PART II. science, command of my affections, the love of Thy self and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar. These are, O LORD, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to Thy Hand or Providence. Dispose of me according to the wisdom of Thy plea sure: Thy will be my own un- FINIS. A LETTER TO A FRIEND, Upon occafion of the DE AT H OF HIS Intimate Friend. By the Learned Sir THOMAS BROWN, Knight, Doctor of Phyfick, late of Norwich. LONDON: Printed for Charles Brome at the Gun at the West-End of S. Paul's Church-yard. 1690. A LETTER TO A FRIEND, &c. IVE me leave to wonder that News of this Give me sheard have such heaty Wingo, that you should hear so little concerning your dearest Friend, and that I must make that unwilling Repetition to tell you, Ad portam rigidos calces extendit, that he is Dead and Buried, and by this time no Puny among the mighty Nations of the Dead ; for tho he left this World not very many days past, yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark Society; and considering the incessant Mortality of Mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole Earth so few as a thousand an hour. Altho at this distance you had no early Account or Particular of his Death, yet your Affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret Sense or Intimation thereof by Dreams, thoughtful Whisperings, Mercurisms, Airy Nuncio's, or sympathetical Insinuations, SECT. I. Persius, SECT. 11. St. Matth. xxiv. 29. SECT. III. which many seem to have had at the Death of their dearest Friends; for since we find in that famous Story, that Spirits themselves were fain to tell their Fellows at a distance that the great Antonio was dead, we have a sufficient Excuse for our Ignorance in such Particulars, and must rest content with the common Road and Appian Way of Knowledge by Information. Tho the uncertainty of the End of this World hath confounded all Humane Predictions, yet they who shall live to see the Sun and Moon darkned, and the Stars to fall from Heaven, will hardly be deceived in the Advent of the last Day; and therefore strange it is, that the common Fallacy of consumptive Persons, who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their Friends in perfect Health and Judgment-that you should be so little acquainted with Plautus's sick Complexion, or that almost an Hippocratical Face should not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair of his Continuation in such an emaciated State, wherein medical Predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute Diseases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a Physician as a Judge. Upon my first Visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all hopes of his Recovery, That in my sad Opinion he was not like to behold a Grashopper, much less to pluck another Fig; and in no long time after, seemed to discover that odd mortal Symptom in him not mention'd by Hippocrates, that is, to lose his |