Read The Major Works (English Library) Online
Authors: Sir Thomas Browne
38
. ‘As
Alexander
the Great did’ (Browne marg.).
39
. ‘Only placed at a distance in the same line’ (
SJ
).
40
. i.e. ‘the mad Hercules’, as in the title of Seneca’s tragedy.
41
. ‘Knave, Rascal’ (Blount).
42
. i.e. the soul, represented in
Phaedrus
(246, 253) as two winged horses – one black, the other white – and a charioteer.
43
. Chariot races (from
ludi circenses
: the games in Rome’s Circus Maximus).
44
. ‘Fight, strife’ (Cockeram).
45
. Gladiators armed with a net and a noose respectively (cf. above,
p. 336, note 17
).
46
. One of the Lipari Islands, Hiera, was Vulcan’s abode.
47
. Ephesians 6.13–17. Cf.
above, p. 70, note 47
.
48
. Spiritual beings thought to have ruled the celestial spheres.
49
. Ecstasy.
50
. See
above, p. 66, note 26
.
52
. i.e. the words inscribed on it during Belshazzar’s feast (Daniel 5.5–28).
53
. Unrevealed.
54
. i.e. novelty.
55
. ‘This was the answer made by Diogenes to Alexander, who asked him what he had to request’ (
SJ
). So Plutarch,
Alexander
, XIV.
56
. ‘Severe, hard, sowre’ (Cockeram).
57
. i.e. measurement.
58
. ‘The book in which the Census, or account of every man’s estate, was registered among the Romans’ (
SJ
).
59
. See
above, pp. 28
and
51
.
60
. Cf. above,
p. 133
: ‘at the sight of a Toad, or Viper, I finde in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them’.
61
. Cf. above,
p. 152
: ‘I ground upon experience, that poysons containe within themselves their owne Antidote’.
63
. Seminal principles (as above,
p. 374, note 53
).
64
. i.e. the man created according to the Idea in the mind of God (above,
p. 30
). An earlier version of this passage in one of Browne’s commonplace books reads: ‘Could wee intimately apprehend the ideated man and as it primitively stood in the intellect of god upon the first exertion by creation, wee might more narrowlie apprehend our degeneration; & how widely wee are fallen from the pure exemplar & Idea of ourselves’ (
K
, III, 293).
66
. i.e. intervening occurrences.
67
. ‘Socrates, and Cardan, perhaps, in imitation of him, talked of an attendant spirit or genius, that hinted from time to time how they should act’ (
SJ
).
68
. Turnings back and turnings aside (
M
).
69
. i.e. the Dead Sea, called
lacus asphaltites
because of the bitumen floating on its surface. Cf. Milton’s ‘Asphaltic Pool’ (
Paradise Lost
, I, 411).
70
. ‘sodaynly’ (Elyot).
71
.
Iliad
, I, 592.
72
. Course, tendency.
73
. So Juvenal – ‘speaking of the confluence of foreigners to Rome’ (
SJ
) – in
Satires
, III, 62.
74
. i.e. small star.
75
. ‘The motion of the heart, which beats about sixty times in a minute; or, perhaps, the motion of respiration, which is nearer to the number mentioned’ (
SJ
).
76
. Customary (
E
).
77
. Proverbs 22.13: ‘The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets’.
78
. In his pursuit of the hind of Keryneia.
79
. ‘Speed, haste’ (Cockeram).
80
. ‘Slackness’ (tockeram).
81
. ‘This blackhearted fellow’ (Browne marg., quoting in Latin the full line of Horace,
Satires
, I, iv, 85).
82
. ‘the term by which the antient theatrical performers solicited a clap’ (
SJ
).
83
. ‘As
Socrates
did.
Athens
a place of Learning and Civility’ (Browne marg.). In Socrates’s praise of the Athenians (Xenophon,
Memorabilia
, III, V, 3).
84
. ‘
Astræa
Goddess of Justice and consequently of all Virtue’ (Browne marg.).
85
. The one wrote mostly of warriors; the other, of philosophers (
SJ
).
1
. ‘
Jupiter’s
brain’: ‘
Cerebrum Jovis
, for a Delicious bit’ (Browne marg.). ‘Cytheridian cheese’: the cheese of the island of Cythnus (?). ‘Tongues of Nightingals’: ‘A dish used among the luxurious of antiquity’ (
SJ
).
2
. ‘
Metellus
his riotous Pontifical Supper, the great variety whereat is to be seen in
Macrobius
’ (Browne marg.):
Saturnalia
, III, xiii, 10 ff.
3
. ‘
Nero
in his flight’: Suetonius,
Nero
, XLVIII, 4 (Browne marg.).
4
. ‘Tepid water, with which the ancients tempered their wine’ (
apud G1
). So Juvenal,
Satires
, V, 63 (Browne marg.).
5
. Gluttons.
6
. i.e. contentments.
7
. Cf. above,
p. 411, note 104
.
8
. Favourably disposed (
OED; M
).
9
. Zoilus: ‘a poete, whych envied Homerus: and therefore the enviers of well lerned men are called Zoil’ (Elyot, in
§176
).
10
. No longer extant; but the mistake is reported by Aulus Gellius.
11
. ‘In
Tabula Smaragdina
’ (Browne marg.). The words from the ‘Smaragdine Table’ (as above,
p. 74, note 71
) mean: ‘It is true, certainly true, true in the highest degree’ (
SJ
).
12
. Structure (cf.
above, p. 250, note 3
).
13
. Scholastically. ‘A “quodlibet” was a question in philosophy or theology proposed for scholastic disputation’ (
SCR
).
14
. i.e. like the ambiguous oracular pronouncements at Delphi.
15
. ‘The
vena basilica
in the arm, one of the veins opened in bloodletting’ (
M
).
16
. ‘a membrane or thin skin, involving the whole heart, like a case’ (Blount).
17
. Uncertain.
18
. ‘On which the Sibyl wrote her oracular answers’ (
SJ
).
19
. Leafy.
20
. i.e. acquisitions.
21
. Previous estimation.
22
. The Emperor Tiberius used to exercise his grammarians by demanding the name of Hecuba’s mother. See also above,
p. 307, note 13
.
23
. ‘Lewis the Eleventh: “He who knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reign” ’ (Browne marg., quoted in Latin).
24
. ‘quiddities; from the Lat. (
Ergo
) a word much used in Syllogisms’ (Blount).
25
. Used in the pejorative sense, unlike its use in
Religio Medici
to describe the art of God (above,
p. 81
).
26
. ‘Forcible eruption’ (
SJ
).
27
. As above,
p. 184, note 49
.
28
. Cf. the proverb ‘Truth lies at the bottom of a well’ (
M
).
29
. As above,
p. 66, note 28
.
30
. ‘I myself (for I well remember it) at the time of the Trojan war was Euphorbus, son of Panthous’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, XV, 160–61.)
31
. The universe, commonly assumed to have been created in about 4000
B
.
C
., was expected to terminate by the year
A
.
D
. 2000 – a period usually divided into Three Eras of 2,000 years each, in accordance with the ‘prophecy’ of the ‘school of Elijah’ (
Sanhedrin
, 97a-b, in
The Babylonian Talmud
, ed. I. Epstein [1935], Sanh. II). See
§97
.
32
. ‘Who comforted himself that he should there converse with the old Philosophers’ (Browne marg.). So Cicero,
On Old Age
, LXXXIV.
33
. i.e. assays: attempts.
34
. Mandelslo (Browne marg.) reported in his
Travels
(trans. 1662) that the inhabitants of Capo Verde ‘believe the dead will rise again, but that they shall be white, and trade as the
Europeans
do’ (
SCR
;
M
).
35
. ‘Our first day fixed our last’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Seneca,
Oedipus
, 988).
36
. Agreement – i.e. with Abraham (Genesis 18.20–32).
37
. ‘Defiled’ (
SJ
).
38
. ‘obstinacy’ (Blount).
39
.
in coagulato
: ‘in a congealed or compressed mass’;
in soluto:
‘in a state of expansion and separation’ (
SJ
).
41
. ‘that is, in the first part of our time, alluding to the four quadratures of the moon’ (
SJ
).
42
. The one was reduced to poverty on having his eyes put out, the other while in captivity was placed in an iron cage. ‘It may somewhat gratify those who deserve to be gratified, to inform them that both these stories are FALSE’ (
SJ
).
43
. ‘amuse’ (1716 ed.): ‘amaze’ (
MSS
.). But the former can also mean the latter (
E
).
44
. ‘Sight is made… by Extramission, by receiving the rayes of the object into the eye, and not by sending any out’ (
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, III, 7).
45
. i.e. direct contact.
46
. i.e. admonitions.
47
. i.e. for our salvation.
48
. Revelation 20.14: ‘death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. And this is the second death’. Cf. above,
p. 313, note 46
.
49
. Magnifying glasses.
50
. i.e. Charles II.
53
. ‘Spare me from shipwreck; then death will be a boon’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Ovid,
Tristia
, I, ii, 52).
55
. So Plutarch,
Themistocles
, XXXI (Browne marg.).
56
.
Phaedo
, 117–18.
57
. ‘Pummel, wherein he is said to have carried something, whereby upon a struggle or despair he might deliver himself from all misfortunes’ (Browne marg.).
58
.
Odyssey
, V, 47–8: ‘the staff, with which [Hermes] mazes the eyes of those mortals whose eyes he would maze, or wakes again the sleepers’.
59
. The murder of Ibrahim Pasha by Suleiman the Magnificent is related by Knolles (Browne marg.).
60
. ‘Agonies’ (
SJ
).
1
. i.e. satires (see above,
p. 408, note 96
).
2
. Man’s first disobedience, according to Milton’s theological treatise, encompasses distrust, sacrilege, deceit, ingratitude, gluttony, and so on (
Works
, Columbia ed., XV, 181–3).
3
. Implacable.
5
. i.e. during Noah’s Flood.
6
. Long-lived.
7
. Methuselah was born before Adam died, and died after Noah was born.
8
. Isaiah 14.12–15, where the reference to the King of Babylon was traditionally understood to apply to Satan.
9
. Salmoneus in Virgil,
Aeneid
, VI, 585–6 (
SJ
).
10
. i.e. exsuperances: ‘exaggerations’ (
SJ
).