Volume 1

The works of Sir Thomas Browne : including his unpublished correspondence, and a memoir / edited by Simon Wilkin.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Sir Thomas Browne : including his unpublished correspondence, and a memoir / edited by Simon Wilkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    DR. JOHNSON'S LIFE OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE. Though the writer of the following Essays1 seems to have had the fortune common among men of letters, of raising little curiosity after his private life, and has, therefore, few memorials preserved of his felicities or misfortunes ; yet, because an edition of a posthumous work appears imperfect and neglected, without some account of the author, it was thought necessary to attempt the gratification of that curiosity which na- turally inquires, by what peculiarities of nature or fortune eminent men have been distinguished, how uncommon attainments have been gained, and what influence learning has had on its possessors, or virtue on its teachers. Sir Thomas Browne was born at London, in the parish of St. Michael in Cheapside,2 on the 19th of 1 The following Essays.] It will be chael ad Bladum, or at the Corn: the recollected that this life was written in church having been originally erected 1756, not foran entire edition of Browne's about the reign of Edward III, on the works, but for a second impression of site of a corn market. The church was his Christian Morals, originally publish- taken down and rebuilt in 1430, in the ed by Archdeacon Jeffery in 171G, and eighth of Henry VI. In the great fire of reprinted by Payne in 175b. London it was destroyed, and not sub- a Si. Michael in Cheapside.'] St. Mi- sequently rebuilt, the parish being united chael's Cheap, as it was formerly called, to that of St. Vedast, in Foster-lane, or St. Michael-le-Quern, probably a The registers have all perished, corruption of the translation of St. Mi- VOL. f. h