Volume 1

The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin.

Thomas Browne

Date:: 1890-1893

Credit: The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$necks vvas a proper figure, making our last bed like our first; nor much unlike the urns of our nativity while we lay in the nether part of the earth,* and inward vault of our microcosm. ]\Iany urns are red, these but of a black colour somewhat smooth, and dully sounding, which begal some doubt, whether they were burnt, or only baked in oven or sun, according to the ancient way, in many bricks, tiles, pots, and testaceous works ; and, as the word testa is pro- perly to be taken, when occurrmg without addition and chiefly intended by Pliny, when he commendeth bricks and tiles of two years old, and to make them in the spring. Nor only these concealed pieces, but the open magnificence of antiquity, ran much in the artifice of clay. Hereof the liouse of Mausolus was built, thus old Jupiter stood in the Capitol, and the statua of Hercules, made in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, was extant in Pliny's days. And such as declined burning or funeral urns, affected coffins of clay, according to the mode of Pythagoras, a way preferred by Varro. But the spirit of great ones was above these cir- cumscriptions, affecting copper, silver, gold, and porphyry urns, wherein Severus lay, after a serious view and sentence on tliat which should contain him.f Some of these urns were thought to have been silvered over, from sparklings in several pots, with small tinsel parcels; uncertain whether from the earth, or the first mixture in them. Among these urns we could obtain no good account of their coverings; only one seemed arched over with some kind of brick-work. Of those found at Buxton, some were covered with flints, some, in other parts, with tiles; those at Yarmouth Caster were closed with Eoman bricks, and some have proper earthen covers adapted and fitted to them. Bat in the Homerical urn of Patroclus, whatever was the solid tegument, we find the immediate covering to be a purple piece of silk : and such as had no covers might have the earth closely pressed into them, after which disposure were probably some of these, wherein we found the bones and ashes half mortared un^to the sand and sides of the urn, and some long roots of quich, or dog's-grass, wreathed about the bones. * Psal. Ixiii. + Xwpi)(T«i£ TQV dv9pii>Trov, 8v ») o/icov/i6v>j ovK ixiJ^{ii)(Ttv.—Bwn,$

The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin.

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