The Major Works (English Library) (63 page)

1
. ‘Ce livre n’aurait pas besoin de tels écoliers. Personne n’était capable de traduire ce livre s’il n’avait l’esprit approchant de l’auteur, qui est gentil et éveillé. Le genre du premier auteur du livre vaut mieux que tous les commentaires, qui ne sont que la misérable pédanterie d’un jeune homme allemand qui pense être bien savant’ (letter of 19 June 1657; in Bibl.
§ 176
).

2
. ‘the learned Annotator-commentator hath parallel’d many passages with other of Mountaignes essayes, whereas to deale clearly, when I penned that peece I had never read 3 leaves of that Author & scarce any more ever since’ (
K
, III, 290).

3
. If indeed he is the annotator of the edition of
Christian Morals
in that year. But it may well be that, while providing Browne’s
Life
(
below, pp. 481
ff.), he also contributed most if not all of the notes to the text.

1
. James Winny, ed.,
Religio Medici
(Cambridge, 1963), p. xvii. For Browne’s claim, see below,
p. 153
. Abbreviations in the notes are expanded on
p. 537
; references in parentheses involving numbers preceded by the symbol § (e.g.
§ 19
,
§127
, etc.) are to the numbered entries in the bibliography,
pp. 539–58
.

2
. St Hilary of Poitiers,
De Trinitate
, VIII, 43; in
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
, 2nd series (Oxford, 1899), IX, 150. See also the formulations by St Augustine and numerous Renaissance writers which I cite in ‘
Paradise Lost
and the Theory of Accommodation’, in
Bright Essence
(Salt Lake City, 1971), pp. 159–63.

3
. James Russell Lowell,
Among my Books
(Boston, 1870), pp. 152–3.

4
. Aubrey,
Brief Lives
, ed. Oliver L. Dick, 3rd ed. (1958), p. xxviii, and
The Poems of George Daniel
, ed. A. B. Grosart (1878), I, 205; respectively.

5
. Ernest A. Strathmann, ‘Elizabethan Meanings of “Atheism” ’, in his
Sir Walter Ralegh
(1951), Ch. III. See also D. C. Allen, ‘Atheism and Atheists in the Renaissance’, and P. H. Kocher, ‘The Physician as Atheist’, in their respective studies (
§§1
,
69
).

6
. Thomas Scott,
The High-waies of God and the King
(1623), p. 60. On Padua as ‘the intellectual capital of the world’, see especially Stoye (
§114
); cf. Castiglioni (
§26
).

7
. As averred among others by Willey (
§128
). See also
§242
.

8
. John R. Mulder (
§84
).

9
.
The City of God
, VIII, 7; trans. John Healey, revised by R. V. G. Tasker (1945). See further Robert E. Cushman, ‘Faith and Reason in the Thought of St Augustine’,
Church History
, XIX (1950), 271–94.

10
.
The Cambridge Platonists
, ed. C. A. Patrides (1969), p. 13. The Plotinus extract is from his
Enneads
, VI, ix, 10.

11
. Samuel Ward,
The Life of Faith
, 3rd ed. (1622), p. 2. See further Lovejoy (
§77
) as well as my extended article on ‘Hierarchy and Order’ (
§94
).

12
. Quoted from the legendary Hermes Trismegistus (discussed later) in
Christian Morals
, below, p. 450. On the circle in Browne, see especially Huntley (
§99
), and in seventeenth-century literature: Nicolson (
§86
). On its wider manifestations – e.g. in architecture – consult the circular patterns of Bramante’s Tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio, discussed and illustrated by Paolo Portoghesi,
Rome of the Renaissance
, trans. Pearl Sanders (1972), pp. 53 ff., and plates 17–20. The metaphoric import of music is delineated by John Hollander,
The Untuning of the Sky
(Princeton, 1961).

13
. The quotation is from Browne’s Commonplace Book (in
K
, III, 293). On the 1664 trial, and on Browne’s views generally, see the bibliography (
§§ 88
,
187
,
190
; also Letts and Tyler, below, p. 547).

14
. This tradition-bound view is expounded in my study (
§ 93
) to which I am much indebted here.

15
.
Psychozoia
, I, 4; in his
Philosophical Poems
, ed. Geoffrey Bullough (Manchester, 1931), p. 2. Ficino’s formulation reads: ‘Prisca Gentilium Theologia, in qua Zoroaster, Mercurius, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras consenserunt, tota in Platonis nostri uoluminibus continetur’ (
De christiana religione
, Ch. XXII; in his
Opera
[Basle, 1576], p. 25). On the entire tradition see also the bibliography (
§§72
,
98
,
107
,
111
,
123
).

16
. Peter Sterry,
A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will
(1675), p. 49.

17
. Cf. Nicholas of Cusa’s
coincidentia oppositorum
, i.e. ‘that coincidence where later is one with earlier, where the end is one with the beginning, where Alpha and Omega are the same’ (
De visione Dei
, X; trans. E. G. Salter, 1960).

18
. The present edition reprints extracts from the 2nd edition of 1650 but includes also a chapter which Browne added in the 3rd edition of 1658 (below, pp. 216–20).

19
.
Miscellany Tracts
, 1683 (in
K
, III, 1–120). These include
inter alia
discourses on falconry, oracular utterances and prophecy, versification, geography, topography, and
Of the Fishes eaten by our Saviour with his Disciples after his Resurrection from the Dead
; also some botanical-philological-theological
Observations upon Several Plants mentioned in Scripture
, as well as a discourse on the uses
Of Garlands
(‘convivial, festival, sacrificial, nuptial, honorary, funebrial’).

20
. The extant
Catalogue of the Libraries of the Learned Sir Thomas Brown, and Dr Edward Brown, his Son
(1710–11) includes Spenser’s
Faerie Queene
, Sidney’s
Arcadia
, Drayton’s
Polyolbion
, Jonson’s
Works
, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, the poems of George Herbert, and Milton’s
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
and
Samson Agonistes
(pp. 45 ff., 52 ff.). Continental poets are led by Virgil, Dante and Tasso. The total number of items in the catalogue is nearly 2,500; but one should add, I suppose, ‘some hundreds of Sermons’ which were among the works Browne’s daughter Elizabeth read to him in the evenings! (
K
, III, 331–2).

21
. In
Purchas his Pilgrimage
(1613).

22
. Merton (
§206
). Yost similarly speaks of Browne’s ‘intelligent acceptance of authority’ (
§241
).

23
. Ralegh,
The History of the World
, ed. C. A. Patrides (1971), p. 72, and Dryden, ‘To my Honour’d Friend, Dr Charleton’, ll. 1–4; respectively. Aristotle’s designation derives from his birthplace Stagira in Northern Greece.

24
.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, Book III, Ch. 28 (in
K
, II, 265). Browne with even greater enthusiasm wrote in a letter in 1646: ‘be sure you make yourself master of Dr Harvey’s piece
De Circul. Sang
. [i.e.
Of the Circulation of the Blood
]; which discovery I prefer to that of Columbus’ (
K
, IV, 255).

25
.
Select Discourses
(1660), p. 48; cf.
The Cambridge Platonists
(as above,
note 10
),
passim
.

26
. So Needham (
§ 214
); but his claim is disputed by Bodemer (
§ 273
).

27
. Bacon’s influence on Browne, accepted by Howell and Thaler but especially by Chalmers (
§§232
,
275
,
282
), is denied by Merton (
§206
).