above, quincunxes in earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in every thing." That aura, or spiritual afflatus of divine mystery, which permeated his imagination, tempted him to follow such lines of enquiry. He thought that, when supported by rational experiment and observation, they might lead to luciferous discoveries. For whoso works upon these hints "shall not," he says, 'pass his hours in vulgar speculations. He shall not fall on trite or trivial disquisitions." To avoid "crambe verities and questions over-queried" was ever a main object with this fastidious student. Yet he did not suffer himself to be the victim of his own conceits. A vein of humour, a subrisive irony runs through ✓ his more fantastic meditations on the quincunx; and at the end of the essay, he dismisses the main subject in a passage of such harmonious eloquence and such fine fancy, as leaves the reader with the sound of music and the stirring of cool night airs to soothe his puzzled brain. It appears that Sir Thomas had been writing late into the night in his study at Norwich. Declining constellations warned him to lay his pen down and to yield to sleep. This peroration is characteristic of his somewhat desultory manner; the manner of one discoursing music to himself, and delighting in the devious melodies of improvisation, without external stimulus, without the regard of any audience but his own vigilant thoughts :

But the quincunx* of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the first parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations, making cables and cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome graves. Beside, Hippocrates + hath spoke so little, and the oneirocritical masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, § can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.

Night, which Pagan theology could make the daughter of Chaos, affords no advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that mass can we derive its genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to ✔ the ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the city of heaven. Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes open longer, were but to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and, as some conjecture, all shall awake again?

"Think you," wrote Coleridge on the margin opposite this passage, "that there was ever such a reason given before for going to bed at midnight; to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes ? And then: The huntsmen are up in America! What life, what

*The constellation of the Hyades.

+ De Insomniis.

§ Strewed with roses.

Artemidorus et Apomazar.

fancy!

Does the whimsical knight give us, thus, the essence of gunpowder tea, and call it an opiate?" Words could hardly be found, better suited to describe the thrill of pleasure aroused in epicures of style, by the sudden sallies and unexpected epigrams of fancy, which alternate with massive rhetorical pageantry in Sir Thomas Browne's prose.

I have included in the selections which compose this volume, three posthumously published pieces. One is a short unfinished tract on Dreams, a topic which had singular attraction for its author, and which he splendidly illustrated in the second part of Religio Medici. The second is a letter written by a friend upon the decease of a young man, whom Browne had attended during his last illness. It has a value beyond that of most consolatory epistles; for it conveys a solemn and pathetic lesson on the refining and spiritualizing touch of death. Browne had watched the decline of his patient through the last lingering stages of consumption. As a physician, he noted the symptoms of that incurable disease. As a friend, he dwelt upon the ethereal serenity of the youth's soul. As✓ a philosopher, he discussed divers opinions regarding the course and treatment of marasmus. But while digressing into general considerations, and enlarging upon the erudition of the subject, he ever returns with subtle instinct to the beauty of a natural but dreaded process, which purged the man, while yet alive, from earthly grossness, and made his final entrance into immortality but, as it were, the fading of a star of morning into light of day.

Thus contemplated, the King of Terrors drops his dart, assuming the semblance of his brother Sleep. He becomes the purifier, the deliverer, the healer Thanatos Paian, the ✓ mystagogue of greater mysteries. The gradual attenuation of the body is a preparation for the soul's escape by gliding or absorption into unseen modes of life. At last the flesh becomes so thin and so diaphanous, that the spirit shines through it like flame in urns of alabaster. Then, with a sigh, the flame expires; but not as mortal flames, because the fuel which sustained them is exhausted. No: it has burned through its envelope of carnal tissue, and has exhaled, a disembodied ghost. This, or something like this, we feel when reading Sir Thomas Browne's epistle. But his style is so moderated, the suspension of his soul before the august spectacle of dying is so grave, his touch upon the mystery is at once so reverent and so familiar, his foresight of immortality is so far more felt than uttered, that any descant on the evenly-sustained and long-drawn theme repairs its weirdly unpremeditated influence.

This letter was first printed as a prelude to Christian Morals, which is the fourth of the posthumous pieces included in this volume. Sir Thomas Browne indicated their juxtaposition; for he closed his epistle with a handful ~ of hortatory apophthegms, which he afterwards worked up in the exordium to Christian Morals. That treatise is said to have been intended for a sequel to Religio Medici. Written in later life, his style has become more sententious, less discursive, less genially paradoxical. "The quick

"more

succession of images" which Dr. Johnson praised, have disappeared. The didactic solemnity of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius rules its inspiration rather than the self-complacent humour of Montaigne. The diction, too, shows signs of labour and of effort. Browne's hyperlatinism has become a vicious habit. He uses crude unaltered Latin words, like "corpage," "confinium," "angustias." He talks of "vivacious abominations" and "congævous generations." He recommends a moderate caution in this portentous sentence: circumspectly, not meticulously; and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously sollicitudinous." Such phrases have the appearance of some caricature of the style in which Religio Medici was written. Were not the evidence for its genuineness convincing, we might fancy that Christian Morals were the work of an imitator rather than the mature production of so truly eloquent a writer. Yet we find many things in the book, which are in all points worthy of their author; and the whole is massy with condensed wisdom. Nothing could be nobler in sentiment or more pithy in expression than the following sentences, which I have culled at random:

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the lights of heaven.

Rest not in an ovation but a triumph over thy praises.

Let not the sun in Capricorn go down upon thy wrath, but write thy wrongs in ashes.

The world which took but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to make out.