A letter to Sir Thomas Browne.

  • Johnson, Lionel, 1867-1902.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Sir Thomas Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    7/10 (page 4)
    the query, whether the charity of Uocl could j save them. For of God you doubted not at I all, grieving only that His'incornprehensibility 1 were not more incomprehensible, and the darkness round about Him less penetrable by faith. Questionless, death was to your living spirit neither bugbear nor nothingness, but by appointment a mysterious state, w.hereinto you strained unweariedly eyes yet clouded with mortal scales; ambitious of glorified vision, and eager, with him you called “the | elegant nnostle.” ilissolvi ct esse cum ' Christo. From the fixitv of determinate faifh could neither the nimbleness of your apprehensions nor the broils of sectaries remove you: t-vith W1S V0lir steady torch along the hollow passages and dusky cavities of death; nor were you' perturbed with solici- tudinous scruples, though its light fell upon the ruined face of Helen, or discovered un- comeliness in Cleopatra. Faith made you spherical music amid the digladiations of reason and the clash of fratricidal swords : 60 was your going hence but sl gentle journey and a “ soft, departure ” unto the ohoirs of the seraphical Trisagion. And no\y, sir, remains it but to give you thanks for that excellent subtile gift of speech, wherewith to the glory of English letters you were enriched. You were none of those apish wits, who are for composing poesy in prose, and_confound thereby the just dichotomy of the written word: yet you obtained in prose a mastery so majeStical, that with a brief line you exalt us to the empyreal home and birth- place of high thoughts; and in the concerted j music of your periods is your least fancy eternised for the lovers of harmonical lan- i guage. You had in proper possession the 1 secrets of a valiant sonority and of a melodious breathing, to the ravishment of eager ears and i to the wonder of all practitioners in that your , art of speech. And herein greatly consisted your success, that you were no pleasurist in language, delighting to titillate the ear with a vacant prefctiness: but your every sentence was a repository of imaginations internally musical, whereto that external music served but for a correspondent beauty. Doubtless, you that did so diligently pursue the miracles and oracles of nature, were no blind stranger to the deep mystery of speech and the curious signification of words, which speak many things beyond their immediate seeming, and as it were with a noble amphibology I You. needed not that lesson taught to the Prince of the Apostles, to call nothing common nor unclean ; and in your writings will terms of a vulgar simplicity appear things of price and unsuspected treasure. Would that your spirit I might by transinamation infuse itself into I the body of our writers: then had we less 1 phantasy without substance, and less dryness j I unadorned. But shame were it for the un- I