it, was then growing popular, and was furely plaufible, even before it was confirmed by later obfervations. The reputation of Browne encouraged fome low writer to publish, under his name, a book called, * Nature's Cabinet unlocked, tranflated, according to Wood, from the phyficks of Magirus; of which Browne took care to clear himself, by modeftly advertising, that "if any man had been benefited by it, he was not fo "ambitious as to challenge the honour thereof, as "having no hand in that work." In 1658 the discovery of fome ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occafion to write Hydriotapbia, Urnburial, er a difcourfe of fepulchral Urns, in which he treats with his ufual learning on the funeral rites of the ancient nations; exhibits their various treatment of the dead; and examines the fubftances found in his Norfolcian urns. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. It is fcarcely to be imagined, how many particulars he has amaffed together, in a treatife which feems to have been occafionally written; and for which, therefore, no materials could have been previously collected. It is indeed, like other treatifes of antiquity, rather for curiofity than ufe; for it is of fmall importance to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them into the fea, or which gave them to birds and beafts; when the practice of cremation began, or when it was difufed; whether the bones of different perfons were mingled in the fame urn; what oblations were thrown into the pyre; or how the afhes of the body Wood, and Life of Sir Thomas Browne. were were diftinguished from those of other fubftances. Of the useleffness of all these enquiries, Browne feems not to have been ignorant; and, therefore, concludes them with an obfervation which can never be too frequently recollected. "All or moft apprehenfions refted in opinions of "fome future being, which, ignorantly or coldly be"lieved, begat thofe perverted conceptions, ceremo"nies, fayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they, which live not in that disadvantage "of time, when men could fay little for futurity, but "from reafon; whereby the nobleft mind fell often 66 upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy diffolutions: "with these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful fpirits "against the cold potion; and Cato, before he durft give the fatal ftroke, spent part of the night in "reading the Immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animofity of that attempt. 66 "It is the heaviest ftone that melancholy can throw "at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; "or that there is no further ftate to come, unto which "this feems progreffional, and otherwise made in vain: "without this accomplishment, the natural expecta"tion and defire of fuch a state were but a fallacy in "nature; unfatisfied confiderators would quarrel at the 'juftice of the conftitution, and reft content that "Adam had fallen lower, whereby, by knowing no "other original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, 66 they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior "creatures, who in tranquillity poffefs their confti"tutions, as having not the apprehenfion to deplore "their own natures; and being framed below the cirVOL. IV. "cumference "cumference of thefe hopes of cognition of better "things, the wifdom of God hath neceffitated their 66 contentment. But the fuperior ingredient and ob"fcured part of ourfelves, whereto all prefent felici"ties afford no refting contentment, will be able at last "to tell us we are more than our prefent felves; and "evacuate fuch hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments.' 66 To his treatife on Urn-burial was added The garden of Cyrus, or the quicunxial lozenge, or network plantation of the anticnts, artificially, naturally, myftically confidered. This discourse he begins with the Sacred Garden, in which the first man was placed; and deduces the practice of horticulture from the earliest accounts of antiquity to the time of the Perfian Cyrus, the first man whom we actually know to have planted a quincunx; which, however, our author is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it in the defcription of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but feems willing to believe, and to perfuade his reader, that it was practifed by the feeders on vegetables before the flood, Some of the moft pleafing performances have been produced by learning and genius exercised upon fubjects of little importance. It feems to have been in all ages the pride of wit, to fhew how it could exalt the low, and amplify the little. To fpeak not inadequately of things really and naturally great, is a task not only difficult but difagreeable; because the writer is degraded in his own eyes by ftanding in comparison with his fubject, to which he can hope to add nothing from his imagination: but it is a perpetual triumph of fancy to expand a fcanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from obfcure properties, and to produce to the world 595 world an object of wonder to which nature had contributed little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the frogs of Homer, the gnat and the bees of Virgil, the butterfly of Spenfer, the fhadow of Wowerus, and the quincunx of Browne. In the prosecution of this fport of fancy, he confiders every production of art and nature in which he could find any decuffation or approaches to the form of a quincunx; and as a man once refolved upon ideal difcoveries feldom fearches long in vain, he finds his favourite figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, facred and civil, fo that a reader, not watchful against the power of his infufions, would imagine that decuffation was the great bufinefs of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx. To fhew the excellence of this figure, he enumerates all its properties; and finds in it almost every thing of ufe or pleasure and to fhew how readily he fupplies what he cannot find, one inftance may be fufficient: "though therein (fays he) we meet not with right angles, yet every rhombus containing four angles equal "unto two right, it virtually contains two right in every one." 66 The fanciful fports of great minds are never without fome advantage to knowledge. Browne has interfperfed many curious obfervations on the form of plants, and the laws of vegetation; and appears to have been a very accurate obferver of the modes of germination, and to have watched with great nicety the evolution of the parts of plants from their feminal principles. Q9 2 He He is then naturally led to treat of the number Five; and finds, that by this number many things are circumfcribed; that there are five kinds of vegetable productions, five fections of a cone, five orders of architecture, and five acts of a play. And obferving that five was the ancient conjugal, or wedding number, he proceeds to a fpeculation which I fhall give in his own words; "the ancient numerits made out the "conjugal number by two and three, the first parity "and imparity, the active and paffive digits, the "material and formal principles in generative focie"ties." 66 Thefe are all the tracts which he published. But many papers were found in his closet: "fome of them, (fays Whitefoot) defigned for the prefs, were often "tranfcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the "fashion of great and curious writers." Of thefe, two collections have been published; one by Dr. Tenifon, the other in 1722 by a nameless editor. Whether the one or the other felected those pieces which the author would have preferred, cannot be known but they have both the merit of giving to mankind what was too valuable to be fuppreffed; and what might, without their interpofition, have perhaps perifhed among other innumerable labours of learned men, or have been burnt in a fcarcity of fuel like the papers of Peirecius. The first of these pofthumous treatifes contains Obfervations upon feveral plants mentioned in Scripture: these remarks, though they do not immediately either rectify the faith, or refine the morals of the reader, yet are by no means to be cenfured as fuperfluous niceties, or ufelefs fpeculations; for they often fhew fome propriety 4 |