Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/822

BRO opinions of presbyterians and independents are somewhat rudely mixed. In 1584 he visited Scotland, landing at Dundee, and proceeding thence to St. Andrews, where he was received by Andrew Melville, who gave him letters of recommendation to ministers in Edinburgh. Here, as usual, he began to attack the opinions and usages of those around him; and having, "after an arrogant manner," offered to set "the session of the kirk of Edinburgh" right on some points of doctrine and practice, these worthies soon taught him they were not men to be trifled with or attacked with impunity, and "he was committed to waird a night or two till his opinions were tried." His views having, for some reason, found favour at the Scottish court, he received protection from the king and returned to England, but not before he had to some extent disseminated his opinions; or, as James afterwards expressed it, "sown his popple" among the people. On his return to England he was again exposed to the persecution of the prelates, and again experienced the benefit of having "a loving friend and cousin," who "pitied the poor man," in the great Burghley. He was allowed to retire for some time to his father's house at Tolethorpe, where every means were used by his father and others to bring him to a reconciliation with the church. For some time these failed, but at last, in some undiscovered way, the heresiarch was induced to forsake, at least outwardly, his peculiar views, and to accept of the wealthy living of Achurch, near Oundle, in Northamptonshire. From this time he was silent; he never officiated at Achurch, but contented himself with consuming his tithes as the price of conformity. He died, it is said, in prison in 1630. His private life in later years seems not to have been without reproach. He beat his wife, Pagit tells us, and when reproved for it, said "that he did not beat her as his wife, but as a curst old woman."—W. L. A.  BROWNE,, a man of extraordinary parts and learning, but even more remarkable on account of a strange frenzy, which clouded the greater part of his life—was born at Shepton-Mallet in Somersetshire in 1680, and died in 1732. He was educated for the dissenting ministry; and, after labouring for some years at Portsmouth, accepted the charge of the congregation of protestant dissenters in the Old Jewry, London. This was in the year 1716. Seven years afterwards, in consequence, it is supposed, of severe domestic affliction, he fell into a profound melancholy; resigned his ministerial functions; and in the strange belief that the Almighty had, "by a singular instance of his divine power, annihilated in him the thinking substance, and utterly divested him of consciousness;" retired to his native place to pass the rest of his days in the obscurity that befitted what he deemed his sad condition. A more singular frenzy is not on record, for, after it took possession of him, he wrote several works in which his talents and learning appear to greater advantage than in any he had formerly published. It was, during the last two years of his life, that he published "A Fit Rebuke to a Ludicrous Infidel," &c. (Woolston); and a "Defence of the Religion of Nature," &c., against Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation.—J. S., G.  BROWNE,, a learned English divine, born in the county of Middlesex in 1604, graduated at Christ Church in 1627, and became domestic chaplain to Archbishop Laud. On the breaking out of the rebellion he was canon of Windsor, and held the rectories of St. Mary Aldermary, London, and Oddington, Oxfordshire. Having been deprived of these benefices, he followed the fortunes of the king, to whom he became chaplain at Oxford. He afterwards fled to the continent, and found an asylum with Mary, princess of Orange, who appointee him her chaplain. After the Restoration he was restored to his preferments. Died in 1673.—J. S., G.  BROWNE,, an English physician and author, was born in London, October 19, 1605. On leaving the university of Oxford he practised physic during a brief period, and then travelled through Ireland, France, Italy, and Holland, taking his degree of M.D. at Leyden. Returning to England, he settled as physician at Shipden Hall, near Halifax, but soon removed to Norwich, where he gained considerable professional eminence. In 1642 he published the "Religio Medici," a work which at once bestowed upon his quiet unostentatious life a European fame. The remarkable character of the book was at once perceived. It provoked numerous discussions, and was very greedily translated into Latin, Dutch, and German. The "Religio Medici," indeed, held up to the age, in the mirror of a personal character, some of the great general tendencies of its speculative thought. It revealed a mind which had learned to investigate everything, but had not abandoned the calm repose of unquestioning reliance upon the wisdom of the past—which delighted in antiquity, but did not therefore refuse to behold the achievements of the hour—which revelled in glorious imaginings, but apprehended the worth of a fact—and which, therefore, was capable of receiving simultaneously (although not capable of welding into a perfectly symmetrical whole) the most divergent principles of philosophical thought. Hence did it happen that the "Religio Medici" was condemned in the most contradictory directions. By one translator its author was pronounced a catholic at heart, who would openly declare himself did he not fear persecution; but at Rome it was actually placed in the Index Expurgatorius; while in England, some accepted it as protestant, others denounced it as atheistical, and one member of the Society of Friends entertained strong hopes of Dr. Browne's conversion to his own opinions! The nobler students of the age deeply sympathized with the many-sided character of the work, and the cause of its condemnation was the seal of its popularity. Men could repudiate no longer the Baconian method of investigation; and yet they feared to lose the rich glories of the faery land of their scientific childhood. They discerned the birth of a hard, matter-of-fact spirit, capable of acknowledging only the visible and the tangible, and dreaded lest the young child, grown into a giant, should strangle their heavenly faith; and, therefore, they rejoiced in a mind like that manifested in the "Religio Medici," which seemed to them to gather up within itself the highest glories alike of the past and the present. Moreover, the "Religio Medici" appeared in that distracted year when civil war broke out in England, and its calm and meditative beauty furnished to troubled hearts a retreat, where for a moment they could renew their inward peace. While sometimes fantastic in expression, it often rises into the noblest poetry; and when we read "that this world is but a picture of the invisible," and that "there is a general beauty in the works of God, and, therefore, no deformity in any kind or species of creature whatever," we recognize the special principles of that modern poetical development of which Wordsworth is the great representative. In 1646 Sir Thomas Browne published the "Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors." The errors inquired into are strange enough to modern ears, and many admitted facts have been proved sufficiently baseless; but, nevertheless, the influence of this great work on scientific progress must not be lightly judged. The age needed not simply teachers who could destroy accredited absurdities with withering scorn, but also teachers possessed of sufficient poetical sympathy with the faith of the multitude, not to give it too wide a shock; of sufficient gentleness to condescend to notice small arguments and petty objections; and of sufficient enlightenment to inculcate a true method of research even when the actual error was left unanswered. Among scientific teachers thus adapted to their age, Sir Thomas Browne holds a high place. He takes an interest in everything, and the truth or falsehood of the smallest matters is of eager importance to him. He does abounding justice to the grossest absurdities, inventing in their defence every possible plea ingenuity can devise, and troubling himself to give a solemn answer to it. In this respect his own personal character is strongly manifested. He is by nature far more inclined to believe than to doubt, and only parts with an absurdity after keeping it in his mind so long as he can give it decent entertainment, and finally conducting it to the door with due ceremony, and giving it a polite bow on its departure. Even when we examine his own particular delusions, we can discern that they are but shadows cast by the very light of the truth he held. He had, for example, a firm belief in witchcraft, and gave evidence at Bury St. Edmund's, which assisted in procuring the condemnation of two unfortunate victims. The secret of his belief in witchcraft and kindred matters, however, was not so much his want of scientific accuracy, as his faith in the wide range of spiritual agencies. To him the outward world was something more than an aggregate of material atoms—it was sustained and pervaded by the powers of a world invisible. He was a philosopher, who, by study of the tangible and definite, gained but deeper faith in the intangible and infinite.—In 1658 Browne published his "Hydriotaphia; or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk," a work treating, with abundant learning, on the funeral ceremonies of various 