Read The Major Works (English Library) Online
Authors: Sir Thomas Browne
The Major Works (English Library) (76 page)
50
. Commenting on
Georgics
, II, 278 (Browne marg.).
51
. Revelation 21.16. On Babylon see Herodotus, I, 178.
52
. ‘Obelisks being erected upon a square base’ (Browne suppl.). The sentence draws on Josephus,
Jewish Antiquities
, I, ii, 3.
53
. Rectangular. So Diodorus Siculus, II, iii, 2–3 (Browne marg.).
54
. Areas from one camp to another.
55
. Jonah 3.4.
56
. About twenty-five miles.
57
. Jonah 4.11.
58
. In his treatise on medals (Browne marg.).
59
. Genesis 6.15, Exodus 25–23 and 28.17–21, respectively.
60
. Extended.
61
. Who carried them down Mount Sinai (Exodus 32.15).
62
. As described in Deuteronomy 3.11.
63
. i.e. stretching, as he was wont to do.
64
. So Plutarch,
Theseus
, XXVII (Browne marg.).
65
. i.e. half-stretched.
1
. In the liberal examples provided by Browne the naturalist hereafter, his marginal notes – and annotation generally – are reduced to a minimum.
2
. On the one, cf.
above, p. 149
; on the other: Virgil,
Eclogues
, II, 36–7 (‘I have a pipe of seven unequal hemlock-stems compacted. Damoetas gave it to me’).
3
. His treatise
Unbeard-of Curiosities
(English trans., 1650).
4
. The Southern Cross.
5
. Cross-bearing (as above,
p. 329, note 30
).
6
. ‘unfolding or opening’ (Bullokar).
7
. Pointed, spiky.
8
. Scaly.
9
. i.e. the seeds – an expression from the
Greek Anthology
(Browne marg.).
10
. Spiked.
11
. ‘There being a single Maggot found almost in every head’ (Browne suppl.). Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11.3).
12
. i.e. crooked arrangement.
13
. Cleansing, scouring.
14
. Jeremiah 2.22 (Browne marg.).
15
. ‘prycke or stynge’ (Elyot).
16
. ‘pointed Stakes’ (Blount).
17
. As above,
p. 114, note 264
.
18
. Cellular, like a honeycomb.
19
. i.e. the circuit is completed
(R)
.
20
. i.e. in symmetric relation.
21
. Folding.
22
. Crosswise arrangement.
23
. i.e. ‘the stemme’ (as
below p. 361
).
24
. i.e. the ‘plastic’ power permeating the entire created order. The reference, one of the earliest in the seventeenth century, was to form part of the endeavours to combat the emerging materialism by asserting a Principle beyond appearances (see
§63
).
25
. ‘pease, beanes, lupines, and such other Graine’ (Bullokar).
26
. Athwart (cf. above,
p. 337, note 28
).
27
. ‘turning’ (as below, p. 372).
28
. i.e. invertedly, upside down.
29
. Literally ‘little heart’.
30
. i.e. comes: radicles on malted barley.
31
. ‘very little point’ (Blount).
32
. The pod or seed-vessel of a plant.
33
. Lightly impressed lines.
34
. Pointed.
35
. Nice point.
36
. Fern.
37
. The purple thorn-apple.
39
.
Meteorologica
, IV, 3, with Cabeus’s commentary (Browne marg.). Coleridge in a long note found the opinion of Paracelsus (in
Philosophia sagax
, I, 3) ‘defensible’.
40
. ‘full of blowing or windiness’ (Blount) – i.e. inflated.
41
. Small leaf-like shoots.
42
. Thickening (cf. above,
p. 286, note 13
).
43
. In Genesis 1.11.
44
. Enumerated below,
p. 380, note 7
.
45
. i.e. acceptation.
46
. i.e. the shrub or bush, and the half-shrub.
47
. i.e. the ‘spontaneous productions’ referred to below. ‘Written before Harvey’s
ab ovo omnia
[i.e. Everything begins from the egg]. Since his work, and Leuenhoke’s microscopium, the question is settled in Physics; but whether in metaphysics, is not quite so clear’ (Coleridge).
48
. Oneness, agreement.
49
. ‘a little worme with many fete, bredynge in vynes & okes’ (Elyot). ‘These and more to be found upon our Oaks; not well described by any till the Edition of [Bauhin’s]
Theatrum Botanicum
’ (Browne suppl.).
50
. Littleness.
51
. From
magnalia
: ‘great things to be wondred at. As
Magnalia Dei
(mentioned
Act
. 2.11) the great works of God’ (Blount).
52
. So Laurenberg (Browne marg.).
53
. Minute (cf. above,
p. 348, note 31
).
54
. ‘The long and tender green Capricornus rarely found, we could never meet with but two’ (Browne marg.).
55
. In
Children by Nature
, XXII.
56
. Germs (in both cases).
57
. i.e. the production of the egg.
58
. ‘Which exceed not five’ (Browne suppl.).
59
. Turns inwards.
60
. i.e. the five leaves of the calyx (
OED; M
).
61
. i.e. hexagonal.
62
. i.e. 5 multiplied by itself yields figures ending in 5 – e.g. 5, 25, 125, etc. (
M
).
63
. Hereafter the argument is: ‘when a circle or sphere is rolled forward on a plane it covers its own area five times by the time it regains its original position’ (
M
, citing Bovillus).
64
.
Elements
, IV, 11 (Browne marg.).
65
.
Delphinium
or larkspur may have been the flower marked AI AI (for AIAS or Ajax, according to Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, XIII, 395–8); henbane was thought to resemble Aaron’s mitre (Exodus 28.36–9).
66
. Pertaining to a chrysalis (
aurelia
).
67
. Pertaining to ‘the art of building’ (Blount).
68
. i.e. cotton-like.
70
. Conjoining of structures.
71
. ‘By
Compartition
, Architects understand a graceful and useful distribution of the whole ground-plot’ (Blount).
72
. ‘Elegantly conspicuous on the inside of the stripped skins of Dive-Fowl, of the Cormorant, Goshonder, Weasell, Loon, &c.’ (Browne marg.).
73
. From
excorio
: ‘to plucke off the skynne’ (Elyot).
74
. The ‘brasen Table’ (
above, p. 330, note 41
).
75
. By Kircher (
above, p. 30
).
76
. The ‘cruciated character’ is the Greek letter X, said to have been invented by Hermes Trismegistus; ‘handed crosses’ are the pre-Christian crosses with handles, thus: ♀.
77
. i.e. statues of Isis, and household idols (Genesis 31.19), respectively.
78
. Genesis 48.13–14.
79
. The crossed figure X (as
above, p. 328, note 25
).
80
. ‘turning away or aside’ (Blount).
81
. Adapted from Psalm 139.14.
82
. The first allusion is attested by Vitruvius in Of
Architecture
, III, i, 13, as well as by Leonardo’s well-known drawing of Vitruvian Man; the second is in Plato’s
Symposium
, 189–91.
83
. Horned.
84
. i.e. the four stomachs of ruminating animals (Browne suppl., named in Greek and Latin).
85
. Sapless (as above,
p. 299. note 14
).
86
. i.e. the Septuagint, on Leviticus 7.31.
87
. i.e. vetch: the bean-like fruit, or the plant itself.
88
. i.e. quaestuary: money-making.
90
. Containers (
M
).
91
. i.e. locomotion, movement.
92
. Gadflies.
93
. Leaping.
94
. Both its left legs are on the ground.
95
. i.e. banana, not pineapple.
96
. i.e. the testicle-like plant described by Colonna.
97
. Whose zodiacal sign is
.
98
. Dr Henry Power had asked Browne ‘In what plant these tearmes are Inscribed’ (
K
, IV, 264) but the question is yet to be answered.
99
. i.e. volutes, the spiral scrolls ornamenting Ionic capitals.
100
. i.e. the conic sections described by Archimedes.
101
. i.e. fixing in place.
102
. Like a spider’s web.
103
. Suetonius,
Augustus
, LXXX (Browne marg.), speaks of the emperor’s birthmarks.
104
. Blisters.
105
. ‘a skyn the whiche doth tye the guttes together’ (Boorde;
OED
).
106
. ‘To be observed in white young Lambs, which afterward vanisheth’ (Browne suppl.).
107
. i.e. contact.
108
. As above,
p. 355, note 66
.
109
. i.e. after the ratio 1⅓: 1 – ‘which contains as much as another, and a third more’ (Blount).
110
. i.e. the parts between the nodes.
111
. i.e. union.
112
. Natural protuberances.
113
. i.e. the swellings or prominent outgrowths.
114
. Merging.
115
. The motion of one bone upon another.
116
. Union, fusion.
117
. i.e. hazelwood, which itself turns and twists (
E
).
118
. ‘Found often in some form of red maggot in the standing waters of Cisterns in the Summer’ (Browne marg.). ‘Tiring’ means drawing or pulling.
1
. The running title of Chapters IV–V is ‘Cyrus-Garden, Or The Quincunx Mistically Considered’. Cf. above,
p. 325, note 1
.
2
. Plutarch,
Solon
, XXIII, 6.
3
. i.e. of extensive roots.
4
. ‘High as its head is carried into the sky, so deep do its roots go down toward Hades’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of
Aeneid
, IV, 445–56).
5
.
Natural History
, XII, v, 9.
6
. Probably
συνολεθρία
(
συν
+
òλεθρία
), joint of shared destruction.
7
. Issuing forth.
8
. Ventilation. The ‘six passages’ are: two from the sides intersecting at right angles, two from the corners making X’s, one from the earth, one from the air (
H
).
9
. A variety of dodder.
10
. Hairy.