Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/73

 can compose a whole comedy. Discoursing leisurely in this vein of whimsical semi-seriousness, from time to time he allows his imagination free scope, and embodies the loftiest thought in language of surpassing richness.

At the outbreak of the civil wars Browne’s sympathies were entirely with the royalists. He was among the 432 principal citizens who in 1643 refused to contribute to the fund for regaining the town of Newcastle, but there is no evidence to show that he gave any active assistance to the king’s cause. His great work, ‘Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths, which examined prove but Vulgar and Common Errors,’ appeared in 1646 (fol.) On the composition of this treatise, which contains an extraordinary amount of learning and research, he must have been engaged for many years, In the preface he apologises for having undertaken single-handed a work which well deserved ‘the conjunction of many heads.’ He knows how difficult it is to eradicate cherished beliefs from men’s minds; but he does not despair of gaining a favourable hearing. His professional employment has been at once a hindrance and advantage in the pursuit of his investigations; for though physicians are led in the course of their professional practice to the discovery of many truths, they have not leisure to arrange their materials or make ‘those infallible experiments and those assured determinations which the subject sometimes requireth.’ He had originally determined to publish his treatise in Latin, but considering that his countrymen, especially the ‘ingenuous gentry,’ had a prior claim upon his services, he had abandoned his intention and written in English. Readers, however, must be prepared to find the style somewhat difficult; neologism is unavoidable in the conduct of such inquiries-besides, the writer is addressing not the illiterate many, but them discerning few. To modern readers ‘Vulgar Errors' presents an inexhanstible store of entertainment. The attainment of scientific truth was not for Browne the sole object; it is in the discussion itself that he delights, and the more marvellous a fable is, the more sedulously he applies himself to the investigation of its truth. Though he professed his anxiety to dispel popular superstitious, Browne was himself not a little imbued with the spirit of credulity. He believed in astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, and magic, and be never ahandydned the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The subject may perhaps have been suggested by a hint in Bacon’s chapter on the ‘Idols of the Understanding.' Both at home and abroad the treatise attracted immediate attention. In 1652 Alexander Ross published ‘Arcana Microcosmi. . . with a regutation of Dr. Browne’s “Vulgar Errors,” the Lord Bacon’s “Natural History,” and Dr. Harvey’s Book “De Generatrone," “Comenius," and others, &c.,’ in which he shows amusing persistence in defending the absurdest of superstitious. John Robinson, a fellow-townsman of Browne and a (physician, passed some not unfriendly animaversions on ‘Vulgar Errors' in his ‘Ventilatio Tranquilla ’ appended to ‘Endoxa,' 1656 (englished in 1658). Isaac Gruter proposed to translate Browne’s treatise into Latin, and addressed to him five letters (preserved in Rawlinson MS. D. 391) on the subject, but the translation was never accomplished.

Browne’s fame for encyclopaedia knowledge being now firmly established, his aid was frequently solicited by scholars engaged on scientific or antiquarian inquiries. The bulk of his correspondence has perished, but enough remains to show that he spared neither time nor trouble in answering inquiries addressed to him. One of his earliest correspondents was Dr. llenry Power, afterwards a noted physician of Halifax, to whom he addressed in 1647 a letter of advice as to the method to be pursued in the study of medicine. There is extant a letter of Power's to Browne, dated 15 Sept. 1648, from Christ’s College, Cambridge, in which he expresses a desire to reside for a month or two at Norwich in order to have the advantage of Browne‘s personal guidance, for at Carnbridge there are ‘such few helpes’ that he tears he will ‘make but a lingering progresse.’ Another of his correspondents was Theodore Jonas, a Lutheran minister residing in Iceland, who came yearly to England and, in gratitude for some professional directions against the leprosy, never fhiled before his return to visit Browne at Norwich. Sir Hamon L’Estrange, of Hunstanton, equally zealous as a naturalist and as a parliamentarian, showed his admiration of Browne by sending him in January 1653-4 eighty-five pages of manuscript ‘Observations on the Pseudodoxia' (preserved in Sloane MS. 1839). His advice was sought in 1655 by a boomer of reputation, William How, who, after serving as an officer in a roynlist cavalry regiment, had established himself as a physician, first in Lawrence Lane, and afterwards in Milk Street. By the death of Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich, in September 1656, Browne was deprived of a dear friend. He attended the bishop in his last illness. In 1668 Browne entered into correspondence 