Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse.

  • Gosse, Edmund, 1849-1928.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    219/234 (page 207)
    that year, what have we? We have a charming fragment of mental autobiography, an incomplete criticism of some wide fields of natural history, an episode in the career of a physician, and some de- sultory jottings on ethics. In spite of this, it would be an error to consider the Norwich doctor as an amateur in literature. If his works are few, and fragmentary, it seems to be because he concluded that the manner of saying a thing was all-important, and because he could often compress the entire splendour of his art within a small compass. We must admit that if this was his theory, he was justified in it. He is said to have dreamed for forty years about a continuation of Religio Medici] but could he have recaptured the delicate charm of adolescence, could he have added to our gratified approval of his adroitness ? If he had given a dozen clinical experi- ences in detail, would they have increased our ad- miration of the penetrative skill shown in A Letter to a Friend ? One find of rough pots at Walsingham inspired a masterpiece in Urn-Burial \ would a vast tome on the antiquities of Norfolk have been anything but a disappointment to us ? And if we could dis- cover that he had composed the huge thesaurus on horticulture of which there was talk in his correspon- dence with Evelyn, should we be willing to exchange for it the last brief chapter of The Garden of Cyrus ? Browne's medical experience had made him keenly aware of the small horizon of human life, and it is difficult to believe that he did not consciously restrict himself to the creation of a few matters which should be exquisite, and his own, and self-sufficing.