Sir Thomas Browne : an essay / Charles Edward Sayle.

  • Charles Edward Sayle
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir Thomas Browne : an essay / Charles Edward Sayle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tT the meantime plundering the best Houses, Nassa Bassa the Vizier riding about with a Cimetre in one hand and a Janizary’s Head in the other to deter them; and the Priests attempting to quench the Fire, by Pieces of Mahomet’s Shirt dipped in holy Water and thrown into it. 16. Draughts of three passionate Looks: of Thyestes when he was told at the 'I'able that he had eaten a piece of his own Son; of Bajazet when he went into the Iron Cage; of Oedipus when he first came to know that he had killed his Father, and married his own Mother. 26. <A fair English Lady drawn Al Negro, or in the Mthiopian hue excelling the original White and Red Beauty, with this subscription : Sed quandam volo nocte nigriorem. 27. Pieces and Draughts in Caricatura, of Princes, Cardinals and famous men; wherein, among others, the painter hath singularly hit. the signatures of a Lion and a Fox in the face of Pope Leo the Tenth. 28. Some Pieces A La Ventura, or Rare Chance Pieces, either drawn at random, and happening to be like some person, or drawn for some and happening to be more like another; while the Face, mistaken by the Painter, proves a tolerable Picture of oue he never saw.! In Sculpture he speaks of the Sea-horses set out by Praxiteles on the temple of Domitius, and the ‘'l'ritons on the temple of Saturn, but each time from the point of view of a student of thé Sea-horse and the Triton and not from that of the sculpture. So the Statua of Venus is only worthy of mention because she has an apple in her hand. ‘That famous statua of Praxiteles concerning Alexander and Bucephalus’ is only noticed because ‘ the Secret Parts are veil’d with Figg Leaves’; and the Statue of Jupiter because it was made out of a vine. In the minor graphic arts, he had a considerable knowledge of coins. Nor is it strange to finde Romane Coynes of Copper and Silver among us: of Vespasian, Trajan, Adrian, Commodus, Antonius Severus, etc. But the greater number of Dioclesian, Constantine, Constans, Valens, with many of Victorinus Posthumus, 'l'etricus, and the thirty T'yrants in the Reigne of Gallienus’. Besides the Norman, Saxon, and Danish peeces of Cuthred, Canutus, William, Matilda, and others, some Brittish Coynes of gold have been dispersedly found; and no small number of silver peeces near Norwich, with a rude head upon the obverse and an ill-formed head an the reverse, with inscriptions Ic. Duro 1°, ‘ Browne’s letters show him to have been an enthusiast on draughtsmanship. 2? Writing to his son Thomas he mentions Gallienus ‘whose oyns you have seen,” Letters, 10 March, 1660-1. 3 Urne Burial, ii. Sir Thomas Browne’s statements are fully discussed. by Sir John Evans in his Coins of the Ancient Britons
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