and the little Linnet, and the honest Robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead.

But the Nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, "Lord, what music hast thou provided for the Saints in Heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!"

The Compleat Angler, I, chap. i.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

1605-1682

CONTEMPT OF DEATH

I HAVE SO abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the Sun and Elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity: in expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do often defy Death: I honour any man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me naturally love a Soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible Regiments, that will die at the command of a Sergeant. Religio Medici, I, sect.38.

THE WORLD

I Do not envy the temper of crows and daws, nor the numerous and weary days of our fathers before the Flood. If there be any truth in Astrology, I may outlive a Jubilee: as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn, nor hath my pulse beat thirty years, and yet excepting one, have seen the ashes and left underground all the Kings of Europe; have been contemporary to three Emperors, four Grand Signiours, and as many Popes: methinks I have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the sun; I have shaken hands with delight in my warm blood and canicular days; I perceive I do anticipate the vices of age, the world to me is but a dream or mock-show, and we all therein but pantaloons and antics, to my severer contemplations.

Ibid., 41.

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is Music where ever there is a Harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the Music of the Spheres: for those well ordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all Church Music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and Tavern Music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of Devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer; there is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God—such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God.

Religio Medici, II, 9.

THE MIRACLE

Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable; for the world, I count it not an Inn, but an Hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world that I re

gard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on: for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my Altitude, for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point, not only in respect of the Heavens above us, but of that Heavenly and Celestial part within us: that mass of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind; that surface that tells the Heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any; I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty; though the number of the arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind; whilst I study to find how I am a Microcosm or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of Divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun.

Religio Medici, II, 11.

ADAM AND EVE AFTER THE FALL BEING thus deluded before the Fall, it is no wonder if their conceptions were deceitful, and could scarce speak without an error after. For, what is very remarkable (and no man that I know hath yet observed) in the relations of Scripture before the Flood, there is but one speech delivered by man, wherein there is not an erronious conception; and, strictly examined, most hainously injurious unto truth. The pen of Moses is brief in the account before the Flood, and the speeches recorded are but six. The first is that of Adam, when upon the expostulation of God, he replied, "I heard thy voice in the garden, and because I was naked I hid myself." In which reply there

was included a very gross mistake, and, if with pertinacity maintained, a high and capital error. For thinking by this retirement to obscure himself from God, he infringed the Omnisciency and essential ubiquity of his Maker, who, as he created all things, so is he beyond and in them all; not only in power, as under his subjection, or in his presence, as being in his cognition, but in his very essence, as being the soul of their causalities, and the essential cause of their existencies. Certainly his posterity at this distance, and after so perpetuated an impairment, cannot but condemn the poverty of his conception, that thought to obscure himself from his Creator in the shade of the Garden, who had beheld him before in the darkness of his Chaos, and the great obscurity of Nothing; that thought to fly from God which could not fly himself; or imagined that one tree should conceal his nakedness from God's eye, as another has revealed it unto his own. Those tormented spirits that wish the mountains to cover them, have fallen upon desires of minor absurdity, and chosen ways of less improbable concealment. Though this be also as ridiculous unto reason as fruitless unto their desires; for he that laid the foundations of the earth, cannot be excluded the secrecy of the mountains, nor can there anything escape the perspicacity of those eyes, which were before light, and in whose optics there is no opacity.

Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, I, ii.

IMMORTALITY

HAPPY are they which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason: whereby the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions. With