Religio medici with Observations thereon / by Sir Kenelm Digby. To which is added, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, a discourse on sepulchral urns; and also Christian morals ; by Sir Thomas Browne.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religio medici with Observations thereon / by Sir Kenelm Digby. To which is added, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, a discourse on sepulchral urns; and also Christian morals ; by Sir Thomas Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    or striking. His page, like the earth after the deluge, appears to teem with a new creation. He seems frequently, too, to labour with thoughts too big for utterance, and which, in bursting into birth, expand his French into sublim- ity. Consequently, perhaps, there is everywhere in Montaigne a charm which most persons who read him find irresistible. He possesses, more- over, the art—if art it be—of investing what- ever he touches with a sort of summer dress, green and refreshing, and of pouring over all a warm and bright sunshine, the most enviable, and least imitable gift of style. Something, no doubt, of all this may be attri- buted to the circumstances under which he wrote his Essays. Living independently, like a petty prince, in his castle, having, ere he retired thither, shaken hands with all the vulgar objects of ambi- tion, in order to be the more at leisure to clothe his pregnant thoughts with fitting language, he felt calm and self-satisfied, and pursued his studies with a more cheerful alacrity than accompanies the huntsman over the dawn-lit heather. Being per- fectly at ease, he could play with his ideas, as he did with his cat, till they became so tame and fami- liar, so frisky and frolicsome, so full of antics and devilry, that to observe the method of their move- ments might have relaxed the hatchet-face of a Trappist into a smile. Nature, of course, fur- nished the basis of all this buoyancy and light- someness—but fortune likewise concurred—and the result has been a more than holiday pleasantry.