ament of chimaeras'--'the irregularities of vain glory,
and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'--are examples of this
consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of
others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days of
absorbed and exquisite worship. It is pleasant to start out for a long
walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'According to the
ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to
go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon the
inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that one
begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to
have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English.

One other function performed by Browne's latinisms must be mentioned,
because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of
the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. Certain classical
words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound,
possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of Saxon
derivation. Such a word, for instance, as 'pyramidally,' gives one at
once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something
extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. And
this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only
Browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts.
The grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was
visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him simply
and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while Mr. Gosse has
flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow Browne any sense of
humour at all. The confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference in
the point of view. Mr. Gosse, regarding Browne's most important and
general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. The
Early Victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were
altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. When
they found Browne asserting that 'Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage,' or
embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,'
they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne,
like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a
multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are
discordant, and extraordinary, and ev