7. ‘Round, pillar-like’ (Browne marg.).
8. Pertaining to the hocks of animals.
9. ‘to infer an absolute truth from a qualified premise’ (E).
10. ‘huntyng’ (Elyot).
11. In the rear.
12. ‘leaping or jumping upon’ (Blount, citing Browne).
13. ‘imitating the beaver, who makes a eunuch of himself, hoping to escape by the sacrifice of his testicles; well does he know their medicinal properties’ (Juvenal, XII, 34–6).
14. i.e. the Latin for beaver is fiber as well as castor; the latter derives from the Greek κάστωρ [kastor], itself related not to ‘castrated’ but to ‘pot bellied’ (γαστρωδης).
15. ‘Diagonion, a line drawn from the crosse angles’ (Browne marg.).
16. Leviticus 11.13 (Browne marg.).
17. ‘sacrifices, wherein were kylled a hundred beastes’ (Elyot).
18. ‘Horses will now mate with griffins’ (Eclogues, VIII, 27).
19. ‘In opposition to ancient writers I would affirm that griffins are to be found neither in that northern region nor in other parts of the world’.
20. The Resurrection of the Flesh, XIII: in Browne’s text quoted in Latin.
21. ‘I used to say, “I will die in my little nest and multiply my days like the phoenix” ’.
22. Psalm 91 [92].12, which the AV renders ‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree’ (in the Septuagint: the phoenix).
23. Beholding.
24. Ecclesiastes 2.14.
25. Broad-beaked.
26. As late as 1661, some members of the Royal Society appear to have credited the unicorn’s existence (§176). Alexander Ross provided a description: it ‘hath the proportion and bignesse of a Horse, the head, legges and feet of a Stagge, and the mane of a Horse; he hath a horn in his forehead’ etc. (in Arcana Microcosmi [1651], pp. 188 ff.).
27. Some doubt to be made what re’em signifieth in Scripture’ (Browne marg.). True enough; for re’em (in Deuteronomy 33.17, Job 39.9–10, Psalms 22.21 and 92.10, etc.) appears as ‘unicorn’ in AV (a literal translation of the Septuagint) but as ‘unicorn’ or ‘rhinocerus’ in the Vulgate.
28. ‘that hath a horn on the nose’ (Blount, citing Browne).
29. Chapter XXVI was added in the 3rd edition (1658); and retained in the next one (also 1658), it was removed from the 5th edition (1659). Its importance for Melville is noted above, p. 51.
30. ‘I do not know what it is’. The entire sentence is included in the Extracts prefixed to Moby Dick.
31. ‘Near Wells’ (Browne marg.).
32. Cartilaginous.
33. Penis.
34. ‘Near Hunstanton’ (Browne marg.).
35. Hump-shaped.
36. A genus of shark.
37. Refining.
38. Lard-like, greasy.
39. i.e. camphor.
40. Of the savour of flowers.
41. Extraction.
42. Finished.
43. i.e. the contractile muscular ring conducive to.
44. Squid.
45. Evidences.
46. Who had imposed a tax on the city urinals but, as he pointed out, the proceeds were not at all offensive (Suetonius, Vespasian, XXIII).
47. i.e. weasand: windpipe.
48. As above, p. 213, note 25.
49. i.e. peculiar to a species.
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 84–6; freely translated by Arthur Golding (1567) thus:
where all other beasts behold the ground with grovelling eie,
He gave to Man a stately looke replete with majestie.
And willde him to behold the Heaven wyth countnance cast on hie,
To marke and understand what things were in the starrie skie.
Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, VII, 506–10; and Donne: ‘Wee attribute but one privilege and advantage to Mans body above other moving creatures, that he is not as others, groveling, but of an erect, of an upright form, naturally built, and disposed to the contemplation of Heaven…’ (Devotions upon Emergent Occasions [1624], ed. John Sparrow [Cambridge, 1923], p. 10). See §291.
2. The lowest part of the os innominatum, the bone on which the body rests when sitting.
3. ‘Describers of Animals’ (Browne marg.).
4. The Italian name for the praying mantis. ‘Province’ is Provence.
5. νθρωπος (man) is said to derive fromνω (upwards) and θρσκω (leap).
6. i.e. man looks up, heavenward.
7. Sight (see below, p. 373, note 50).
8. ‘Point of heaven over our heads’ (Browne marg.).
9. i.e. leopard. The work cited is the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems.
10. ‘yll savour’ (Elyot).
11. Sweetened.
12. ‘coming in’ (Blount).
13. 2 Esdras 14.45.
14. ‘lechery, fleshly wantonnesse’ (Blount).
15. Disgraces.
16. i.e. pashas.
17. i.e. lost their scent.
18. Genesis 34.30.
19. Including The Garden of Cyrus which extols the number five (below, pp. 317 ff.).
20. Strife.
21. See above, p. 80, note 101.
22. Perilous.
1. i.e. not only in stained glass but in the engravings of Raphael, Michelangelo, et al.
2. Nature’s underlying creative power. Cf. below, p. 238, note 7.
3. The vena porta or great vein conveying blood to the liver (OED).
4. ‘teare in peeces’ (Cockeram).
5. Conjunction.
6. ‘being in labor, with childe’ (Blount).
7. Knowledge. By ‘seminality’ Browne appeals to ‘plastic’ nature (see below, p. 347, note 24).
8. ‘order in construction’ (Elyot).
9. ‘agreable’ (Elyot).
10. Figurative (as above, p. 60, note 6).
11. i.e. distinguishing characteristics of temperament.
12. ‘Chiromancer, a Palmester, or one who tells fortunes by the lines of ones hand’ (Blount).
1. Scallions.
2. See above, p. 89, note 145.
3. i.e. the Ottoman emperor.
4. Bleaching.
5. Genesis 9.20–25.
6. The one corresponding to Paris, the other to Thersites.
7. See above, p. 31.
8. Song of Solomon (‘Canticle of Canticles’) 1.5.
9. ibid. 5.11.
10. Discussed earlier, pp. 226 ff.
1. By actual inspection.
2. ‘Of or belonging to a Parable’ (Blount).
3. ‘close joyning’ (Blount, citing Browne).
4. See above, p. 223, note 2.
5. He died at the age of 969 (Genesis 5.27).
6. i.e. paralogism: faulty reasoning.
7. Psalm 90.4.
8. As above, p. 73, note 63.
9. As above, p. 71, note 49.
10. ‘Nothing can be more contemptible than that the oracles are not given out at Delphi in this way, not only in our time but for a long time since’. On the legend and its several manifestations, see §292.
11. As above, p. 97, note 176.
12. ‘cutting off in the midst’ (Blount).
13. i.e. Satan’s.
14. i.e. Satan.
15. Psalm 2.4.
16. John 2.17, quoting Psalm 69.9 (‘the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up’).
17. As above, p. 188, note 57.
18. Cf. below, p. 304. The present section is said to be ‘the first pointed defence in English of Epicurus’s position’ (§54).
19. Feasting.
20. See below, p. 436, note 1.
21. ‘I do not say, as do most of our sect, that the school of Epicurus is an academy of vice, but I say it has a bad name, is of ill repute, and yet undeservedly’ (On the Happy Life, XIII, 2).
22. In The Life and death of Epicurus, 1647 (Browne marg.).
23. Pseudodoxia Epidemica terminates with a quotation, in Latin, from Lactantiu
s’s Institutes, I, 23 (first quoted in the 2nd edition of 1650): ‘the first step towards wisdom is to understand what is false’.
1. A close friend who lived in Crostwick Hall north of Norwich; son of Sir Charles Le Gros, himself a patient of Browne’s.
2. ‘The Sons of Pompey are covered by the soils of Asia and Europe; Pompey himself by that of Africa’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Martial, V, lxxiv, 1–2).
3. ‘Little directly, but Sea between your house and Greenland’ (Browne marg.). Crostwick Hall (above, note 1) is less than twenty miles from the coast.
4. ‘Brought back by Cimon’ (Browne marg.). So Plutarch, Cimon, VIII,6.
5. The word is much favoured in this treatise, even as The Garden of Cyrus favours ‘discern’ and ‘discover’ (§198).
6. i.e. in the discovered urns.
7. ‘The great Urnes in the Hippodrome at Rome conceived to resound the voices of people at their shows’ (Browne marg.).
8. Raynham Hall in Norfolk, built by Inigo Jones in 1630, ‘worthily possessed by that true Gentleman Sir Horatio Townsbend, my honored Friend’ (Browne marg.).
9. i.e. on Roman coins.
10. ‘Joined the great majority’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Petronius, Satyricon, XLII, 5).
11. ‘Which makes the world so many years old’ (Browne marg.) – i.e. several times the estimates current during the Renaissance (see below, p. 439, note 31).
12. ‘Wherein M. Dugdale hath excellently well endeavoured, and worthy to be countenanced by ingenuous and noble persons’ (Browne marg.). The reference is to Sir William Dugdale’s antiquarian labours, worthy of Camden’s classic Britannia (1586 ff.).
13. Actually Helen (according to Cicero, On Invention, II, 1). ‘Centos’ means patched garments.
14. In the time of Henry II, according to Camden’s Britannia (Browne marg.).
15. Horace, The Art of Poetry, 471.
16. ‘The most outstanding diamond comes from ancient rock’ (Browne marg., in Latin).
1. ‘The rich [in silver] Mountain of Peru’ (Browne marg.). Cf. above, p. 158, note 129.
2. According to tradition, Adam was formed of dust from the four quarters of the earth. Hence the four letters of his name – in Greek at any rate: ’A (ναολ), (σ s), ’′A (ρκος), M (εσημβρα).
3. i.e. from the earth’s surface which nourished them.
4. During the Flood (Genesis 7.17 ff.).
5. Moderated.
6. Genesis 25.9.
7. Deuteronomy 34.6 in the light of Jude 9.
8. Who is said to have cremated the warrior Argeus.
9. Iliad, XXIII, 161 ff.; Odyssey, XXIV, 65 ff.
10. Statius, Thebaid, XII, 60 ff., and VI, 1 ff.
11. Judges 10.3–5.
12. Iliad, XXIV, 782 ff.
13. ‘Gumbrates King of Cbionia a Countrey near Persia. Ammianus Marcellinus’ (Browne marg.).
14. So Arnoldus Montanus on cremation, as supported by the scholars Giraldi and Kirchmann (Browne marg.).
15. i.e. of eastern Europe.
16. In his Natural History, X, 60.
17. In the Roman code of the Twelve Tables (Browne marg., quoted in Latin).
18. ‘Finally a flame was applied to the pyre’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Ovid, Fasti, IV, 856).
19. Currency, popularity (R).
20. Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 6.
21. ‘And therefore the Inscription of his Tomb was made accordingly’ (Browne marg.). The source here is Nicholas of Damascus as reported by Perucci, one of the three scholars liberally used throughout this chapter (see previous page, note 14).
22. ‘Which Magius reads ξαπóλωλ (Browne marg.). The Greek adapts a word from Odyssey, IV, 511, to justify ‘totall destruction’.
23. So Diodorus Siculus, V, 18 (Browne marg.).
24. So Ramusius (Browne marg.).
25. i.e. preferring rather to be placed (in the grave) than to be destroyed (by fire).
26. Bishop Martialis, as reported by Cyprian (Browne marg.).
27.1 Samuel 31.12.
28. Amos 6.10 (Browne marg.).
29. Jeremiah 34.5, 2 Chronicles 16.14 and 21.19.
30. So Suetonius, Julius, LXXXIV, 5 (Browne marg.).
31. ‘As that magnificent Monument erected by Simon’ (Browne marg.): 1 Maccabees 1.13.
32. ‘ “A wonderfully made work” [quoted in Greek from Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, X, xi, 7], whereof the Jewish Priest had alwayes the custody unto Josephus his dayes’ (Browne marg.).
33. Most violent treatment (R).
34. Psalm 16.10, Acts 2.31, John 19.36.
35. Substance, material (OED; M).
36. Types or prefigurations of the Resurrection in that the first two were translated to heaven, and the last was delivered from the whale’s body.
37. Bandages.
38. ‘O Absolom, Absolom, Absolom. 2 Samuel 18.33’ (Browne marg.).
39. ‘shout or noise of many together’ (Blount).
40. ‘experts in those thinges, that appertayne to the ministration of a common weale’ (Elyot).
41. Obtuse rather than insensitive (§176). Browne is probably thinking of Ross who vigorously defended the existence of the phoenix in 1651 (as he did that of the unicorn: above, p. 214, note 26).
1. The accompanying plate appears in the 1st edition at the outset of Hydriotaphia, immediately after the epistle dedicatory (above, p. 265). The quotation from Propertius (IV, xi, 14) reads: ‘I am a weight that may be lifted with five fingers’ – where the reference to five contains, in anticipation of The Garden of Cyrus, ‘the merest hint of the quincunx’ (§198).
The Major Works (English Library) Page 57