a sweet conversation, into the thorny wilder- 10 And in this condition he continued about a 15 year; in which time his two pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, took a journey to see their tutor; where they found him with a book in his hand,-it was the Odes of Horace, 20 25 —he being then like humble and innocent Abel, 3 Sir Edwin Sandys (c. 1561-1629), who assisted the Pilgrims in chartering the Mayflower. 4i. e.. repeated their "innocent recreations," with such amplification or difference as there is between a paraphrase and the original text. 55 John Earle 1 1601?-1665 A CRITIC1 (From Microcosmographie, 1628) 2 A Critic is one that has spelled over a great many of books, and his observation is the and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. orthography. He is the surgeon of old authors, He converses much in fragments and Desunt mulla's, and if he piece it up with two lines, he is more proud of that book than the author. He runs over all sciences to peruse their syntaxes, and thinks all learning comprised in learning Latin. He tastes styles, as some descreeter palates do wine; and tells you which is genuine, which sophicated and bastard. deceased long before the Caesars, and entombed His own phrase is a miscellany of old words, by Varro, and the modernest man he follows is Plautus. He writes omneis at length, and quicquid, and his gerund is most incomformable. He is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up to the judgment of his castigations. He is one that makes all books sell dearer, while he swells them into folios with his comments. Sir Thomas Browne 1605-1682 DEATH AND IMMORTALITY (From Hydriotaphia: Urn Burial, 1658) Now since these dead bones' have already out-lasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard underground, and thin walls of clay, out-worn all the strong and specious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums 1 John Earle, a learned and witty man and a successful writer, was Chaplain to Charles II in exile, and after the Restoration became successively Bishop of Worcester and of Salisbury. The nature of the Microsmographie, his chief work, is suggested in its sub-title-A Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters. The numerous character studies of the seventeenth century "form a link between the 'humors' of the old comedy on the one hand and the familiar essay and novel of the eighteenth century on the other." Among these characterwriters," Earle holds a foremost place. Many things are lacking i. e. in the text of the work he is editing. 3 Plautus, one of the masters of Latin comedy, died 181 B. C. Hence he lived some time before the learned scholar and writer Varro, who died about 28 B. C. and before the Augustan Age of Latin literature,—the age of Vergil, Horace, and their great contemporaries. These are instances of the obsolete or antiquated Latin usage followed by the pedantic critic. 1 This essay was suggested by the discovery of "between forty and fifty urns" in a field of Old Walsingham, Norfolk, containing human bones, with boxes, combs, and other articles. In a preceding chapter, Browne contends that "these were the urns of Romans." and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relicks, or might not gladly say, mal-content of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity; content to have so far been, as to have a title to future being, although he had lived here but in an hidden 5 state of life, and as it were, an abortion. What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the per Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim?3 Time which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments. In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of 10 sons of these ossuaries' entered the famous their continuation, and obscurity their protection. If they died by violent hands, and were thrust into their urns, these bones become considerable, and some old philosophers would nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a ques honour them, whose souls they conceived most 15 tion above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, 10 or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their pure, which were thus snatched from their bodies, and to retain a stronger propension unto them; whereas they weariedly left a languishing corpse, and with faint desires of re-union. If they fell by long and aged decay, 20 relicks, they had not so grossly erred in the yet wrapt up in the bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, and make but one blot with infants. If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live with death, 25 unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes: common counters sum up the life of Moses his man. Our days become con art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vainglory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last forever, siderable, like petty sums, by minute accumu- 30 had encouragement for ambition; and finding lations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers; and our days of a span long, make not one little finger." no atropos unto the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vainglories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already out-lasted their monuments, and mechanical preservations. If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity into it, there was a happi- 35 ness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew politickly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be 40 But in this latter scene of time, we cannot ex Means of preservation. Inclination towards them. i. e., Moses's man. The average length of man's life as estimated by Moses (Pslm. xc. 10) is but seventy or eighty years, hence while it would take a great mathematician (an Archimedes) to calculate the number of pulses, or heart-beats in the life of Methuselah, ordinary reckoners can readily sum up the short span of man's life according to Moses' computation. 7i. e., not one hundred years. According to an ancient method of counting on the fingers, the crooking of the little finger of the right hand signified a hundred. In the story of Alcmena, Jupiter delays the rising of Phoebus, and makes one night as long as three. pect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of Elias, 12 and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector. i. e., those whose bones were deposited in these urns (or ossuaries). 10 The guardian spirits of a particular place; tutelary observators, guardian angels of the persons buried there. 11 The Fate who cuts the thread of life. 12 i. e., of the prophet Elijah, called Elias in the New Testament. The prophecy was, that the world was to last but six thousand years. The world would thus come to an end in 2000 A. D. Should this prophecy be fulfilled, Charles V., who died in 1558, could not possibly be remembered more than 442 years, while Hector (assuming his death to have taken place about 1100 or 1200 B. C.) had been already remembered some 2700 or 2800 years when Browne wrote. Therefore in 1658, the date of Browne's essay, Hector's fame had already exceeded the greatest possible duration of that of Charles V. by over two thousand years, or by more than double the length of Methuselah's life (two Methuselahs), which would be only 1938 years. According to a passage in the Talmud, the tradition of this prophecy was handed down "by the house" (i. e. the disciples or school) of Elijah. And therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus13 holds no proportion unto the other. "Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for tion and judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's patients, or Achilles's horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the 5 balsam of our memories, the entelechia" and soul of our subsistences? To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one. our designs. To extend our memories by monu- 10 And who had not rather have been the good ments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We thief, than Pilate? But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpe whose generations are ordained in this setting 15 tuity. Who can but pity the founder of the part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the con- 20 sideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, 18 confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remark membered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methusaleh's long life had been his only chronicle. Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right lined circle11 must 25 able persons forgot, than any that stand reconclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. 30 Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, 15 to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or 35 first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages. To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they know more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan;16 disparaging his horoscopal inclina 13 Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, and hence especially associated with gates and other places of entrance. He was represented with two faces, looking in different directions, possibly because at the moment of beginning we naturally look backward to what is ended and forward to what is to come. Browne (adopting this interpretation) declares that the face of Janus which looks forward to the future, is out of all proportion to the face which looks towards the past; i. e. that the world's past will greatly exceed its future, the larger part of the six thousand years being already spent. 14i.e., the Greek letter theta, O, the symbol of death. Among the Greeks, when a man's fate was decided by vote, those in favor of his death marked their ballots with the letter, that being the first letter of the word Оávātos, or death. The fatal letter thus came to be a sign of death, and as such is found on Roman gravestones. 15 Jan Gruter, a Dutch scholar, whose principal work was a book of Roman inscriptions. 16 A famous Italian mathematician and scientist of Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows 40 when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina 19 of life, and even Pagans could doubt, the 16th century. The reference is to a sentence in his autobiography, which may be translated as follows: "I wish to be known because I am, I do not require that I should be known as I am." 17 Entelechy, the complete realization, or full expression of a thing. Here, our noble acts are regarded as the entelechia, the perfect, or essential, part of our subsistence, or remembrance upon earth. 18 The historian Dion Cassius, after commenting on the delight which the Emperor Hadrian (Adrian) took in hunting, adds: "What he [Hadrian] did for a horse called Baristhenes, which he commonly used for hunting, may let us see how far the excess of this passion carried him, since when he died he raised him a monument in the form of a pillar, on which he engraved his epitaph." Hadrian was buried in a splendid mausoleum on the bank of the Tiber. There is an inscription to him in the interior of the tomb, which was not explored until 1825, so that his epitaph was not eventually confounded by time, as was the case when Browne wrote. 19 The Roman goddess of birth. Death is the Lucina (Lat. lux, light, lucina, light-bringing), or heavenly power that presides over our birth into a true life. whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, 20 and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes;21 since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;-diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation. below the moon: men have been deceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath 5 already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth;-durable in their main bodies, alterable Darkness and light divide the course of time, 10 in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense en stars, perspectives24 begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's favour would make clear conviction. There is nothing strictly immortal, but im dureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us 15 mortality. Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end;-which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself; and the highest strain of omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of 20 even from the power of itself: all others have a evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. 25 A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls,—a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something re- 30 ants have found unhappy frustration; and to dependent being and within the reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expect hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor markable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to re- 35 omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy 25 cede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies 40 death, while men vainly affected precious in sweet consistencies, 22 to attend the return In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations 20 A technical term in the old astronomy, indicating the early setting of the sun, which, during these short days, makes but winter arches, that is does not pass through the Zenith at noon, but describes an arc, or arch, nearer to the horizon. The sense is: since our day of life, even when it is longest, is but as a short day in winter. 21 An allusion to the Jewish custom of placing a lighted candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse. 22 The sense appears to be "planning [to preserve] their bodies in sweet consistencies," i. e. in gums or spices which enable them to resist decay. 23 Mummy, or Mummia, a substance made (or supposed to be made) from mummies, was regularly used in medicine as late as the early 18th century. pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn. Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus.26 The man of God" lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly 50 interred by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without 24 Telescopes. 25 Southey suggests that Browne wrote infimy (i. e., lowliness, inferiority) not infamy, which has a more opprobrious meaning. 26 Marcus Antonius Gordianus, the third of the Roman Emperors of that name. He was murdered while conducting an expedition against the Persians (244 A. D.) and a monument erected to his memory bore an inscription in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian, and Arabic. 27 Moses. transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is 5 surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them. To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names32 and predicament of chimæras, was large satis either tomb or burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all die but be changed, according to received translation, the last day will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate lasting sepultures. Some graves will be 10 faction unto old expectations, and made one opened before they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that fear to die, shall groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when 15 believers, 'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's men shall wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilation shall be courted. While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined them, and some have 20 been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus 28 seems most subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla that thought himself safe in his urn, could not pre- 25 vent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no com- 30 motion among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah." Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous 35 resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of 40 contingency.30 Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble 33 churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be any thing, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.34 tabesne cadavera solvat, An rogus, haud refert.35 FAITH (From Religio Medici, 1642) LUCAN. As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an O altitudo! "Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity-incarnation and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, 45 learned of Tertullian, Certum est quia impos and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution,31 liquefaction, 28 Alaric, the Goth, who, according to legend, was buried with great treasure in the bed of the river Busento to protect his body from the Romans. Isa. xiv., 16, etc. 30 The angle of contingence is the smallest of angles. 31 Exolution (Lat. ex-solvo, to unloose, liberate, etc.) seems to suggest a state in which the soul is released, or purified; the gross and earthly elements which clog it being melted or dissolved. The word liquefaction follows up this thought. The word transformation apparently indicates that the preliminary stages of aspiration and purification have done their work, as it is followed by expressions depicting the active joys of the liberated soul. The order of all the words in the series is not fortuitous, but indicates a spiritual progress. sible est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for, to credit ordinary and visible objects, is not faith, but persuasion. 32 i. e., to live in the mere memory of their names on earth (whether on monuments, or kept alive through their productions), to live, if only in the predicament, or state, of those impossible monsters (chimeras) who exist but as fables, this was a large satisfaction, etc. 23 "In Paris, where bodies soon consume.' 34 The tomb of Hadrian. 35 It matters not at all whether corruption dissolves dead bodies, or the funeral pile." 10 altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei. (Vulg. Rom., 11, 33):-"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" 2 It is certain because it is impossible. |