DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.50017#0031
INTRODUCTION xxv
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 signilicancy of the text.”
Browne is prone to preface his Orations like the
advocate Petit Jean in Racine’s comedy, Les 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
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 signilicancy of the text.”
Browne is prone to preface his Orations like the
advocate Petit Jean in Racine’s comedy, Les 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