Hours in a Library

Chapter 10

Prev List Next

Let us inquire, and it is a more delicate question, whether he is better qualified to use it as a plaything. He has a reputation as a humorist.

The Essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is probably the most popular of his writings. The conception is undoubtedly meritorious, and De Quincey returns to it more than once in his other works. The description of the Williams murders is inimitable, and the execution even in the humorous pa.s.sages is frequently good. We may praise particular sentences: such as the well-known remark that "if a man once indulges himself in murder, he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking; and from that to incivility and procrastination." One laughs at this whimsical inversion; but I don"t think one laughs very heartily; and certainly one does not find, as in really deep humour, that the paradox is pregnant with further meaning, and the laugh a prelude to a more melancholy smile. Many of the best things ever said are couched in a similar form: the old remark that the use of language is the concealment of thought; the saying that the half is greater than the whole, and that two and two don"t always make four, are familiar instances; but each of them really contains a profound truth expressed in a paradoxical form, which is a sufficient justification of their extraordinary popularity. But if every inversion of a commonplace were humorous, we should be able to make jokes by machinery. There is no humour that I can see in the statement that honesty is the worst policy, or that procrastination saves time; and De Quincey"s phrase, though I admit that it is amusing as a kind of summary of his essay, seems to me to rank little higher than an ingenious pun. It is a clever trick of language, but does not lead any further.

Here, too, and elsewhere, the humour gives us a certain impression of thinness. It is pressed too far, and spun out too long. Compare De Quincey"s mode of beating out his one joke through pages of laboured facetiousness, with Swift"s concentrated and pungent irony, as in the proposal for eating babies, or the argument to prove that the abolition of Christianity may be attended with some inconveniences. It is the difference between the stiffest of nautical grogs and the negus provided by thoughtful parents for a child"s evening party. In some parts of the essay De Quincey sinks far lower. I do not believe that in any English author of reputation there is a more feeble piece of forced fun, than in the description of the fight of the amateur in murder with the baker at Munich. One knows by a process of reasoning that the man is joking; but one feels inclined to blush, through sympathy with a very clear man so exposing himself. A blemish of the same kind makes itself unpleasantly obvious at many points of his writings. He seems to fear that we shall find his stately and elaborate style rather too much for our nerves. He is conscious that, as a great master of language, he can play what tricks he pleases, without danger of remonstrance. And therefore, he every now and then plunges into slang, not irreverently, as a vulgar writer might do, but of malice prepense. The shock is almost as great as if an organist performing a solemn tune should suddenly introduce an imitation of the mewing of a cat. Now, he seems to say, you can"t accuse me of being dull and pompous. Let me quote an instance or two from his graver writings. He wishes to argue, in defence of Christianity, that the ancients were insensible to ordinary duties of humanity. "Our wicked friend Kikero, for instance, who _was_ so bad, but _wrote_ so well, who _did_ such naughty things, but _said_ such pretty things, has himself noticed in one of his letters, with petrifying coolness, that he knew of dest.i.tute old women in Rome who went without tasting food for one, two, or even three days. After making such a statement, did Kikero not tumble downstairs and break at least three of his legs in his hurry to call a public meeting," &c., &c. What delicate humour! The grave apologist of Christianity actually calls Cicero, Kikero, and talks about "three of his legs!" Do we not all explode with laughter? A parallel case occurs in his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly funny as to call Josephus "Mr. Joe," and addresses him as follows:--"Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you"ve been telling us a fairy tale; and for my part, I"ve no objection to a fairy tale in any situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph, happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a malicious lie." I have seen this stuff described as "scholarlike badinage;" but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my mind, is to persuade one that a writer a.s.sailed by such weapons, and those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English language at his command, must probably have been encountering an inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir Isaac Newton sitting all day with one stocking on and one off, in the Casuistry of Roman Meals, as an ill.u.s.tration of the way in which a story ought not to be told. Its most conspicuous, though not its worst fault, its extreme length, protects it from quotation.

It is strange to find that a writer, pre-eminently endowed with delicacy of ear, and boasting of the complex harmonies of his style, should condescend to such an irritating defect. De Quincey says of one of the greatest masters of the humorous:--"The gyration within which his (Lamb"s) sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always the shortest possible. It does not prolong itself, it does not repeat itself, it does not propagate itself." And he goes on to connect the failing with Lamb"s utter insensibility to music, and indifference to "the rhythmical in prose composition." The criticism is a fine one in its way, but it may perhaps explain some of De Quincey"s shortcomings in Lamb"s peculiar sphere. De Quincey"s jokes are apt to repeat and prolong and propagate themselves, till they become tiresome; and the delicate touch of the true humorist, just indicating a half-comic, half-pathetic thought, is alien to De Quincey"s more elaborate style.

Yet he had a true and peculiar sense of humour. That faculty may be predominant or latent; it may form the substance of a whole book, as in the case of Sterne: or it may permeate every sentence, as in Carlyle"s writings; or it may simply give a faint tinge, rather perceived by subsequent a.n.a.lysis than consciously felt at the time; and in this lowest degree it frequently gives a certain charm to De Quincey"s writing. When he tries overt acts of wit, he becomes simply vulgar; when he directly aims at the humorous, we feel his hand to be rather heavy; but he is occasionally very happy in that ironical method, of which the Essay on Murder is the most notorious specimen. The best example, in my opinion, is the description of his elder brother in the Autobiographical Sketches. The account of the rival kingdoms of Gombroon and Tigrasylvania; of poor De Quincey"s troubles in getting rid of his subjects" tails; of his despair at the suggestion that by making them sit down for six hours a day they might rub them off in the course of several centuries; of his ingenious plan of placing his unlucky island at a distance of 75 degrees of lat.i.tude from his brother"s capital; and of his dismay at hearing of the "vast horns and promontories" which run down from all parts of the hostile dominions towards his unoffending little territory, are touched with admirable skill. The grave, elaborate detail of the perplexities of his childish imagination is pleasant, and at the same time pathetic. When, in short, by simply applying his usual stateliness of manner to a subject a little beneath it in dignity, he can produce the desired effect, he is eminently successful. The same rhetoric which would be appropriate (to use his favourite ill.u.s.tration) in treating the theme of "Belshazzar the King giving a great feast to a thousand of his lords," has a certain piquancy, when for Belshazzar we subst.i.tute a schoolboy playing at monarchy. He is indulging in a whimsical masquerade, and the pomp is a.s.sumed in sport instead of in earnest. n.o.body can do a little mock majesty so well as he who on occasion can be seriously majestic. Yet when he altogether abandons his strong ground, and chooses to tumble and make grimaces before us, like an ordinary clown, he becomes simply offensive. The great tragedian is capable on due occasion of pleasant burlesque; but sheer unadulterated comedy is beyond his powers. De Quincey, in short, can parody his own serious writing better than anybody, and the capacity is a proof that he had the faculty of humour; but for a genuine substantive joke--a joke which, resting on its own merits, instead of being the shadow of his serious writing, is to be independently humorous--he seems, to me at least, to be generally insufferable.

De Quincey"s final claim to a unique position rests on the fact that his "impa.s.sioned prose" was applied to confessions. He compares himself, as I have said, to Rousseau and Augustine. The a.n.a.logy with the last of these two writers would, I should imagine, be rather difficult to carry beyond the first part of resemblance; but it is possible to make out a somewhat closer affinity to Rousseau. In both cases, at least, we have to deal with men of morbid temperament, ruined or seriously injured by their utter incapacity for self-restraint. So far, however, as their confessions derive an interest from the revelation of character, Rousseau is more exciting almost in the same proportion as he confesses greater weaknesses. The record of such errors by their chief actor, and that actor a man of such singular ability, presents us with a strangely attractive problem. De Quincey has less to confess, and is less anxious to lay bare his own morbid propensities. His story excites compa.s.sion; and, as in the famous episode of "Anne," attracts us by the genuine tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He was free from the errors which make some of Rousseau"s confessions loathsome, but he was also not the man to set fire, like Rousseau, to the hearts of a whole generation. His narrative is a delight to literary students; not a volcanic outburst to shake the foundations of society. Nearly all that he has to tell us is that he ran away from school, spent some time in London, for no very a.s.signable reason, in a semi-starving condition, and then, equally without reason, surrendered at discretion to the respectabilities and went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey"s comment of rich meditative eloquence become so fascinating.

Unfortunately, though he managed to write recollections which are, in their way, unique, he never achieved anything at all comparable to his autobiographic revelations. Vague thoughts pa.s.sed through his mind of composing a great work on Political Economy, or of writing a still more wonderful treatise on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. But he never seems to have made any decided steps towards the fulfilment of such dreams, and remained to the end of his days a melancholy specimen of wasted force. There is nothing, unfortunately, very uncommon in the story, except so far as its hero was a man of genius. The history of Coleridge exemplifies a still higher ambition, resulting, it is true, in a much greater influence upon the thought of the age, but almost equally sad. Their lives might be put into tracts for the use of opium-eaters; and whilst there was still hope of redeeming them, it might have been worth while to condemn them with severity. Indignation is now out of place, and we can only grieve and pa.s.s by. When thousands of men are drinking themselves to death every year, there is nothing very strange or dramatic in the history of one ruined by opium instead of by gin.

From De Quincey"s writings we get the notion of a man amiable, but with an uncertain temper; with fine emotions, but an utter want of moral strength; and, in short, of a nature of much delicacy and tenderness retreating into opium and the Lake district, from a world which was too rough for him. He uttered in many fragmentary ways his views of philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the answer to all our perplexities is to be found in some of the mysteries of German metaphysics. If we could only be taught to distinguish between the reason and the understanding, the scales would fall from our eyes, and we should see that the Thirty-nine Articles contained the plan on which the universe was framed. He had an acquaintance, which, if his own opinion were correct, was accurate and profound with Kant"s writings, and had studied Sch.e.l.ling, Fichte, and Hegel. He could talk about concepts and categories and schematisms without losing his head amongst those metaphysical heights. He knew how by the theoretic reason to destroy all proofs of the existence of G.o.d, and then, by introducing the practical reason, to set the existence of G.o.d beyond a doubt. He fancied that he was able to translate the technicalities of Kant into plain English; and he believed that when so translated, they would prove to have a real and all important meaning. If German metaphysics be a science, and not a mere edifice of moonshine; and if De Quincey had really penetrated the secrets of that science, we have missed a chance of enlightenment. As it is, we have little left except a collection of contemptuous prejudices. De Quincey thought himself ent.i.tled to treat Locke as a shallow pretender. The whole eighteenth century was, with one or two exceptions, a barren wilderness to him. He aspersed its reasoners, from Locke to Paley; he scorned its poets with all the bitterness of the school which first broke loose from the rule of Pope; and its prose-writers, with the exception of Burke, were miserable beings in his eyes. He would have seen with little regret a holocaust of all the literature produced in England between the death of Milton and the rise of Wordsworth. Naturally, he hated an infidel with that kind of petulant bitterness which possesses an old lady in a country village, who has just heard that some wicked people dispute the story of Balaam"s a.s.s. And, as a corollary, he combined the whole French people in one sweeping censure, and utterly despised their morals, manners, literature, and political principles. He was a John Bull, as far as a man can be who is of weakly, nervous temperament, and believes in Kant.

One or two ill.u.s.trations may be given of the force of these effeminate prejudices; and it is to be remarked with regret that they are specially injurious in a department where he otherwise had eminent merits, that, namely, of literary criticism. Any man who lived in the eighteenth century was _prima facie_ a fool; if a free thinker, his case was all but hopeless; but if a French free thinker, it was desperate indeed. He lets us into the secret of his prejudices, which, indeed, is tolerably transparent in his statement that he found it hard to reverence Coleridge when he supposed him to be a Socinian. Now, though a "liberal man," he could not hold a Socinian to be a Christian; nor could he "think that any man, though he make himself a marvellously clever disputant, ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher, unless he should begin or end with Christianity." The canon may be sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him "a dubious exception," Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies.

"Think of a man," he exclaims about poor Whiston, "who had brilliant preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for half a century through the very mire of despondency and dest.i.tution, because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the "Shepherd of Hermas" was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England." To do him justice, De Quincey admits, in another pa.s.sage, that this ridicule of a poor man for sacrificing his interests to his principles was not quite fair; but then Whiston was only an Arian. When Priestley, who was a far worse heretic, had his house sacked by a mob and his life endangered, De Quincey can scarcely restrain his exultation. He admits in terms that Priestley ought to be pitied, but adds that the fanaticism of the mob was "much more reasonable" than the fanaticism of Priestley; and that those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers. Porson is to be detested for his letters to Travis, though De Quincey does not dare to defend the disputed text. He has, however, a pleasant insinuation at command. Porson, he says, stung like a hornet; "it may chance that on this subject Master Porson will get stung through his coffin, before he is many years deader." What scholarlike badinage! Political heretics fare little better. Fox"s eloquence was "ditch-water," with a shrill effervescence of "imaginary gas." Burnet was a "gossiper, slanderer, and notorious falsifier of facts." That one of his sermons was burnt is "the most consolatory fact in his whole worldly career;" and he asks, "would there have been much harm in tying his lordship to the sermon?" Junius was not only a knave who ought to have been transported, but his literary success rested upon an utter delusion. He had neither "sentiment, imagination, nor generalisation." Johnson, though the best of Tories, lived in the wrong century, and unluckily criticised Milton with foolish harshness. Therefore "Johnson, viewed in relation to Milton, was a malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man."

Let us turn to greater names. Goethe"s best work was "Werther," and De Quincey is convinced that his reputation "must decline for the next generation or two, until it reaches its just level." His merits have been exaggerated for three reasons--first, his great age; secondly, "the splendour of his official rank at the court of Weimar;" thirdly, "his enigmatical and unintelligible writing." But "in Germany his works are little read, and in this country not at all." "Wilhelm Meister" is morally detestable, and, artistically speaking, rubbish. Of the author of the Philosophical Dictionary, of the "Essai sur les Moeurs," of "Candide," and certain other trifles, his judgment is that Horace Walpole"s reputation is the same in kind, as the _genuine_ reputation of Voltaire: "Both are very splendid memoir writers, and of the two, Lord Orford is the more brilliant." In the same tone he compares Gibbon to Southey, giving the advantage to the latter on the score of his poetical ability; and his view of another great infidel may be inferred from the following phrase. One of Rousseau"s opinions is only known to us through Cowper, "for in the unventilated pages of its originator it would have lurked undisturbed down to this hour of June, 1819."

Voltaire and Rousseau have the double t.i.tle to hatred of being Frenchmen and freethinkers. But even orthodox Frenchmen fare little better. "The French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fenelons, &c., whatever may be thought of their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most commonplace of thinkers." In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon him like a red rag on a bull. The French, "in whom the lower forms of pa.s.sion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings," are incapable of English earnestness.

Their taste is "anything but good in all that department of wit and humour"--the department, apparently, of anecdotes--"and the ground lies in their natural want of veracity;" whereas England bases upon its truthfulness a well-founded claim to "a moral pre-eminence among the nations." Belgians, French, and Italians attract the inconsiderate by "facile obsequiousness," which, however, is a pendent of "impudence and insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the original _fundus_ of southern manners." Our faults of style, such as they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid.

"What striking sacrifices of s.e.xual honour does this one fact argue!"

The French style is remarkable for simplicity--"a strange pretension for anything French;" but on the whole the intellectual merits of their style are small, "chiefly negative," and "founded on the accident of their colloquial necessities." They are amply compensated, too, by "the prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose composition." Even their handwriting is the "very vilest form of scribbling which exists in Europe," and they and the Germans are "the two most gormandising races in Europe." They display a brutal selfishness in satisfying their appet.i.tes, whereas Englishmen at all public meals are remarkably conspicuous for "a spirit of mutual attention and self-sacrifice." It is enough to show the real degradation of their habits, that they use the "odious gesture" of shrugging their shoulders, and are fond of the "vile e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n "bah!"" which is as bad as to puff the smoke of a tobacco-pipe into your companion"s face. They have neither self-respect nor respect for others. French masters are never dignified, though sometimes tyrannical; French servants are always, even without meaning it, disrespectfully familiar. Many of their manners and usages are "essentially vulgar, and their apparent affability depends not on kindness of heart, but love of talking."

The impudence of the a.s.sertions is really amusing, though one cannot but regret that the vulgar prejudice of the old-fashioned John Bull should have been embodied in the pages of a master of our language. They are worth notice because they were not special to De Quincey, but characteristic of one very intelligible tendency of his generation. De Quincey"s prejudices are chiefly the reflection of those of the Coleridge school in general, though he added to them a few pet aversions of his own. At times his genuine acuteness of mind raises him above the teaching of his masters, or at least enables him to detect their weaknesses. He discovers Coleridge"s plagiarisms, though he believes and, indeed, speaks in the most exaggerated terms of his philosophical pretensions; whilst, in treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not look to men who are leading a revolt against established modes of thought for a full appreciation of the doctrines of their antagonists; and if De Quincey could recognise no merit in Voltaire or Rousseau, in Locke, Paley, or Jeremy Bentham, their followers were quite prepared to retaliate in kind. One feels, however, that such prejudices are more respectable when they are the foibles of a strong mind engaged in active warfare. We can pardon the old campaigner, who has become bitter in an internecine contest. It is not quite so pleasant to discover the same bitterness in a gentleman who has looked on from a distance, and never quite made up his mind to buckle on his armour. De Quincey had not earned the right of speaking evil of his enemies. If a man chances to be a Hedonist, he should show the good temper which is the best virtue of the indolent. To lie on a bed of roses, and snarl at everybody who contradicts your theories, seems to imply rather testiness of temper than strength of conviction. De Quincey is a Christian on Epicurean principles. He dislikes an infidel because his repose is disturbed by the arguments of freethinkers. He fears that he will be forced to think conscientiously, and to polish his logical weapons afresh. He mutters that the man is a fool, and could be easily thrashed if it were worth while, and then turns back to his opium and his rhetoric and his beloved Church of England. There is no pleasanter inst.i.tution for a gentleman who likes magnificent historical a.s.sociations, and heartily hates the rude revolutionists who would turn the world upside down, and thereby disturb the rest of dreamy metaphysicians.

He is quite pathetic, too, about the British Const.i.tution. "Destroy the House of Lords," he exclaims, "and henceforward, for people like you and me, England will be no habitable land." Here, he seems to say, is one charming elysium, where no rude hand has swept away the cobwebs or replaced the good old-fashioned machinery; here we may find rest in the "pure, holy, and magnificent Church," whose Articles, interpreted by Coleridge, may guide us through the most wondrous of metaphysical labyrinths, and dwell in a grand const.i.tutional edifice, rich in picturesque memories, and blending into one complex harmony elements contributed by a long series of centuries. And you, wretched French revolutionists, with your love of petty precision, and irreverent radicals and utilitarians, with your grovelling material notions, propose to level, and destroy, and break in upon my delicious reveries.

No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its inst.i.tutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I call their a.s.sailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write what might be the opening pages of the preface to some very great work of the future. Alas! the first digression diverts the thread of the discourse; the task becomes troublesome, and the labour is abruptly broken off. And so in a life of seventy-three years De Quincey read extensively and thought acutely by fits, ate an enormous quant.i.ty of opium, wrote a few pages which revealed new capacities in the language, and provided a good deal of respectable padding for magazines. It sounds, and many people will say that it is, a harsh and, perhaps they will add, a stupid judgment. If so, they may find plenty of admirers who will supply the eulogistic side here too briefly indicated. I will only say two things: first, that there are very few writers who have revealed new capacities in the language, and in English literature they might almost be counted on the fingers. Secondly, I must confess that I have often consulted De Quincey in regard to biographic and critical questions, and that though I have generally found something to admire, I have always found gross inaccuracies and almost always effeminate prejudices and mere flippancies draped in elaborate rhetoric. I take leave, therefore, to insist upon faults which are pa.s.sed over too easily by writers of more geniality than I claim to possess.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] It is curious that De Quincey, in his Essay on Style, explains that political economy, and especially the doctrine of value, is one of those subjects which cannot be satisfactorily treated in dialogue--the very form which he chose to adopt for that particular purpose.

_SIR THOMAS BROWNE_

"Let me not injure the felicity of others," says Sir Thomas Browne in a suppressed pa.s.sage of the "Religio Medici," "if I say that I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me." Perhaps on second thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, of all men, is the last to be taken too literally at his word. He is a humorist to the core, and is here writing dramatically. There are many things in this book, so he tells us, "delivered rhetorically, many expressions therein merely tropical,... and therefore also many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the rigid test of reason." We shall hardly do wrong in reckoning amongst them this audacious claim to surpa.s.sing felicity, as we may certainly include his boast that he "could lose an arm without a tear, and with few groans be quartered into pieces." And yet, if Sir Thomas were to be understood in the most downright literal earnest, perhaps he could have made out as good a case for his a.s.sertion as almost any of the troubled race of mankind. For, if we set aside external circ.u.mstances of life, what qualities offer a more certain guarantee of happiness than those of which he is an almost typical example? A mind endowed with an insatiable curiosity as to all things knowable and unknowable; an imagination which tinges with poetical hues the vast acc.u.mulation of incoherent facts thus stored in a capacious memory; and a strangely vivid humour that is always detecting the quaintest a.n.a.logies, and, as it were, striking light from the most unexpected collocations of uncompromising materials: such talents are by themselves enough to provide a man with work for life, and to make all his work delightful.

To them, moreover, we must add a disposition absolutely incapable of controversial bitterness; "a const.i.tution," as he says of himself, "so general that it consorts and sympathises with all things;" an absence of all antipathies to loathsome objects in nature--to French "dishes of snails, frogs, and toadstools," or to Jewish repasts on "locusts or gra.s.shoppers;" an equal toleration--which in the first half of the seventeenth century is something astonishing--for all theological systems; an admiration even of our natural enemies, the French, the Spaniards, the Italians, and the Dutch; a love of all climates, of all countries; and, in short, an utter incapacity to "absolutely detest or hate any essence except the devil." Indeed, his hatred even for that personage has in it so little of bitterness, that no man, we may be sure, would have joined more heartily in the Scotch minister"s pet.i.tion for "the puir de"il"--a prayer conceived in the very spirit of his writings. A man so endowed--and it is not only from his explicit a.s.sertions, but from his unconscious self-revelation, that we may credit him with closely approaching his own ideal--is admirably qualified to discover one great secret of human happiness. No man was ever better prepared to keep not only one, but a whole stableful of hobbies, nor more certain to ride them so as to amuse himself, without loss of temper or dignity, and without rude collisions against his neighbours. That happy art is given to few, and thanks to his skill in it, Sir Thomas reminds us strongly of the two ill.u.s.trious brothers Shandy combined in one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he unites the omnivorous intellectual appet.i.te and the humorous pedantry of the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may fancy that he took a general hint or two from so congenial an author.

The best mode of approaching so original a writer is to examine the intellectual food on which his mind was nourished. He dwelt by preference in strange literary pastures; and their nature will let us into some secrets as to his taste and character. We will begin, therefore, by examining the strange furniture of his mind, as described in his longest, though not his most characteristic book--the "Inquiry into Vulgar Errors." When we turn over its quaint pages, we feel as though we were entering one of those singular museums of curiosities which existed in the pre-scientific ages. Every corner is filled with a strange, incoherent medley, in which really valuable objects are placed side by side with what is simply grotesque and ludicrous. The modern man of science may find some objects of interest; but they are mixed inextricably with strange rubbish that once delighted the astrologer, the alchemist, or the dealer in apocryphal relics. And the possessor of this miscellaneous collection accompanies us with an unfailing flow of amusing gossip: at one moment pouring forth a torrent of out-of-the-way learning; at another, making a really pa.s.sable scientific remark; and then lapsing into an elaborate discussion of some inconceivable absurdity; affecting the air of a grave inquirer, and to all appearance fully believing in his own pretensions, and yet somehow indulging himself in a half-suppressed smile, which indicates that the humorous aspect of a question can never be far removed from his mind. Mere curiosity is not yet differentiated from scientific thirst for knowledge; and a quaint apologue is as good a reward for the inquirer as the discovery of a law of nature. The numerous cla.s.s which insists upon a joke being as unequivocal as a pistol-shot, and a serious statement as grave as a Blue-book, should therefore keep clear of Sir Thomas Browne.

His most congenial readers are those who take a simple delight in following out any quaint train of reflections, careless whether it may culminate in a smile or a sigh, or in some thought in which the two elements of the sad and the ludicrous are inextricably blended. Sir Thomas, however, is in the "Inquiry" content generally with bringing out the strange curiosities of his museum, and does not care to draw any explicit moral. The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without hyperbole of the "fairy tales of science." To us, who have to plod through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not science, we may ask with a _prima facie_ resemblance of right, destroy as much poetry as it generates? To him no such doubts could present themselves, for fairyland was still a province of the empire of science.

Strange beings moved through the pages of natural history, which were equally at home in the "Arabian Nights" or in poetical apologues. The griffin, the phoenix, and the dragon were not yet extinct; the salamander still sported in flames; and the basilisk slew men at a distance with his deadly glance. More commonplace animals indulged in the habits which they had learnt in fables, and of which only some feeble vestiges now remain in the eloquence of strolling showmen. The elephant had no joints, and was caught by felling the tree against which he rested his stiff limbs in sleep; the pelican pierced its breast for the good of its young; ostriches were regularly painted with a horseshoe in their bills, to indicate their ordinary diet; storks refused to live except in republics and free states; the crowing of a c.o.c.k put lions to flight, and men were struck dumb in good sober earnest by the sight of a wolf. The curiosity-hunter, in short, found his game still plentiful, and, by a few excursions into Aristotle, Pliny, and other more recondite authors, was able still to display a rich bag for the edification of his readers. Sir Thomas Browne sets out on that quest with all imaginable seriousness. He persuaded himself, and he has persuaded some of his editors, that he was a genuine disciple of Bacon, by one of whose suggestions the "Inquiry" is supposed to have been prompted.

Accordingly, as Bacon describes the idols by which the human mind is misled, Sir Thomas sets out with investigating the causes of error; but his introductory remarks immediately diverge into strange paths, from which it is obvious that the discovery of true scientific method was a very subordinate object in his mind. Instead of telling us by what means truth is to be attained, his few perfunctory remarks on logic are lost in an historical narrative given with infinite zest, of the earliest recorded blunders. The period of history in which he most delighted was the antediluvian--probably because it afforded the widest field for speculation. His books are full of references to the early days of the world. He takes a keen personal interest in our first parents. He discusses the unfortunate lapse of Adam and Eve from every possible point of view. It is not without a visible effort that he declines to settle which of the two was the more guilty, and what would have been the result if they had tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life before applying to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he pa.s.ses in review every recorded speech before the Flood, shows that in each of them, with one exception, there is a mixture of falsehood and error, and settles to his own satisfaction that Cain showed less "truth, wisdom, and reverence" than Satan under similar circ.u.mstances. Granting all which to be true, it is impossible to see how we are advanced in settling, for example, whether the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system of astronomy is to be adopted, or in extracting the grains of truth that may be overlaid by ma.s.ses of error in the writings of alchemists. Nor do we really learn much by being told that ancient authorities sometimes lie, for he evidently enjoys acc.u.mulating the fables, and cares little for showing how to discriminate their degree of veracity. He tells us, indeed, that Medea was simply a predecessor of certain modern artists, with an excellent "recipe to make white hair black;" and that Actaeon was a spirited master of hounds, who, like too many of his ancestors, went metaphorically, instead of literally, to the dogs. He points out, moreover, that we must not believe on authority that the sea is the sweat of the earth, that the serpent, before the Fall, went erect like man, or that the right eye of a hedgehog, boiled in oil, and preserved in a brazen vessel, will enable us to see in the dark. Such stories, he moderately remarks, being "neither consonant unto reason nor correspondent unto experiment," are unto us "no axioms." But we may judge of his scepticism by his remarks on "Oppia.n.u.s, that famous Cilician poet." Of this writer he says that "abating the annual mutation of s.e.xes in the hyaena, the single s.e.x of the rhinoceros, the antipathy between two drums of a lamb"s and a wolf"s skin, the informity of cubs, the venation of centaurs, and some few others, he may be read with delight and profit." Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no inexorably severe guide to truth! he will not too sternly reject the amusing because it happens to be slightly improbable, or doubt an authority because he sometimes sanctions a ma.s.s of absurd fables. Satan, as he argues at great length, is at the bottom of most errors, from false religions down to a belief that there is another world in the moon; but Sir Thomas takes little trouble to provide us with an Ithuriel"s spear, and, indeed, we have a faint suspicion that he will overlook at times the diabolic agency in sheer enthusiasm at the marvellous results. The logical design is little more than ostensible; and Sir Thomas, though he knew it not himself, is really satisfied with any line of inquiry that will bring him in sight of some freak of nature or of opinion suitable to his museum of curiosities.

Let us, however, pa.s.s from the anteroom, and enter this queer museum. We pause in sheer bewilderment on the threshold, and despair of cla.s.sifying its contents intelligibly within any moderate s.p.a.ce. This much, indeed, is obvious at first sight--that the t.i.tle "vulgar errors" is to some extent a misnomer. It is not given to vulgar brains to go wrong by such complex methods. There are errors which require more learning and ingenuity than are necessary for discovering truths; and it is in those queer freaks of philosophical minds that Sir Thomas specially delights.

Though far, indeed, from objecting to any absurdity which lies on the common highroad, he rejoices in the true spirit of a collector when he can discover some grotesque fancy by rambling into less frequented paths of inquiry. Perhaps it will be best to take down one or two specimens, pretty much at random, and mark their nature and mode of treatment.

Here, for example, is that quaint old wonder, the phoenix, "which, after many hundred years, burneth itself, and from the ashes thereof ariseth up another." Sir Thomas carefully discusses the pros and cons of this remarkable legend. In favour of the phoenix, it may be alleged that he is mentioned "not only by human authors," but also by such "holy writers" as Cyril, Epiphanius, and Ambrose. Moreover, allusions are made to him in Job and the Psalms. "All which notwithstanding," the following grave reasons may be alleged against his existence: First, n.o.body has ever seen a phoenix. Secondly, those who mention him speak doubtfully, and even Pliny, after telling a story about a particular phoenix which came to Rome in the censorship of Claudius, unkindly turns round and declares the whole story to be a palpable lie. Thirdly, the name phoenix has been applied to many other birds, and those who speak unequivocally of the genuine phoenix contradict each other in the most flagrant way as to his age and habitat. Fourthly, many writers, such as Ovid, only speak poetically, and others, as Paracelsus, only mystically, whilst the remainder speak rhetorically, emblematically, or hieroglyphically.

Fifthly, in the Scriptures, the word translated phoenix means a palm tree. Sixthly, his existence, if we look closely, is implicitly denied in the Scriptures, because all fowls entered the ark in pairs, and animals were commanded to increase and multiply, neither of which statements is compatible with the solitary nature of the phoenix.

Seventhly, n.o.body could have known by experience whether the phoenix actually lived for a thousand years, and, therefore, "there may be a mistake in the compute." Eighthly, and finally, no animals really spring, or could spring, from the ashes of their predecessors and it is impossible to believe that they could enter the world in such a fashion.

Having carefully summed up this negative evidence--enough, one would have fancied, to blow the poor phoenix into summary annihilation--Sir Thomas finally announces his grave conclusion in these words--"How far to rely on this tradition we refer unto consideration." And yet he feels impelled to add a quaint reflection on the improbability of a statement made by Plutarch, that "the brain of a phoenix is a pleasant bit, but that it causeth the headache." Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have slain the phoenix, for it must of necessity be "a vain design to destroy any species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days." To which it is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel, he could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only woman in existence; for then there must have been another creation, and a second rib of Adam must have been animated.

We must not, however, linger too long with these singular speculations, for it is probable that phoenix-fanciers are becoming rare. It is enough to say briefly, that if anyone wishes to understand the natural history of the basilisk, the griffin, the salamander, the c.o.c.katrice, or the amphisboena--if he wishes to know whether a chameleon lives on air, and an ostrich on horseshoes--whether a carbuncle gives light in the dark, whether the Glas...o...b..ry thorn bore flowers on Christmas-day, whether the mandrake "naturally groweth under gallowses," and shrieks "upon eradication,"--on these and many other such points he may find grave discussions in Sir Thomas Browne"s pages. He lived in the period when it was still held to be a sufficient proof of a story that it was written in a book, especially if the book were Latin; and some persons, such as Alexander Ross, whose memory is preserved only by the rhyme in "Hudibras," argued gravely against his scepticism.[5] For Sir Thomas, in spite of his strange excursions into the marvellous, inclines for the most part to the sceptical side of the question. He was not insensible to the growing influence of the scientific spirit, though he believed implicitly in witchcraft, spoke with high respect of alchemy and astrology, and refused to believe that the earth went round the sun. He feels that his favourite creatures are doomed to extinction, and though dealing lovingly with them, speaks rather like an attached mourner at their funerals than a physician endeavouring to maintain their flickering vitality. He tries experiments and has a taste for dissection. He proves by the evidence of his senses, and believes them in spite of the general report, that a dead kingfisher will not turn its breast to the wind. He convinced himself that if two magnetic needles were placed in the centre of rings marked with the alphabet (an odd antic.i.p.ation of the electric telegraph, _minus_ the wires), they would not point to the same letter by an occult sympathy. His arguments are often to the point, though overlaid with a strange accretion of the fabulous. In discussing the question of the blackness of negroes, he may remind benevolent readers of some of Mr. Darwin"s recent speculations. He rejects, and on the same grounds which Mr. Darwin declares to be conclusive, the hypothesis that the blackness is the immediate effect of the climate; and he points out, what is important in regard to "s.e.xual selection," that a negro may admire a flat nose as we admire an aquiline; though, of course, he diverges into extra-scientific questions when discussing the probable effects of the curse of Ham, and rather loses himself in a "digression concerning blackness." We may fancy that this problem pleased Sir Thomas rather because it appeared to be totally insoluble than for any other reason; and in spite of his occasional gleams of scientific observation, he is always most at home when on the border-land which divides the purely marvellous from the region of ascertainable fact. In the last half of his book, indeed, having exhausted natural history, he plunges with intense delight into questions which bear the same relation to genuine antiquarianism that his phoenixes and salamanders bear to scientific inquiry: whether the sun was created in Libra; what was the season of the year in Paradise; whether the forbidden fruit was an apple; whether Methuselah was the longest-lived of all men (a main argument on the other side being that Adam was created at the perfect age of man, which in those days was fifty or sixty, and thus had a right to add sixty to his natural years); what was the nature of St. John the Baptist"s camel"s-hair garment; what were the secret motives of the builders of the Tower of Babel; whether the three kings really lived at Cologne,--these and many other profound inquiries are detailed with all imaginable gravity, and the interest of the inquirer is not the less because he generally comes to the satisfactory and sensible conclusion that we cannot possibly know anything whatever about it.

The "Inquiry into Vulgar Errors" was published in 1646, and Sir Thomas"s next publication appeared in 1658. The dates are significant. Whilst all England was in the throes of the first civil war, Sir Thomas had been calmly finishing his catalogue of intellectual oddities. This book was published soon after the crushing victory of Naseby. King, Parliament, and army, ill.u.s.trating a very different kind of vulgar error, continued to fight out their quarrel to the death. Whilst Milton, whose genius was in some way most nearly akin to his own, was raising his voice in favour of the liberty of the press, good Sir Thomas was meditating profoundly on quincunxes. Milton hurled fierce attacks at Salmasius, and meanwhile Sir Thomas, in his quiet country town, was discoursing on "certain sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk." In the year of Cromwell"s death, the result of his labours appeared in a volume containing "The Garden of Cyrus" and the "Hydriotaphia."

The first of these essays ill.u.s.trates Sir Thomas"s peculiar mysticism.

The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the form of an X, or that reminds him in any way of the number five. From the garden of Cyrus, where the trees were arranged in this order, he rambles through the universe, stumbling over quincunxes at every step.

To take, for example, his final, and, of course, his fifth chapter, we find him modestly disavowing an "inexcusable Pythagorism," and yet unable to refrain from telling us that five was anciently called the number of justice: that it was also called the divisive number; that most flowers have five leaves; that feet have five toes; that the cone has a "quintuple division;" that there were five wise and five foolish virgins; that the "most generative animals" were created on the fifth day; that the cabalists discovered strange meanings in the number five; that there were five golden mice; that five thousand persons were fed with five barley-loaves; that the ancients mixed five parts of water with wine; that plays have five acts; that starfish have five points; and that if anyone inquire into the causes of this strange repet.i.tion, "he shall not pa.s.s his hours in vulgar speculations." We, however, must decline the task, and will content ourselves with a few characteristic phrases from his peroration. "The quincunx of heaven," he says, referring to the _Hyades_, "runs low, and "tis time to close the five parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations, making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves.... Night, which Pagan theology could make the daughter of chaos, affords no advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that ma.s.s can we derive its genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the admirer of order and mystical mathematics of the City of Heaven. Although Somnus, in Homer, be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these drowsy approaches of night. To keep our eyes open longer were but to act with our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour, which roused us from everlasting sleep? Or have slumbering thoughts at that hour, when sleep itself must end, and, as some conjecture, all shall wake again?"

"Think you," asks Coleridge, commenting upon this pa.s.sage, "that there ever was such a reason given for going to bed at midnight, to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes?" In truth, Sir Thomas finishes his most whimsical work whimsically enough. The pa.s.sage is a good specimen of the quaint and humorous eloquence in which he most delights--s.n.a.t.c.hing fine thought from sheer absurdities, and putting the homeliest truth into a dress of amusing oddity. It may remind us that it is time to touch upon those higher qualities, which have led one of the acutest of recent critics[6] to call him "our most imaginative mind since Shakspeare." Everywhere, indeed, his imaginative writing is, if we may so speak, shot with his peculiar humour. It is difficult to select any eloquent, pa.s.sage which does not show this characteristic interweaving of the two elements. Throw the light from one side, and it shows nothing but quaint conceits; from the other, and we have a rich glow of poetic colouring. His humour and his melancholy are inextricably blended; and his melancholy itself is described to a nicety in the words of Jaques:--"It is a melancholy of his own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of his travels, in which his often rumination wraps him in a most humorous sadness." That most marvellous Jaques, indeed, is rather too much of a cynic, and shows none of the religious sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne; but if they could have talked together in the forest, poor Jaques would have excited a far closer sympathy than he receives from his very unappreciative companions. The book in which this "humorous sadness" finds the fullest expression is the "Religio Medici." The conception of the book apparently resulted from the "sundry contemplation of his travels," and it is written throughout in his characteristic strain of thought. From his travels he had learnt the best lesson of a lofty toleration. The furious controversies of that age, in which the stake, the prison, and the pillory were the popular theological arguments, produced a characteristic effect on his sympathies. He did not give in to the established belief, like his kindly natured contemporary Fuller, who remarks, in a book published about the same time with the "Religio Medici," that even "the mildest authors" agree in the propriety of putting certain heretics to death.

Nor, on the other hand, does he share the glowing indignation which prompted the great protests of Chillingworth and Taylor against the cruelties practised in the name of religion. Browne has a method of his own in view of such questions. He shrinks from the hard, practical world into spiritual meditation. He regards all opinions less as a philosopher than as a poet. He asks, not whether a dogma is true, but whether it is amusing or quaint. If his imagination or his fancy can take pleasure in contemplating it, he is not curious to investigate its scientific accuracy. And therefore he catches the poetical side of creeds which differ from his own, and cannot even understand why anybody should grow savage over their shortcomings. He never could be angry with a man"s judgment "for not agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within a few days, I should dissent myself." Travelling in this spirit through countries where the old faith still prevailed, he felt a lively sympathy for the Catholic modes of worship. Holy water and crucifixes do not offend him. He is willing to enter the churches and to pray with the worshippers of other persuasions. He is naturally inclined, he says, "to that which misguided zeal terms superst.i.tion," and would show his respect rather than his unbelief. In an eloquent pa.s.sage, which might teach a lesson to some modern tourists, he remarks:--"At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought and memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at, but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; for though misplaced in circ.u.mstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Mary bell without an elevation; or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circ.u.mstance, for me to err in all--that is, in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine to G.o.d, and rectified the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering my own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of laughter and scorn."

Very characteristic, from this point of view, are the heresies into which he confesses that he has sometimes fallen. Setting aside one purely fantastical theory, they all imply a desire for toleration even in the next world. He doubted whether the d.a.m.ned would not ultimately be released from torture. He felt great difficulty in giving up prayers for the dead, and thought that to be the object of such prayers, was "a good way to be remembered by posterity, and far more n.o.ble than a history."

These heresies, he says, as he never tried to propagate them, or to dispute over them, "without additions of new fuel, went out insensibly of themselves." Yet he still retained, in spite of its supposed heterodoxy, some hope for the fate of virtuous heathens. "Amongst so many subdivisions of h.e.l.l," he says, "there might have been one limbo left for these." With a most characteristic turn, he softens the horror of the reflection by giving it an almost humorous aspect. "What a strange vision will it be," he exclaims, "to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of!"

The words may remind us of an often-quoted pa.s.sage from Tertullian; but the Father seems to gloat over the appalling doctrines from which the philosophical humorist shrinks, even though their very horror has a certain strange fascination for his fancy. Heresies such as these will not be harshly condemned at the present day. From others of a different kind, Sir Thomas is shielded by his natural love of the marvellous. He loves to abandon his thoughts to mysterious contemplations; he even considers it a subject for complaint that there are "not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith." "I love," he says, "to lose myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an _O alt.i.tudo_! "Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learnt of Tertullian, _certum est quia impossibile est_."

He rejoices that he was not an Israelite at the pa.s.sage of the Red Sea, or an early Christian in the days of miracles; for then his faith, supported by his senses, would have had less merit. He loves to puzzle and confound his understanding with the thoughts that pa.s.s the limits of our intellectual powers: he rejoices in contemplating eternity, because n.o.body can "speak of it without a solecism," and to plunge his imagination into the abysses of the infinite. "When I cannot satisfy my reason," he says, "I love to recreate my fancy." He recreates it by soaring into the regions where the most daring metaphysical logic breaks down beneath us, and delights in exposing his reason to the rude test of believing both sides of a contradiction. Here, as everywhere, the strangest freaks of fancy intrude themselves into his sublime contemplations. A mystic, when abasing reason in the presence of faith, may lose sight of earthly objects in the splendour of the beatific vision. But Sir Thomas, even when he enters the holiest shrine, never quite loses his grasp of the grotesque. Wonder, whether produced by the sublime or the simply curious, has equal attraction for him. His mind is distracted between the loftiest mysteries of Christianity and the strangest conceits of Talmudists or schoolmen. Thus, for example, whilst eloquently descanting on the submissiveness of his reason, he informs us (obviously claiming credit for the sacrifice of his curiosity) that he can read of the raising of Lazarus, and yet refrain from raising a "law case whether his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance bequeathed unto him by his death, and he, though restored to life, have no plea or t.i.tle unto his former possessions." Or we might take the inverse transition from the absurd to the sublime, in his meditations upon h.e.l.l.

He begins by inquiring whether the everlasting fire is the same with that of our earth. "Some of our chymicks," it appears, "facetiously affirm that, at the last fire, all shall be crystallised and reverberated into gla.s.s," but, after playing for some time with this and other strange fancies, he says in a loftier strain, though still with his odd touch of humour, "Men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains, which, to grosser apprehensions, represent h.e.l.l. The heart of men is the place the devils dwell in. I feel sometimes a h.e.l.l within myself; Lucifer keeps his courts in my breast; Legion is revived in me. There was more than one h.e.l.l in Magdalene, when there were seven devils; for every devil is a h.e.l.l unto himself; he holds enough of torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of circ.u.mference to afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a shadow or introduction into h.e.l.l hereafter."

Sir Thomas"s witticisms are like the grotesque carvings in a Gothic cathedral. It is plain that in his mind they have not the slightest tinge of conscious irreverence. They are simply his natural mode of expression; forbid him to be humorous, and you might as well forbid him to speak at all. If the severity of our modern taste is shocked at an intermixture which seemed natural enough to his contemporaries, we may find an unconscious apology in a singularly fine pa.s.sage of the "Religio Medici." Justifying his love of church music, he says, "Even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer." That power of extracting deep devotion from "vulgar tavern music" is the great secret of Browne"s eloquence. It is not wonderful, perhaps, that, with our a.s.sociations, the performance seems of questionable taste; and that some strains of tavern music mix unpleasantly in the grander harmonies which they suggest. Few people find their religious emotions stimulated by the performance of a n.i.g.g.e.r melody, and they have some difficulty in keeping pace with a mind which springs in happy unconsciousness, or rather in keen enjoyment, of the contrast from the queer or commonplace to the most exalted objects of human thought.

One other peculiarity shows itself chiefly in the last pages of the "Religio Medici." His worthy commentators have laboured to defend Sir Thomas from the charge of vanity. He expatiates upon his own universal charity; upon his inability to regard even vice as a fitting object for satire; upon his warm affection to his friend, whom he already loves better than himself, and whom yet in a few months he will regard with a love which will make his present feelings seem indifference; upon his absolute want of avarice or any kind of meanness; and, which certainly seems a little odd in the midst of these self-laudations, upon his freedom from the "first and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil, pride." Good Dr. Watts was shocked at this "arrogant temerity,"

and Dr. Johnson appears rather to concur in the charge. And certainly, if we are to interpret his language in a matter-of-fact spirit, it must be admitted that a gentleman who openly claims for himself the virtues of charity, generosity, courage, and modesty, might be not unfairly accused of vanity. To no one, as we have already remarked, is such a matter-of-fact criticism less applicable. If a humorist was to be denied the right of saying with a serious face what he does not quite think, we should make strange work of some of the most charming books in the world. The Sir Thomas Browne of the "Religio Medici" is by no means to be identified with the everyday flesh-and-blood physician of Norwich.

He is the ideal and glorified Sir Thomas, and represents rather what ought to have been than what was. We all have such doubles who visit us in our day-dreams and sometimes cheat us into the belief that they are our real selves, but most of us luckily hide the very existence of such phantoms; for few of us, indeed, could make them agreeable to our neighbours. And yet the apology is scarcely needed. Bating some few touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man"s own charact

Prev List Next