The opening sentence of Thomas Browne's
Urn-Burial challenges the reader to look beyond mere surface appearances towards the unseen and hidden.
In the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.
An ardent enquirer questing for fresh insight into Browne's esoteric creativity would do well to cast their eye upon the curious word which heads Browne's discourse - HYDRIOTAPHIA and ponder awhile.The six syllable word has a touch of theatricality about it, its sonority arrests the ear as if a magician's abracadabra or medical mantra. Although its a word which is commonly assumed to be an alternative title to Urn-Burial in fact is not followed by the word 'or' as with Browne's various alternative titles to his 1658 diptych Discourses and its often printed with a differing letter size and/or font in most modern publications as in the original frontispiece.
Ostensibly meaning an empty tomb, it's just possible that the word HYDRIOTAPHIA is also an anagram. Browne's era was one in which all manner of word-play flourished, including the devising of anagrams. Such word-play occurred not only among literate academic circles, but also in the spheres of military and political communication. During the English civil war coded writing, as in the form of a cryptogram, was of extreme importance in maintaining military security when defeat or victory could be decided by the deciphering of the enemy's communications. However the construction of secret codes was not exclusive to the military, Anne Geneva noted of the wide-spread engagement in word-play throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
'the seventeenth century was able to draw upon a long tradition of cryptography, dozens of ciphers surviving from the sixteenth century alone, although Sir T.B. was the first to use the word in English'.[1]
Browne was one of many learned and leisured gentlemen throughout seventeenth century Europe who took an interest in secret codes, ciphers and anagrams. Of greater import Anne Geneva also recognised crucially that- 'Alchemy in particular seems to have thrived upon anagrams.'
With his penchant for the secretive, along with his deep-rooted interest in the esoteric, Sir Thomas Browne is a prime candidate for having anagrammatic inclinations; he not only possessed almost every major esoteric author associated with coded writing, including those by the Abbot Trithemius, the Italian polymath Della Porta and the Frenchman Blaise de Vignere [1] but also knew that both the Polish alchemist Michel Sendivogius [2] and the Oxford antiquarian Elias Ashmole had published alchemical literature under anagrammatic pseudonyms.[3]
In many ways Browne is the archetypal alchemist, he possessed an 'elaboratory' where he conducted numerous experiments, many of which are recorded in his encyclopaedia, including an experiment in which he suspended a magnetic pendulum above a circular table with an alphabet marked out around its circumference. He also experimented with various acids including Vitriol and was doubtlessly familiar with the near commonplace advisory derived from the initial letters of the word V.I.T.R.I.O.L. -
Visita Interiorem Terrae Rectificandoque Invenies Occultum Lapidem which can loosely be translated as advice to -
Visit the interior of the earth and rectifying, you will find the hidden stone.
an aphorism which bears close comparison to the opening sentence of Urn-Burial.
By rising to the challenge of the cryptic and acknowledging that the hidden world beyond appearances was a vital preoccupation of Hermetic philosophers such as Browne, essential clues can be acquired assisting deciphering the cryptogram HYDRIOTAPHIA; when deciphered it not only highlights fundamental themes of the diptych discourses, namely death and birth, but also reveals a rare utterance from Browne's alter-ego persona.
If one heeds the literary critic Peter Green's observation that, 'Sir Thomas is his own most fascinating subject of study, and knows it’ one may with confidence extract the letter I , the most frequently used word in the English language, to begin constructing a full sentence. Having identified our subject we next need an active word such as a verb or adverb.
The opening dedicatory address in Urn-Burial to his patron, the Norfolk landowner Thomas le Gros, provides further clues to deciphering the second word of the anagram. Remembering that it was the discovery and unearthing of several burial urns at Walsingham, North Norfolk, which was the inspiration for the composition of the Discourse, the critic Joan Bennett described the physician's excitement at this 'hit of fate' and archaeological discovery which fired his imagination, scholarship and creativity thus -
'he must have rejoiced when, ten years after he had completed his magnum opus, the discovery of the Urns at Old Walsingham offered him a subject so appropriate to his interest and gifts'.[4]
Browne describes the archaeological find as a 'hit of fate' and considered the unearthing of the Saxon-era urns to be opportune, prompting him to contemplate time and antiquity. The initial spark of an archaeological discovery kindled Browne's imagination and fired-up the full force of his literary creativity to write upon the themes of time, mortality and eternity.
Consulting Browne's contemporary, the seventeenth century lexicographer and dictionary-compiler
Henry Blount's Glossographia assists ones enquiry further. Blount includes the words 'seasonable', 'opportune',
'appropriate' 'timely' and
'tidy' to describe a singular, lucky or
unlucky event . Indeed, a miniature Dictionary published circa 1900 in the author's possession has under the entry
Tidy, the definitions seasonable, clever, neat, spruce. Although
the English language has altered considerably in three and a half centuries,
the word 'tidy' retains its original 'hit of fate' meaning as in the phrase, 'a tidy sum of money'. Placing our ‘hit of fate', adverb as descriptive of Browne's own 'hit of
fate' we now have an opening sentence of ' I tidy.........'
The remaining letters in the
word Hydriotaphia form a word utterly pertinent and central to the 'twin' Discourse's themes of death and
rebirth - PHARAOH .
In Urn-Burial Browne condemns all monuments to the dead as vain-glory including those built by the Egyptian Pharaoh's. The Pyramid is however one of the primary 'conjoining' symbols of the Discourses, for in The Garden of Cyrus the Pyramid is alluded to on several occasions as an example of the eternal, Platonic shapes and evidence of intelligent design in art and nature. The Garden of Cyrus also attempts to define several archetypes, 'the wise ruler' notably in its titular hero but also Augustus, Alexander the Great, Moses and many others are cited as examples of this archetype, including the earliest 'wise ruler' of all, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who despite their folly of building pyramid mausoleums for themselves were also 'thrice-great' rulers of Egyptian society, holding the combined office of High Priest, Military leader and Law-giver.
The
significance of the hidden sentence within the word Hydriotaphia in context of the welter of esoteric literature published during the Protectorate
of Cromwell cannot be ignored. Browne was a devoted Bibliophile who kept
well-abreast of the latest in book publications. He was both a modest and self -effacing physician who knew himself to also be a colossus of knowledge of European stature with the fame of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Observing the plethora of
esoteric literature published in the
decade of the Protectorate, Browne may well in his intellectual pride believed himself to be the opportune or 'tidy' Pharaoh of all those who purported to be
privy to Hermetic wisdom.
The
hidden anagram sentence - 'I, tidy
Pharaoh' - may have been inspired by Browne's knowledge that the
antiquarian Elias Ashmole had published his Norwich acquaintance Arthur
Dee's alchemical collection Fasiculus Chemicus in 1650 under the anagram pseudonym of
James Hassole (by subsitution of the letter J which is non-existent in Latin
for I). The frontispiece of Fasiculus Chemicus announced that
Ashmole elected himself as 'the English
Mercurius' and perhaps either as a gentle, playful rejoinder to Ashmole, or in
a rare outburst of alter-ego, Browne proclaimed his own status in the Hermetic
art under cover of an anagrammatic retort.
But perhaps in the final analysis it's the relationship between those who invent anagrams to their subject which is the most revealing to study. The ingenuity of devising phrases to describe someone from an exterior arrangement of alphabet letters.There certainly are some remarkable examples of anagrams made from famous names and Wikipedia offers an interesting
history of the anagram and many amusing examples.
Browne himself was made the subject of an anagram, 'made and sent to me by my ever honoured friend Sir Philip Wodehouse'. Sir Philip Wodehouse ingeniously extracted from the latin of the name Doctor Thomas Brouenis the phrase, Ter Cordatus bonus homo which roughly translates as - 'the three-fold great man'.
Wodehouse's anagram is a brilliant allusion to alchemy's 'thrice-greatest' founding sage, Hermes Trismegistus, connecting the Norwich physician to Hermetic philosophy as well as illustrating the high esteem in which his contemporaries held him.
Of course, we'll never know absolutely for sure whether or not Browne coined the word Hydriotaphia as an anagram. Unless of course new evidence should surface. Nevertheless it's possible to extract a three word sentence from this curious word which makes allusion to a favourite study of Browne's, namely ancient Egypt and to fundamental themes of the discourses namely death and birth. It is also a bold statement made with characteristic humour of an alter-ego alias .
HYDRIOTAPHIA or I TIDY PHARAOH
Although this proposed deciphering of an anagram can never be fully proven, one is none the less reminded of
Browne's observation-
'The Hand of Providence writes often by Abbreviatures, Hieroglyphics or short Characters, which...are not to be made out but by a Hint or Key from that Spirit which indited them'. [6]
Notes
[1] Anne Geneva - Astrology and the seventeenth century mind Manchester University Press 1995
[2] Examples of coded writing author's in Browne's library include Trithemius Polygraphia S.C. p.30 no. 17 and Blaise de Vigenere Tract du Feu & du Sal S.C. page 32 no.22
[3] 'Another kind of verticity, is that which Angelus doce mihi jua. alias Michael Sundevogius, in a Tract De Sulphure, discovereth in Vegetables...' Browne in Bk 2 chapter 3 of P.E.
[4] When Elias Ashmole published the alchemical writings of Browne's Norwich acquaintance, Arthur Dee, son of the elizabethan magus John Dee, he wrote under the anagrammatic pseudonym of James Hasholle (by substition of the inter-changability of the letters I/J )
[5] Joan Bennett Sir Thomas Browne Cambridge University Press 1962
[6] Christian Morals Part I Section 25
