frailties and vices, had yet skill to discover excellence, and virtue to reward it with such honorary distinctions, at least, as cost him nothing, yet, conferred by a king so judicious and so much beloved, had the power of giving merit new lustre and greater popularity.
Thus he lived in high reputation, till, in his seventy-sixth year, he was seized with a colick, which, after having tortured him about a week, put an end to his life at Norwich, on his birthday, October, 19, 1682[87]. Some of his last words were expressions of submission to the will of God, and fearlessness of death.
He lies buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, in Norwich, with this inscription on a mural monument, placed on the south pillar of the altar: