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The works of Sir Thomas Browne : including his unpublished correspondence, and a memoir / edited by Simon Wilkin.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Credit: The works of Sir Thomas Browne : including his unpublished correspondence, and a memoir / edited by Simon Wilkin.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

    40/612
    most capable of improving mankind, very frequently neglect to communicate their knowledge; either be- cause it is more pleasing to gather ideas than to im- part them, or because to minds naturally great, few things appear of so much importance as to deserve the notice of the publick. About the year 1634,* he is supposed to have re- turned to London ; and the next year to have written his celebrated treatise, called Religio Medici,3 the religion of a physician,t which he declares himself never to have intended for the press, having composed it only for his own exercise and entertainment. It, indeed, contains many passages, which, relating merely to his own person, can be of no great importance to the publick: but when it was written, it happened to him as to others, he was too much pleased with his performance, not to think that it might please others as much ; he, therefore, communicated it to his friends, and receiving, I suppose, that exuberant applause with which every man repays the grant of perusing a ma- nuscript, he was not very diligent to obstruct his own praise by recalling his papers, but suffered them to wander from hand to hand, till at last, without his own consent, they were in 1642 given to a printer. This has, perhaps, sometimes befallen others; and this, I am willing to believe, did really happen to Dr. * Biographia Britannica. j Letter to Sir Kenelm Digby, vol. ii, p. xxvii. 3 Religio Medici.'] Dr. Kippis deems would be 1G36; which is contradicted by himself to have proved, in his note B, another passage in Religio Medici, (p. f>0,) p. 628, that Religio Medici was written in which Browne says he was not thirty in 1G35. His argument is drawn from years old, whereas in 1636 he was older, a comparison of the date of Browne's I think it, however, very possible that Letter to Digby, (March 3, 1642,) with the true reading of the passage at p. xxxi, a passage in his Epistle to the Reader, vol. ii, is above seven years, Which (p. xxxi, vol. ii,) stating that it was would justify Dr. Johnson's date. See written about seven years ago. But the point spoken of in the Preface to Re- this is inconclusive; because the true ligio Medici, and in the Supplementary date of the letter being 1642-3, the result Memoir.