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.

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    in virtue of the fine and reasonable qualities of his intellect, a little ahead of his contemporaries, but not much, and he never advances so far as to lose sight of them. In short, he is not so eminent as a thinker as he is as a writer; and we resign ourselves to the immense pleasure of hearing the average ideas of intel- ligent persons in the early part of the seventeenth century placed before us in the best possible way. If we want something quite new, something that was to speed the world violently forward along its intel- lectual track, then we must turn to Spinoza or Des- cartes, and the men who contributed to the movement of thought. In Browne thought is moderately static, but it is rendered in enchanting forms, and in a studied harmony of language. These reflections become necessary to our enjoy- ment of feligio Medici, when the author starts on a consideration of his personal attitude in face of what he had somewhat earlier called “the meanders and labyrinths of providence.” He is eager to deal with the subject of miracles, on which he expatiates at length. He admits the existence of the miraculous with a lightheartedness that is perhaps a little deceptive. Is he so confident as he declares himself to be? His position is that the age of wonder never passes ; that all violent acts of disturbance are equally easy to God, if to perform them is His will; that the physical world is full of miracles; and that we must beware lest we narrowly confine the power of God. The result of these concessions is that Browne accepts, and with an alacrity which might even alarm the clergy whose criticism he deprecates, everything that is supernatural in religious tradition and anecdote. At
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