Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus: A Paradox and a Cosmic Vision

HYDRIOTAPHIA AND THE GARDEN OF CYRUS: A PARADOX AND A COSMIC VISION MARGARET AsH HEIDEMAN IN 1658 Sir Thomas Browne published together Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial; or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk, and The Garden of Cyrus,· or, The Quincuncial Lozenge,_ or Net-Work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically Considered. Despite the seeming disparity of their .titl~s, the relationship of these two compositions is more one of blood than of water. Basically the subjects have a certain identity, and their expression represents the highest point of artistic perfection reached by a dweller in- many worlds: a lover of ancient lore who was a good scientist, a sceptic who was a man of faith, a constant dissector of the microcosm who was also a mental traveller of the macrocosm. Hydriotaphia has been the subject of diverse critical speculations. Sir Edmund Gosse and Lytton Strachey felt that there was some symbolic unity to the composition. Gosse found symbolic significance in the burnt opal which still retained some lustre.1 Strachey pointed out that the recurrent figure of Methuselah had a unifying effect.2 In recent years Mr. J. M. Cline has attributed the unity of the piece to its form which, he believes, is based on the literary form of the paradox, and from mortality proves immortality in the wittiest seventeenth -century manner.8 The two older critics, distracted by the many degrees of Browne's oscillations between plain fact and pure poetry and by the exaltation of the last section, did not view 1-Iydriotaphia as a whole. Mr. Cline approaches from another direction. His argument is rewarding, but his main thesis is denied by the fact that _here, as elsewhere, whatever unity is found in Browne's compositions is organic and not artificial. It is the product of imagination rather than of wit. Hydriotaphia readily yields the secret of its unity to a complete imaginative apprehension, for its subject is integral to Browne's most characteristic way of thinking and writing. It is another variation on the constant theme of life and death, the paradox which resulted not from the studied use of a literary form but from the imaginative coupling of two figures which Browne knew scientifically. The dominant and unifying symbol of Hydriotaphia is neither the opal nor l.Sir E. Gosse, Sir Thomas Browne (London, 1905), 110. 2L. Strachey, Books and Characters (Toronto, 1922), 46. 3 J. M. Cline, "Hydriotaphia, (University of California Publications in English , VIII, 1940, 73-100). 235 - · ·- -~--·--- --··-------------- - - ---- - - - - - - - 236 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Methuselah. It is that "mystery of similitude'· ' which Browne finds in the burial urn and the human womb. "But the common form with necks was a proper figure, making our last bed. like our first; nor much unlike the Urnes of our Nativity, while we lay in the nether part of the Earth, and inward vault of our Microcosme."4 Hydriotaphia has been generally described as the most poetical and highly figurative of all Browne's work, but an analysis reveal$ that, if Browne does here reach the height of his capabilities as ·a literary artist, this is not owing to the mere amount of imagery which he employs. His high level of artistic effect is achieved by the contraction and expansion of an ironic thought accompanied by a rare quality of symbolic imagery which unifies all. Certain predominating symbols recur with increasing frequency in his detailed discussion of the rites of death throughout man's history untH a climax is reached in a great crescendo. From the beginning, the reader feels that Browne's subject-title symbolizes a more profound meaning, that his real topic will open out into life and death in time and eternity, as Browne hints in his dedication to Thomas LeGros: "But these ~re sad and sepulchral Pitchers, which have no joyful voices; silently expressing old mortality, the ruines of forgotten times, and can only speak with life, how long in this corruptible frame, some parts may be uncorrupted; yet able to outlast bones long unborn, and noblest pyle among us." Browne describes first the ancient burial customs of many nations. In chapter rr, the urns of...