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Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the . His writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the Scientific Revolution of enquiry and are permeated by references to and sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffused with , Browne's writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished eloquence.


Biography

Early life
Thomas Browne was born in the parish of St Michael, , in London on 19 October 1605. He was the youngest child of Thomas Browne, a merchant from , and Anne Browne, the daughter of Paul Garraway of , . He had an elder brother and two elder sisters. The family, who had lived at Upton for several generations, were "evidently people of some importance" who "intermarried with families of position in that neighbourhood", and were . Browne's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Henry Birkenhead, Clerk of the Green Cloth to Elizabeth I of England and Clerk of the Crown for the counties of and . Browne's father died while he was young, and his mother married Sir Thomas Dutton of and , , by whom she had two daughters.

Browne was educated at Winchester College. In 1623, he went to of Oxford University. Browne was chosen to deliver the undergraduate oration when the hall was incorporated as Pembroke College in August 1624. He graduated from Oxford in January 1627, after which he studied medicine at Padua and Montpellier universities, completing his studies at Leiden, where he received a medical degree in 1633. He settled in in 1637 and practised medicine there until he died in 1682.

In 1641, Browne married Dorothy Mileham of Burlingham St Peter, . They had 10 children, six of whom died before their parents.


Literary career
Browne's first literary work was (The Religion of a Physician). It surprised him when an unauthorised edition appeared in 1642, which included unorthodox religious speculations. An authorised text appeared in 1643, with some of the more controversial views removed. The expurgation did not end the controversy. The Scottish writer Alexander Ross attacked Religio Medici in his Medicus Medicatus (1645). Browne's book was placed upon the Papal Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the same year.

In 1646 Browne published his encyclopaedia, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many Received Tenents, and commonly Presumed Truths, the title of which refers to the prevalence of false beliefs and "vulgar errors". A sceptical work that debunks in a methodical and witty manner several legends circulating at the time, it displays the side of Browne—the side that was unafraid of what at the time was still called the "". The book is significant in the history of science because it promoted an awareness of scientific journalism.

The last works published by Browne were two philosophical Discourses. They are closely related to each other in concept. The first, Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or a Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk (1658), was inspired by the discovery in Norfolk of some 40 to 50 Anglo-Saxon burial urns. It is a literary meditation upon death, the customs of the world and the ephemerality of fame. The other discourse in the is antithetical in style, subject matter and imagery. The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, and Mystically Considered (1658) features the that Browne used to demonstrate evidence of in art and nature.


Later life and knighthood
Browne believed in the existence of and . He attended the 1662 Bury St Edmunds witch trial, where his of a similar trial in Denmark may have influenced the jury's minds concerning two accused women, who were later found guilty of witchcraft.

In November 1671, King Charles II, accompanied by his Court, visited Norwich. The courtier , who had occasionally corresponded with Browne, made good use of the royal visit to call upon "the learned doctor" of European fame and wrote of his visit, recording that "his whole house and garden is a paradise and Cabinet of rarities and that of the best collection, amongst Medails, books, Plants, natural things". During his visit, Charles visited Browne's home. A was held in St Andrew's Hall for the royal visit. Obliged to honour a notable local, the name of the Mayor of Norwich was proposed to the King for . The Mayor, however, declined the honour and proposed Browne's name instead.


Death and aftermath
Browne died on 19 October 1682, his 77th birthday. He was buried in the of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich. His skull was removed when his lead coffin was accidentally re-opened by workmen in 1840. It was not re-interred in St Peter Mancroft until 4 July 1922 when it was recorded in the as aged 317 years. Browne's , which was stolen the same time as his skull, was also eventually recovered, broken into two halves, one of which is on display at St Peter Mancroft. Alluding to the commonplace opus of it reads, Amplissimus Vir Dns. Thomas Browne, Miles, Medicinae Dr., Annos Natus 77 Denatus 19 Die mensis Octobris, Anno. Dni. 1682, hoc Loculo indormiens. Corporis Spagyrici pulvere plumbum in aurum Convertit. — translated from Latin as "The esteemed Gentleman Thomas Browne, Knight, Doctor of Medicine, 77 years old, died on the 19th of October in the year of Our Lord 1682 and lies sleeping in this coffin. With the dust of his alchemical body he converts lead into gold". The origin of the invented word is from the Greek spao to tear open + ageiro to collect, a signature neologism coined by to define his medicine-oriented alchemy; the origins of , being first advanced by him.

Browne's coffin-plate verse, along with the collected works of Paracelsus and several followers of the Swiss physician listed in his library, is evidence that although sometimes highly critical of Paracelsus, nevertheless, like the 'Luther of Medicine', he believed in , , alchemy, and the .

The Library of Sir Thomas Browne was held in the care of his eldest son Edward until 1708. The auction of Browne and his son Edward's libraries in January 1711 was attended by . Editions from the library were subsequently included in the founding collection of the . A Facsimile of the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward's Libraries. Introduction, notes and index by J.S. Finch (E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1986) Page 7


Autobiography
On 14 March 1673, Browne sent a short autobiography to the antiquarian , presumably for Aubrey's collection of , which provides an introduction to his life and writings:

...I was born in in London, went to school at Winchester College, then went to Oxford, spent some years in foreign parts, was admitted to be a Socius Honorarius of the College of Physicians in London, Knighted September 1671, when the King, Queen and Court came to Norwich. Wrote in English, which was since translated into Latin, French, Italian, High and Low Dutch.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into Common and Vulgar Errors translated into Dutch four or five years ago.
Hydriotaphia, or Urn Buriall.
[The, or de Quincunce]].
Have some miscellaneous tracts which may be published...


Literary influence
Browne is widely considered one of the most original writers in the English language. The freshness and ingenuity of his mind invested everything he touched with interest; while on more important subjects his style, if frequently ornate and Latinate, often rises to the highest pitch of stately eloquence. He has a and ambiguous place in the history of ideas, as equally, a devout Christian, a promoter of the new inductive science, and an adherent of ancient learning. For these reasons, one literary critic succinctly assessed him as "an instance of scientific reason lit up by mysticism in the Church of England". However, the complexity of Browne's labyrinthine thought processes, his highly stylised language, his many allusions to Biblical, Classical and contemporary learning, along with esoteric authors, are each contributing factors to why he remains obscure, little-read, and, thus, misunderstood.

A master , Browne appears at number 69 in the Oxford English Dictionarys list of top-cited sources. He has 775 entries in the OED of first usage of a word, is quoted in a total of 4131 entries of first evidence of a word, and is quoted 1596 times as first evidence of a particular meaning of a word. Examples of his coinages, many of which are of a scientific or medical nature, include 'ambidextrous', 'antediluvian', 'analogous', 'approximate', 'ascetic', 'anomalous', 'carnivorous', 'coexistence', 'coma', 'compensate', 'computer', 'cryptography', 'cylindrical', 'disruption', 'ergotisms', 'electricity', 'exhaustion', 'ferocious', 'follicle', 'generator', 'gymnastic', 'hallucination', 'herbaceous', 'holocaust', 'insecurity', 'indigenous', 'jocularity', 'literary', 'locomotion', 'medical', 'migrant', 'mucous', 'prairie', 'prostate', 'polarity', 'precocious', 'pubescent', 'therapeutic', 'suicide', 'ulterior', 'ultimate' and 'veterinarian'.

The influence of his literary style spans four centuries. In the 19th century, Browne's reputation was revived by the . Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charles Lamb (who considered himself the rediscoverer of Browne) were all admirers. Carlyle was also influenced by him.

The composer wrote a in 1973 based upon the rhythmical cadences of Browne's literary work Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial.

The writer Jorge Luis Borges alluded to Browne throughout his literary writings, from his first publication, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) until his last years. He described Browne as "the best prose writer in the English language".


Recognition
In the 18th century, , who shared Browne's love of the , wrote a brief Life in which he praised Browne as a faithful Christian and assessed his prose.

The English author wrote two short essays about him, observing in 1923, "Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those who do are the salt of the earth."

included an essay on Browne in his Cultural Amnesia collection. James celebrated Browne's style and originality, stating that Browne was "minting new coin" with everything he wrote.


Portraits and influence in the visual arts
The National Portrait Gallery in London has a contemporary portrait by of Sir Thomas Browne and his wife Dorothy, probably completed between 1641 and 1650.

More recent sculptural portraits include Henry Alfred Pegram's 1905 statue of Sir Thomas contemplating with an urn in Norwich. This statue occupies the central position in the Haymarket beside St Peter Mancroft, not far from the site of his house. Unveiled on 19 October 1905, it was moved from its original position in 1973 and once more in 2023.

  • In 1931 the English painter Paul Nash was invited to illustrate a book of his own choice, Nash chose Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus, providing the publisher with a set of 32 illustrations to accompany Browne's Discourses. The edition was published in 1932. A pencil drawing by Nash called "Urne Buriall: Teeth, Bones and Hair" is held by Birmingham Museums Trust.

  • In 2005 a small standing figure in silver and bronze, commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Browne's birth, was sculpted by Robert Mileham.

  • In 2016 the artists Peter Rodulfo and Mark Burrell elected Browne as honorary Great-Grandfather of the North Sea Magical Realists art-movement. Simultaneously they realised in painting items taken from Browne's in its Rarities in Pictures section.


Publications
  • (1642; authorised in 1643)
  • Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646)
  • Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658)
  • The Garden of Cyrus (1658)
  • A Letter to a Friend (1690)
  • (1716)
  • Tract 13 from Miscellaneous Tracts (1684)


See also


Notes

Sources


Further reading

External links

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