Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/79

 I SIR THOMAS KROWNE. 61 ptay at these famous schools, returned home by- way of Holland, and was created Doctor of Physic I jit the University of Leyden. j! Of his travels we have no certain account ; and there remain no observations made by him in his passage through those countries which he visited, jit is to be regretted, therefore, that we have lost jiithe pleasure and instruction which might have jbeen received from the remarks of a man so curi- ous and diligent : indeed it is to be lamented, that those who are most capable of improving man- kind, so frequently neglect to communicate their knowledge, as if it were more pleasing to gather ' ideas than to impart them, or because, to minds ! naturally great, few things appear of so much im- ll portance as to deserve the notice of the public. Browne returned to London about the year ! 1634 ; and the next year is supposed to have i written the celebrated tieatise, Religio Medici, a work which was no sooner published, than it j excited attention in an extraordinary degree. It i first came out, as it was said, surreptitiously, in I itself a circumstance calculated to recommend I it to notice ; but besides this, it was distinguished ' by much learning, great subtlety, and exuberant imagination, and written in the strongest and most forcible language. Such a book was, of course, soon criticised ; and the correspondence that took place between the critic. Sir Kenelm Digby, and Browne, has been characterized as " affording an ostentatious display of conscious un worthiness, and desire of concealment, on the one part, and pompous professions of reverence and anxious apologies on the other." The letters that passed