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.

    67/232 page 55
    and had allowed it to be sent to the press. In a panic of vexation, on the 3rd of March 1643, Browne wrote from Norwich to Sir Kenelm Digby, entreating him to delay the publication of that criticism of which he had ‘descended to be the author,” until the genuine text of the original, which Browne said he was now hastening through the printer’s hands, could be re- ferred to. The demand was a reasonable one, presented in the most courteous terms, but it reached Winchester House too late, or else Digby’s vanity would not brook delay, for there appeared at the end of March 1643 a volume of Observations upon Religio Medict, “‘ occasion- ally written” by Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight. After the briefest possible further delay, Crooke issued “a true and full copy of that which was most imperfectly and surreptitiously printed before under the name of Religio Medici.” We see that, once having secured the correct text of this popular book, the publisher was ready to acknowledge, without a blush, that his pre- vious editions of it had been ‘‘imperfect” and even “surreptitious.” The public, however, had at last what is known as the first authorised edition, that of 1643. The incidents which have just been recorded are not merely curious and interesting in themselves, but they mark a condition in which Browne was almost, if not quite, unique among the English authors of his time. The absence of accepted critical authority, applied to literature, was an extreme inconvenience to the writers of the early seventeenth century. A critical feeling was abroad, but it had not yet found any vehicle, nor was it concentrated on particular publications ; there was no one until the time of Dryden, who was in a
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3