that the author committed in the _Pseudodoxia_ were not committed by
idleness or negligence, but only for want of the philosophy of Boyle and
Newton.' Who, then, will gird up his loins in our enlightened day to
give us a new _Pseudodoxia_ after the philosophy of Bacon and Boyle and
Newton and Ewald and Darwin? And after Sir Thomas's own philosophy,
which he thus sets forth before himself in this and in all his other
studies: 'We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like
obtruded our conceptions: but, in the humility of inquiries or
disquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners. And we
shall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re-
oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. And
shall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious knowledge
shall be employed, not to traduce or extenuate, but to explain and
dilucidate, to add and ampliate, according to the laudable custom of the
ancients in their sober promotions of learning. Unto whom,
notwithstanding, we shall not contentiously rejoin, or only to justify
our own, but to applaud or confirm his maturer assertions; and shall
confer what is in us unto his name and honour; ready, for our part, to be
swallowed up in any worthy enlarger: as having our aid, if any way, or
under any name, we may obtain a work, so much desired, and yet
desiderated, of truth.' Shall this Association, I wonder, raise up from
among its members, such a worthy successor and enlarger of Sir Thomas
Browne?

The title, at least, of the _Urn-Burial_ is more familiar to the most of
us than that of the _Pseudodoxia_. It was the chance discovery of some
ancient urns in Norfolk that furnished Sir Thomas with the occasion to
write his _Hydriotaphia_. And that classical book is only another
illustration of his enormous reading, ready memory, and intense interest
in everything that touches on the nature of man, and on his beliefs,