Sir Thomas Browne: A Study in Religious Philosophy by William P. Dunn (review)

438 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Sir Thomas Browne: A St.udy in Religious Philosophy. By WILLIAM P. DUNN. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press [Toronto: Thomas Allen Limited]. 1950. Pp. viii, 182. $3.50. Since its publication in 1926 Professor Dunn has rewritten and recast this book so considerably that it is to be regarded as something more than the usual "second edition, revised." In his attitude to Browne as a scientist and writer, however, he seems unable to shake off' certain common nineteenth-century misconceptions, including even some of the follies of Gosse. Indeed he repeats as he seems to disclaim, as when Coleridge's epithet "faery light" dances before his modern eyes or when the author of Urn Burial is praised as "no mere quaint writer of prose meditations." Almost at the outset the Vulgar Errors is described as "the twilight of the mediaeval gods," and "as through a falling darkness" Professor Dunn views "one of the last imposing processions of the great figures of old-world science-Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Pliny, Augustine, Dioscorides, Bartholomew, Albertus Magnus. With a very learned and naive admiration Browne sees the physical world through their eyes, and when he studies animals and plants and stars he enters their fairyland of monsters and prodigies and legendary tales and pious frauds. He has all their encyclopedic industry, all their credulity, all their lack of method, all their undisciplined curiosity." "Their" seems to he applied here with a certain lack of discrimination, and Browne's actual comment on Alhertus Magnus and Bartholomew Glanvil is that they have "delivered most conceits with strict enquiry into few." Later in the book Professor Dunn admits that his view has been challenged, but still persists in comparing Browne to a "rhapsodic monk" who "sees everything through a cloud of mystical emotion." This is nonsense whether applied to Browne or monks with an interest in natural history. But indeed the difficulty some critics have in writing relevantly about the so-called "world of Sir Thomas Browne" is illustrated in Professor Dunn's first paragraph, which runs: For the follower of intellectual byways in seventeenth-century England, no figure is more provocative and rewarding than Sir Thomas Browne. As antiquary, embryo naturalist, enlightened physician, restlessly speculative philosopher, he is an enduring personality whose name is inextricably woven into the life of Bacon, Gilbert and Harvey. ... He is one of the truest mirrors of that age .. . to the extent that he shows such superb genius for handling knowledge imaginatively he is one of the greatest men.... Religio M ediei and Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are now fixed stars, only less than the brightest in the English sky. 438 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Sir Thomas Browne: A Study in R eligious Philosophy. By WILLIAM P. DUNN. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press [Toronto : Thomas Allen Limited]. 1950. Pp. viii, 182. $3.50. Since its publication in 1926 Professor Dunn has rewritten and recast this book so considerably that it is to be regarded as something more than the usual "second edition, revised." In his attitude to Browne as a scientist and writer, however, he seems unable to shake off' certain COffilllon nineteenth-century misconceptions, including even some of the follies of Gosse. Indeed he repeats as he seems to disclaim, as when Coleridge's epithet "faery light" dances before his modern eyes or when the author of Urn Burial is praised as "no mere quaint writer of prose meditations." Almost at the outset the Vulgar Errors is described as "the twilight of the mediaeval gods," and "as through a falling darkness" Professor Dunn views "one of the last imposing processions of the great figures of old-world science-Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Pliny, Augustine, Dioscorides, Bartholomew, Albertus Magnus. With a very learned and naive admiration Browne sees the physical world through their eyes, and when he studies animals and plants and stars he enters their fairyland of monsters and prodigies and legendary tales and pious frauds. He has all their encyclopedic industry, all their credulity, all their lack of method, all their undisciplined curiosity." "Their" seems to be applied here with a certain lack of discrimination, and Browne's...