rom the works of other curious writers in the delightful period which
passed between the childish credulity of mediaeval and classical physics and
the arid analysis of the modern "scientist." Sir Thomas Browne was of a
certain natural scepticism of temperament (a scepticism which, as displayed
in relation to other matters in the _Religio Medici_, very unjustly
brought upon him the reproach of religious unorthodoxy); he was a trained
and indefatigable observer of facts, and he was by no means prepared to
receive authority as final in any extra-religious matters. But he had a
thoroughly literary, not to say poetical idiosyncrasy; he was both by
nature and education disposed to seek for something more than that physical
explanation which, as the greatest of all anti-supernatural philosophers
has observed, merely pushes ignorance a little farther back; and he was
possessed of an extraordinary fertility of imagination which made comment,
analogy, and amplification both easy and delightful to him. He was,
therefore, much more disposed--except in the face of absolutely conclusive
evidence--to rationalise than to deny a vulgar error, to bring explanations
and saving clauses to its aid, than to cut it adrift utterly. In this part
of his work his distinguishing graces and peculiarities of style appear but
sparingly and not eminently. In the other division, consisting of the
_Religio Medici_, the _Urn-Burial_, the _Christian Morals_, and the _Letter
to a Friend_, his strictly literary peculiarities, as being less hampered
by the exposition of matter, have freer scope; and it must be recollected
that these literary peculiarities, independently of their own interest,
have been a main influence in determining the style of two of the most
remarkable writers of English prose in the two centuries immediately
succeeding Browne. It has been said that Johnson edited him somewhat early;
and all the best authorities are in accord that the Johnsonian Latinisms,
differently managed as they are, are in all probability due more to the
following--if only to the unconscious following--of Browne than to anything
else. The second instance is more indubitable still and more happy. It
detracts nothing from the unique charm of "Elia," and it will be most
clearly recognised by those who know "Elia" best, that Lamb constantly
borrows from Browne, that the mould and shape of his most characteristic
phrases is frequently suggested directly by Sir Thomas, and t