contemporary figure, but he had more than a little in common with Browne himself.

Though his ideas were neither exact nor profound, there was that about the stirring character of Sir Kenelm Digby which made him accepted by his contemporaries as an authority both in science and in religion. If a book of the class of Religio Medici was published, there were a great many people who would be interested in knowing what Sir Kenelm Digby thought of it. Since 1639, when the House of Commons had ordered him to give an account of the Catholic contribution, he had been looked upon as a leader of the more liberal section of his community, while he was an ardent and outspoken Royalist. Staying in London when the Civil War broke out, Digby was arrested by the Parliament and confined in Winchester House. This imprisonment, however, was a very mild one; the Catholic philosopher had his own servants, free communication with the world outside, and great respect from his captors. But his native restlessness displayed itself in a feverish mental activity, and Sir Kenelm Digby was now prepared to write a striking pamphlet upon almost any subject.

Although it was already late in the evening when Sir Kenelm Digby received Lord Dorset's letter advising him to read Religio Medici, he was so much struck by what his noble friend had written that he sent his servant out immediately to St. Paul's Churchyard to endeavour to buy a copy. The shops were shutting, no doubt, and the messenger delayed his return; Sir Kenelm Digby meanwhile went to bed. He was not yet asleep, however, when his man came back, having succeeded in buying one of the pirated

editions. Sir Kenelm, writing next morning (December 23, 1642) to Lord Dorset, excitedly reports:-

"This good-natured creature [Religio Medici] I could easily persuade to be my bedfellow, and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to entertain myself with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation. And truly, my Lord, I closed not my eyes till I had enriched myself with, or at least exactly surveyed, all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets."

But when he had sunk to sleep at last, having taken, as Browne might himself have said, this merciful dormitive to bedward, intellectual excitement would not suffer Sir Kenelm Digby to rest quiet. In the early morning, almost before it was light, he woke, and then and there-as it appears, in his bed-he began to compose a criticism on the marvellous book which had so greatly amazed his spirits. This critical examination of Religio Medici, which formed, when printed, a little volume of one hundred and twenty-four pages, was written almost at a sitting, in a blaze of enthusiasm and excitement.

It does not appear that either Dorset or Digby at this time knew the name of the author whose book had interested them so much. But a little later on, Sir Kenelm seems to have put himself in communication with Andrew Crooke, the publisher, who informed Browne that the famous Catholic philosopher was preparing to print a review of Religio Medici. It is almost certain that it was this information which induced Browne to remove the embargo he had placed upon his work, and to supply Crooke with a revised and correct manuscript to print from. Meanwhile, the knight had received back his letter from Lord Dorset,

and had allowed it to be sent to the press. In a panic of vexation, on the 3rd of March 1643, Browne wrote from Norwich to Sir Kenelm Digby, entreating him to delay the publication of that criticism of which he had "descended to be the author," until the genuine text of the original, which Browne said he was now hastening through the printer's hands, could be referred to. The demand was a reasonable one, presented in the most courteous terms, but it reached Winchester House too late, or else Digby's vanity would not brook delay, for there appeared at the end of March 1643 a volume of Observations upon Religio Medici, "occasionally written" by Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight. After the briefest possible further delay, Crooke issued "a true and full copy of that which was most imperfectly and surreptitiously printed before under the name of Religio Medici." We see that, once having secured the correct text of this popular book, the publisher was ready to acknowledge, without a blush, that his previous editions of it had been "imperfect" and even "surreptitious." The public, however, had at last what is known as the first authorised edition, that of 1643.

The incidents which have just been recorded are not merely curious and interesting in themselves, but they mark a condition in which Browne was almost, if not quite, unique among the English authors of his time. The absence of accepted critical authority, applied to literature, was an extreme inconvenience to the writers of the early seventeenth century. A critical feeling was abroad, but it had not yet found any vehicle, nor was it concentrated on particular publications; there was no one until the time of Dryden, who was in a

position to create critical values. The result was that books fell suddenly into complete discredit in consequence of a slight change in the current of popular taste, and did not recover until modern criticism went back to dig for them under the dust of two centuries. If we consider certain admirable publications of the same decade as Religio Medici, if we take, for instance, Milton's Poems of 1645, and Herrick's Hesperides of 1648, we find ourselves in the presence of works which acquired no public valuation in their own time, which attracted no examination and no movement of opinion, and which, in consequence, sank immediately into discredit as soon as the taste of the moment deviated from that in which they had been composed. It may be said, without paradox, that the reputation of Herrick and Milton as lyrical poets did not begin to exist until modern criticism rediscovered them, and almost, indeed, created them.

It was Browne's extraordinary good fortune to enjoy contemporary criticism. He was defended and he was attacked, but at least he did not sink under that fatal silence which attended the bulk of the works of his contemporaries. The Observations of Sir Kenelm Digby gave a definite value to Religio Medici. People who read the latter were pleased to know what were the conclusions of the Roman Catholic critic, and they adopted or rejected them as the case might be. Discussion was awakened, and it moved on a definite basis. The success of Browne's book was marked, and public curiosity was proved by the issue, so early as 1644, of a revised edition of Digby's Observations. Other censors hurried forward, who agreed neither with Digby nor with Browne. Their pamphlets, whether

hostile or laudatory, increased the excitement around the original text, and the Norwich physician found himself one of the most eminent writers of the day. Curiosity in his book spread quickly to the continent of Europe; and already in 1644 two editions were published in Latin, one in Leyden and the other in Paris.

The author of the earliest Latin version, in a letter addressed five years later to Browne, gives some curious particulars as to the reception of Religio Medici in Holland and in France. The first publisher to whom this John Merryweather offered his manuscript took it to Salmasius, who was the great glory of Leyden, and now regarded as the literary dictator of Europe. Salmasius, who knew very little indeed about English affairs, nevertheless posed as a great defender of the Stuart crown, and was pleased to be the opponent of Milton, and consulted about English politics. He kept the Latin Religio Medici by him for three months, and then told the translator that "it contained many things well said, but also many exorbitant conceptions in religion," and that it would "probably find but frowning entertainment." The translator, however, persisted until he discovered a Leyden printer willing to undertake it.

From Leyden, copies of Merryweather's translation were sent to all parts of western Europe, and they seem to have been welcomed everywhere. But the most gratifying reception which they met with was in Paris, where the book arrived in October 1644. Of the fate of the book among the French we have very interesting evidence scattered through the sparkling, easy, and sarcastic letters which Guy Patin addressed to his friends. This eminent physician was at that time