The Major Works (English Library)

PENGUIN
CLASSICS

THE MAJOR WORKS

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London in 1605 and educated at Winchester and Pembroke College, Oxford. After a tour of Ireland, he studied medicine at Montpellier and Padua and received his doctorate from Leiden.

Religio Medici
was composed in the mid-1630s and published without permission. Three years after its appearance it became prohibited reading for Catholics but soon had its imitators, such as
Religio Laici
by John Dryden. After the publication of
Religio Medici
, Browne settled in Norwich, where he spent the rest of his life. His most learned and ambitious work,
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, was published in 1646 and in 1658
Hydriotaphia
and
The Garden of Cyrus
were published jointly. He was knighted by default in 1671 when Charles II visited Norwich; the City Mayor declined the honour and Browne was suggested as a substitute. His later works include several tracts on a range of topics, some published posthumously. Browne’s reputation has remained unwavering throughout the centuries. Coleridge referred to him as ‘the Humorist constantly mingling with and flashing across the Philosopher’ and his influence is discernible in writers as diverse as Swift and Herman Melville.

C. A. Patrides, formerly Professor of English and Related Literature in the University of York, is now G. B. Harrison Professor of English Literature in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is the author of
Milton and the Christian Tradition
(1966), ‘
The Grand Design of God’: The Literary Form of the Christian View of History
(1972) and
Premises and Motifs in Renaissance Thought and Literature
(1982), as well as editor of collections such as
Approaches to Sir Thomas Browne
(1982) and editions such as
The Cambridge Platonists
(1969), the selected prose of Milton (Penguin Books, (1974), and the poetry of Herbert (1974) and Donne (1984).

SIR
THOMAS
BROWNE

Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by
C
.
A
.
PATRIDES

PENGUIN BOOKS

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This selelction first published 1977

Published in Penguin Classics 2006

9

Introduction and Notes copyright © C. A. Patrides, 1977

All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-195879-8

CONTENTS

To the Reader

An Outline of Browne’s Life

‘Above Atlas his Shoulders’: An Introduction to Sir Thomas Browne

BROWNE
’
S PROSE

The Major Works

R
ELIGIO
M
EDICI

P
SEUDODOXIA
E
PIDEMICA
(selections)

H
YDRIOTAPHIA

T
HE
G
ARDEN OF
C
YRUS

A L
ETTER TO A
F
RIEND

C
HRISTIAN
M
ORALS

From the Shorter Works

O
N
D
REAMS

Appendix

Samuel Johnson,
The Life of Sir Thomas Browne

A Dictionary of Names

Bibliography

Contents

Abbreviations

TO THE READER

T
HE
present edition provides in the first instance the complete text of five of Browne’s major works; also extracts from his colossal
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
together with the titles of the omitted chapters in order to suggest its continuity; and finally one of his numerous shorter works – ‘On Dreams’ – which not only displays the riches still awaiting our attention but confirms the persuasion Browne often voices elsewhere, that ‘There is surely a neerer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreames, than in our waked senses’ (below,
p. 154
).

Also included is Dr Samuel Johnson’s
Life of Sir Thomas Browne
(1756), immediately useful because it quotes extensively from the only substantial earlier memoir – John Whitefoot’s
Some Minutes for the Life of Sir Thomas Browne
(1712) – and mediately valuable in that it is the considered judgement of one major prose writer on another.

The annotator of Browne’s prose is much helped by Browne himself, who frequently explains a difficult word (e.g. ‘solisequious and Sun-following’, ‘Panoplia or compleat armour’), translates his Greek and Latin words and phrases (e.g. ‘the
and adumbration’, or ‘
Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi
, that vertue is her own reward, is’ etc.), and places explanatory remarks in the margin (here transferred to the footnotes). Where Browne ends, however, the annotator’s problems begin. The temptation to provide elaborate notes is at times irresistible; but aware that ponderous annotation of Browne’s prose would interfere with his rhythms, I like to think that Gui Patin would not have included me in the just censure he directed in 1657 against a pedantic German editor of
Religio Medici
.
¹
Hence my decision not to embark on the perilous seas
of source-hunting without, and much less against, Browne’s express warrant; for I would then stand accused of that excessive zeal which he discerned in yet another annotator of Religio Medici, Thomas Keck in 1656.
²
Nor should the frequency with which I call attention to widely accepted ideas be misconstrued, since my intention is not to imply that Browne resorted to mere commonplaces but to suggest the way his fertile imagination transformed them into novelties.

My notes also include several of Coleridge’s remarks, both sustained and marginal. So far, however, no apology is ventured for none is needed.

In quoting from the manuscripts of
Religio Medici
to suggest earlier stages of its final text, I have normally preferred the Pembroke version (see
P
in Abbreviations). Finally, the appended Dictionary identifying the host of names invoked by Browne (pp. 513 ff.) may be accepted as an effort to reduce the proliferating notes.