Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/99

 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 81 which he does not appear to have cultivated with success. However, if his style has great excel- lences, it must be allowed that it is not without its faults. The pen of Johnson has characterized it as " vigorous, but rugged ; learned, but pedantic ; deep, but obscure ; " with other pointed antitheses, in a manner not altogether free from the defects which he is himself reprehending. The high strain of moral reflection with which Browne closes his Treatise on Urn-burial, affords passages of splendid eloquence that cannot easily be equalled. For example — " There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things. Our fathers fmd their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors'. To be read by bare inscriptions, like many in Gruter ; to hope for eternity by any me- trical epithets, or first letters of our names ; to be studied by antiquaries who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpe- tuity, even by everlasting languages. " The night of time far surpasseth the day — who knows when was the sequinox ? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. — Darkness and hght divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings. Who knows whether the best of men be known : or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the known account of time ? — The sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either G