Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/249

Rh was published without authority in 1642, when it elicited a small volume of Observations upon Religio Medici (1643) by Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), another enthusiast—as Browne was himself—for strange phenomena and the mysteries of science. The first authorised edition of the Religio Medici appeared the same year, when it excited great interest, was translated into Latin, and circulated on the Continent. Meantime Browne had settled at Norwich, where the rest of his life was spent in practice as a physician, and in study scientific and antiquarian. Of his private and family life details are preserved in the Correspondence. His most elaborate contribution to science was the Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), an examination of many accepted beliefs in the sphere of natural science. More occasional productions were the famous Hydriotaphia: Urn Burial, or A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found at Norfolk (1658), The Garden of Cyrus (1658), the posthumous Christian Morals, and other short tracts.

There is, it seems to me, more truth in Mr Pater's contrast between Browne and Pascal than in Mr Gosse's parallel. Nothing is further from the mind of the author of the Religio Medici than any absolute separation of theology from science or philosophy. Theology rests on tradition, philosophy on free inquiry; but Browne is far from making the distinction logical and complete. To his religious beliefs he had obtained by grace certainly, but also by "the law of mine own reason." The "wingy mysteries in divinity and airy subtleties in religion" transcend but do not