in favour
of the liberty of the press, good Sir Thomas was meditating profoundly
on quincunxes. Milton hurled fierce attacks at Salmasius, and meanwhile
Sir Thomas, in his quiet country town, was discoursing on 'certain
sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk.' In the year of Cromwell's
death, the result of his labours appeared in a volume containing 'The
Garden of Cyrus' and the 'Hydriotaphia.'

The first of these essays illustrates Sir Thomas's peculiar mysticism.
The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces,
and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance;
but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to
which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine
of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and
earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches
all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the
form of an X, or that reminds him in any way of the number five. From
the garden of Cyrus, where the trees were arranged in this order, he
rambles through the universe, stumbling over quincunxes at every step.
To take, for example, his final, and, of course, his fifth chapter, we
find him modestly disavowing an 'inexcusable Pythagorism,' and yet
unable to refrain from telling us that five was anciently called the
number of justice: that it was also called the divisive number; that
most flowers have five leaves; that feet have five toes; that the cone
has a 'quintuple division;' that there were five wise and five foolish
virgins; that the 'most generative animals' were created on the fifth
day; that the cabalists discovered strange meanings in the number five;
that there were five golden mice; that five thousand persons were fed
with five barley-loaves; that the ancients mixed five parts of water
with wine; that plays have five acts; that starfish have five points;
and that if anyone inquire into the causes of this strange repetition,
'he shall not pass his hours in vulgar speculations.' We, however, must
decline the task, and will content ourselves with a few characteristic
phrases from his peroration. 'The quincunx of heaven,' he says,
referring to the _Hyades_, 'runs low, and 'tis time to close the five
parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts
into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations,
making cables of cobwebs, and