115. The motion of one bone upon another.
116. Union, fusion.
117. i.e. hazelwood, which itself turns and twists (E).
118. ‘Found often in some form of red maggot in the standing waters of Cisterns in the Summer’ (Browne marg.). ‘Tiring’ means drawing or pulling.
1. The running title of Chapters IV–V is ‘Cyrus-Garden, Or The Quincunx Mistically Considered’. Cf. above, p. 325, note 1.
2. Plutarch, Solon, XXIII, 6.
3. i.e. of extensive roots.
4. ‘High as its head is carried into the sky, so deep do its roots go down toward Hades’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Aeneid, IV, 445–56).
5. Natural History, XII, v, 9.
6. Probably συνολεθρία (συν + òλεθρία), joint of shared destruction.
7. Issuing forth.
8. Ventilation. The ‘six passages’ are: two from the sides intersecting at right angles, two from the corners making X’s, one from the earth, one from the air (H).
9. A variety of dodder.
10. Hairy.
11. i.e. water germander.
12. i.e. the river Acheron (Odyssey, X, 509–10).
13. i.e. in a room.
14. ‘bending downeward’ (Bullokar).
15. i.e. at the summer solstice (see next note).
16. i.e. on Midsummer Day.
17. In On Plants, I, x, 1.
18. ‘that is toward the Eastern or Western points’ (Pseudodoxia Epidemica, II, 2).
19. i.e. in the direction of the sun’s (apparent) annual motion.
20. Song of Solomon 4.16; cf. Theophrastus on the impact of winds, in On Plants, IV, i, 4.
21. Suitable arrangement; in Varro, On Agriculture, I, vii, 2. On ‘quaternio’s’ see above, p. 333, note 60.
22. Literally ‘deviations from the circular form’. Cf. ‘eccentricall’ in the next paragraph.
23. Spherical layers (R).
24. ‘In a lop-sided onion of seven or more rings, those closer to the centre on one side are larger than those farthest from the centre on the other’ (H).
25. i.e. upstream.
26. Turn.
27. Theophrastus, On Plants, IV, iv, 1, and Plutarch, Alexander, XXXV; respectively.
28. Of the Temperaments and Powers of Simples, VII (Browne marg.), where Galen gives a prescription for splenetic patients.
29. ‘fairer than the white ivy’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Virgil, Eclogues, VII, 38).
30. i.e. insition: engrafting (OED).
31. ‘Satio, the acte of sowinge of come’ (Elyot).
32. Linschoten, Discourse of Voyages, I, 61 (Browne marg.). The Royal Society was to express an interest in the reputed ‘horns taking root and growing about Goa’, only to discover that ‘it was a jeer put upon the Portugues, because the women of Goa are counted much given to lechery’ (§ 187).
33. i.e. joined by their apexes.
34. i.e. degrees.
35. On conic sections (as before, p. 361, note 100). An ‘Equicrurall’ cone is an isosceles (as above, p. 337, note 25).
36. Genesis 6.14; Arrian, VII, 19; and Song of Solomon (‘Canticles’) 1.14 – respectively.
37. Pruning in circular fashion.
38. Stalks.
39. Inner halls of Roman houses.
40. Open-air temples (subdialia is synonymous with hypætbros).
41. Arcades with recesses.
42. In On Architecture, V, i, 3.
43. With thinly spaced columns.
44. ‘the space betweene pilars’ (Elyot).
45. Spacing.
46. Exodus 27.9–11.
47. Shading.
48. i.e. the eye’s pupil.
49. Unshaded (R).
50. ‘that parte of the eie, whych is called the syghte… Also the front of an hoste, at the joynynge of battayle’ (Elyot).
51. Brilliant whiteness.
52. i.e. burying under ground.
53. i.e. seminal principles (of growth).
54. Slimy covers.
55. Helmont had planted a willow’s stem in sterilised earth; watered only with rain or distilled water, its weight multiplied over thirty times within five years.
56. Used as an emetic.
57. As above, p. 348, note 32.
58. ‘Orcus’s light is Jupiter’s darkness, Orcus’s darkness is Jupiter’s light’: Hippocrates (Browne marg., quoted in Latin).
59. i.e. dispenses with natural occultations or eclipses. So Hevelius in his study of the moon (Browne marg.).
60. As above, p. 325, note 2.
61. The Incarnation was prefigured ‘by types / And shadowes’, as Milton was to write in Paradise Lost (XII, 232–3; cf. above, p. 70). Hence, inter alia, ‘the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercy-seat’ of the Tabernacle (Hebrews 9.5) prefigured the advent of Christ (Luke 1.35: ‘the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee’).
62. Image.
63. Cf. above, p. 71: ‘Lux est umbra Dei’.
64. i.e. the camera obscura. The paragraph describes accepted theories of vision, both modern and ancient, involving patterns diagrammatically represented as > (‘the decussation’) and >— (‘semi-decussation’).
65. i.e. by a force strong enough to make them rebound (M).
66. Well-tuned (R).
67. i.e. animate, and therefore spiritual.
68. In his treatise Of Perception (Browne marg.). Bovillus makes his point with a diagram of several crossing lines (see M).
69. i.e. fantastical: pertaining to vision.
70. Timaeus, 36b-d; merged in the next paragraph with Justin Martyr’s First Apology, LXX. The argument must be visualised, for it involves not only Christ’s initial in Greek (X) and the Cross (+ or T) but patterns which, made by the intersecting circles if rotated on a vertical axis, pass through the Greek letter theta (θ) representing thanatos or death (cf. above, p. 309, note 21; and §198).
71. Union. Also ‘communication between a man and a god’.
72. ‘make knowne’ (Bullokar).
73. ‘He placed him crosswise in the universe’. So Justin Martyr (above, note 70), who attributes the statement to Plato.
74. Numbers 21.8–9.
75. Cf. ‘the mysterious crosses of Ægypt’, above, p. 330. ‘Mercurial’ refers to both Hermes (Mercurius) Trismegistus [cf. the handed crosses ♀, above, p. 357, note 76] and the sign of the planet Mercury (G2).
1. i.e. the mystical import of numbers according to Pythagoras and his disciples.
2. δκη (Browne marg.): dike or justice.
3. A marginal note provides the diagram which ‘by square numeration’ becomes with the number five ‘hanging in the centre of Nine’.
4. i.e. nine-pins (M).
5. In The Cessation of the Oracles.
6. i.e. the four constituents of matter – ‘fire, water, earth, and aire’ (as above, p. 124) – and the quintessence (ether).
7. ‘Arbor, frute, suffrute, herba, and that fifth which comprehendeth the fungi and tubera’ (Browne marg.). Cf. above, p. 350, note 46.
8. ‘As Herns, Bitterns, and long claw’d Fowls’ (Browne suppl.).
9. i.e. claws.
10. Ellipse, parabola, hyperbola, circle, triangle (Browne marg., named in Latin).
11. i.e. microscopes.
12. i.e. lens.
13. Cf. Plutarch, The E at Delphi: ‘the beginning and ground of even numbers is Two, and of odde, Three…: which being joined together is engendered Five,… worthily named μος, that is to say, Mariage; because the even number hath some resemblance to the female, and the odde, a reference to the male’ (Holland’s translation, 1603; in M).
14. As above, p. 69, note 38.
15. ‘Beware of all fifth days; they are harsh and angry’ – in Works and Days, 802 (Browne marg.).
16. Laws, VI (Browne marg.).
17. Matthew 25.1.
18. i.e. numerologists. On Browne’s attitude to numerology see above pp. 42–3.
19. So Plutarch (Browne marg.).
20. i.e. the fifth of the creation (Genesis 1.20–23).
21. i.e. Venus: ‘the lips that Venus has imbued with the quintessence of her own nectar’ (Browne suppl., quoting the Latin of Horace, Odes, I, xiii, 15–16).
22. According to Archangelus Burgonovus (Browne marg.) in his defence of the cabalistic or esoteric Judaeo-Christian doctrines of Pico (§178).
23. i.e. the letter ‘h’, when Abram was renamed Abraham (Genesis 17.5).
24. i.e. the letter ‘iod’ (the tenth of the Hebrew alphabet) was changed to ‘h’ (the fifth) when Sarai became Sarah (Genesis 17.15).
25. ‘Or very few’ (Browne marg., mentioning a spider with ten legs noted by Clusius and de Laet – ‘If perfectly described’, he adds).
26. The three Hebrew letters in Yahweh (‘Jehovah’) denote the three numbers mentioned.
27. As above, p. 71, note 49.
28. Leviticus 19.23–5.
29. Watery.
30. i.e. that the second day of creation was ‘good’ – the benediction mentioned in every other instance (Genesis 1.6–8). On the number two as ‘Feminine’, see above, p. 380, note 13.
31. i.e. that it was ‘good’ (Genesis 1.10 and 12).
32. Leviticus 6.5.
33. i.e. the ‘trespass offering’ of ‘five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines’ (1 Samuel 6.4).
34. Leviticus 6.5 (‘five of you shall chase an hundred’).
35. 1 Corinthians 14.19.
36. The ensuing seven paragraphs reduced Coleridge to ecstasy: ‘Quincunxes in Heaven above, Quincunxes in Earth below, & Quincunxes in the water beneath the Earth; Quincunxes in Deity, Quincunxes in the mind of man, Quincunxes in optic nerves, in Roots of Trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing!’
37. The consonants in the roots of Hebrew words.
38. The Pentateuch or first five books of the Bible were said to contain just over 600,000 ‘radicall Letters’; and the warriors of Israel, to have been nearly as many (Numbers 1.46).
39. John 6.9–10 and Matthew 15.34–8, respectively.
40. Genesis 45.22 and 1 Samuel 17.40, respectively.
41. Scaliger – ‘the Criticall Physician’ or literary doctor – had claimed that the Latin word for five derives from the Greek of ‘four and one’ (Browne marg.).
42. In Epidemics, VII, 3.
43. “Αγαθχη, or bona fortuna, the name of the fifth house’ (Browne marg.). The celestial regions were divided into twelve ‘houses’.
44. ‘Conjunct, opposite, sextile, trigonal, tetragonal’ (Browne marg.).
45. The Biblical episode (1 Samuel 16.23) elicited many elaborate discourses as by Mersenne (quoted in M).
46. According to an inscription printed by Gruterus (G2).
47. i.e. the four parts of any dramatic poem (Browne marg., naming the terms in Greek).
48. Horace, The Art of Poetry, 189–90.
49. i.e. the science of magnetism.
50. i.e. turn away their vertices so that, in pointing north, they avoid the decussation.
51. As above, p. 180, note 39.
52. ‘loss’ (Blount).
53. As above, p. 242, note 12.
54. Referring to a coin illustrated by Agostino (as above, p. 341, note 58).
55. i.e. venefical: malignant. The myth is described in ‘draughts’ (drawings) and related by Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX, 298–300.
56. The ancient Amphidromia at the naming of a child.
57. Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 126.
58. Odyssey, IV, 412.
59. Iliad, II, 403, and VII, 315.
60. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XI, 12; etc.
61. i.e. nauseated by stale truths.
62. Iliad, XVIII, 468 ff.
63. i.e. the Pythagorean tetrad (1+2+3+4 = 10), suggestive of the totality of things and their underlying design. See §56.
64. i.e. experimental knowledge, the ‘experience’ and ‘reason’ commended in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (see above, p. 35).
65. ‘Hyades near the Horizon about midnight at that time’, i.e. the beginning of March (Browne marg.). Hyades is the cluster of five stars in the vicinity of Pleiades.
66. i.e. the five senses.
67. Previous thoughts.
68. In On Dreams (Browne marg.).
69. ‘Artemidorus & Apomazar’ (Browne marg.): see below, p. 476, note 5.
70. ‘strewed with roses’ (Browne marg.).
71. Hesiod, Theogony, 123.
72. Iliad, II, 6, where Zeus sends not sleep but a dream (somnium).
73. ‘Think thou’, exclaimed Coleridge, ‘that there ever was such a reason given before for going to bed at midnight, to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of our ANTIPODES!!’
74. ‘ – what Life, what Fancy! Does the whimsical Knight give us thus a dish of strong green Tea, & call it an Opiate?’ (Coleridge).
1. Persius, III, 105: ‘He stretches out his heels cold and stark towards the door’.
2. The reference is not to Plutarch’s story (‘the great Pan is dead’) but to George Sandys’s report in 1621 that the death of ‘one Antonio called the Rich’ was foretold by ‘a voice’ (§ 321). Browne’s preference for Sandys’s account may have been dictated by the fact that the daughter of Sir John Pettus (see headnote, above) had married into the Sandys family.
3. Plautus, The Captives, 647–8: ‘thin face, sharp nose, complexion fair, black eyes, hair a little reddish, waving, and curle’.
4. ‘moribund’ (§176). The allusion is to Hippocrates’s description (in Prognostics, II) of the dying man.
5. i.e. East Anglia. Air containing nitre was said to be conducive to health (M).
6. ‘When death comes, Sardinia is in the midst of Tivoli’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Martial, Epigrams, IV, 60, 5–6). Sardinia was regarded as unhealthy.
The Major Works (English Library) Page 61