propriety of defcription, or elegance of allufion, utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in Oriental botany; and are often of more important ufe, as they remove fome difficulty from narratives, or fome obfcurity from precepts.

The next is, of garlands, or coronary and garland plants; a subject merely of learned curiofity, without any other end than the pleasure of reflecting on ancient customs, or on the industry with which ftudious men have endeavoured to recover them.

The next is a letter, On the fishes eaten by our Saviour with bis Difciples, after his refurrection from the dead; which contains no determinate refolution of the queftion, what they were, for indeed it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning could fupply confifts in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea.

Then follow, Anfwers to certain queries about fishes, birds, and infects; and A letter of hawks and falconry ancient and modern: in the firft of which he gives the proper interpretation of fome ancient names of animals, commonly mistaken; and in the other has fome curious obfervation on the art of hawking, which he confiders as a practice unknown to the ancients. I believe all our sports of the field are of Gothic original; the ancients neither hunted by the fcent, nor feemed much to have practifed horfemanship as an exercife; and though, in their works, there is mention of aucupium and pifcatio, they feem no more to have been confidered as diverfions, than agriculture or any other manual labour.

In two more letters he speaks of the cymbals of the Hebrews, but without any fatisfactory determination; and

of ropalic or gradual verfes, that is, of verfes beginning with a word of one fyllable, and proceeding by words of which each has a fyllable more than the former; as,

"O deus, æternæ ftationis conciliator." AUSONIUS.

and after this manner purfuing the hint, he mentions many other reftrained methods of verfifying, to which industrious ignorance has fometimes voluntarily fubjected itself.

His next attempt is, On languages, and particularly the Saxon tongue. He difcourfes with great learning, and generally with great juftnefs, of the derivation and changes of languages; but, like other men of multifarious learning, he receives fome notions without examination. Thus he obferves, according to the popular opinion, that the Spaniards have retained fo much Latin, as to be able to compofe fentences that fhall be at once grammatically Latin and Caftilian: this will appear very unlikely to a man that confiders the Spanish terminations; and Howel, who was eminently skilful in the three provincial languages, declares, that after many effays he never could effect it.

The principal defign of this letter is to fhew the affinity between the modern English and the ancient Saxon; and he obferves, very rightly, that "though "we have borrowed many fubftantives, adjectives, "and fome verbs, from the French; yet the great body "of numerals, auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, which are the diftinguishing and lafting parts of a language, remain "with us from the Saxon."

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To prove this pofition more evidently, he has drawn up a short difcourfe of fix paragraphs, in Saxon and

English;

English; of which every word is the fame in both languages, excepting the terminations and orthography. The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phrafeology is English; and, I think, would not have been understood by Bede or Alfric, notwithstanding the confidence of our author. He has, however, fufficiently proved his pofition, that the English refembles its parental language more than any modern European dialect.

There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one, Of artificial bills, mounts, or barrows, in England; in reply to an interrogatory letter of E. Ď. whom the writers of the Biographia Britannica fuppofe to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or fir William Dugdale, one of Browne's correfpondents. Thefe are declared by Browne, in concurrence, I think, with all other antiquaries, to be for the most part funeral monuments. He proves, that both the Danes and Saxons buried their men of eminence under piles of earth," which "admitting (fays he) neither ornament, epitaph, nor

infcription, may, if earthquakes fpare them, outlaft. "other monuments: obelisks have their term, and "pyramids will tumble; but thefe mountainous monu❝ments may stand, and are like to have the fame period "with the earth."

In the next, he anfwers two geographical queftions; one concerning Troas, mentioned in the Acts and Epiftles of St. Paul, which he determines to be the city built near the ancient Ilium; and the other concerning the dead fea, of which he gives the fame account with other writers.

Another letter treats Of the answers of the oracle of Apollo, at Delphos, to Crafus king of Lydia. In this

tract nothing deserves notice, more than that Browne confiders the oracles as evidently and indubitably fupernatural, and founds all his difquifition upon that poftulate. He wonders why the phyfiologifts of old, having fuch means of inftruction, did not inquire into the fecrets of nature: But judiciously concludes, that fuch questions would probably have been vain; " for in "matters cognofcible, and formed for our difquifition, "our industry muft be our oracle, and reafon our "Apollo."

The pieces that remain are, A prophecy concerning the future ftate of feveral nations; in which Browne plainly discovers his expectation to be the fame with that entertained lately with more confidence by Dr. Berkeley, "that America will be the feat of the fifth empire:" and Museum claufum, five Bibliotheca abfcondita; in which the author amufes himself with imagining the existence of books and curiofities, either never in being, or irrecoverably loft.

These pieces I have recounted as they are ranged in Tenifon's collection, because the editor has given no account of the time at which any of them were written. Some of them are of little value, more than as they gratify the mind with the picture of a great fcholar, turning his learning into amufement; or shew upon how great a variety of enquiries the fame mind has been fuccefsfully employed.

The other collection of his pofthumous pieces, publifhed in octavo, London 1722, contains Repertorium; or fome account of the tombs and monuments in the cathedral of Norwich; where, as Tenifon obferves, there is not matter proportionate to the fkill of the antiquary.

The

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The other pieces are, "Answers to Sir William "Dugdale's enquiries about the fens; a letter concerning Ireland; another relating to urns newly disco"vered; fome short strictures on different fubjects; and "a letter to a friend on the death of his intimate friend," published fingly by the author's fon in 1690.

There is inferted, in the " Biographia Britannica, "a letter containing instructions for the study of phy"fick;" which, with the effays here offered to the public, completes the works of Dr. Browne.

To the life of this learned man, there remains little to be added, but that in 1665 he was chofen honorary fellow of the college of phyficians, as a man, "Vir"tute et literis ornatiffimus ;-eminently embellished "with literature and virtue:" and, in 1671, received, at Norwich, the honour of knighthood from Charles II. a prince, who, with many frailties and vices, had yet skill to discover excellence, and yirtue to reward it with fuch honorary distinctions at least as coft him nothing, yet, conferred by a king fo judicious and fo much beloved, had the power of giving merit new luftre and greater popularity.

Thus he lived in high reputation, till in his feventyfixth year he was fiezed with a, colic, which, after having tortured him about a week, put an end to his life at Norwich, on his birth-day, October 19, 1682 *. Some of his laft words were expreffions of fubmiffion to the will of God, and fearleffness of death.

'He lies buried in the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, in Norwich, with this infcription on a mural monument, placed on the fouth pillar of the altar:

*Browne's remains. Whitefoot.

M. S.