Soft panegyrics, and the rude winds bring Mr. Gosse has pointed out the close resemblance, in metrical form, between Chamberlayne's poem and Keats' Endymion, and is inclined to regard the debt that Keats owed to the author of Pharonnida as larger than has generally been recognized. Thomas Stanley 1625-1673. Thomas Stanley, the last belated survivor of the metaphysical school, published, in 1649, a volume of translations from Moschus, Ausonius, and other writers, and a volume of original poems two years later. His verse is refined and delicate—especially in the translations—but wanting in vigour and originality. Mr. Gosse calls him a tamer and duller Herrick.' His ponderously learned History of Philosophy, and his edition of Eschylus, both of which belong to the Restoration period, constitute a more substantial claim to literary reputation. L CHAPTER VII. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. THE seventeenth century produced, in Browne and Fuller, two humorists of the very highest order. Thomas Fuller, with his light curly hair and sparkling blue eyes, was the very incarnation of the cheerful and quaint facetiousness that played around the most sacred subjects without irreverence or vulgarity; while the graver and more dignified appearance of Sir Thomas Browne, 'always cheerful, but never merry,' corresponds to the deeper and more subdued humour that informs and enriches his writings. Among the chief writers of the age of Milton, Browne alone stood entirely aside from the political struggle. Through all the great events which drove Hobbes, Cowley, and Clarendon into exile, Milton into political controversy, and Fuller and Jeremy Taylor into literary retirement, he kept the even tenor of his way, busy with the calls of a large practice, and explorations along the unfrequented bypaths of knowledge. "He had no sympathy with the great business of men. In that awful year when Charles I. went in person to seize five members of the Commons' House-when the streets resounded with shouts of Privilege of Parliament,' and the King's coach was assailed by the prophetic cry, 'To your tents, O Israel,'-in that year, in fact, when the Civil War first broke out, and when most men of literary power were drawn by the excitement of the crisis into patriotic controversy on either side-appeared the calm and meditative reveries of the Religio Medici. The war raged on. It was a struggle between all the elements of government, and England was torn by convulsion and red with blood. But Browne was tranquilly preparing his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, as if errors about basilisks and griffins were the paramount and fatal epidemic of the time; and it was published in due course in that year when the cause which the author advocated, as far as he could advocate anything political, lay at its last gasp. The King dies on the scaffold. The Protectorate succeeds. Men are again fighting on paper the solemn cause already decided in the field. Drawn from visions more sublime-forsaking studies more intricate and vast than those of the poetical sage of Norwich-diverging from a career bounded by the most splendid goal-foremost in the ranks shines the flaming sword of Milton. Sir Thomas Browne is lost in the quincunx of the ancient gardens, and the year 1658 beheld the death of Oliver Cromwell, and the publication of the Hydriotaphia."1 This isolation from political controversies almost necessarily implied a similar attitude in relation to ecclesiastical questions. Unaffectedly religious, and even in some respects inclined to superstition, Browne incurred the penalty that falls on moderate men in times of controversy, and was branded as a sceptic by the vehement partisans of all the religious factions. It is to the scientific movement of the time that Browne more properly belongs. The age of credulity, of alchemy, magic and strange superstitions, lay just behind him; and the age of inquiry and experiment, of iconoclasm and dis 1 Edinburgh Review, October, 1836. illusionment, was springing from the seed that Bacon had sown. As yet, scientific research had only added a new mystery to common things, and opened up worlds of possibility, along whose shores fancy was not yet forbidden to play. This new influence pervades Browne's writings—we see it in the philosophic doubt of the Religio Medici, too undefined to be sceptical, too young to be intolerant; in the wistful and reluctant concessions of the Pseudodoxia; in the fantastic speculations of the Garden of Cyrus. But besides being a scientist, Browne was a mystic, an antiquarian and a humorist, and withal a master of rhythmic and ornate language. His life was uneventful. Born in 1605, the son of a London merchant, he was educated at Winchester and at Pembroke College, Oxford. Attracted by his love of physical science to the medical profession, he spent some years in travel and study at Montpellier, Padua and Leyden, and then settled down to a country practice at Shipley Hall, near Halifax. In 1637, by the advice of several friends, he moved to Norwich, where he spent the rest of his life. Four years after settling at Norwich he married a Norfolk lady, of whose union with him it was said that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism.' A large family grew up around them, whose happiness and education occupied much of their father's thoughts. Norwich was proud of her learned physician, on whom Charles II. conferred the honour of knighthood in 1671, and whose house is described by Evelyn as a 'paradise and cabinet of varieties, and that of the best collections, specially medals, plants, books, and natural things.' He died in 1682, at the age of seventy-seven, more than twenty years after his best literary work was completed. The Religio Medici, written during Browne's residence in Shipley Hall, was not originally intended for publication; but it was circulated in manuscript among the friends of the author, and in 1642, a broken and imperfect copy' was issued without his consent. In self-defence, Browne published in the following year an authorized edition, which appeared with some prefatory observations by Sir Kenelm Digby. The immediate success of the volume was very great. Its artless and fascinating egotism and brilliant style, and even more its open-minded attitude in relation to religious dogmas, secured for it a welcome throughout Europe. It was translated into Latin, Dutch, French and German ; was condemned by the Roman Church to a place in the Index Expurgatorius; and eventually passed through more than thirty editions. The treatise is a kind of confession of faith, in two parts; the first dealing with the faith and hopes of the writer, the second with his views on charity. Browne avows himself a member of the English Church, while asserting his right to private judgment in matters indifferent. The outward symbols that repelled Puritans awake in him sympathetic emotion: At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour. I could never hear the Ave-Mary bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all—that is in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their prayers to her, I offered mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering mine own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter.' Opinions on theological questions have changed too often for any man to assert his ideas as the truth without doubt. |