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Browne
by
There are, indeed, some interiour and secret virtues, which a man may, sometimes, have without the knowledge of others; and may, sometimes, assume to himself, without sufficient reasons for his opinion. It is charged upon Browne, by Dr. Watts, as an instance of arrogant temerity, that, after a long detail of his attainments, he declares himself to have escaped “the first and father-sin of pride.” A perusal of the Religio Medici will not much contribute to produce a belief of the author’s exemption from this father-sin; pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.
As easily may we be mistaken in estimating our own courage, as our own humility; and, therefore, when Browne shows himself persuaded, that “he could lose an arm without a tear, or, with a few groans, be quartered to pieces,” I am not sure that he felt in himself any uncommon powers of endurance; or, indeed, any thing more than a sudden effervescence of imagination, which, uncertain and involuntary as it is, he mistook for settled resolution.
“That there were not many extant, that, in a noble way, feared the face of death less than himself,” he might, likewise, believe at a very easy expense, while death was yet at a distance; but the time will come, to every human being, when it must be known how well he can bear to die; and it has appeared that our author’s fortitude did not desert him in the great hour of trial.
It was observed, by some of the remarkers on the Religio Medici, that “the author was yet alive, and might grow worse as well as better:” it is, therefore, happy, that this suspicion can be obviated by a testimony given to the continuance of his virtue, at a time when death had set him free from danger of change, and his panegyrist from temptation to flattery.
But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he will not easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men; for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success.
His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas, sometimes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning and the clearness of his decisions: on whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately so many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent notions, that he was always starting into collateral considerations; but the spirit and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight; and the reader follows him, without reluctance, through his mazes, in themselves flowery and pleasing, and ending at the point originally in view.
“To have great excellencies and great faults, ‘magnae; virtutes nee minora vitia,’ is the poesy,” says our author, “of the best natures.” This poesy may be properly applied to the style of Browne; it is vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantick; it is deep, but obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not allure; his tropes are harsh, and his combinations uncouth.
He fell into an age in which our language began to lose the stability which it had obtained in the time of Elizabeth; and was considered by every writer as a subject on which he might try his plastick skill, by moulding it according to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of this encroaching license, began to introduce the Latin idiom: and Browne, though he gave less disturbance to our structures in phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotick words; many, indeed, useful and significant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by circumlocution, such as commensality, for the state of many living at the same table; but many superfluous, as a paralogical, for an unreasonable doubt; and some so obscure, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it, as arthritical analogies, for parts that serve some animals in the place of joints.