yielding to the fascination of Lucretius. Of the De Rerum Natura, which delighted such contemporaries as Evelyn, and even Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne can now only say, "I do not much recommend the reading or studying of it, there being divers impieties in it, and 'tis no credit to be punctually versed in it." Thomas Tenison, a prodigy of the Norwich grammar school, who was much in Sir Thomas Browne's household, and who had already cheerily confuted Hobbes, has written "a good poem" against the Lucretians of this age, in imitation of the De Rerum Natura, "in a manuscript dedicated to me." This was the Tenison, who was afterwards editor of Browne's posthumous tracts, and from 1694 onwards Archbishop of Canterbury.

He

About 1675, a new inmate of the house at Norwich was Edward Browne's little son, Thomas, now three years old. The London air did not suit him at Salisbury Court, and the grand-parents were only too glad of the child's company. From this time forward the references to "little Tomey" are constant. "is lively, God be thanked. He lieth with Betty. She takes great care of him, and gets him to bed in due time, for he riseth early. She or Frank is fain sometimes to play him asleep with a fiddle. When we send away our letters he scribbles a paper and will have it sent to his sister, and sayeth she doth not know how many fine things there are in Norwich." They have the usual fright of grand-parents, whenever Tomey has a cold, and in one illness Sir Thomas Browne's spelling, usually so correct, goes all to pieces with anxiety, and tells us that the child is "much batter of his coffe." In 1678, Tomey begins to go to

school, "and is a very good boy, and delights his grandfather when he comes home." He grew up a worthy scion of the stock he came from, became a physician early, and would doubtless have been distinguished, but for an accident. In 1710, two years after his father's death, he was thrown from his horse and died of the injuries.

Sir Thomas Browne's health began to fail some years before his death. In January 1679 he had a severe illness, which had scarcely passed away, before a fit of influenza laid the household low, sparing, however, little Tomey. Sir Thomas's long letters to his son Edward are full of local news and scientific gossip, but say very little about his own doings. We learn, however, that both grand-parents are much exercised about getting Tomey breeched against the assizes, he being now "a beaux tall boy, and will be much a man." In this great matter, Tomey himself is superlatively interested, and "would give all his stock to see his breeches," over which the tailor culpably dawdles. So life went gently and merrily on in the Norwich household, until Tomey was ten years old, the grandfather growing, we suppose, ever a little quieter and weaker, but retaining all cheerfulness and his intellectual vivacity. He had made his will in December 1679, but it was not until October 19, 1682, that a sharp attack of colic carried him off, after a short illness. He had enjoyed the great pleasure of living to see his beloved son Edward made physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, at the express desire of the king. This appointment was dated the 7th of September, and news of it must have reached Norwich about a month before Browne's

death. It is a curious reflection that Sir Thomas Browne, who seems to us the happiest and the most prosperous of men, suffered from an occasional melancholy in which he longed to die. He could even say "I think no man ever desired life, as I have sometimes death." He had written, in Religio Medici, that for the tail of the snake to return into its mouth precisely at the day of a man's nativity, "is indeed a remarkable coincidence." It occurred in his own case, for he died on his seventy-seventh birthday. Lady Browne survived her husband until February 24, 1685.

CHAPTER VI

POSTHUMOUS WRITINGS-PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

AFTER 1658 Sir Thomas Browne published nothing new, although he was frequently called upon to superintend fresh issues of his earlier works, which retained their popularity to the full. Since 1659 these had appeared in a single folio volume, of which an edition. was corrected by the author in 1682, just before his death. The last imprint of Religio Medici seen by the author was called the eighth, but was in reality at least the fourteenth. The Vulgar Errors had been printed five times, Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus four times, before the death of Browne In the face of so remarkable and so long-sustained a success, it is strange that he refrained from fresh publication during the last quarter of a century of his life, especially as he wrote during part of that time rather abundantly. After his death, a large quantity of manuscripts came into the hands of Lady Browne and her son, Edward, who sought in vain for any instructions about them. But Sir Thomas had never said what he wished to be done, "either for the suppressing or the publishing of them." The executors placed them, as they were, in the hands of Thomas Tenison. It is possible that Lady Browne had scruples against publication, for it

was not until a month or two before her death that anything fresh appeared.

many

disordered papers,

At length, in 1684, Tenison produced a small octavo, entitled Certain Miscellany Tracts, and this was the earliest instalment of Browne's posthumous writings. These tracts were appended to the Works in 1686, and henceforth formed a part of them. Tenison tells us that he selected them out of and arranged them as best he could. We gather that they had all been sent at one time or another, in the form of letters, to persons such as Evelyn, Dugdale, Lord Yarmouth, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and perhaps Edward Browne. They are thirteen in number, and very diverse in subject, length, and importance. Most of them were obviously written, in reply to the queries of friends, in what Tenison aptly calls "those little spaces of vacancy which [Browne] snatched from the very many occasions which gave him hourly interruption." In several instances, we can trace by internal evidence the occasions upon which the particular essays were written, and those addressed to Evelyn on gardens and to Dugdale on the fen-country have already been mentioned in the course of this narrative.

The important treatise on "Plants mentioned in Scripture" is almost long enough to form a little volume. It was dedicated to Sir Nicholas Bacon, whose passion for flowers we have already recorded. From the purely zoological essays we learn that that beautiful bird the hoopoe was common in Norfolk in Browne's day, so common that the naturalist cannot understand its being unfamiliar to a correspondent in another part of England. The other essays, on