Two other works of Browne are Vulgar Errors (1646), a curious combination of scientific and credulous research in the matter of popular superstition, and Urn Burial, a treatise suggested by the discovery of Roman burial urns at Walsingham.  It began as an inquiry into the various methods of burial, but ended in a dissertation on the vanity of earthly hope and ambitions.  From a literary point of view it is Browne’s best work, but is less read than the Religio Medici.

THOMAS FULLER (1608-1661).  Fuller was a clergyman and royalist whose lively style and witty observations would naturally place him with the gay Caroline poets.  His best known works are The Holy War, The Holy State and the Profane State, Church History of Britain, and the History of the Worthies of England.  The Holy and Profane State is chiefly a biographical record, the first part consisting of numerous historical examples to be imitated, the second of examples to be avoided.  The Church History is not a scholarly work, notwithstanding its author’s undoubted learning, but is a lively and gossipy account which has at least one virtue, that it entertains the reader.  The Worthies, the most widely read of his works, is a racy account of the important men of England.  Fuller traveled constantly for years, collecting information from out-of-the-way sources and gaining a minute knowledge of his own country.  This, with his overflowing humor and numerous anecdotes and illustrations, makes lively and interesting reading.  Indeed, we hardly find a dull page in any of his numerous books.

JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-1667).  Taylor was the greatest of the clergymen who made this period famous, a man who, like Milton, upheld a noble ideal in storm and calm, and himself lived it nobly.  He has been called “the Shakespeare of divines,” and “a kind of Spenser in a cassock,” and both descriptions apply to him very well.  His writings, with their exuberant fancy and their noble diction, belong rather to the Elizabethan than to the Puritan age.

From the large number of his works two stand out as representative of the man himself:  The Liberty of Prophesying (1646), which Hallam calls the first plea for tolerance in religion, on a comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foundations; and The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living (1650).  To the latter might be added its companion volume, Holy Dying, published in the following year. The Holy Living and Dying, as a single volume, was for many years read in almost every English cottage.  With Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, Pilgrim’s Progress, and the King James Bible, it often constituted the entire library of multitudes of Puritan homes; and as we read its noble words and breathe its gentle spirit, we cannot help wishing that our modern libraries were gathered together on the same thoughtful foundations.