any kind of meanness; and, which certainly
seems a little odd in the midst of these self-laudations, upon his
freedom from the 'first and father sin, not only of man, but of the
devil, pride.' Good Dr. Watts was shocked at this 'arrogant temerity,'
and Dr. Johnson appears rather to concur in the charge. And certainly,
if we are to interpret his language in a matter-of-fact spirit, it must
be admitted that a gentleman who openly claims for himself the virtues
of charity, generosity, courage, and modesty, might be not unfairly
accused of vanity. To no one, as we have already remarked, is such a
matter-of-fact criticism less applicable. If a humorist was to be denied
the right of saying with a serious face what he does not quite think, we
should make strange work of some of the most charming books in the
world. The Sir Thomas Browne of the 'Religio Medici' is by no means to
be identified with the everyday flesh-and-blood physician of Norwich.
He is the ideal and glorified Sir Thomas, and represents rather what
ought to have been than what was. We all have such doubles who visit us
in our day-dreams and sometimes cheat us into the belief that they are
our real selves, but most of us luckily hide the very existence of such
phantoms; for few of us, indeed, could make them agreeable to our
neighbours. And yet the apology is scarcely needed. Bating some few
touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really
possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is
only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to
an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man's own
character, it is rather an agreeable literary ingredient. Sir Thomas
defines his point of view with his usual felicity. 'The world that I
regard,' he says in the spirit of the imprisoned Richard II., 'is
myself: it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for
the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for
my recreation.' That whimsical inversion of the natural order is the key
to the 'Religio Medici.' We, for the nonce, are to regard Sir Thomas
Browne as a world, and to study the marvels of his microcosm instead of
the outside wonders. And no one can deny that it is a good and kindly
world--a world full of the strangest combinations, where even the most
sacred are allied with the oddest objects. Yet his imagination
everywhere diffuses a solemn light such