Times look troublesome: but you have an honest and
peaceable profession like myself, which may well employ you, and you have
discretion to guide your words and actions. May God be reconciled to us,
and give us grace to forsake our sins which set fire to all things. You
shall never want my daily prayers, and also frequent letters.' And so
on, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his two sons: and out of
which a fine picture rises before us, both of Sir Thomas's own student
life abroad, as well as of the footing on which the now famous physician
and English author stood with his student and sailor sons.
* * * * *
You might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne's writings and never
discover that a sword had been unsheathed or a shot fired in England all
the time he was living and writing there. It was the half-century of the
terrible civil war for political and religious liberty: but Sir Thomas
Browne would seem to have possessed all the political and religious
liberty he needed. At any rate, he never took open part on either side
in the great contest. Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot metal
and the stern stuff of John Milton. All through those terrible years
Browne lived securely in his laboratory, and in his library, and in his
closet.
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