The Major Works (English Library) (41 page)

[
A Letter to a Friend, upon occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend
was first published posthumously in 1690. Originally thought to have been written in the early 1670s (e.g.
§ 190
), the work is now generally accepted as having been composed not long after December 1656. At that time, it has been established, Browne addressed the
Letter
to Sir John Pettus on the occasion of Robert Loveday’s death of consumption at the age of thirty-five (see
§§ 314–15
).]

Give me leave to wonder that News of this nature should have such heavy Wings, that you should hear so little concerning your dearest Friend, and that I must make that unwilling Repetition to tell you,
Ad portam rigidos calces extendit
,
¹
that he is Dead and Buried, and by this time no Puny among the mighty Nations of the Dead; for tho he left this World not very many days past, yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark Society; and considering the incessant Mortality of Mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole Earth so few as a thousand an hour.

Altho at this distance you had no early Account or Particular of his Death; yet your Affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret Sense or Intimation thereof by Dreams, thoughtful Whisperings, Mercurisms, Airy Nuncio’s, or sym-pathetical Insinuations, which many seem to have had at the Death of their dearest Friends: for since we find in that famous Story, that Spirits themselves were fain to tell their Fellows at a distance, that the great
Antonio
was dead;
²
we have a sufficient Excuse for our Ignorance in such Particulars, and must rest content with the common Road, and
Appian
way of Knowledge by Information. Tho the uncertainty of the End of this World hath confounded all Humane Predictions; yet they who shall live to see the Sun and Moon darkned, and the Stars to fall from Heaven, will hardly be deceived in the Advent of the last Day; and therefore strange it is, that the common Fallacy of consumptive Persons, who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their Friends in perfect Health and Judgment. That you should be so little
acquainted with
Plautus
’s sick Complexion,
³
or that almost an
Hippocratical
⁴
Face should not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair of his Continuation in such an emaciated State, wherein medical Predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute Diseases, and wherein ’tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a Physician as a Judge.

Upon my first Visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all hopes of his Recovery, That in my sad Opinion he was not like to behold a Grashopper, much less to pluck another Fig; and in no long time after seemed to discover that odd mortal Symptom in him not mention’d by
Hippocrates
, that is, to lose his own Face and look like some of his near Relations; for he maintained not his proper Countenance, but looked like his Uncle, the Lines of whose Face lay deep and invisible in his healthful Visage before: for as from our beginning we run through variety of Looks, before we come to consistent and settled Faces; so before our End, by sick and languishing Alterations, we put on new Visages: and in our Retreat to Earth, may fall upon such Looks which from community of seminal Originals were before latent in us.

He was fruitlessly put in hope of advantage by change of Air, and imbibing the pure Aerial Nitre of these Parts;
⁵
and therefore being so far spent, he quickly found
Sardinia
in
Tivoli
,
⁶
and the most healthful Air of little effect, where Death had set her Broad Arrow;
⁷
for he lived not unto the middle of
May
, and confirmed the Observation of
Hippocrates
⁸
of that mortal time
of the Year when the Leaves of the Fig-tree resemble a Daw’s Claw. He is happily seated who lives in Places whose Air, Earth, and Water, promote not the Infirmities of his weaker Parts, or is early removed into Regions that correct them. He that is tabidly inclined, were unwise to pass his days in
Portugal
: Cholical Persons will find little Comfort in
Austria
or
Vienna
: He that is Weak-legg’d must not be in Love with
Rome
, nor an infirm Head with
Venice
or
Paris
. Death hath not only particular Stars in Heaven, but malevolent Places on Earth, which single out our Infirmities, and strike at our weaker Parts; in which Concern, passager and migrant Birds have the great Advantages; who are naturally constituted for distant habitations, whom no Seas nor Places limit, but in their appointed Seasons will visit us from
Greenland
and Mount
Atlas
, and as some think, even from the
Antipodes
.
⁹

Tho we could not have his Life, yet we missed not our desires in his soft Departure, which was scarce an Expiration; and his End not unlike his Beginning, when the salient Point
¹⁰
scarce affords a sensible motion, and his Departure so like unto Sleep, that he scarce needed the civil Ceremony of closing his Eyes; contrary unto the common way wherein Death draws up, Sleep lets fall the Eye-lids. With what strift
¹¹
and pains we came into the World we know not; but ’tis commonly no easie matter to get out of it: yet if it could be made out, that such who have easie Nativities have commonly hard Deaths, and contrarily; his Departure was so easie, that we might justly suspect his Birth was of another nature, and that some
Juno
sat cross-legg’d at his Nativity.
¹²

Besides his soft Death, the incurable state of his Disease might somewhat extenuate your Sorrow, who know that Monsters but seldom happen, Miracles more rarely, in Physick.
¹³
Angelus Victorius
gives a serious Account of a Consumptive,
Hectical, Pthysical Woman, who was suddenly cured by the Intercession of
Ignatius
.
¹⁴
We read not of any in Scripture who in this case applied unto our Saviour, tho some may be contained in that large Expression, That
he went about Galilee healing all manner of Sickness, and all manner of Diseases
.
¹⁵
Amulets, Spells, Sigils and Incantations, practised in other Diseases, are seldom pretended in this; and we find no Sigil in the Archidoxis
¹⁶
of
Paracelsus
to cure an extreme Consumption or
Maras-mus
, which if other Diseases fail, will put a period unto long Livers, and at last make dust of all. And therefore the
Stoicks
could not but think that the firy Principle would wear out all the rest, and at last make an end of the World, which notwithstanding without such a lingring period the Creator may effect at his Pleasure: and to make an end cf all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he need but put out the Sun.

I was not so curious to entitle the Stars unto any concern of his Death, yet could not but take notice that he died when the Moon was in motion from the Meridian; at which time, an old
Italian
long ago would persuade me, that the greatest part of Men died: but herein I confess I could never satisfie my Curiosity; altho from the time of Tides in Places upon or near the Sea, there may be considerable Deductions; and
Pliny
hath an odd and remarkable Passage concerning the Death of Men and Animals upon the Recess or Ebb of the Sea.
¹⁷
However, certain it is he died in the dead and deep part of the Night, when Nox might be most apprehensibly said to be the Daughter of Chaos, the Mother of Sleep and Death, according to old Genealogy;
¹⁸
and so went out of this World about that hour when our blessed Saviour entred it, and about what time many conceive he will return again unto it.
Cardan
hath a peculiar and no hard Observation
from a Man’s Hand, to know whether he was born in the day or night, which I confess holdeth in my own. And
Scaliger
to that purpose hath another from the tip of the Ear.
¹⁹
Most Men are begotten in the Night, most Animals in the Day; but whether more Persons have been born in the Night or the Day, were a Curiosity undecidable, tho more have perished by violent Deaths in the Day; yet in natural Dissolutions both Times may hold an Indifferency, at least but contingent
²⁰
Inequality. The whole course of Time runs out in the Nativity and Death of Things; which whether they happen by Succession or Coincidence, are best computed by the natural, not artificial Day.

That
Charles
the Fifth was Crowned upon the day of his Nativity, it being in his own power so to order it, makes no singular Animadversion; but that he should also take King
Francis
Prisoner upon that day, was an unexpected Coincidence, which made the same remarkable.
Antipater
who had an Anniversary Feast
²¹
every Year upon his Birth day, needed no Astrological Revolution to know what day he should dye on.
²²
When the fixed Stars have made a Revolution unto the points from whence they first set out, some of the Ancients thought the World would have an end;
²³
which was a kind of dying upon the day of its Nativity. Now the Disease prevailing and swiftly advancing about the time of his Nativity, some were of Opinion, that he would leave the World on the day he entred into it: but this being a lingring Disease, and creeping softly on, nothing critical was found or expected, and he died not before fifteen days after. Nothing is more common with Infants than to dye on the day of their Nativity, to behold the worldly Hours and but the Fractions thereof; and even to perish before their
Nativity in the hidden World of the Womb, and before their good Angel is conceived to undertake them.
²⁴
But in Persons who out-live many Years, and when there are no less than three hundred sixty five days to determine their Lives in every Year; that the first day should make the last, that the Tail of the Snake should return into its Mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity,
²⁵
is indeed a remarkable Coincidence, which tho Astrology hath taken witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary in making Predictions of it.

In this consumptive Condition and remarkable Extenuation he came to be almost half himself, and left a great part behind him which he carried not to the Grave. And tho that Story of Duke
John Ernestus Mansfield
²⁶
be not so easily swallowed, that at his Death his Heart was found not to be so big as a Nut; yet if the Bones of a good Sceleton weigh little more than twenty pounds, his Inwards and Flesh remaining could make no Bouff-age,
²⁷
but a light bit for the Grave. I never more lively beheld the starved Characters of
Dante
²⁸
in any living Face; an Arus-pex
²⁹
might have read a Lecture upon him without Exenteration,
³⁰
his Flesh being so consumed that he might, in a manner, have discerned his Bowels without opening of him: so that to be carried
sextâ cervice
³¹
to the Grave, was but a civil unnecessity; and the Complements of the Coffin might out-weigh the Subject of it.

Omnibus Ferrarius
³²
in mortal Dysenteries of Children looks for a Spot behind the Ear; in consumptive Diseases some eye the Complexion of Moals;
Cardan
eagerly views the Nails, some the Lines of the Hand, the Thenar or Muscle of the Thumb; some are so curious as to observe the depth of the Throat-pit, how the proportion varieth of the Small of the Legs unto the Calf, or the compass of the Neck unto the Circumference of the Head: but all these, with many more, were so drowned in a mortal Visage and last Face of
Hippocrates
,
³³
that a weak Physiognomist might say at first eye, This was a Face of Earth, and that
Morta
³⁴
had set her Hard-Seal upon his Temples, easily perceiving what
Caricatura
³⁵
Draughts Death makes upon pined Faces, and unto what an unknown degree a Man may live backward.
³⁶

Tho the Beard be only made a distinction of Sex and sign of masculine Heat by
Ulmus
,
³⁷
yet the Precocity and early growth thereof in him, was not to be liked in reference unto long Life.
Lewis
, that virtuous but unfortunate King of
Hungary
, who lost his Life at the Battel of
Mohacz
, was said to be born without a Skin, to have bearded at Fifteen, and to have shewn some gray Hairs about Twenty; from whence the Diviners conjectured, that he would be spoiled of his Kingdom, and have but a short Life: But Hairs make fallible Predictions, and many Temples early gray have out-lived the Psalmist’s Period.
³⁸
Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the Face or Head but on the Back, and not in Men but Children, as I long ago observed in that Endemial Distemper of little Children in
Languedock
, called the
Morgellons
,
³⁹
wherein they critically break out with
harsh Hairs on their Backs, which takes off the unquiet Symptoms of the Disease, and delivers them from Coughs and Convulsions.