tonius reports of Augustus, enough to clothe a good family.

"The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much. He could tell the number of the visible stars in his horizon, and call them all by their names that had any; and of the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge, as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial orb, and its products, minerals, plants, and animals. He was so curious a botanist, that besides the specifical distinctions, he made nice and elaborate observations, equally useful as entertaining.

"His memory, though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was capacious and tenacious, insomuch as he remembered all that was remarkable in any book that he had read; and not only knew all persons again that he had ever seen at any distance of time, but remembered the circumstances of their bodies, and their particular discourses and speeches.

"In the Latin poets he remembered every thing that was acute and pungent; he had read most of the historians, antient and modern, wherein his observations were singular, not taken notice of by common readers; he was excellent company when he was at leisure, and expressed more light than heat in the temper of his brain.

"He had no despotical power over his affections and passions, (that was a privilege of original perfection, forfeited by the neglect of the use of it,) but as large a political power over them as any stoick or man of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment,

that he hath very rarely been known to have been overcome with any of them. The strongest that were found in him, both of the irascible and concupiscible, were under the controul of his reason. Of admiration, which is one of them, being the only product, either of ignorance, or uncommon knowledge, he had more, and less, than other men, upon the same account of his knowing more than others; so that though he met with many rarities, he admired them not so much as others do.

"He was never seen to be transported with mirth, or dejected with sadness; always cheerful, but rarely merry, at any sensible rate, seldom heard to break a jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the levity of it: his gravity was natural without affectation.

"His modesty was visible in a natural habitual blush, which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any observable cause.

"They that knew no more of him than by the briskness of his writings, found themselves deceived in their expectation when they came in his company, noting the gravity and sobriety of his aspect and conversation; so free from loquacity, or much talkativeness, that he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he was so, it was always singular, and never trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as little loss as any man in it, when he had any to spare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study; so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing.8

8 do nothing.] Here Dr. Johnson has omitted the following passages:

"In his papers left behind him, which were many, nothing was found that was

"Sir Thomas understood most of the European languages, viz. all that are in Hutter's bible, which he made use of. The Latin and Greek he understood critically; the oriental languages, which never were vernacular in this part of the world, he thought the use of them would not answer the time and pains of learning them; yet had so great a veneration for the matrix of them, viz. the Hebrew, consecrated to the Oracles of God, that he was not content to be totally ignorant of it; though very little of his science is to be found in any books of that primitive language. And though much is said to be written in the derivative idioms of that tongue, especially the Arabick, yet he was satisfied with the translations, wherein he found nothing admirable.

"In his religion he continued in the same mind which he had declared in his first book, written when he was but thirty years old, his Religio Medici, wherein he fully assented to that of the church of England, preferring it before any in the world, as did the learned Grotius. He attended the publick service very constantly, when he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were in Read the best English sermons he could hear

town.

vulgar, but all savouring of much ingenuity and curiosity; some of them designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious wits.

"He had ten children by his surviving only wife, a lady of such a symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism.

"Four of his children survived, a son and three daughters, all of them remarkably partakers of his ingenuity and vir

tues; who were left bebind to propagate that supuia, that excelled in his person. Though health, grace, and happiness, are no hereditary portions, yet good nature generally is.

"His surviving sont was his eldest child, a person of eminent reputation in the city of London; and hath seen the best part of Europe-France, Italy, Lower and High Germany, Croatia, and Greece, as far as Larissa-has been in four of the greatest princes' courts that border upon the Mediterranean, viz. that of the Emperor, that of France, the Pope, and the Grand Signior."

Whose maiden name was Mileham, a gentlewoman of a very considerable family in the county of Norfolk. † Dr. Edward Browne, late President of the College of Physicians.

of, with liberal applause; and delighted not in controversies. In his last sickness, wherein he continued about a week's time, enduring great pain of the cholick, besides a continual fever, with as much patience as hath been seen in any man, without any pretence of stoical apathy, animosity, or vanity, of not being concerned thereat, or suffering no impeachment of happiness. Nihil agis dolor.

"His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and a sound faith of God's providence, and a meek and humble submission thereunto, which he expressed in few words. I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much; the last words which I heard from him were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely sub mit to the will of God, being without fear. He had oft triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given many repulses in the defence of patients; but when his own turn came, he submitted with a meek, rational, and religious courage.

"He might have made good the old saying of dat Galenus opes, had he lived in a place that could have afforded it. But his indulgence and liberality to his children, especially in their travels, two of his sons in divers countries, and two of his daughters in France, spent him more than a little. He was liberal in his house entertainments, and in his charity; he left a comfortable, but no great estate, both to his lady and children, gained by his own industry, having spent the greatest part of his patrimony* in his travels.

"Such was his sagacity and knowledge of all history, antient and modern, and his observations thereupon so singular, that it hath been said by them that knew He was likewise very much defrauded by one of his guardians.

him best, that if his profession, and place of abode, would have suited his ability, he would have made an extraordinary man for the privy council, not much inferior to the famous Padre Paulo, the late oracle of the Venetian state.

"Though he were no prophet, nor son of a prophet, yet, in that faculty which comes nearest it, he excelled, i. e. the stochastick, wherein he was seldom mistaken, as to future events, as well publick as private; but not apt to discover any presages or superstition."

It is observable, that he who in his earlier years had read all the books against religion, was in the latter part of his life averse from controversies. To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections and elude proof, is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly repents. There is a time, when every wise man is weary of raising difficulties only to task himself with the solution, and desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard of contest. There is, perhaps, no better method of encountering these troublesome irruptions of scepti

9 stochastick.] On the predictive power expressed by this term, I meet with the following passage in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, 2nd series, vol. ii, 425:"This faculty seems to be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucydides in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is given as a close translation. By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he was supereminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far surpassed all in his deductions of the future from the PAST; or

was the best guesser of the future from the past. Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered as a science, we can even furnish it with a denomination; for the writer of the life of Sir Thomas Browne, prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour of it for that philosopher, calls it 'the Stochastic,' a term derived from the Greek and from archery, meaning, 'to shoot at a mark.' This eminent genius it seems, often 'hit the white.' Our biographer declares, that though he were no prophet, yet in that faculty, &c.'"

1 superstition.] End of Whitefoot's Minutes.

* Οἰκεία γὰρ ξυνεσεῖ, καὶ οὔτε προμαθὼν ἐς αὐτὴν οὐδὲν, οὔτ ̓ ἐπιμαίων, τῶν τε παραχρῆμα δι' ἐλαχίστης βουλῆς κράτιστος γνώμων, καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐπιπλεῖστον το γενησομένου ἀριστος εἰκαστής.—THUCYDIDES, lib. I.