The Major Works (English Library) (79 page)

40
. His upper and lower Jaw being solid, and without distinct rows of Teeth’ (Browne marg.): cf. Plutarch’s life of Pyrrhus, III.

41
. According to Picotus, (Browne marg.).

42
. ‘Twice tell over his Teeth never live to threescore Years’ (Browne marg.).

43
. ‘many I have seen become’ (
MSS
.:
K
;
E
): ‘many have been become’ (1690 ed.:
M
).

44
. In
Les Voyages
(1654).

45
. When persons were touched for the King’s Evil [scrofula], a gold medal was hung round each patient’s neck (
G1
).

46
. ‘Most carefree and easy’ (Browne marg., quoted in Greek and Latin): as remarked by Hippocrates,
Epidemics
, I, iii, 11.

47
. ‘The bell rarely tolls for a fourth-day fever’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of a popular saying). The daily services were at the first, third, sixth and ninth hours.

48
. In
The Republic
, III, 405d.

49
. The membrane investing the intestines (
M
).

50
. Sapless (as
above, p. 299, note 14
).

51
. ‘So A.F.’ (Browne marg.).
K
reads ‘
A.J
.’, identified as Sir Arthur Jenny (
K
, III, 301).

52
. Ribs.

53
. ‘Cardan in his
Encomium Podagræ
[Praise of Gout] reckoneth this among the
Dona Podagræ
[Gifts of Gout], that they are delivered thereby from the Pthysis and Stone in the Bladder’ (Browne marg.).

54
. In the pseudo-Aristotelian
Problems
, X, 1.

55
. i.e. writers on agriculture.

56
. An error for Aldrovandi (
M
) ?

57
. ‘belonging to Whales or such like great fishes’ (Blount).

58
. ‘Birds, Beasts, or Fishes that breed eggs or spawn’ (Blount, citing Browne). Cf. above, p. 203.

59
. In
On Dreams
(Browne marg.). The more ‘scientific’ attitude of Hippocrates is here contrasted to interpretations of dreams ventured by Artemidorus, whose
Oneirocriticon
is ‘mainly a source book of ancient superstition’ (
§125
).

60
. ibid.

61
. See
below, p. 476, note 5
.

62
. Hippocrates claims that man declines most between his eighteenth and his thirty-fifth year (
Aphorisms
, V, 9).

63
. Transmissions (cf.
above, p. 106, note 224
).

64
. ‘A sound Child cut out of the Body of the Mother’ (Browne marg.).

65
. ‘We take our children young to the river and harden them in the painful, ice-cold water’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of
Aeneid
, IX, 603–4).

66
. i.e. like those auction-sales where bids were received so long as a small candle still burned (
G1
;
M
).

67
. ‘Julius Caesar Scaliger his remains’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin in Joseph Scaliger’s biography of his father).

68
. i.e. Robert Loveday (see headnote,
above, p. 389
).

69
. Cf. ‘
Cicero
, the worst of Poets’ (above, p. 150).

70
. i.e. desipiency: ‘when the sick person speak and doth idly; dotage’ (Blount).

71
. As
above, p. 360, note 88
.

72
. ‘Felicities’: ‘real Felicities enough’ (
MSS
.:
M
).

73
. ‘soften’: ‘sweeten’ (
MSS
.:
M
).

74
. Co-existence.

75
. ‘unto too uncomfortable’: ‘into to narrowe’ (
MSS
.:
M
).

76
. Martial,
Epigrams
, X, xlvii, 13 (Browne marg., quoted in Latin).

77
. ‘Who upon some Accounts, and Tradition, is said to have lived 30 Years after he was raised by our Saviour.
Baronius
’ (Browne marg.). Baronius had quoted the account of Epiphanius.

78
. As
above, p. 112, note 258
.

79
. ‘In the Speech of
Vulteius
in
Lucan
[IV, 486–7], animating his Souldiers in a great struggle to kill one another… [:] “All fear is over do but resolve to dye, and make your Desires meet Necessity” ’ (Browne marg.).

80
. On the Stoic and Christian attitudes to death – and life – see also
above, p. 304
.

81
. In
Aemid
, VIII, 209.

82
. Especially In the Book of Revelation, whose ‘signs’ of the age preceding the Last Judgement were widely said to have been fulfilled by the seventeenth century.

83
. Wisdom of Solomon 4.9 (Browne marg.).

84
. i.e. old at sixty-three, one’s climacteric year (above, pp. 231 ff.).

85
. ‘Deceitfull’ (Cockeram).

86
. Nearly all the paragraphs from the next one to the end of the
Letter
(p. 414) reappear in
Christian Morals
(see below, pp. 417 ff.).

87
. Rope-walking.

88
. ‘virtuously’: ‘for itself or at least for the noblest ends that attend it’ (
MSS.: M
).

89
. ‘not to be free from the Infamy of common Transgressors’: ‘not to procure the name of a sober & temperate person & so to bee out of the list of common offenders’ (
MSS.: M
).

90
. ‘palliate obscure and closer’: ‘observe thy closer & hidden’ (
MSS.: M
).

91
. ‘render Virtues disputable’: ‘tread away from true virtue’ (
MSS.: M
).

92
. ‘Oblation’: ‘offering. Remember thy creator in the dayes of thy youth & lay up a treasure of pietie in thy healthfull dayes. & conserve thy health in the first place for that intention.’ (
MSS
.:
M
).

93
. The
Pinax
commonly attributed to Socrates’s pupil Cebes, but actually written in the first century
A
.
D
.

94
. Rough.

95
. ‘Through the Pacific Sea, with a constant Gale from the East’ (Browne marg.).

96
. i.e. satirists write satires. Seventeenth-century spelling permits the ambiguity in formal definitions of
satyr
: ‘a Monster having a body like a man, but all hairy, with legges and feet like a Goat; it is also a biting verse’ (Cockeram).

97
. ‘Who is said to have Castrated himself’ (Browne marg.: as
below, p. 418, note 5
).

98
. ‘Mite’: the reading in
Christian Morals
(below,
p. 418
); but the 1st edition of 1690 reads ‘Mitre’.

99
. Literally ‘not beyond’ – i.e. the terminal point.

100
. Interpretation (cf.
above, p. 171, note 9
).

101
. The river whose crossing by Caesar in 49
B
.
C
. marked the beginning of the civil war.

102
. i.e. by a private door of repentance.

103
. ‘Anger is short-lived madness’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Horace,
Epistles
, I, ii, 62).

104
. Displeasure with.

105
. In
Nicomachean Ethics
, IV, 5 (Browne marg.).

106
. Protestants have not actually questioned the Epistle’s canonical status, but many – especially Luther – disliked its emphasis on works at the expense of faith.

107
. From St Paul’s hymn to charity in 1 Corinthians 13.

108
. ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (Browne marg.: as
below, p. 423, note 21
).

109
. ‘Even when the days are shortest’ (Browne marg.: as
below, p. 422, note 18
). The paragraph amplifies Ephesians 4.26: ‘Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’

110
. ‘Alluding to the Tower of Oblivion mentioned by
Procopius
[
History of the Wars
, I, 4–5], which was the name of a Tower of Imprisonment among the
Persians
: whosoever was put therein, he was as it were buried alive, and it was Death for any but to name him’ (Browne marg.: as
below, p. 422, note 19
).

111
. Matthew 11.12 (Browne marg.: as
below, p. 424, note 26
).

112
. i.e. the ideal wise man as described by Zeno (in Cicero,
About the Ends
, III, 22).

113
. ‘Ovation a petty and minor kind of Triumph’ (Browne marg.: as
below p. 417, note 3
).

114
. Cf. ‘
Lucifer
keeps his court in my breast,
Legion
is revived in me’ (above, p. 125).

115
. Temperamental (cf.
above, p. 69, note 37
).

116
. As
above, p. 69, note 38
.

1
. Brackets designate the passages forming part of
A Letter to a Friend
(see headnote, above).

2
. ‘That is, in armour, in a state of military vigilance. One of the Grecian chiefs used to represent open force by the lion’s skin, and policy by the fox’s tail’ (
SJ
).

3
. ‘Ovation a petty and minor Kind of Triumph’ (Browne marg.; as above,
p. 413, note 113
).

4
. Cf. the violent conflict between the Lapiths and the Centaurs at the marriage of Perithous.

5
. ‘Who is said to have Castrated himself’ (Browne marg.: as above,
p. 408, note 97
).

6
. As
above, p. 301, note 23
.

7
. Ecclesiastes 11.2 (Browne marg.).

8
. Luke 6.30 (Browne marg.).

9
. Proverbs 19.17.

10
. ‘the time when money lent out at interest was commonly repaid’ (
SJ
).

11
. 2 Kings 6.5–7.

12
. ‘That is, with a position as immutable as that of the magnetical axis, which is popularly supposed to be invariably parallel to the meridian, or to stand exactly north and south’ (
SJ
).

13
. ‘where prudent Simplicity hath fix’d thee’ (as above,
p. 409
): ‘when prudent simplicity hath fixt thee’ (1716 ed.).

14
. ‘Optimi malorum pessimi bonorum’ (Browne marg.). The dictum, most likely proverbial, is translated in the text.

15
. Mutable.

16
. The monument in Alexandria commemorating the city’s capture by Diocletian.

17
. i.e. the eight members of Noah’s family.

18
. ‘Even when the days are shortest’ (Browne marg.: as
above, p. 412, note 109
).

19
. See
above, p. 412, note 110
.

20
. See
above, p. 411, note 105
.

21
. ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (Browne marg.: as above,
p. 412, note 108
).

22
. Cf.
The Garden of Cyrus
on the stars as ‘rayes and flashing glimpses of the Empyreall light’ etc. (above,
p. 375
).

23
. On Atlantis, the mythical island ‘vaster than Libya and Asia put together’, see Plato,
Timaeus
, 24e.

24
. Speculative.

25
. ‘The powers of vengeance’ (
SJ
). Adrastea is an epithet of Nemesis.

26
. Matthew 11.12 (Browne marg.: as above,
p. 412, note 111
).

27
. i.e. gods: rulers who imitate the Lord God (Elohim).

28
. The moon’s ‘noise’ was thought to have formed part of the music of the spheres (above,
p. 149
).

29
. Alluding to the story of Ulysses, who stopped the ears of his companions with wax when they passed by the Sirens’ (
SJ
):
Odyssey
, XII, 173.

30
. i.e. sycophants or malevolent accusers.

31
. Jonah 4.6–10: ‘the gourd… came up in a night, and perished in a night’.

32
. i.e. which need to be preserved.

33
. The time span of ephemerides (as
above, p. 81, note 104
) surpasses by far that of the quadrennial Olympic games.

34
. i.e. after the Last Judgement.

35
. i.e. deaths. See
above, p. 309, note 21
.

36
. i.e. no one who is guilty. The phrase echoes Juvenal,
Satires
, XIII, 2–3.

37
. ‘that is… though we find in ourselves the imperfections of humanity’ (
SJ
).