He married, in 1641, Mrs. Mileham, of a good family in Norfolk; "a lady," says Whitefoot, "of such symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism."

This marriage could not but draw the raillery of contemporary wits * upon a man who had just been wishing in his new book, "that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction"; and had lately declared, that "the whole world was made for man, but only the twelfth part of man for woman"; and that "man is the whole world, but woman only the rib or crooked part of man." +

Whether the lady had been yet informed of these contemptuous positions, or whether she was pleased with the conquest of so formidable a rebel, and considered it as a double triumph to attract so much merit and overcome so powerful prejudices; or whether like most others, she married upon mingled motives, between convenience and inclination; she had, however, no reason to repent, for she lived happily with him one and forty years, and bore him ten children, of whom one son and three daughters outlived their parents. She survived him two years, and passed her widowhood in plenty, if not in opulence.

Browne having now entered the world as an author, and experienced the delights of praise and molestations of censure, probably found his dread of the

*Howel's Letters.

+ Religio Medici.

public eye diminished, and therefore was not long before he trusted his name to the critics a second time; for in 1646 he printed" Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors"; a work, which, as it arose not from fancy and invention, but from observation and books, and contained not a single discourse of one continued tenor, of which the latter part arose from the former, but an enumeration of many unconnected particulars, must have been the collection of years, and the effect of a design early formed and long pursued, to which his remarks had been continually referred, and which arose gradually to its present bulk by the daily aggregation of new particles of knowledge. It is indeed to be wished, that he had longer delayed the publication, and added what the remaining part of his life might have furnished. The thirty-six years which he spent afterwards in study and experience, would doubtless have made large additions to an "Enquiry into Vulgar Errors." He published, in 1673, the sixth edition, with some improvements; but I think rather with explication of what he had already written, than any new heads of disquisition. But with the work, such as the author, whether hindered from continuing it by eagerness of praise or weariness of labor, thought fit to give, we must be content, and remember, that in all sublunary things there is something to be wished which we must wish in vain.

This book, like his former, was received with great applause, was answered by Alexander Ross, and translated into Dutch and German, and not many years ago into French.

Notwithstanding his zeal to detect old errors, he seems not very easy to admit new positions; for he never mentions the motion of the earth but with contempt and ridicule, though the opinion which admits it was then growing popular, and was surely plausible even before it was confirmed by later observations.

The reputation of Browne encouraged some low writer to publish, under his name, a book called "Nature's Cabinet Unlocked," translated, according to Wood, from the Physics of Magirus; of which Browne took care to clear himself, by modestly advertising, that "if any man had been benefited by it, he was not so ambitious as to challenge the honor thereof, as having no hand in that work."

In 1658 the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occasion to write "Hydriotaphia, Urn-burial, or a Discourse of Sepulchral Urns," in which he treats with his usual learning on the funeral rites of the ancient nations, exhibits their various treatment of the dead, and examines the substances found in his Norfolcian urns. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. It is scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars he has amassed together in a treatise which seems to have been occasionally written, and for which, therefore, no materials could have been previously collected.

To his treatise on Urn-burial was added "The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial, Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically, considered." 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 Persian 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 description of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems willing to believe and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by the feeders on vegetables before the flood.

In the prosecution of this sport of fancy, he considers every production of art and nature in which he could find any decussation or approaches to the form of a quincunx; and as a man once resolved upon ideal discoveries seldom searches long in vain, he finds his favorite figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, sacred and civil; so that a reader, not watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx.

To show the excellence of this figure he enumerates all its properties, and finds it in almost every thing of use or pleasure; and to show how readily he supplies what he cannot find, one instance may be sufficient. "Though therein," says 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."

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The fanciful sports of great minds are never without some advantage to knowledge. Browne has interspersed many curious observations on the form of plants and the laws of vegetation, and appears to have been a very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched with great nicety the evolution of the parts of plants from their seminal principles.

He is then naturally led to treat of the number Five, and finds that by this number many things are circumscribed; that there are five kinds of vegetable productions, five sections of a cone, five orders of architecture, and five acts of a play. And observing that five was the ancient conjugal or wedding number, he proceeds to a speculation which we shall give in his own words: "The ancient numerists made out the conjugal number by two and three, the first parity and imparity, the active and passive digits, the material and formal principles in generative societies."

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These are all the tracts which he published. But many papers were found in his closet. "Some of them," says Whitefoot, designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious writers."

Of these, two collections have been published; one by Dr. Tenison, the other in 1722 by a nameless editor. Whether the one or the other selected 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 suppressed, and what might, without their interposition,