At which she
opened and read in the Gospel of John. Sir Thomas Browne is neither more
nor less than the very prose-laureate of death. He writes as no other
man has ever written about death. Death is everywhere in all Sir Thomas
Browne's books. And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heaven
itself, there is no death there. Death is swallowed up in Sir Thomas
Browne's defiant faith that cannot, even in death, get difficulties and
impossibilities enough to exercise itself upon. O death, where is thy
sting to Rutherford, and Bunyan, and Baxter, and Browne; and to those who
diet their imaginations and their hearts day and night at such heavenly
tables! But, if only to see how great and good men differ, Spinoza has
this proposition and demonstration that a 'free man thinks of nothing
less than of death.' Browne was a free man, but he thought of nothing
more than of death. He was of Dante's mind--
The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight.
The _Religio Medici_ was Sir Thomas Browne's first book, and the
_Christian Morals_ was his last; but the two books are of such affinity
to one another that they will always be thought of together. Only, the
style that was already almost too rich for our modern taste in the
_Religio_ absolutely cloys and clogs us in the _Morals_.
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