one of the leaders of European opinion. A man of the highest scientific attainments, dean of the faculty of medicine in Paris, and king's lecturer at the Collège de France, Guy Patin had opportunities of extending the reputation of a new book such as were shared by few. He was orthodox, yet liberal, a man of advanced ideas yet untainted by the charge of atheism. An experimental philosopher, a practical physician, a brilliant man of letters, Patin's position was not without a certain likeness to that of the Norwich medicus, but it was as central as Browne's was provincial. The earliest of Patin's references to the new English volume occurs in a letter of October 1644:

"Un petit livre nouveau intitulé Religio Medici fait par un Anglais et traduit en latin par quelque Hollandais. C'est un livre tout gentil et curieux, mais fort délicat et tout mystique; l'auteur ne manque pas d'esprit ; vous y verrez d'étranges et ravissantes pensées. Il n'y a encore guère de livres de cette sorte. S'il était permis aux savants d'écrire ainsi librement, on nous apprendroit beaucoup de nouveautés . . . la subtilité de l'esprit humain se pourroit découvrir par cette voie.”

This is by far the most penetrating contemporary judgment which, so far as we know, was passed on Religio Medici. Nothing to approach it, indeed, was said, until Coleridge began to scribble notes on the edges of the reprint of 1802. It was probably owing to the interest awakened by Guy Patin, that although there was another Leyden edition of 1644, this did not suffice for Paris. Merryweather told Browne :—

"When I came to Paris the next year [1645], I found it printed again, in which edition both the Epistles were left out, and a preface by some papist put in their place, in which, making use of, and wresting some passages in your book, he

endeavoured to show that nothing but custom and education kept you from their Church."

This Paris reprint created a great stir in France, where some people took the view indicated by the preface, while others were inclined to charge the author with heresy and infidelity. Guy Patin again comes to our help in a delightful letter of April 16, 1645, addressed to the Troyes physician, Belin :

"On fait ici grand état du livre intitulé Religio Medici; cet auteur a de l'esprit. C'est un mélancholique agréable en ses pensées, mais qui, à mon jugement, cherche maître en fait de religion, comme beaucoup d'autres, et peut-être qu'enfin il n'en trouvera aucun. Il faut dire de lui ce que Philippe de Commines a dit du fondateur des Minimes, l'ermite de Calabre, François de Paule, 'Il est encore en vie, il peut aussi bien empirer qu'amender!""

This is very amusing, and we may suspect that the adroit Parisian critic hoped to see Browne come forth in more definite revolt. He was disappointed, if so, but he never lost his interest in Religio Medici. When, in 1652, a certain Levin Nicholas Moltke put forth a tedious and pedantic sheet of Annotations, Guy Patin flew into a passion at the impertinence of the man, and declared that such good wine as Religio Medici needed no presumptuous German bush. As late as

1657 we find Patin true to his enthusiastic admiration of Thomas Browne, "si gentil et éveillé "; and when Edward Browne was in Paris in 1664, Patin, meeting him in a shop by accident, "saluted me very kindly, asked me many things concerning my father, whom he knew only as author of Religio Medici, discoursed with me very lovingly, and told me he would write to my father." Thomas Browne was eager to hear more

about his first kind critic, and Edward, who attended Patin's physic lectures, tells him that Patin "is very old, yet very pleasant in his discourse and hearty; he is much followed [in Paris], is a Galenist, and doth often laugh at the chymists"; after the lectures, "he answers all doubts and questions proposed." In September 1665, further courtesies having passed, we find Browne telling his son to "present my services and thanks unto Dr. Patin," who lived on until 1672, dying full of honours and fame. The whole episode of his relations with Browne is one of great interest, the more as it was unparalleled at that time in the literary history of England and France.

The spread of Browne's fame over the continent of Europe was rapid. As early as 1649, a foreign correspondent was able to assure him that "a good part of Christendom " was now familiar with his character and work. For a century his name continues to recur in the heavy German discussions about atheism and superstition, some writers claiming that Browne was a freethinker, others defending his orthodoxy. Buddæus of Jena, drawing up a list of English atheists, put Sir Thomas Browne's name into it, along with those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Hobbes, and Toland; while Tobias Wagner, a pillar of the German Church in his day, declared that Religio Medici could scarcely be read without danger of infection. All this was lumbering and ill-informed criticism, but it proves that the Norwich physician had achieved a foreign reputation denied to the rest of his contemporaries. When, in 1652, Levin Nicholas Moltke published his Annotations, he said that he had been first led to the perusal of Religio Medici by its universal fame in

England, France, Italy, Holland, and Germany; and he declared that at the time he wrote all those countries were ringing with the applause of Browne. Nor was this vogue confined to the Latin version, for before Browne died, his book had appeared in French, German, Dutch, and Italian translations.

To return to England, and to the most important of all the native criticisms of Browne, a study of Sir Kenelm Digby's Observations of 1643 shows that what 'thoroughly touched the little needle" of the knight's soul was the happy temper of spiritual liberty which breathed from every page of Religio Medici. Digby, who had been writing a treatise on the immortality of the soul, was attracted by the Platonism of Browne, with which he found himself in ardent sympathy. But he thought the physician a little too much bound down to earth by his habits of physical experiment, and he would fain have found his conceptions of eternity more transcendental. Yet "his wishes and aims, and what he pointeth at, speak him owner of a noble and a generous heart." On one point, Sir Kenelm Digby rises superior to Browne, whom he challenges, with great courage, for "knowing that there are witches." It was highly dangerous in those days to deny the existence of such malevolent powers. Digby does not go so far. "I only reserve my assent," he says, meet with stronger motives to carry it. And I confess I doubt much of the efficacy of those magical rules he speaketh of, as also of the finding out of mysteries by the courteous revelation of spirits."

"till I

Many of Sir Kenelm's thrusts with the rapier are highly effective. When he says that we cannot err in taking the author of Religio Medici for "a very fine

ingenious gentleman, but how deep a scholar" he will not presume to say, he insists on what modern criticism must constantly repeat, that it is the art, the style, the human charm of Browne that matter, and not his boasted learning. For his metaphysical arguments, Digby depends upon Thomas White, the Albius of Roman controversy, who was presently to push his own speculations into dangerous fields. It is odd that he reproves the personal note in Browne's treatise, and those confidences about himself, and his tasks and habits, which we enjoy so much. To Digby it seemed that these could "not much conduce to any man's betterment"; and he urged Browne to omit them from his treatises of philosophy, reserving them for that "notable romance of his own story and life" which he doubted not that Browne might "profitably compose." The Observations, however, although occasionally carping, are full of appreciative comment, and Sir Kenelm's summing-up of "our physician," as he calls Browne, is worth quoting:

"Truly I must needs pay him as a due the acknowledging his pious discourses to be excellent and pathetical ones, containing worthy motives, to incite one to virtue and to deter one from vice. . . Assuredly he is owner of a solid head, and of a strong, generous heart. Where he employeth his thoughts upon such things as resort to no higher or more abstruse principles than such as occur in ordinary conversation with the world, or in the common track of study and learning, I know no man would say better. But when he meeteth with such difficulties as concerning the resurrection of the body, . . . I do not at all wonder he should tread a little away and go astray in the dark, for I conceive his course of life hath not permitted him to allow much time unto the unwinding of such entangled and abstracted subtilties. But,

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