ribute of 1,000 marks.]

[Footnote 69: These words mean "We create thee companion to kings,
superior to dukes, and our brother."]

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Born in 1605, died in 1682; educated at Oxford, Padua and
Leyden; in 1633 made Doctor of Medicine; settled at Norwich
in 1637; knighted in 1671; his "Religio Medici" published in
1643; author of several other works.

I

OF CHARITY IN JUDGMENTS[70]

Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish the
merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my
parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of
charity: and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and
naturally framed to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution
so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have
no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I
wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and
toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being
amongst them, make them my common viands, and I find they agree with
my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a
churchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a
serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or
viper I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I
feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in
others; those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold
with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I
find their actions in balance with my countrymen's, I honor, love, and
embrace them in the same degree.

I was born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and
constellated unto all: I am no plant that will not prosper out of a
garden; all places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in
England, everywhere, and under any meridian; I have been shipwrecked,
yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play or sleep in
a tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing: my conscience would
give me the lie if I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but
the devil; or so at least abhor anything but that we might come to
composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do
contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and
religion--the mul