For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might persuade the world I
have none at all, as the general scandal of my profession, the natural course of my
studies, the indifferency of my behaviour ... yet in despite hereof I dare, without
usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian.
Browne was himself ‘of that reformed, new-cast Religion, wherein I dislike noth-
ing but the name’, a loyal Anglican. He studied medicine in Europe, where, he tells
us, he ‘wept abundantly’ at Catholic devotions, ‘while my consorts, blind with oppo-
sition and prejudice, have fallen into an access of scorn and laughter’. He held the
neglected Christian idea that ‘no man can justly censure or condemn another,
because indeed no man truly knows another’. In matters of fact and interpretation,
he has a medical practitioner’s reliance on evidence, and a Christian belief that
nature had a code, which he tried to read, though without much trust in reason.
Sense and sympathy coexist with speculation: ‘I love to lose myself in a mystery’, he
confides, ‘to pursue my reason to ano altitudo [O the height (of God’s ways)!]’.
Wonderful depths are found in his late work,Urn-burial, a meditation on the
vanity of earthly fame, prompted by the discovery of ancient burial-urns near
Norwich.
What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among
women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the
persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes
and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietiaries of these
bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarism; not to
be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial
guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names as
they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation.
But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.One fascination of his style, which here approaches self-parody, is its perilous
balancing of the metaphysical, the moral and the scientific. By the end of the
century, physics and metaphysics were separate pursuits.
Poetry to Milton
Ben Jonson
Donne’s wit was admired by those who read it; but extravagance was cut short with
Charles I, or took a quieter form. Later non-dramatic poets followed neither Donne
nor Milton but Jonson (1572–1637), a professional poet as well as playwright. His
clarity, edge and economy lie behind the wit of Andrew Marvell, the polish of
Alexander Pope, and the weight of Samuel Johnson. Jonson’s Works (1616) begin
with ‘To the Reader’: ‘Pray thee take care, that tak’st my book in hand, / To read it
well; that is, to understand.’
Jonson’s natural ferocity was balanced and ground to a point by a lifetime’s read-
ing, which transmuted classical phrases, lines and whole poems into English litera-
ture. He imitated especially the caustic and lyric epigrams of the Roman poets,
Catullus, Horace and Martial. Jonson’s verse is social, directed at a person, a topic,
an occasion. Its function, civil, moral or aesthetic, is as clear as its sense. He wrote
short, highly-crafted poems in a variety of styles across a range of subjects. His non-
dramatic verse matches his writing for the stage, and he carved out a role for the poet
as the arbiter to civilized society, an ideal which lasted for a century and a half.
THE STUART CENTURY 149