features that connect him with the rest of mankind; Sir Thomas is a rapt mystic, who in gazing upon the microcosm of his mind finds himself "something more than the great world," a portion of that divinity to which the whole earth is but a point. He loves the mysteries of religion which carry his reason away into an O Altitudo, leaving the senses to grovel in their baser element. What men call reality is to him no more real than his nightly dreams; indeed our dreams afford us a closer apprehension of our pleasures than our waking senses, though there is an equal delusion in both. If he studies the visible appearance of nature it is to regard it as the open book of God in which nothing can be written amiss, but not by human reason to prescribe a law to the operation of omnipotence, for God may arbitrarily pervert his rule to acquaint the world with his prerogative, "lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not." The same power, shaping the destinies of men and nations in a manner inscrutable to us, we call blind fortune in our ignorance. There is no such thing as blind fortune: "Because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty." Neither does Sir Thomas understand how any reasonable and learned person can deny the existence of spirits, tutelary guardians, and witches. Amid these supersensuous beings, in theologic fancies, and in the contemplation of the "wingy mysteries" of eternity, he is far more at home than in viewing the ordinary affections of men.

Next to God, Sir Thomas worships himself and the beauty and purity of his sentiments. He dedicates the second part of the "Religio Medici", which is as entirely personal as any essay of Montaigne's, to Charity. Had

the Frenchman written this piece, he would have called it "Of the Veneration Due to Myself." He begins by telling us that he is by nature framed to the virtue of charity, having derived from his parents a humane inclination which makes him averse from nothing, unless it be the senseless multitude. To contemn the manyheaded monster, however, is almost the duty of a Christian, and Solomon has authorized it by his example. There is, moreover, a providential end in the folly and viciousness of the many, for it reflects a greater lustre on the virtue and wisdom of the remnant. In speaking of his love for communicating knowledge, Sir Thomas cannot hold back the saddening reflection that his talents must perish with himself instead of being bequeathed as a legacy to his friends. Though far from claiming immunity from the sins to which all men have been doomed by Adam's fall, he can thank God that he has escaped from the most dangerous of all sins-pride. But what would be the merit of this claim if he had no just cause for pride? He therefore enumerates a store of gifts and acquirements which might have sufficed to turn a giddier head with vanity; for himself he must be content with the modesty of Socrates who knew that he knew not anything. He feels superior to the sordid temptations of his profession, and in matters of justice he "supererogates" the golden rule. But it is his hatred of Mammon that moves him to the highest pitch of self-approval: "for this only do I love and honor my own soul, and have methinks two arms too few to embrace myself."

Browne's egotism is of a gentle quality, consorting with humaneness and sweetness of temper. A Christian respect for his soul is not incompatible with generous feelings and sympathies; his thought embraces something more than his private salvation. Yet

throughout he remains the poet rather than the moralist. Sometimes he makes an observation of searching depth; more often he unfolds a paradox transcending the limits of common sense, but always he preserves the tone of purity and refinement in his reflections. Though he conceives of hell and its punishments with the literal severity of his own times, yet must he conclude that "they go the fairest way to heaven that would serve God without a hell." Though he seems to condone vice as a desirable foil to virtue, yet a sense of the inscrutableness of human motives restrains him in his judgments: "No man can justly censure or condemn another; because, indeed, no man truly knows another No man can judge another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love.” His appreciation of friendship goes beyond what men have said most eloquently in its praise. "I never yet cast a true affection on a woman, but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God." The soul of apostolic humility speaks in his tender compassion for the poor: "I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers. These scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untouched part of us both: there is under these centoes and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as ourselves." But all at once he adds a thought to remind us that he regards the poor as existing for the sake of Christian charity, rather than charity for

the sake of the poor: "Statists that labor to contrive a commonwealth without poverty take away the object of our charity; not understanding only the commonwealth of Christians, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ (The poor ye shall have always with you)." It is not clear that this is one of the remarks which Sir Thomas would have us take "in a soft and flexible sense" and not call "to the rigid test of reason." Perhaps we are here on the borderland of his elusive humor, a humor subtly pervasive, in part springing unconsciously from the solemnity with which an obsolete habit of thought is expressed, but in part also from a free-ranging fancy consciously at play on the fringes of common sense. Jeremy Taylor draws his inspiration from the same themes which call forth the deepest harmonies from the instrument of Sir Thomas Browne. He, too, views the pageant of life as a prologue to the great closing action. But instead of soaring away on the wings of rapt contemplation, his imagination dwells on the pathos of earthly imperfection and human suffering. Figures of grief and sorrow, the frail beauties of life, the horrid shadows behind them, form the background for his books of practical devotion. He broods tenderheartedly over the lot of man till even his sins and corruptions take on a pathetic loveliness. His retelling of the legend of the Ephesian matron in the closing reflections of the "Holy Dying" is no mere didactic illustration: it is the work of a dramatist probing into the mysteries of human passion, the work of a poet in love with his decorative detail. His voice comes to us on a stream of similies and stories ceaselessly flowing, making a soft elegiac harmony out of the dissonant notes of life.

JACOB ZEITLIN