The Major Works (English Library)
Page 55
284. ‘The Oracle of Apollo’ at Delphi (MSS. marg., in M).
285. ‘In those dayes there shall come lyers and false prophets’ (Browne marg.). As above, p. 68, note 35.
286. Matthew 24.6.
287. Luke 21.25 and 1 Thessalonians 5.2, respectively.
288. ‘that man of sin…, the son of perdition; who… as God sitteth in the temple God, shewing himself that he is God’ (2 Thessalonians 2.3–4; cf. 1 John 2.18).
289. A discreet reference to the numerous Protestant identifications of the Antichrist with the Pope.
290. Revelation 6.9–10.
291. The earlier specific reference (above, p. 112, note 253) is now transmuted into the Day of Judgement.
292. Discriminating, partial.
293. A proverbial utterance phrased among others by Seneca, On the Happy Life, IX, 4.
294. Seneca, Moral Letters, XXV, 5–6; quoting Epicurus.
295. ibid., CXIII, 31.
296. Whose ‘impieties’ include a sustained effort to discredit the traditional gods. Cf. below, p. 311, note 32.
297. ‘That is, if nothing remaine after this life’ (Keck).
298. Chaos (as above, p. 76, note 84).
299. Inserted here (MSS.): ‘What is made to bee immortall, nature cannot nor will the voice of God destroy; these bodies wee behold to perish were in their created natures immortall, and liable to death but accidentally, and upon forfeit; therefore they owe not that naturall homage unto death, as other creatures, but may bee restored to immortality by a lesser miracle, and by a bare and easie revocation of the curse returne immortall;’
300. Dissolved in acid.
301. i.e. scholastic (cf. above, p. 69, note 39).
302. i.e. the creative man of sense who perceives the truth (as above, p. 31). Corrected from ‘suttle’ (MSS.).
303. ‘This was, I believe, some lying Boast of Paracelsus, which the good Sir T. Brown has swallowed for a Truth’ (Coleridge). Not quite; for Browne appears to have consulted an actual if misinterpreted experiment (M).
304. Ezekiel 37.1 ff.
305. St Paul, whose verses are quoted next (1 Corinthians 2.9 and 2 Corinthians 12.4: see above, p. 110, note 243).
306. Revelation 21.19–21.
307. 2 Corinthians 12.2.
308. Which enclosed the moving spheres of Ptolemaic cosmology. Heaven was said to be situated beyond it.
309. Exodus 33.17 ff. See also above, p. 104, note 212.
310. Luke 16.19 ff.
311. Telescope.
312. i.e. external appearances.
313. On the Soul, II, 7.
314. Revelation 21.8, etc.
315. See the next section (#51)
316. Authoritative.
317. i.e. they burn and melt.
318. ‘Calcination a chymicall terme for the reduction of a minerall into powder’ (MSS. marg., in M). The Biblical reference is Deuteronomy 9.21.
319. i.e. chemists; but here more properly alchemists.
320. i.e. altered by heat.
321. i.e. the universe at large (the macrocosm) which is reflected in the ‘little compendium’ or microcosm of man. Cf. above, p. 103, note 208.
322. The rest of this section was not in UA.
323. i.e. volcanoes.
324. The host of demonic spirits (cf. Mark 5.9).
325. Beyond harm.
326. Corrected from ‘boxe of the eare’ (P).
327. The passage is said to have been ‘obviously inspired’ by Dante, Inferno, IV, 31–45, (§220).
328. Cf. Romans 9.20–21. On ‘perpend’ see below, p. 166, note 3.
329. Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, x, 1–3, which was said to have been contradicted in Aristotle’s relationship with the tyrant Hermias.
330. The annual ritual of Venice’s marriage to the sea celebrated her bountiful seaborne empire.
331. Crates the Cynic (as reported by Diogenes Laertius, VI, 8,
332. Cf. Ephesians 6.13: ‘take unto you the whole armour of God’ etc.
333. Hit or thrust (in fencing).
334. Persons of inferior intelligence.
335. Cf. Romans 7.19: ‘the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do’.
336. ‘Chiron, a Centaure’ (MSS. marg., in M).
337. Cf. 1 Timothy 2.3–4 (‘God… will have all men to be saved’) and Matthew 7.14 (‘straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it’).
338. The next section was not in UA.
339. Strabo’s Geography (II, v, 14) likens the known inhabited world to a short cloak spread out (R).
340. i.e. Protestant.
341. Mark 13.20 (‘the elect… whom he hath chosen’), etc.
342. i.e. reformers who demand further reformation, and dissenters.
343. ‘Atomist’ could be a reference to the fundamentalist sect of the Adamites, or may simply mean ‘materialist’. The ‘Familist’ is a member of the Family of Love, a revolutionary sect of mystics.
344. Foretell. In the preceding lines, Browne ‘must have had before his mind’ not only Matthew 8.11–12 (‘many shall come from the east and west… in the kingdom of heaven’) but its expansion by Dante in Paradiso, XIX, 103 ff., and XX, 133 ff. (§220).
345. i.e. in that he was not baptised. Cf. Romans 2.12.
346. Corrected from ‘law’ (MSS.).
347. Matthew 19.24: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’.
348. Luke 12.32.
349. Widely accepted by Protestants in principle, even as the traditional division into nine orders was consistently opposed (§94).
350. Corrected from ‘much’ (P; K).
351. Philippians 2.12.
352. Good pleasure, gracious purpose.
353. John, 8.58.
354. ‘in some sense’ was not in UA.
355. i.e. the council of the triune Godhead in Genesis 1.26 (‘Let us make man in our image’). On ‘the Idea of God’ see above, p. 31.
356. The rest of this section was not in UA.
357. ‘onely’ (not in UA) was added here to suggest Browne’s reluctance to side with Protestant zealots (‘zeales’) who proclaimed justification solely by faith (sola fide) at the expense of good works (‘merit’).
358. Judges 7.4–7.
359. Place before. Cf. Matthew 17.20.
1. The casual reminder that Part II is to be concerned with charity, alerts us in retrospect to the concern of Part I with the other two cardinal virtues, faith and hope. See above, p. 49.
2. ‘peculiar temperament’ (Coleridge).
3. i.e. England. ‘Climate’ is a belt of the earth’s surface contained between two parallels of latitude (OED).
4. On his return from a visit to Ireland in 1629.
5. Proverbs 1.7 (‘fools despise wisdom and instruction’), etc. Denunciations of the multitude, commonplace in Browne’s age, include an outburst by the saintly Lancelot Andrewes (§262).
6. The uneducated.
7. The reference is probably to the standard abacus with two banks of beads, above and below; so that ‘three or foure men [i.e. gentlemen] together come short’ of the one below, who is worth five (§258).
8. Rich men (literally the gilded ones).
9. The social hierarchy here, parallels the cosmic one above (p. 101).
10. The 1678 edition was the first to add ‘only’ after ‘almes’.
11. Beggars.
12. Vegetable physiognomy, as Browne makes clear.
13. Psalm 147–4 and Genesis 2.19–20, respectively.
14. Corrected from ‘lines and figures’ (MSS.).
15. i.e. the apocryphal Physiognomica (§241).
16. i.e. gipsies.
17. Here reduced from twenty-six because i/j and u/v were commonly regarded as single letters.
18. i.e. model.
19. i.e. the copy made necessarily diverges from the Copy or ulti
mate ‘patterne’ which is the Idea of God (as above, p. 31).
20. i.e. the beggar ‘full of sores’ in the parable (Luke 16.20).
21. The 1643 edition punctuates: ‘the Lawes of Charity in all disputes; so much’ etc. I follow the reading in MSS., E, M, K.
22. ‘Battle of the Frogs and the Mice’, the title of the mock-heroic poem formerly attributed to Homer.
23. i.e. the mock trial of the relative claims of the Greek letters Sigma and Tau, in Lucian’s Consonants at Law.
24. ‘Whether Jovis or Jupiteris’ (Browne marg.).
25. The proverbial ‘To break Priscian’s head’ was said of any violation of the rules of grammar.
26. ‘Were Democritus still on earth, he would laugh’. So Horace, Epistles, II, i, 194.
27. ‘That cutt a whetstone in two’ (MSS. marg., in M). So Livy, I, 36.
28. Large cannon, named after the fatal (but fabled) basilisk.
29. i.e. the scholars. The personal pronouns immediately following, refer to the princes.
30. ‘The rebellious Englishman, and the swaggering Scot; the Italian bugger, and the mad Frenchman; the cowardly Roman, and the thieving Gascon; the arrogant Spaniard, and the drunken German’. The lines adapt Sonnet LXVIII in Du Bellay’s Les Regrets (§270).
31. Titus 1.12, quoting Epimenides.
32. Most likely Caligula’s, who wished that the Romans might have had a single neck so that it could be severed at a stroke.
33. Corrected from ‘hereditary’ (MSS.).
34. Cf. Milton, Areopagitica (1644): ‘that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary’ etc. (Selected Prose, ed. C.A. Patrides, Penguin Books [1974], p. 213).
35. i.e. transmission to the mind of a material object’s image; hence ‘derived’ (reflected).
36. To square or agree.
37. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20.13).
38. Browne’s contemporaries did not hesitate similarly to denounce Adam as history’s ‘first Criminal’ (§ 95).
39. ‘I thinke’ was not in UA.
40. A variant of ‘impostors’ (MSS.).
41. In Job 4–5, 8, 11, etc.
42. i.e. like anything measurable.
43. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ (Exodus 20.12).
44. See below, p. 148. Coleridge responded to this sentence with a lengthy and passionate outburst (‘I loved one Woman; & believe that such a Love of such a Woman is the highest Friendship’ etc.).
45. i.e. the divine and the human in Christ.
46. Corrected from ‘zealous oration’ (MSS.).
47. ‘who after he had inveigled his enemy to disclaime his faith for the redemption of his life, did presently poyniard him, to prevent repentance, and assure his eternall death’ (Pseudodoxia Epidemica, VII, 19).
48. Corrected from ‘malevolous’ (MSS.).
49. 2 Corinthians 12.7.
50. i.e. with unbated sword.
51. The decisive naval battle against the Turkish fleet on 7 October 1571.
52. i.e. renders me a coward.
53. The ten lines immediately following (to ‘… any of these’) were not in UA.
54. i.e. copulated with a statue.
55. ‘pertaining to… monstrous actions of lust’ (Blount; OED). The allusion is to the Emperor Tiberius (Claudius Nero Caesar), as reported by Suetonius, Tiberius, XLIII.
56. i.e. discovered by Galileo (1610).
57. Ordinariness.
58. Daily.
59. The macrocosm (cf. above, p. 103, note 208).
60. i.e. once the rebellions are masters.
61. ‘Pride is a more subtle sin then you conceive’, replied Ross in 1645: ‘pride intrudes it selfe amongst our best workes: And have you not pride, in thinking you have no pride?’ But that is precisely Browne’s (not the narrator’s) point; and he makes much of it in what ensues.
62. i.e. tower.
63. i.e. in the way an ode is constructed.
64. Enumerated above, p. 33 (cf. §195).
65. ‘The description of a countrey’ (Cockeram).
66. The two stars in the Great Bear pointing nearly to the Pole Star.
67. Gathered simples (medicinal herbs).
68. Plato, Apology, 21d.
69. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, VII, 13, dismisses the legend that Homer wasted to death because unable to solve a riddle.
70. That Aristotle drowned himselfe in Euripus as despairing to resolve the cause of its reciprocation, or ebbe and flow seven times a day… is generally beleeved amongst us’ (ibid.).
71. Here and in all subsequent references to Janus (see below, p. 524), cf. the fundamental principle articulated earlier: ‘In Philosophy… truth seemes double-faced’ (above, p. 66).
72. Ecclesiastes 8.16–17.
73. Cf. the angels’ ‘intuitive knowledge’, above, p. 102, note 196.
74. Corrected from: ‘I was never yet once, and am resolv’d never to bee married twice’ (MSS.). Religio Medici, written when Browne was single, was published after his first and only marriage (1641).
75. Corrected from ‘woman’ (MSS.; K).
76. Corrected from ‘I could wish’ (MSS.).
77. The sentiment was first censured by James Howell in 1645, who thought ‘it was a most unmanly thing’ in Browne ‘to wish that ther wer a way to propagat the world otherwise than by conjunction with women’ (Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, 3rd ed. [1655], I, 308). Other censures followed, e.g. Dr Johnson’s, below, p. 489. But the lighthearted tone of the passage suggests that Browne again deploys his ‘soft and flexible sense’ (see above, p. 21).
78. So Hermes Trismegistus affirmed that God is ‘by nature a musician, and… works harmony in the universe at large’ (Hermetica, ed. Walter Scott [Oxford, 1924], 1,274–7). The concept is of great antiquity and equal popularity throughout the Renaissance.
79. Corrected from ‘our’ (MSS.).