Sir Thomas Browne (October 19, 1605 –
October 19, 1682) was an English author of varied works which disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the
esoteric.
Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the Scientific revolution of
Baconian enquiry.A consummate literary craftsman, Browne's works are permeated by frequent
reference to Classical and Biblical sources and to his own
highly idiosyncratic personality. His literary style varies according to genre resulting in a rich, unusual prose that ranges from rough notebook observations to the highest baroque eloquence.
Biography
The son of a silk merchant from Upton, Cheshire, he
was born in the parish of St Michael, Cheapside, in London on October 19, 1605. His father
died while he was still young and he was sent to school at Winchester College. In
1623 Browne went up to Oxford University. He
graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford in 1626
after which he studied medicine at various Continental universities, including Leiden,
where he received an MD in 1633. He settled in
Norwich in 1637 where he practiced medicine and lived until his death in 1682.
His first well-known work bore the Latin title Religio Medici (The Religion of
a Physician). This work was circulated in manuscript among his friends, and it caused Browne some surprise and embarrassment when
an unauthorised edition appeared in 1642, since the work contained a number of religious
speculations that might be considered unorthodox. An authorised text with some of the controversial matter removed appeared in
1643. The expurgation did not end the controversy; in 1645,
Alexander Ross attacked Religio Medici in his Medicus Medicatus
(The Doctor, Doctored) and in fact the book was placed upon the Papal index of forbidden reading for Catholics in the same
year.
In 1646, Browne published Pseudodoxia
Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and commonly Presumed Truths, whose title refers to the
prevalence of false beliefs and "vulgar errors." A sceptical work that debunks a number of legends circulating at the time in a
paradoxical and witty manner, it displays the Baconian
side of Browne—the side that was unafraid of what at the time was still called "the new learning." The book is significant in the
history of science.
In 1658 Browne published together two Discourses which are intimately related to each other, the
first Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial or a Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns
lately found in Norfolk, occasioned by the discovery of some Bronze Age burials in
earthenware vessels found in Norfolk. These inspired Browne to meditate upon the
funerary customs of the world and the fleetingness of earthly fame and reputation.
Urn-Burial's 'twin' Discourse is The Garden of Cyrus, or, The Quincunciall
Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, and Mystically Considered, whose subject is the
quincunx, the arrangement of five units like the five-spot in dice, which Browne uses to demonstrate that the Platonic forms exist throughout Nature.
1671 Knighthood to death
In 1671 King Charles II, accompanied by the Royal Court, visited Norwich. The courtier John Evelyn, who had occasionally corresponded with
Browne, took good use of the Royal visit to call upon the learned doctor of European fame and wrote of his visit: His
whole house & garden is a paradise and Cabinet of rarieties & that of the best collection, amongst Medails, books,
Plants, natural things.
During his visit to Norwich, King Charles II visited Browne's home. A banquet was held in the Civic Hall St. Andrews for the
Royal visit. Obliged to honour a notable local, the name of the Mayor of Norwich was proposed to the King for knighthood. The
Mayor, however, declined the honour and proposed the name of Browne instead.
Sir Thomas Browne died on 19 October 1682, his
77th birthday. His skull became the subject of dispute when
in 1840 his lead coffin was accidentally re-opened by workmen. It was not re-interred until
4 July 1922 when it was registered in the church of Saint Peter Mancroft as aged 316 years.
Literary works
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Literary influence
The literary critic Robert Sencourt succinctly assessed Browne as
'an instance of scientific reason lit up by mysticism in the Church of
England'.
Indeed, Browne's paradoxical place in the history of ideas, as both a promoter of the new
inductive science, as an adherent of ancient esoteric learning as well as devout Christian greatly contributes to his ambiguity in the history of ideas.
Add to this the complexity of his labyrinthine thought and his ornate language, along with his many allusions to the
Bible, Classical learning and to a variety of esoteric authors. These combined factors account for
why Browne remains little-read and much-misunderstood. However, the influence of his literary style spans four centuries.
In the eighteenth century, Doctor Johnson, who shared Browne's love of the
Latinate, wrote a brief Life in which he praised Browne as a faithful Christian.
In the nineteenth century Browne's reputation was revived by the Romantics.
Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and Charles Lamb (who considered himself the rediscoverer of Browne) were
all admirers. The seminal American novelist Herman Melville, heavily influenced by his
style, deemed him "a cracked archangel."
The English author Virginia Woolf however wrote of him in 1923,
'Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those that do are the salt of the earth'.
In the twentieth century those who have admired the English man of letters include:
- The Scottish psychologist R. D. Laing, who
opens his work The Politics of Experience with a quotation by him.
- The American author Tony Kushner in 1987 wrote a play upon Browne whose title is
Hydriotaphia.
- The Canadian physician William Osler (1849–1919) the "founding father of modern
medicine".
- The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges
alluded to Browne throughout his literary writings, from his first publication, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) until his last years. Such was Borges' admiration of Browne as a literary stylist and thinker that late in
his life (Interview April 25th 1980) he stated of himself alluding to his self-portrait in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1940):
'I am merely a word for Chesterton, for Kafka,
and Sir Thomas Browne—I love him. I translated him into seventeenth century Spanish and
it worked very well. We took a chapter out of Urne Buriall and we did that into Quevedo's Spanish and it went very well'.
- In his short story The Celestial Omnibus, published in 1911, E. M. Forster makes Browne the first "driver" that the young protagonist encounters on the magical omnibus
line that transports its passengers to a place of direct experience of the aesthetic sublime reserved for those who internalize
the experience of poetry.
- In North Towards Home, Willie Morris quotes Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial from memory as he walks up Park Avenue with
William Styron: "'And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt, whether thus to live were to die;
since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down
in darkness and have our light in ashes…' At that instant I was almost clipped by a taxicab, and the driver stuck his head out
and yelled, 'Aincha got eyes in that head, ya bum?'"
- William Styron prefaced his 1951 novel, Lie Down In Darkness, with the same quotation as noted above in the remarks
about Willie Morris's memoir. The title of Styron's novel itself comes from that quotation.
On America
Each of Sir Thomas Browne's major writings makes significant mention of America. As a
keen geographer, botanist and zoologist Browne wrote on America in his encyclopedia
Pseudodoxia Epidemica. He also employed the proper-place name of America as a
symbol of the new, the unknown and the exotic.
Browne's study of nature led him to raise the query in Religio Medici (1643) the
zoological puzzle:
How America abounded with beasts of prey, and noxious Animals, yet contained not in it that necessary creature, a
Horse, is very strange
In Pseudodoxia Epidemica frequent references to America can be found. Indeed its opening address entitled To the
Reader describes his efforts to determine truth in compiling an encyclopædia:
but oft-times fain to wander in the America and untravelled parts of truth.
Throughout his encyclopædia Browne includes speculations and reports from America including mention of the giant
phalanges spider, speculation as to why American natives skin-pigmentation differs from African natives, makes a
geographical comparison of the proportions of the Gulf of California to the Red Sea and collated sundry notes upon its
vegetation. He also noted that the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus equated America as
representing the rear of the world stating:
…of the Geography of Paracelsus, who according to the Cardinal points of the World, divideth the body of man; and therefore
working upon humane ordure, and by long preparation rendring it odiferous, he terms it Zibeta Occidentalis, Western Civet; making
the face the East, but the posteriours the America or Western part of his Microcosm.
The dedicatory epistle of the Discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) humorously
makes light of the great volume of printed information available upon the botany of America thus:
(you) who know that three full Folio's are yet too little, and how New Herballs fly from America upon us, from
persevering enquirers.
The concluding lines of the Discourse drowsily contemplates the fact that the world consists of time-zones thus:
The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.
As a medical man Browne was appreciative of William Harvey's discovery of the
circulation of the blood (1628). In correspondence he advised
be sure you make yourself master of Dr Harvey's piece De Circul. Sang; which discovery I prefer to that of Columbus,
(i.e. that of America).
The opening lines of his Discourse, Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial compares the
'discovery' of America to that of a significant archaeological find.
That great antiquity America lay buried for a thousand years; and a large part of the earth is still in the Urn unto
us.
When introduced to the prophecies of Nostradamus sometime in the 1670s Browne wrote a
pastiche of the Lyons physician's verses. His miscellaneous tract, A prophecy concerning the future State of Several
Nations makes several remarkable 'predictions' based upon reason of America's future. In quasi-oracular style Browne
challenges the wisdom of the Slave-trade.
When Africa shall no longer sell out its Blacks to be Slaves and drudges to the American Tracts.
Browne 'predicted' that sometime in the distant future America would protect its wealth and be a land pursuing happiness,
employing the highly-original phrase, American Pleasure.
When America shall cease to send out its treasure but employ it instead in American Pleasure.
adding the explanatory note:
That is when America shall be better civilized, new policied and divided between great Princes, it may come to pass that they
will no longer suffer their Treasure of Gold and Silver to be sent out to maintain the Luxury of Europe and other parts: but
rather employ it to their own advantages, in great Exploits and Undertakings, magnificent Structure, Wars, or Expeditions of
their own.
He also prognosticated America to become the economic equal of Europe:
When the New World shall the old invade nor count them their Lords but their Fellows in Trade.
adding the explanatory note:
That is, When America shall be so well peopled, civilized and divided into Kingdoms, they are likely to have so little regard
of their Originals, as to acknowledge no subjection unto them: they may also have a distinct commerce between themselves, or but
independentlt with those of Europe, and may hostilely and pyratically assault them, even as the Greek and Roman Colonies after a
long time dealt with their Original Countries.
These examples of reports upon America's botany, zoology and geography are remarkable for their very earliness in American
history for in Browne's day (1605-82) America was a fledging colony; in literary terms his usage of the proper place-name of
America as a symbol must also be noted; however, more importantly, it was from reports of the superabundance of America's natural
resources, its geographical size and the determination of its founding settlers led one seventeenth century European thinker to
perceive America as an exotic continent with great future potential.
Portraits of Sir Thomas Browne
The National Portrait Gallery in London has a fine contemporary
portrait of Sir Thomas Browne and his wife Dorothy, Lady Browne (née Mileham). More recent sculptural portraits include Pegram’s
statue of Sir Thomas contemplating with urn. This statue occupies the central position in the Haymarket beside St. Peter
Mancroft, not far from the site of his house. It was erected in 1905 and moved from its original position in 1973. In 2005 Robert
Mileham’s small standing figure in silver and bronze was commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Browne's birth.
External links
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Browne, Thomas, Sir |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
Browne, Thomas |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
English author |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
October 19, 1605 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
St Michael, Cheapside, London |
| DATE OF DEATH |
October 19, 1682 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
Norfolk, England |
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