Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse.

  • Edmund Gosse
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/232 page 25
    CHAPTER I! RELIGIO MEDICI Reiieio Mepic1, which to Browne’s contemporaries possessed a dangerous savour of scepticism, has come to be considered by us as a work of practical piety. The mind of its author had a curious mixture of directness and tortuousness which disguises from all but the care- ful reader the singleness of his aim. But those who are persistent in studying the whole of Religio Medici—a book far too often treated as if it were a mere storehouse of striking paradoxes—will discover that an unbroken thread runs through it. It lies spread out before us like a smiling champaign, through which, with singular turns and convolutions, undulates a shining river of argument. The casual observer sees the light and the beauty, but there seems to him no current, no fall. Yet, winding as it is, the stream does move, and it descends, with soft regularity, to a goal in the far distance. We must therefore give no excessive attention to Browne’s fantastic escapes from the obvious, nor must we be deceived by the caprices of his fancy. His argument, if you give it time and scope, will not lose its way nor miss its appointed aim. The object of Religio Medici, then, when we lay it down after a careful reading, is seen to be a defence
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