1623, when in his eighteenth year, he was entered as a fellow-commoner at Broadgate Hall, Oxford, soon after endowed as a college, and taking its name from the Earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of the university.

Here he earned the warm and lasting esteem of his tutor, Dr. Thomas Lushington. There is little doubt that his university career was distinguished not only by his rare intellectual qualifications, but by the display of a singularly attractive disposition; for we find in after-years that his college friends had much to do in shaping his career. He was admitted to his Bachelor's degree January 31, 1626-7, and proceeded Master of Arts in his twenty-third year.

From this time the study of medicine appears to have claimed his special attention, and he soon began to practise in the neighbourhood of Oxford. He quickly, however, gave up his work, in order that he might avail himself of the opportunity of accompanying his stepfather, Sir Thomas Dutton, in an official tour through Ireland, undertaken for the purpose of inspecting and reporting upon the condition of its forts and castles, the country then being in one of its periodically disturbed states.

From Ireland he continued his travels to

France, where he visited the principal places of interest. Very few autobiographical details are available regarding this period, but we find him in after-years, in a letter to his son, speaking of his experiences of Rochelle, as a place of too much good fellowship and a very drinking town, more than other parts of France.'

He made a considerable stay at Montpellier, then a famous school of medicine, whence he proceeded to Padua, the most renowned of the Italian universities. Here existed the most celebrated school of medicine in the world; and here Harvey and nearly all the seventeenth-century doctors of any fame passed their curriculum under the greatest teachers of the age.

Doubtless during this period the young student acquired his ready knowledge of French and Italian, and obtained an extensive acquaintance with the literature of both countries, drinking deeply from the rich storehouses of Dante and Montaigne; for the influence of the daring sublimity of the one and the almost self-effacing philosophic toleration of the other is most strongly marked in Sir Thomas Browne's subsequent writings.

Perhaps the following is one of the most striking of the many interesting parallelisms

that could be pointed out, showing how nearly he approached Montaigne in at least one side of his character. Montaigne wrote: 'I look upon all men as my countrymen, and embrace a Polander as heartily as a Frenchman, preferring the universal and common tie to this national tie.' (Book III. chap. viii.)

In the Religio Medici, Part II. sect. i., Browne writes: 'I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others: those natural repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spanish, or Dutch; but where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen, I honour, love, and embrace them in the same degree. Many similar lines of convergence can be found by careful comparison of these two authors, who, while in some respects so dissimilar, yet strangely approximate in thoughts that are common to both.

Browne's foreign travel was concluded about 1633, when he was in his twentyeighth year, he having finished his medical studies at Leyden, where he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine. It must be remembered that at this time foreign medical degrees were regarded with much greater esteem than at present, and the fact, already

alluded to, of the eminent positions held by the schools of Montpellier and Padua sufficiently explains why English doctors sought their diplomas abroad rather than at home.

Within a few years of his return Browne was incorporated Doctor of Medicine at Oxford (1637), showing that a foreign degree was considered a sufficient reason for the bestowal of an English degree honoris causa.

After his return to England, Dr. Browne appears to have established himself in practice at Shipden Hall, near Halifax; and at this place, in the enforced leisure that generally falls to the lot of the young doctor, he doubtless wrote his first and most famous work, the Religio Medici. Internal evidences, derived from the references he makes to his age in the Religio Medici, almost certainly fix the actual year in which this unique 'piece of serene wisdom' was written as 1635, when he was in his

thirtieth year. He wrote: 'As yet I have

not seen one revolution of Saturn, nor hath my pulse beat thirty years'; and again, in his preface to the edition of 1643: 'This, I confess, about seven years past, with some others of affinity thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I had at leisure hours composed.'

This treatise, written SO soon after

Browne's return from his student life in France and Italy, retains the varied impressions made upon his mind by the opposite schools of thought he had passed through, and is an elaborate apology for his belief. No further proof of its breadth and liberality is needed than the fact that its author was claimed both by Romanists and Quakers as a member of their far differing creeds!

It may be presumed that the Shipden Hall practice was not very lucrative or promising, for in 1637 he removed to Norwich, at the earnest solicitation of his former college tutor, who had then become rector of the neighbouring parish of Burnham Westgate. To the persuasions of Dr. Lushington were joined those of Sir Nicholas Bacon of Gillingham, Justinian Lewyn, who had just taken his degree as Doctor of Law at Pembroke College (June 30, 1637), and Sir Charles Le Gros of Crostwick,2 all Norfolk worthies, who desired to bring so promising and learned a man within the circle of their immediate influence.

1 Judge-Marshall of the Army under Thomas, Earl of Arundel, in the Scotch expedition of 1639, and after that one of the Masters in Ordinary in the High Court of Chancery, a knight and commissionary and official of Norfolk.-Wood's Fasti.

2 The father of Thomas le Gros, to whom Hydriotaphia was dedicated.