dertake that to satisfie their pleasure, which a poore man for a good stipend would scarce be hired to undergoe. Plutarch in his booke de soler. animal. speakes against all fishing, as a filthy, base, illiberall imployment, having neither wit nor perspicacity in it, nor worth the labour. But he that shall consider the variety of baits for all seasons, and pretty devices which our anglers have invented, peculiar lines, false flies, several sleights, &c. will say, that it deserves like commendation, requires as much study and perspicacity as the rest, and is to be preferred before many of them. Because hawking and hunting are very laborious, much riding, and many dangers accompany them; but this is still and quiet : and if so be the angler catch no fish, yet he hath a wholesome walke to the brooke side, pleasant shade, by the sweet silver streames, he hath good aire, and sweet smels of fine fresh meadow flowres, he hears the melodious harmony of birds, he sees the swannes, herons, ducks, water-hens, cootes, &c. and many other fowle, with their brood, which he thinketh better then the noyse of hounds, or blast of hornes, and all the sport that they can make *.; " The language of Burton, when not encum * Anatomy of Melancholy, Partition 2. Member 4, bered by quotation, which too frequently gives an air of stiffness and pedantry to his pages, is remarkable for purity in its words and idiom; a circumstance the more meritorious, as about this period a considerable innovation was taking place in the diction of our English literati. This appeared before the public, carried to a most extravagant height, in the works of SIR THOMAS BROWNE; first in his Religio Medici, written in 1635, and published in 1642, and afterwards still more conspicuously in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors. In these productions, which in point of information possess no small degree of merit, Sir Thomas has been at incredible pains to introduce all the exotic terms he could muster. Some with a happy effect, but the greater part throws such an obscurity round his subject, or places it in such a ludicrous light, that the knowledge he wishes to communicate is either not understood, or, if perceived, is unhappily associated with ideas of ridicule and contempt. Dr. Johnson, who was partial to Browne, and who scrupled not to purloin many of his ponderous words, has nevertheless described his style with much critical acumen. "It is vigorous," remarks he, " but rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; it is deep, but obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not allure: his tropes are harsh and his combinations uncouth. He fell into an age, in which our language began to lose. the stability which it had obtained in the time of Elizabeth; and was considered by every writer as a subject on which he might try his plastic skill, by moulding it according to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of this encroaching licence, began to introduce the Latin idiom: and Browne, though he gave less disturbance to our structures and phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotic words; many indeed useful and siguificant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by circumlocution, such as commensality for the state of many living at the same table; but many superfluous, as a paralogical for an unreasonable doubt; and some so obscure, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it, as arthritical analogies for parts that serve some animals in the place of joints. His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another." On scientific subjects the use of erudite terms, in order to avoid circumlocution, will readily be admitted, provided they are clear and appropri ate; but to accumulate them until confusion and obscurity ensue, is too often the fate of Sir Thomas Browne. For instance, after describing what crystal is not, he thus proceeds to define what it is: "It is a mineral body in the difference of stones, and reduced by some unto that subdivision, which comprehendeth gemms, transparent and resembling glass or ice, made of a lentous percolation of earth, drawn from the most pure and limpid juyce thereof, owing unto the coldness of the earth some concurrence or coadjuvancy, but not immediate determination and efficiency, which are wrought by the hand of its concretive spirit, the seeds of petrifaction and gorgon of itself. As sensible phylosophers conceive of the generation of diamonds, iris, berils. Not making them of frozen icicle, or from meer aqueous and glaciable substances condensing them by frosts into solidities, vainly to be expected even from polary congelations: from thin and finest earths, so well contempered and resolved, that transparency is not hindered; and continuing lapidifical spirits, able to make good their solidi ties, against the opposition and activity of outward contraries: and so leave a sensible difference between the bonds of glaciation, which if the mountains of ice about the northern seas, are easily dissolved by an ordinary heat of the sun; and the finer legatures of petrification, whereby not only the harder concretions of diamonds and saphirs, but the softer veins of chrystal, remain indissolvable in scorching territories, and the negro land of Congor. "The principle and most gemmary affection is its tralucency: as for irradiancy or sparkling, which is found in many gemms, it is not discoverable in this; for it cometh short of their compactness and durity: and therefore requireth not the energy, as the saphir, granate, and topaz, but will receive impression from steel, in a manner like the turchois. As for its diaphanity or prespicuity, it enjoyeth that most eminently; and the reason thereof is its continuity; as having its earthy and salinous parts so exactly resolved, that its body is left imporous and not discreted by atomical terminations. For that continuity of parts is the cause of prespicuity, it is made prespicuous by two waies of experiment *." If on topics of science a profusion of learned words be objectionable, on more familiar themes such a style must prove utterly absurd. The diction, however, of Browne is nearly alike, whether the subject be trivial or abstruse. In treat *Pseudodoxia Epidemica, p. 41, 42. folio, 3d edition, 1658. |