prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost would take possession there." The only other trace of Browne's infancy which can be gathered refers to his maternal grandfather. He wrote, in the last year of his life, "I remember, when I was very young, and, I think, but in coats, my mother carried me to my grandfather Garraway's house in Lewes. I retain only in my mind the idea of some rooms of the house, and of the church." The Cheshire estates passed to the elder brother of the mercer, Richard Browne of Upton, and Thomas, it is evident, had gone up to London to make his own living by trade. From his marriage with Anne Garraway he had four children, of whom the illustrious physician was the youngest. THOMAS BROWNE was born in the parish of "St. Michaels Cheap"-as St. Michael-le-Quern, Cheapside, was commonly called-on the 19th of October 1605. The first decade of the seventeenth century was not very rich in the births of literary men. Randolph was born a few months earlier than Browne; Chillingworth three years earlier; the next four years saw the successive births of Davenant, Waller, Milton, and Clarendon. These very incongruous names may help to suggest to us the disparate intellectual elements which were to be characteristic of English thought during Browne's life-time. The mercer of Cheapside died early, but in what year is not recorded; when young Thomas was nineteen the head of the family, Richard Browne of Upton, also died, and this may account for the neglect of which we hear. Sir Thomas's first biographer assures us, we know not on what authority, that, "according to the common fate of orphans, he was defrauded by one of his guardians," his fortune at his father's death having been two-thirds of £9000. His widowed mother soon married Sir Thomas Dutton, of Gloucester and Isleworth, who "enjoyed an honourable post in the Government of Ireland." The statement of Johnson that Browne was "left to the rapacity of his guardian, deprived now of both his parents, and therefore helpless and unprotected," has always been accepted, although it is only supported by a much milder statement of Whitefoot's. If Lady Dutton took her widow's third, there were left £6000, not for Thomas alone, but for her four children. Thomas was well educated and able to travel freely; if his mother abandoned him, and his guardian defrauded him of the greater part of his £1500, it is difficult to know what were his sources of income. Moreover, there is evidence that he remained on intimately friendly terms with his step-father until the death of the latter in 1634. If the Paul Garraway who died in 1620 was Thomas Browne's grandfather, it is possible that the boy, who was then at Winchester, profited by the distribution of his wealth. All must be left to conjecture, but there is certainly no evidence of poverty. Of the youth of Thomas Browne, unhappily, no particulars have been preserved beyond the bare fact that he was admitted to a scholarship at Winchester, on the 20th of August 1616, and that he proceeded six years later to Oxford, where, early in 1623, he matriculated as a fellow-commoner of Broadgates Hall, the name by which what became Pembroke College during Browne's stay at Oxford was originally known. It appears, also, that Thomas Lushington, afterwards a distinguished divine, but then a young graduate of Lincoln College, was his tutor. That Browne was distinguished early for his learning appears from an expression of Anthony à Wood, while Dr. Johnson, proud of his own connection with Pembroke, and having remarked that Browne was the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, characteristically continues, "to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began." Browne's taking the degree of bachelor, the event thus enthusiastically referred to, occurred on the 30th of June 1626, and he proceeded master on the 11th of June 1629. It was probably between these last two dates that Thomas Browne accompanied his step-father, Sir Thomas Dutton, to Ireland. Dutton seems to have been a man of unbridled temper, whose "mutinous and unworthy courage" in the camp before Juliers had been severely stigmatised in despatches by Sir Edward Cecil. He, "upon base advantage, hurt Sir Hatton Cheke, his colonel," and, being challenged to duel after the campaign was over, he killed Cheke upon Calais Sands. This was in 1610, but at a much later date, the turbulent knight, as we have seen, "enjoyed an honourable post in the government of Ireland." There may have been a later duel, for an incident of this kind is believed to have inspired his step-son with a copy of verses among the Sloane Manuscripts of which the following alone seem to be in a coherent form : "Diseases are the arms whereby That thread of life the Fates do twine Let me be Abel, and not Cain." The poetical value of these verses is not great, but they have the interest not merely of occurring in the earliest specimen of Browne's composition which we possess, but of being curiously characteristic of him as a physician, as a philosopher, and as a passive resister. In attendance upon the fierce Sir Thomas Dutton, young Browne paid a visit to the castles and fortifications of Ireland. This would probably be at the close of 1626, after the rupture with France, when the coast defences were attracting the attention of a special commission of inquiry. At so favourable an age for observation, and under such interesting conditions, it is to be supposed that Browne saw and noted many things, but it cannot be said that this tour of Irish inspection has left much trace upon his writings. He remarks, indeed, that Ireland is free from toads and snakes, but that was notorious; it is a personal touch, however, which assures us that the belief that there are no spiders in Ireland is a vulgar error, since he has seen them there himself. Like many choleric people, it is possible that Sir Thomas Dutton could make himself very pleasant when he was not crossed. The even temper of Browne would seem to have assuaged him, for the report of Dutton long afterwards in the physician's family, was that he had shown himself "a worthy person.' As a boy Thomas Browne had begun to study the botany of the day, but "had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside." It is understood that he turned his attention to medicine while he was still at Oxford, and it is stated that he even practised as a physician in Oxfordshire. But this seems unlikely, as he had taken no medical degree, and as the technical education offered to her students by the university of Oxford was meagre indeed. It consisted solely of a little perfunctory reading of Hippocrates and Galen in the original. There was no hospital at Oxford and therefore no clinical school; the very study of drugs and plants was of a primitive character. If Browne went through the poverty-stricken classes of Oxford medical teaching, it could only have been to assure himself of their worthlessness. His writings may be searched in vain for the slightest sign of loyalty to Oxford or gratitude for anything she taught him. The only possible mark of approval is the fact that in 1666 he sent his son Edward to Merton. What is most likely is, that having tested the medical training of Oxford, and having found it useless, he buried himself in his books. His extraordinary learning is seen to be of a kind, and to extend in a direction, which are never due to teachers but to the original initiative of the student. Preparing for a long course of study abroad, Browne would steep his memory in all the scientific learning of the age, so as to profit without any loss of time by whatever revelations might await him in France and Italy. The general cessation of hostilities made it easy to travel through Europe in 1630, at all events in the west and south. There was a revival of trade with the Biscayan ports, and we may conjecture that Browne |