INTRODUCTION xxr 



upon the subject will come in for some measure of 

 attention. 



" A swelled style," wrote Temple, in an early 

 essay at Brussels in 1652, "proceeds from a swelled 

 mind " ; and we may surely echo this two centuries 

 and a half later, although the modern echo might sound 

 rather like " swelled head" than " mind." 



Sir Thomas Browne is as diffuse, desultory and 

 centrifugal a writer as Montaigne, and as fond of 

 marrowy classical quotations as old Burton ; but he is 

 more complicated, since he makes appeal and reference 

 to the sciences of the past and then present, as well as 

 to their literature. Thus he cannot embark upon the 

 Plants mentioned in Scripture, without a long prologue 

 asserting that all the other sciences and arts (astronomy, 

 surgery, rhetoric, mineralogy, navigation, &c.) may be 

 illuminated from the pages of Holy Writ, before he 

 arrives at the " expressions from plants elegantly 

 advantaging the significancy of the text." 



Browne is prone to preface his Orations like the 

 advocate Petit Jean in Racine's comedy, Let Plaideurs 

 " Avant la naissance du Monde " and were we 

 not awed at his solemn sublimity, we might sometimes 

 be inclined, like the Judge in the same play, to implore 



