967 



BROWNE, SIR THOMAS. 



BROWNE, WILLIAM GEORGE. 



958 



Shipden Hall near Halifax; but in 1636 he settled at Norwich, where 

 he resided during the remainder of his life. Having soon obtained 

 considerable practice, he was incorporated Doctor of Physic at Oxford, 

 July 10, 1637. Notwithstanding very ungallant opinions advanced in 

 the ' Religio Medici,' he married a lady who is described as both 

 beautiful and attractive, Mrs. Dorothy Mileham, of a good Norfolk 

 family. She bore him ten children, of whom a son and three daughters 

 survived their parents. In 1646 he published with his name a work 

 evincing moat extensive reading and observation, and on which his 

 fame is principally founded : ' Pseudodoxia Epidemica ; or Inquiries 

 into Vulgar and Common Errors,' which ran through six editions in 

 twenty-seven years. A reply to it entitled ' Arcana Microcosmi ' was 

 attempted by Alexander Ross, a great lover of the marvellous. It 

 was immediately translated into Dutch and German, and in later years 

 into French, and acquired for its author an extraordinary amount of 

 credit. In 1648 appeared ' Hydriotaphia, Urnburial, or a Discourse 

 on Sepulchral Urns ; ' a treatise occasioned by the discovery of some 

 ancient urns in Norfolk; and replete with antiquarian knowledge, and 

 marked by many passages of a quaint sombre eloquence. To this was 

 added a much more fanciful essay, entitled ' The Garden of Cyrus, or 

 the Quincunxial Lozenge ; or Net-work Plantations of the Anciente, 

 artifically, naturally, and mystically considered.' So imbued was 

 Browne with respect for his. favourite figure, that an incautious reader 

 (to use the powerful language of Johnson) " would imagine that decus- 

 sation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art 

 had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx." 

 These were all the works published in his lifetime. Two collections 

 of posthumous tracts found among papers transcribed and corrected 

 by his own hand contain the following pieces : 



1, 'Observations on several Plants mentioned in Scripture;' 2, 'Of 

 Garlands, and coronary and garland Plants;' 3, 'Of the Fishes eaten 

 S.iviour with his Disciples after his Resurrection from the 

 Dead ; ' 4, ' Answers to certain Queries about Fishes, Birds, and Insects;' 

 5, ' A Letter on Hawks and Falconry, Ancient and Modern ; ' 6, 'Of 

 the Cymbals of the Hebrews;' 7, 'Of Ropalic or gradual Verses;' 

 8, ' On Languages, and particularly the Saxon Tongue ; ' 9, ' Of arti- 

 ficial Hills, Mounts, and Barrows in England;' 10, 'Of Troas, &c. ;' 

 11, 'Of the Answers of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos to Croesus, 

 King of Lydia;' 12, 'A Prophecy concerning the future State of 

 several Nations ;' 13, 'Museum clausum sive Bibliotheca abscondita.' 



The above were published in one volume folio, together with works 

 acknowledged by Browne himself, by Archbishop Tennyson in 1684 ; 

 to which were added in 1722 in 8vo, ' Repertorium, or some Account 

 of the Tombs and Monuments in the Cathedral of Norwich.' Other 

 pieces by Browne published singly by his son in 1690 are: 1, 'Answers 

 to Sir William Dugdale's Inquiries about the Fens;' 2, 'A Letter 

 concerning Ireland ;' 3, 'A Letter concerning the Urns newly dis- 

 covered ; ' 4, ' Short Strictures on different Subjects ; ' 5, ' A Letter to 

 a Friend on the death of his intimate Friend ;' and in the ' Biographia 

 Britannica ' is inserted ' A Letter containing Instructions for the Study 

 of Physic." The ' Complete Works of Sir Thomas Browne,' with nume- 

 rous personal and family letters, and n great body of valuable notes, 

 was published in 1836 under the editorship of Mr. S. Wilkins, F.S.A. 



In 1665 Browne was chosen honorary member of the College of 

 Physician*, being, as his brethren expressed themselves in their vote, 

 a man " Virtute et litteris ornatissimus." Charles II. knighted him 

 in 1671 at Norwich, where, after a short illness, he expired on his 

 seventy-seventh birthday, 1682. He was buried in the church of St. 

 Peter Mancroft, in that city, and a short and unpretending Latin 

 inscription on a mural tablet on the south pillar of the altar records 

 his memory. It is a disgraceful fact that in our own day the skull of 

 Sir Thomas Browne has been abstracted from his grave and placed for 

 exhibition in a museum. The surviving son of Sir Thomas, Edward 

 Browne, published an account of his own travels in Germany and 

 Turkey, and practised in London as a physician with much reputation 

 during and subsequently to the reign of Charles II. 



The life of Browne by Dr. Johnson was prefixed in 1756 to a second 

 edition of 'Christian Morals,' 12mo, which first appeared in 1716, 

 printed from the original correct manuscript of the author by John 

 Jeffery, D.D., archdeacon of Norwich. The Anglo-Latinity of Sir 

 Thomas Browne is believed to have bad a great iufluence on the stjle 

 of Dr. Johnson. It is a style too peculiar and idiomatic ever to be 

 generally liked, but Browne wrote at a time when our language was 

 in a state of transition, and had scarcely assumed any fixed character. 

 If it be blamed as too Latinised, it may be answered that it would be 

 difficult to substitute adequate English words for those which lie has 

 employed, and that he by no means seeks to give false elevation to a 

 mean idea by sounding phrases, but that he is compelled, by the 

 remoteness of that idea from ordinary apprehensions, to adopt extra- 

 ordinary modes of speech. Coleridge has borne strong testimony to 

 the great intellectual power as well as to the quaint humour, extensive 

 learning, and striking originality of the "philosopher of Norwich." 

 Browne was in his own day charged with scepticism, and the charge 

 ha* been repeated in later times, but many passages occur in the 

 1 Religio Medici ' and elsewhere which show Browne to be a firm and 

 sincere Christian, although perhaps not free from certain fanciful 

 prejudices. His ' Inquiry into Vulgar Errors' may be almost received 

 M an encyclopaedia of contemporary knowledge. 



BROWNE, WILLIAM, one of our minor English poets, was born 

 in 1590, of a good family, at Tavistock in Devonshire. He resided at 

 Exeter College, Oxford, but left the university without a degree, and 

 went to London, where he entered at the Inner Temple. In 1624 he 

 returned to his college, and acted as private tutor to Robert Dormer, 

 afterwards Earl of Caernarvon ; and the degree of M.A. was then con- 

 ferred on him. He afterwards resided in the family of the Earl of 

 Pembroke; and it is said by Anthony Wood that he was able to 

 amass money enough to purchase an estate. The time of his death is 

 uncertain, but was probably about 1645. His principal poems are 

 Eclogues ; a long series entitled ' Britannia's Pastorals ; ' a shorter 

 entitled ' The Shepherd's Pipe.' In the narration of events, and in 

 the delineation of characters or passions, he is feeble, confused, and 

 tedious, especially in his more elaborate series of pastorals. But his 

 poetry abounds in beautiful landscapes, painted with much delicacy 

 of feeling, and not without frequent richness of fancy. lu 1772 there 

 was published a compl-te edition of his poems in 3 vols. Ilium, which 

 contained his ' Inner Temple Masque,' printed for the first time from 

 a Bodleian manuscript, transcribed by Dr. Farmer. 



BROWNE, WILLIAM GEORGE, was born on Great Tower-Hill, 

 London, on the 25th of July 1768. His father, a respectable wine- 

 merchant in London, sent him to Oriel College, Oxford, where, as the 

 traveller frequently lamented in after-life, he met with no encourage- 

 ment and little assistance, in his academical studies. After leaving 

 the University he kept a few terms in the Temple, and attended the 

 courts of law ; but he had uever any love for his profession, and when, 

 by the death of his father, he came into possession of a competence, 

 he devoted himself altogether4o general literature, to the acquiring 

 of modern languages, and the general principles of chemistry, botany, 

 and mineralogy, which were afterwards very useful to him in his 

 travels. 



An ardent lover of liberty, and, stimulated by the deceptive dawning 

 of the French revolution, he republished several political tracts, with 

 prefaces by himself, at his own expense. His ruling passion however 

 from early life was a love of travelling, and a strong desire to distin- 

 guish himself as an explorer of remote and unknown countries. The 

 publication of ' Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia,' and of the first volume 

 of the 'Proceedings of the African Association' had the effect of 

 determining him to attempt a passage into the interior of Africa. 

 Accordingly he left England towards the close of 1791, and arrived at 

 Alexandria, in Egypt, in January, 1792. After visiting the Oasis of 

 Siwah (the ancient Ammonium), he returned to Alexandria in the 

 month of April. In May he went to Cairo, where he diligently studied 

 the Arabic language and customs, with which he made himself so 

 familiar as to pass for an Arab even among Arabs. 



In September 1792, he started for Abyssinia, but a Mamluk war, 

 which had broken out in Upper Egyyt, prevented him from getting 

 farther than Assouan (Syene) and the first rapids of the Nile. On his 

 return down the Nile he turned off at Kenne", and visited the immense 

 quarries near Cosseir, on the Red Sea, In May 1793, Mr. Browne set 

 out from Egypt with the great Soudan Caravan (Caravan of the country 

 of the Negroes), whose destination was Dar-Fur, a Mohammedan 

 country west of Abyssinia and north of the great western branch of 

 the Nile the Bahr-el-abiad, sometimes called the White River. He 

 hoped to penetrate in this direction into Abyssinia ; and the novelty 

 of this route into the interior of Africa, and the circumstance that 

 Dar-Fur had never yet been visited by a European traveller, were in 

 themselves very strong inducements. After many hardships he reached 

 Dar-Fur at the end of July ; but soon after his arrival he fell ill, and 

 after being plundered of almost everything, found himself a complete 

 prisoner in the hands of the bigoted black Sultan of the country, 

 who detained him nearly three years. During this time he lived in a 

 clay-built hovel at Cobbc, the capital of Dar-Fur, his principal amuse- 

 ment being the taming of two young lions. Mr. Browne did not reach 

 Cairo till the autumn of 1796. During four months of this journey he 

 could not procure a mouthful of animal food of any kind. 



In January 1797, Mr. Browne embarked at Datnietta for Syria, and 

 in the course of that year he visited Acre, Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, 

 Balbec, &c., and then, proceeding through the interior of Asia Minor, 

 arrived at Constantinople on the 9th of December. He returned to 

 London in September 1798, having been absent nearly seven years. 

 In the spring of the year 1800 he published his ' Travels in Africa, 

 Egypt and Syria, from the year 1792 to 1798.' As a writer Browne 

 has no great merits ; he was frequently quaint and odd without 

 being amusing ; on not a few occasions he trespassed on delicacy, and 

 he indulged in extravagant paradoxes. One of these paradoxes was 

 that the manners and customs of the people of the East were far 

 preferable to those of civilised Europeans, and that they excelled us 

 as much in virtue as they did in happiness. But notwithstauding 

 these blemishes his book contains a great deal of information which 

 was then both new and valuable, and it is impossible to read it with- 

 out acquiring a strong conviction of the author's veracity. In the 

 summer of 1800 Mr. Browne went by way of Berlin and Vienna to 

 Trieste, where he embarked for the Levant. After seeing a great 

 portion of Greece and Turkey he proceeded by a land journey from 

 Constantinople to Antioch, whence he went to Cyprus and Egypt. 

 In 1802 he visited Salonika, Mount Athos, Albania, the Ionian Islands, 

 and then went to Venice. In 1803 he carefully examined Sicily and 



