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The first of these posthumous treatises contains Observations upon several 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 censured as superfluous niceties, or useless speculations; for they often show some propriety of description, or elegance of allusion, utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in oriental botany; and are often of more important use, as they remove some difficulty from narratives, or some obscurity from precepts.

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

The next is a letter, on the Fishes eaten by our Saviour with his Disciples, after his Resurrection from the Dead: which contains no determinate resolution of the question, what they were, for, indeed, it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning could supply, consists in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea.

Then follow, Answers to certain Queries about Fishes, Birds, Insects; and a Letter of Hawks and Falconry, ancient and modern; in the first of which he gives the proper interpretation of some ancient names of animals, commonly mistaken; and in the other, has some curious observations on the art of hawking, which he considers as a practice unknown to the ancients. I believe all our sports of the field are of Gothick original; the ancients neither hunted by the scent, nor seemed much to have practised horsemanship, as an exercise; and though in their works there is mention of aucupium and piscatio, they seemed no more to have been considered as diversions, than agriculture, or any other manual labour.

In two more letters, he speaks of the cymbals of the Hebrews, but without any satisfactory determination; and of rhopalick, or gradual verses, that is, of verses beginning with a word of one syllable, and proceeding by words of which each has a syllable more than the former; as,

“O deus, aeterne stationis conciliator.”—AUSONIUS.

And after this manner pursuing the hint, he mentions many other restrained methods of versifying, to which industrious ignorance has sometimes voluntarily subjected itself.

His next attempt is, on Languages, and particularly the Saxon Tongue. He discourses with great learning, and generally with great justness, of the derivation and changes of languages; but, like other men of multifarious learning, he receives some notions without examination. Thus he observes, according to the popular opinion, that the Spaniards have retained so much Latin as to be able to compose sentences that shall be, at once, grammatically Latin and Castilian: this will appear very unlikely to a man that considers the Spanish terminations; and Howell, who was eminently skilful in the three provincial languages, declares, that, after many essays, he never could effect it [86].

The principal design of this letter, is to show the affinity between the modern English, and the ancient Saxon; and he observes, very rightly, that “though we have borrowed many substantives, adjectives, and some verbs, from the French; yet the great body of numerals, auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, which are the distinguishing and lasting parts of a language, remain with us from the Saxon.”

To prove this position more evidently, he has drawn up a short discourse of six paragraphs, in Saxon and English; of which every word is the same in both languages, excepting the terminations and orthography. The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phraseology is English; and, I think, would not have been understood by Bede or Elfric, notwithstanding the confidence of our author. He has, however, sufficiently proved his position, that the English resembles its paternal language more than any modern European dialect.

There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one, of artificial Hills, Mounts, or Barrows, in England; in reply to an interrogatory letter of E. D. whom the writers of the Biographia Britannica suppose to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or sir William Dugdale, one of Browne’s correspondents. These 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,” says he “neither ornament, epitaph, nor inscription, may, if earthquakes spare them, outlast other monuments: obelisks have their term, and pyramids will tumble; but these mountainous monuments may stand, and are like to have the same period with the earth.”