Because America accounts for approximately 60% of visitors to this Sir Thomas Browne centred blog, I thought it would be a nice gesture to record a few facts about his interest in America.
It’s an extraordinary fact and testimony to his curiosity that each of Sir Thomas Browne's major writings mentions America. During his lifetime mass emigration from Europe to America established and developed. According to Wikipedia, itself a great American success story, the earliest English settlements were the Virginia colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrim’s’ Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610’s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies. Another source of early American settlers, were those known as religious dissenters. Because England’s King Charles believed that his rule was a God-given right he felt justified in persecuting those who disagreed with him. Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies.
It was against this historical background, one of political and religious ferment in England under the rule of King Charles I that the newly qualified medical doctor Thomas Browne penned Religio Medici, a Montaigne-like discourse upon the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. Its labyrinthine digressions includes the zoological query -
'How America abounded with beasts of prey, and noxious Animals, yet contained not in it that necessary creature, a Horse, is very strange'.
In fact America was the home of the horse until its eventual extinction in the last Ice Age. Not until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century was the horse re-introduced to the continent of America. Today, a little more than a quarter (28%) of all the world's horses are stabled in the USA.
Throughout his life Browne was a keen geographer, botanist and zoologist; it was therefore inevitable that he would lend an eager ear to the numerous reports about the New World which sporadically arrived in England. In his encyclopedic endeavor Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-76) he refers to America on several occasions. Indeed its very opening address describes his painstaking labors in not only compiling an encyclopedia but also in debunking common fallacies as - 'but oft-times fain to wander in the America and untravelled parts of truth'.
Browne's encyclopedia also includes reports of the natural history of America, including the giant phalanges spider, speculation as to why the skin-pigmentation of American natives differs from African natives and a geographical comparison of the Gulf of California to the Red Sea. Browne also notes in Pseudodoxia Epidemica that the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus symbolically equated America as representing the hind-quarters of the world noting-
'…of the Geography of Paracelsus, who according to the Cardinal points of the World, divideth the body of man; and therefore working upon humane ordure, and by long preparation rendering it odiferous, he terms it Zibeta Occidentalis, Western Civet; making the face the East, but the posteriors the America or Western part of his Microcosm'.
Browne’s encyclopedia was a European best-seller, translated into several languages and reprinted with additions and amendments no less than six times in his life-time. It found itself upon the book-shelves of many educated English families and its introduction of work-in-progress enquiry paved the way for suceeding scientific journalism.
Throughout his life Browne kept abreast of the latest developments of the early scientific revolution. Although not credited for making any significant scientific discovery himself, he nonetheless coined many new technical words which were useful to scientific and medical debate. The words ‘electricity’ ‘pathology’ and ‘hallucination’ for example, are just a few of the many neologisms he introduced into the English language. Indeed, a careful scrutiny of the Oxford dictionary reveals that Browne’s name occurs as the source or first usage of a word in the English language more than any other author.
Browne's informed reading made him an appreciative supporter of William Harvey's recent medical discovery. In correspondence to a young student he wittily advised -
'be sure you make yourself master of Dr Harvey's piece De Circul. Sang (Of the circulation of the blood); which discovery I prefer to that of Columbus' ............(i.e. that of America)
The demands of his medical profession along with a need to earn an income to support his large family allowed Browne little leisure-time for writing, however during the 1650s, under the newly-established Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, he penned two Discourses ‘Urn-Burial’ and ‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658).
Fully intended to be one whole literary work, as their highly-polarised themes, imagery, symbolism and epistemology makes abundantly clear, publishers however continue to print them separately; an act initiated by Victorian appreciation of the stoicism and funereal pomp of ‘Urn-Burial’, but wholly against artistic intent and bewilderment at its diptych companion.
The opening lines of ‘Urn Burial, or a brief discourse upon the sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk’, notes how America was undetected by European explorers for centuries and compares its 'discovery' to an archaeological find.
'That great antiquity America lay buried for a thousand years; and a large part of the earth is still in the Urn unto us'.
In the dedicatory epistle of The Garden of Cyrus Browne with characteristic subtle humour remarks to his patron upon the great volume of printed information on American botany being published at the time, joking -
'you who know that three full Folio's are yet too little, and how New Herballs fly from America upon us, from persevering enquirers'.
It’s also in ‘The Garden of Cyrus’ that Browne employs proper-place names as highly evocative symbols; for example, the place-name of Persia is invariably employed to symbolize pagan antiquity. In contrast, the proper-place name of America is used to represent the new, unknown and exotic. At the Discourse's conclusion Browne contemplates the fact that the world consists of time-zones and prophetically links Persia (modern-day Iran ) to America as if opposed thus:
'The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia'.
‘The Garden of Cyrus’ has been likened as a work of prophecy and compared to the Biblical Book of Revelation by the American literary scholar, Frank Huntley. Indeed its American scholarship which has most fruitfully interpreted Browne throughout the 20th century notably by Frank Huntley, and Jeremiah Finch, Dean Emeritus of Yale University whose life-long study of Browne included a publication of a facsimile of the 1711 Sales Auction catalogue of Browne’s library.
It was sometime in the 1670s when introduced to a English translation of the prophecies of Nostradamus that Browne made astounding predictions on America’s future.
His miscellaneous tract – ‘A prophecy concerning the future State of Several Nations’ (Miscellaneous Tract 12) is a quasi-oracular pastiche of the Lyons physician's barely intelligible predictions. It questions the morality of the growing Slave-trade almost two centuries before its eventual abolition -
'When Africa shall no longer sell out its Blacks to be Slaves and drudges to the American Tracts'.
Equally remarkable Browne 'predicted’ in his ‘prophecy’ that sometime in the future America would protect its wealth and be a Nation which vigorously pursued happiness in his highly-original phrase, ‘American Pleasure’.
'When America shall cease to send out its treasure but employ it instead in American Pleasure'.
Ever helpful to his perplexed reader Browne adds this explanatory note:
'That is when America shall be better civilized, new policied and divided between great Princes, it may come to pass that they will no longer suffer their Treasure of Gold and Silver to be sent out to maintain the Luxury of Europe and other parts: but rather employ it to their own advantages, in great Exploits and Undertakings, magnificent Structure, Wars, or Expeditions of their own'.
But perhaps most extraordinary of all, at a time when America was only a fledgling colony Browne prognosticated it to become equal in wealth to Europe-
'When the New World shall the old invade, nor count them their Lords but their Fellows in Trade'.
Once more helpfully expounding his ‘prophecy’ with the foot-note-
'That is, When America shall be so well peopled, civilized and divided into Kingdoms, they are likely to have so little regard of their Originals, as to acknowledge no subjection unto them: they may also have a distinct commerce between themselves, or but independently with those of Europe, and may hostilely and pyratically assault them, even as the Greek and Roman Colonies after a long time dealt with their Original Countries'.
And here one must include Browne's thoughts upon war, the greatest threat to humanity's survival. In correspondence to his youngest son, Browne moralises upon why wars begin-
'The cause of this war was that of all wars, excess of prosperity. As wealth arises spirits rise, and lust and greed of power appear; thence men lose their sense of moderation, look with distaste on the prosperity of others, revolve disquiet in their mind, and throw over all settlement, for fear lest their enemies’ wealth be firmly established, they put their own to risk; and finally (as happens in human affairs) fall into slavery when they seek to impose it, and earnestly courting good fortune, experience disaster'.
Thomas Browne’s observations upon the botany, zoology and geography of the New World and its political future are remarkable for their earliness in history; from reports of the superabundance of her natural resources, geographical size and the sheer determination of her founding settlers, led him to apprehend America to be a land with a bright future.
See also -
