SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND HIS ‘RELIGIO MEDICI’: an Appreciation with some of the best…

Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier

Saint Mary Street, Edinburgh, and 21 Paternoster Square, London 1898

DEDICATED TO SIR THOMAS GRAINGER STEWART PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT WHOSE REQUEST THIS APPRECIATION WAS DELIVERED AS THE INAUGURAL DISCOURSE AT THE OPENING MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION IN ST. GILES’ CATHEDRAL ON THE 26TH JULY 1898 IN GREAT GOOD-WILL AND LOVE BY ALEXANDER WHYTE p. 11

APPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION

The Religio Medici is a universally recognised English classic. And the Urn-Burial, the Christian Morals, and the Letter to a Friend are all quite worthy to take their stand beside the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne made several other contributions to English literature besides these masterpieces; but it is on the Religio Medici, and on what Sir Thomas himself calls ‘other pieces of affinity thereto,’ that his sure fame as a writer of noble truth and stately English most securely rests. Sir Thomas Browne was a physician of high standing and large practice all his days; and he was an antiquarian and scientific writer of the foremost information and authority: but it is the extraordinary depth and riches and imaginative sweep of his mind, and his rare wisdom and wealth of heart, and his quite wonderful English style, that have all combined together p. 12to seal Sir Thomas Browne with his well-earned immortality.

Sir Thomas Browne’s outward life can be told in a very few words. He was born at London in 1605. He lost his father very early, and it must have been a very great loss. For the old mercer was wont to creep up to his little son’s cradle when he was asleep, and uncover and kiss the child’s breast, and pray, ‘as ’tis said of Origen’s father, that the Holy Ghost would at once take possession there.’ The old merchant was able to leave money enough to take his gifted son first to Winchester School, and then to Oxford, where he graduated in New Pembroke in 1626. On young Browne’s graduation, old Anthony à Wood has this remark, that those who love Pembroke best can wish it nothing better than that it may long proceed as it has thus begun. As soon as he had taken his university degree young Browne entered on the study of medicine: and, in pursuit of that fast-rising science, he visited and studied in the most famous schools of France and Italy and Holland. After various changes of residence, through all of which it is somewhat

difficult to trace the young physician’s movements, we find him at last fairly settled in the city of Norwich, where p. 13he spent the remainder of his long, and busy, and prosperous, and honourable life.

Dr. Johnson laments that Sir Thomas Browne has left us no record of his travels and studies abroad, and all Sir Thomas’s readers will join with his great biographer in that regret. At the same time, as we turn over the pile of letters that Sir Thomas sent to his student son Edward, and to his sailor son Thomas, when they were abroad at school and on ship, we can easily collect and picture to ourselves the life that the writer of those so wise and so beautiful letters led when he himself was still a student at Montpellier and Padua and Leyden. ‘Honest Tom,—God bless thee, and protect thee, and mercifully lead thee through the ways of His providence. Be diligent in going to church. Be constant, and not negligent in your daily private prayers. Be a good husband. Cast up your accounts with all care. Be temperate in diet, and be wary not to overheat yourself. Be courteous and civil to all. Live with an apothecary, and observe his drugs and practice. Frequent civil company. Point your letters, and put periods at the ends of your sentences. Have the

love and the fear of God ever before your eyes. And may God confirm your faith in Christ. Observe the p. 14manner of trade: how they make wine and vinegar, and keep a note of all that for me. Be courteous and humble in all your conversation, and of good manners: which he that learneth not in France travaileth in vain. When at sea read good books. Without good books time cannot be well spent in those great ships. Learn the stars also: the particular coasts: the depth of the road-steads: and the risings and fallings of the land. Enquire further about the mineral water: and take notice of such plants as you meet with. I am told that you are looked on in the Service as exceeding faithful, valiant, diligent, generous, vigilant, observing, very knowing, and a scholar. When you first took to this manner of life, you cannot but remember that I caused you to read all the sea-fights of note in Plutarch: and, withal, gave you the description of fortitude left by Aristotle. In places take notice of the government of them, and the eminent persons.

The merciful providence of God ever go with you, and direct and bless you, and give you ever a grateful heart toward Him. I send you Lucretius: and with it Tully’s Offices: ’tis as remarkable for its little size as for the good matter contained in it, and the authentic and classical Latin. I hope p. 15you do not forget to carry a Greek Testament always to church: a man learns two things together, and profiteth doubly, in the language and the subject. God send us to number our days, and to fit ourselves for a better world. Times look troublesome: but you have an honest and peaceable profession like myself, which may well employ you, and you have discretion to guide your words and actions. May God be reconciled to us, and give us grace to forsake our sins which set fire to all things. You shall never want my daily prayers, and also frequent letters.’ And so on, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his two sons: and out of which a fine picture rises before us, both of Sir Thomas’s own student life abroad, as well as of the footing on which the now

famous physician and English author stood with his student and sailor sons.

* * * * *

You might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne’s writings and never discover that a sword had been unsheathed or a shot fired in England all the time he was living and writing there. It was the half-century of the terrible civil war for political and religious liberty: but Sir Thomas Browne would seem to have possessed all the political and religious liberty p. 16he needed. At any rate, he never took open part on either side in the great contest. Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot metal and the stern stuff of John Milton. All through those terrible years Browne lived securely in his laboratory, and in his library, and in his closet. Richard Baxter’s Autobiography is as full of gunpowder as if it had been written in an army-chaplain’s tent, as indeed it was. But both Bunyan’s Grace Abounding and Browne’s Religio Medici might have been written in the Bedford or Norwich of our own peaceful day. All men are not made to be soldiers and statesmen: and it is no man’s duty to attempt to be what he was not made to be. Every man has his own talent, and his corresponding

and consequent duty and obligation. And both Bunyan and Browne had their own talent, and their own consequent duty and obligation, just as Cromwell and Milton and Baxter had theirs. Enough, and more than enough, if it shall be said to them all on that day, Well done.

‘My life,’ says Sir Thomas, in opening one of the noblest chapters of his noblest book, ‘is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry; and it would sound to common ears like a fable.’ p. 17 Now, as all Sir Thomas’s readers must know, the most extraordinary criticisms and comments have been made on those devout and thankful words of his concerning himself. Dr. Samuel Johnson’s were not common ears, but even he comments on these beautiful words with a wooden-headedness almost past belief. For, surely the thirty years of schoolboy, and student, and opening professional life that resulted in the production of such a masterpiece as the Religio Medici was a miracle both of God’s providence and God’s grace, enough to justify him who had experienced all that in acknowledging it to God’s glory and to the unburdening of his own heart, so richly loaded with God’s benefits. And, how a man of Samuel Johnson’s insight, good sense, and pious feeling could have so missed the mark in this case, I cannot understand. All the more

that both the chapter so complained about, and the whole book to which that chapter belongs, are full of the same thankful, devout, and adoring sentiment. ‘The world that I regard,’ Sir Thomas proceeds, ‘is myself. Men that look upon my outside, and who peruse only my conditions and my fortunes, do err in my altitude. There is surely a piece of divinity in us all; something that was p. 18before the elements, and which owes no homage unto the sun.’ And again, ‘We carry with us the wonders we seek without us. There is all Africa and all its prodigies in us all. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.’ And again, ‘There is another way of God’s providence full of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods: that serpentine and crooked line: that cryptic and involved method of His providence which I have ever admired. Surely there are in every man’s life certain rubs, and doublings, and wrenches, which, well

examined, do prove the pure hand of God. And to be true, and to speak out my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my own life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and a mass of mercies. And those which others term crosses, and afflictions, and judgments, and misfortunes, to me they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection.’ And in the Christian Morals: ‘Annihilate not the mercies of God by the oblivion of ingratitude. Make not thy head a grave, but a repository of God’s mercies. Register not p. 19only strange, but all merciful occurrences. Let thy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementoes and asterisks of acknowledgment. And to be complete and to forget nothing, date not His mercy from thy nativity: look beyond this world, and before the era of Adam. And mark well the winding ways of providence. For that hand writes often by abbreviations, hieroglyphics, and short characters, which, like the laconism on Belshazzar’s

wall, are not to be made out but by a key from that Spirit that indited them.’ And yet again, ‘To thoughtful observers the whole world is one phylactery, and everything we see an item of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God.’ How any man, not to speak of one of the wisest and best of men, such as Samuel Johnson was, could read all that, and still stagger at Sir Thomas Browne holding himself to be a living miracle of the power, and the love, and the grace of God, passes my understanding.

We have seen in his own noble words how Sir Thomas Browne’s life appeared to himself. Let us now look at how he appeared to other observing men. The Rev. John Whitefoot, the close and lifelong friend of Sir Thomas, has left us this lifelike portrait of the author of Religio Medici. ‘For a character of his person, his complexion p. 20and his hair were answerable to his name, his stature was moderate, and his habit of body neither fat nor lean, but ευσαρκος. In his habit of clothing he had an aversion to all finery, and affected plainness. He ever wore a cloke, or boots, when few others did. He kept himself always very warm, and thought it most safe so to do. The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much. And of the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge as if he had been by divine providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial orb and its products, minerals, plants, and animals. His memory,

though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was capacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remembered all that was remarkable in any book he ever read. He had no despotical power over his affections and passions, that was a privilege of original perfection, but as large a political power over them as any stoic or man of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment that he hath very rarely been known to have been overpowered with any of them. His aspect and conversation were grave and sober; there was never p. 21to be seen in him anything trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss as any man in it, when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study: so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing. He attended the public service very constantly, when he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were in town. Read the best English sermons he could hear of

with liberal applause: and delighted not in controversies. His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and sound faith of God’s providence, and a meek and humble submission thereto. I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much: and the last words I heard from him were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of God: being without fear. He had oft triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given him many repulses in the defence of patients; but when his own time came, he submitted with a meek, rational, religious courage.’

Taking Sir Thomas Browne all in all, Tertullian, Sir Thomas’s favourite Father, has p. 22supplied us, as it seems to me, with his whole life and character in these so expressive and so comprehensive words of his, Anima naturaliter Christiana. In these three words, when well weighed and fully opened up, we have the whole author of the Religio Medici, the Christian Morals, and the Letter to a Friend. Anima naturaliter Christiana.

* * * * *

The Religio Medici was Sir Thomas Browne’s first book, and it remains by far his best book. His other books acquire their value and take their rank just according to the degree of their ‘affinity’ to the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne is at his best when he is most alone with himself. There is no subject that interests him so much as Sir Thomas Browne. And if you will forget yourself in Sir Thomas Browne, and in his conversations which he holds with himself, you will find a rare and an ever fresh delight in the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas is one of the greatest egotists of literature—to use a necessary but an unpopular and a misleading epithet. Hazlitt has it that there have only been but three perfect, absolute, and unapproached egotists in all literature—Cellini, Montaigne, and Wordsworth. But why that fine critic leaves out Sir p. 23Thomas Browne, I cannot understand or accept. I always turn to Sir Thomas Browne, far more than to either of Hazlitt’s canonised three, when I want to read what a great man has to tell me about himself: and

in this case both a great and a good and a Christian man. And thus, whatever modification and adaptation may have been made in this masterpiece of his, in view of its publication, and after it was first published, the original essence, most genuine substance, and unique style of the book were all intended for its author’s peculiar heart and private eye alone. And thus it is that we have a work of a simplicity and a sincerity that would have been impossible had its author in any part of his book sat down to compose for the public. Sir Thomas Browne lived so much within himself, that he was both secret writer and sole reader to himself. His great book is ‘a private exercise directed solely,’ as he himself says, ‘to himself: it is a memorial addressed to himself rather than an example or a rule directed to any other man.’ And it is only he who opens the Religio Medici honestly and easily believing that, and glad to have such a secret and sincere and devout book in his hand,—it is only he who will truly enjoy the book, and who will p. 24gather

the same gain out of it that its author enjoyed and gained out of it himself. In short, the properly prepared and absolutely ingenuous reader of the Religio Medici must be a second Thomas Browne himself.

‘I am a medical man,’ says Sir Thomas, in introducing himself to us, ‘and this is my religion. I am a physician, and this is my faith, and my morals, and my whole true and proper life. The scandal of my profession, the natural course of my studies, and the indifference of my behaviour and discourse in matters of religion, might persuade the world that I had no religion at all. And yet, in despite of all that, I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian.’ And if ever any man was a truly catholic Christian, it was surely Sir Thomas Browne. He does not unchurch or ostracise any other man. He does not stand at diameter and sword’s point with any other man; no, not even with his enemy. He has never been able to alienate or exasperate himself from any man whatsoever because of a difference of an opinion. He has never been angry with any man because his judgment in matters of religion did not agree with his. In short he has no genius for disputes about religion; and he has often p. 25felt it to be his best wisdom to decline all such disputes. When his

head was greener than it now is, he had a tendency to two or three errors in religion, of which he proceeds to set down the spiritual history. But at no time did he ever maintain his own opinions with pertinacity: far less to inveigle or entangle any other man’s faith; and thus they soon died out, since they were only bare errors and single lapses of his understanding, without a joint depravity of his will. The truth to Sir Thomas Browne about all revealed religion is this, which he sets forth in a deservedly famous passage:—‘Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in revealed religion for an active faith. I love to lose myself in a mystery, and 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, with incarnation and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, Certum est quia impossibile est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for anything

else is not faith but persuasion. I bless myself, and am thankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For then had my faith been p. 26thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. They only had the advantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming of Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith.’ The unreclaimed reader who is not already allured by these specimens need go no further in Sir Thomas Browne’s autobiographic book. But he who feels the grace and the truth, the power and the sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to know that