from words of classical derivation as the sermons
of Latimer. A very little reflection and inquiry
will suffice to show how completely mistaken this
view really is. In the first place, the theory
that Browne considered all unclassical words ‘barbarous’
and unfit to interpret his thoughts, is clearly untenable,
owing to the obvious fact that his writings are full
of instances of the deliberate use of such words.
So much is this the case, that Pater declares that
a dissertation upon style might be written to illustrate
Browne’s use of the words ‘thin’
and ‘dark.’ A striking phrase from
the
Christian Morals will suffice to show the
deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the
latter word:—’the areopagy and dark
tribunal of our hearts.’ If Browne had thought
the Saxon epithet ‘barbarous,’ why should
he have gone out of his way to use it, when ‘mysterious’
or ‘secret’ would have expressed his meaning?
The truth is clear enough. Browne saw that ‘dark’
was the one word which would give, better than any
other, the precise impression of mystery and secrecy
which he intended to produce; and so he used it.
He did not choose his words according to rule, but
according to the effect which he wished them to have.
Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme contrast
between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon
words in direct antithesis to classical ones.
In the last sentence of
Urn Burial, we are
told that the true believer, when he is to be buried,
is ’as content with six foot as the Moles of
Adrianus.’ How could Browne have produced
the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase
conveys, if his vocabulary had been limited, in accordance
with a linguistic theory, to words of a single stock?
There is, of course, no doubt that Browne’s
vocabulary is extraordinarily classical. Why
is this? The reason is not far to seek.
In his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely
occupied with thoughts and emotions which can, owing
to their very nature, only be expressed in Latinistic
language. The state of mind which he wished to
produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated
one: they were to be impressed and elevated by
a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense of mystery
and awe. ‘Let thy thoughts,’ he says
himself, ’be of things which have not entered
into the hearts of beasts: think of things long
past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with
the choragium of the stars, and consider the vast
expanse beyond them. Let intellectual tubes give
thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not.
Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts
of things, which thoughts but tenderly touch.’
Browne had, in fact, as Dr. Johnson puts it, ’uncommon
sentiments’; and how was he to express them unless
by a language of pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate
rhythm? Not only is the Saxon form of speech
devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity
is still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which
seems to produce (by some mysterious rhythmic law)
an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, though the
pathetic may be present, there is no place for the
complex or the remote. To understand how unsuitable
such conditions would be for the highly subtle and
rarefied art of Sir Thomas Browne, it is only necessary
to compare one of his periods with a typical passage
of Saxon prose.