Peter LehuThe Age of Charles IDr. Potter23 May 2003

The Aesthetic Significance of Hydriotaphia

In 1840, 182 years after the publication of Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall and 158 years

after Sir Thomas Browne's death, the author became the subject of his text. Browne's

skull was stolen from his gravesite at the Church of St. Peter Mancroft and the

subsequent year put on display in the Norwich Castle Museum (Huntley 243). To anyone

who has read Browne’s unique essay on burial practices and mortality the question that

instantly comes to mind is whether Dr. Browne would have been pleased with becoming

a relic or would he have applauded the reinterrment of his skull in 1922 by Sir William

Osler. If the bones of ancient, unknown Britons can provoke from Browne the lessons on

morality, history, theology, and rhetoric that make up Hydriotaphia surely the skull of a

celebrated thinker could one day be the impetus of worthy ideas. However, even as

Browne writes the works that bring him fame, he sermonizes about the futility of

becoming famous. Even as the remains of antiquity stimulate his mind, he instructs his

readers to leave nothing behind when quitting this world. In Religio Medici, Browne

claims never to have succumbed to pride. Yet, in Hydriotaphia Browne's prose sings with

the rhetorical eloquence of someone writing to be remembered. Considering the way

Hydriotaphia is presented and its apparent contradictions, it is hard to believe that

Browne would not smile at the irony of his own posthumous fame and of his own bones

becoming relics.

Browne had three didactic motives when he wrote Hydriotaphia: to document the

archeological discovery of ancient burial urns in "a field of old Walsingham" outside of

Norfolk; to educate his readers, many of them his "disciples" who sought his advice, on

the traditions associated with death and body disposal throughout the world and the ages;

and to propagate his Anglican beliefs concerning materialism (Gosse 104). However,

these goals are often pushed aside in Browne's text because the author does nothing to

inhibit an instinctive, fourth motive from flourishing. Hydriotaphia is partially a news

article, partially an anthropological study, and partially an Anglican sermon, but it is

wholly a work of art. Browne's text is much more than an epistemological tool; in many

ways, rather, his subject matter is the tool used to facilitate the creation of inspired text.

Browne's Hydriotaphia has aesthetic significance, not only in that it is not a pure display

of fact and opinion, but also in that Browne believed that knowledge itself has aesthetic

value. Therefore, Browne's work is aesthetically motivated by both what it presents and

how it is presented. Browne’s three motives in Hydriotaphia- the historical/scientific, the

religious/moral, and the aesthetic- compete as they weave in and out of one another, and

while Browne intends to have religion be the dominant force by the last chapter, it is

Browne’s aesthetic purpose that most significantly shapes and dominates the text.

The structure of Hydriotaphia, or lack thereof, indicates the multiple purposes that

Browne had in writing the essay. Chapter I begins by proclaiming the benefits of burying

and exhuming: these acts connect us with past and future generations. Browne goes on to

outline the various burial techniques practiced throughout time and cultures. Chapter II

begins with a description of the Walsingham urns, compares characteristics of the urns to

other unearthed urns, considers the possible origins of the urns, and ends displaying a

great amount of uncertainty about much of the chapter’s assumptions. In Chapter III,

Browne continues to try to come to conclusions about the urns and turns less to historical

and scientific data for clues and more towards his own imagination and religion. Facts

about the urns and general information about necropsy and undertaking are interspersed

with Browne sermonizing and postulating. The chapter is very loosely organized around

Browne’s argument that cremation is a better form of body disposal than corpse burial. In

Chapter IV, Browne rationalizes the burial customs of Christians as compared to those of

classical societies and within the frame of this objective builds a description of a virtuous

follower of Christ. Finally, in Chapter V, the Walsingham urns are long forgotten as

Browne, in a great rhetorical flourish, proclaims to any practicing Christian who hopes to

live after death that burial practices and other displays of materialism are of no

consequence.

There is structure in Hydriotaphia in so far as Browne has a goal which he fulfills. There

is lack of structure in that his argument is not constructed rationally or systematically

until the fifth chapter. Chapters I through IV are a hodgepodge of facts and opinions that

are swept under the rug by Browne before he begins writing the last chapter. Browne’s

abrupt dismissal of information is echoed in a passage of Moby-Dick in which the

narrator leaves his jumbled classification of whales unfinished: “For small erections may

be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to

posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything” (127). ( Melville even quotes

Browne in his opening of the novel. ) Browne’s factual presentation is also left

unfinished because the author has more important agendas. The structure of Hydriotaphia

is in some ways paradoxical to Browne’s religious motive. That his scientific and

historical conjectures are ignored in the end is testament to their unimportance compared

to Browne’s religious lesson; yet, the fact that they are included in the first place- that

Browne requires them to build his religious argument-- negates that very argument that

states that they are inconsequential.

The essay was published with another, The Garden of Cyrus, an essay about botany and

gardening based more upon fact than Hydriotaphia. Browne, a biologist and collector of

botanical specimens, was much more prepared to write an essay about plants. Browne

cared little about the accuracy of his historical postulations while he is self-assured and

precise when his writing is based on empirical observation. The essays complement each

other. The first is about death; the second is about life. The first is concerned with being

delivered into the earth; the second is about rising from the earth. Both essays have a

similar structure. Post writes, "Each is divided into five chapters, suggesting the five-act

structure of drama" (120). This is a bizarre claim since there is little else that these essays

have in common with drama except that as in most plays there is a revealing of truth in

the last "act." The fact that they are similar to each other suggest that Browne's five

chapter structure was not chosen arbitrarily. A central theme in The Garden of Cyrus is

the quincunx configuration common to ancient gardens in which trees are planted in

sequences of five that resemble an "X." Browne observes that the quincunx is an elegant

configuration found throughout nature. He facetiously asks his readers to not compare it

to Christ's cross though he must realize that in asking us not to he is doing precisely that.

The chapters of Hydriotaphia hardly attempt to divide the essay topically and within the

chapters structure is lacking as the order in which Browne mentions topics does not seem

planned out. Apart from the dedication, the reader does not learn about the urns until the

second chapter. Meanwhile, the first chapter deceives the reader into thinking the essay is

going to be a straightforward account of burial practices. Browne gets less and less

objective as he writes. In the essay's beginning, there are lists of questions that he admits

he cannot answer. The first three chapters are filled with conjectures. By the fifth,

Browne is making grand proclamations. It is as if he himself does not know where the

subject of burial is taking him. The reader follows as his thought process unfolds. If

anything, the chapter breaks loosely signal increases in the intensity of the text’s religious

content. However, for the most part, Hydriotaphia’s five-chapter structure is only for

show-- it is a symbolic connection to Christ and it is aesthetically pleasing in that it is

symmetrical with the adjoining essay.

Browne begins Hydriotaphia with a Dedicatory to the antiquarian, Thomas Le Gros, in

which he outlines his reasons for writing the book. They are not concrete; Browne feels

responsible to study the recently uncovered urns merely because they are there to be

studied: "But seeing they arose as they lay...we were very unwilling they should die

again, and be buried twice among us" (Dedicatory v). He studies the urns for the sake of

those whose remains have been unearthed and because "a complete piece of virtue must

be made from the centos [scraps] of all ages" (vi). The essay itself is “the complete piece

of virtue” being made, religious and non-religious passages included. Indeed, Browne

writes in Religio Medici that "Art is the perfection of nature" (20). His text is art; it is

able to transform something as natural, and therefore as imperfect, as death and burial

custom into a valuable lesson. Browne is not very interested in the facts pertaining to

these ancient urns. We get few detailed descriptions of the urns but many speculations

that warrant "conjecture." This seems to be enough for Browne. A speculation can lead to

a historical reference, a moral, or the construction of a well-crafted sentence just as

efficiently as a fact can. Browne's text draws out the full value of God's creation and

graciously delivers it to his Christian audience.

There is reason to believe that Browne wrote the Dedicatory after he finished the essay as

it shares some of the religious philosophies that make appearances near the end of the

text. Browne speaks of the urns plainly- they are not a “strange sight of spectacle;” they

are not expected to have the effect of “Hippodrome Urnes,” which, as Browne reveals in

a marginal note, amplified the voices of actors; and Browne tells Le Gros that he would

not even bother writing about the urns, since “we have scarce time before us to

comprehend new things”, except that they are there (iv-v). In other words, the urns are

from the past and normally would be unimportant but because they have been unearthed

they are also a part of the present and thus worth considering. Browne announces what he

plans to accomplish in the essay: “...to observe Occurrences, and let nothing remarkable

escape...” and “...to look back upon old times, and contemplate our Forefathers” (vi). It is

not important that the urns are ancient or that they tell us about past generations. They are

important if they can inform us about our lives in the present-- which ultimately they do,

albeit indirectly, in Chapter V. According to the Dedicatory, Browne does not intend on

studying the urns but rather on “contemplating” them, as he writes in Religio Medici,

"The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man..."

(15). Of course, until Chapter V, Browne does more than just contemplate the urns; at

times the reader is bombarded with factual information about the past. This suggests that,

unless Browne disregarded his letter to Le Gros, he went back to write it after finishing

the essay. He may have recognized the lack of ideological uniformity in his text and

hoped to partially remedy this imbalance by offsetting his conclusions in Chapter V with

similar sentiments in the preface material.

Browne's “contemplative” writing style is not original. Even during his lifetime readers

were comparing Browne's works to those of the French essayist, Michel de Montaigne.

His Essaies published in 1580 are trial-and-error attempts at discovering truths. (The

English word "essay" is derived from the title of Montaigne's work which is French for

"attempts.") Montaigne's writing is also replete with contradiction and conjecture. He was

a self-proclaimed skeptic who, with a life marked with tragedy in a country of political

unrest, decided that ultimately he could only trust himself (and sometimes not even that).

Unlike Browne, he distrusted anything he could not observe in reality but like Browne he

presented his thoughts in his writing in the order that they came to him. To Montaigne,

this order was closer to representing the truth than any artificial categorization of

knowledge ("Montaigne"). Browne claimed never to have read Montaigne and his focus

on spirituality places the central themes of his writing at a very different place than the

French writer (Post 63). However, the two writers’ joint reliance on observation and

experimentation makes their writing very similar. Post describes their syntax as "varying

concise, seried utterances of differing length with loose, run-on sentences often held

together with weak ligatures...portraying ‘not a thought, but a mind thinking’" (65).

Ironically, Browne, with his distrust of himself, and Montaigne, with his distrust in

anything but himself, find themselves in the same place: both confront skepticism though

their writings. In this way, Browne's loose writing style is a tool as well as an aesthetic.

Browne’s Montaignian writing method leads him to a conclusion by Chapter V of

Hydriotaphia. Despite the myriad ways that mankind goes about burying its dead that

Browne has spent pages outlining, he concludes, “... to subsist in bones, and be but

Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy of duration” (72). Ashes, the product of the obsequies that

Browne has previously advocated over burials, are revealed to be mere “Emblemes of

mortal vanities” (72). Posthumous fame on Earth is pointless to the Christian who expects

life after death. It is more important to be “found in the Register of God, not in the record

of man” (76). Browne is not ashamed or unaware of the contradiction between what he

preaches in Chapter V and his motives in the first four chapters; he ends Hydriotaphia

with a Latin quote by Lucan that explicitly negates the significance of much of his essay.

It reads, translated, “whether bodies decompose or are burned on the pyre is of no

importance” (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne 580). Despite this, he spends much of

Chapter III listing the reasons why burning burials are better than simple enterrment.

Therefore, his later conclusion refutes his earlier ones.

Browne gets away with this contradiction because Hydriotaphia is more a

“contemplation” than a historical document or a religious sermon. Browne’s religion

teaches him right from wrong but he is not interested in judging humanity. He writes in

Chapter V, “But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave,

solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equall lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of

bravery, in the infamy of his nature.” (80). Browne regards man curiously and objectively

as he would an animal ( as he studies badgers, elephants, and other animals in

Pseudodoxia Epidemica ). He learns how mankind acts through observation and

historical record and attempts to understand why. Browne deduces that societies attend to

their dead in different ways according to their beliefs. Of course, Browne is an “animal”

himself; he is in no position to judge. Rather, he is prone to “infamy” as well, as he

demonstrates through his contradictions and his respect for selected burial rituals. For

instance, he is opposed to burying coins with the dead but writes, “let monuments and

rich fabricks, not riches adorn men’s ashes” (41). According to his later arguments,

monuments and fabrics are equally unacceptable: “Pyramids, Arches, Obelisks, were but

the irregularities of vain-glory” (82). Browne, like any human, is attracted to aesthetics

even if he believes they are “folly.” Hence, an essay that purports puritanical values is

decorated with ornate descriptions and metaphors.

Browne not only accepts this contradiction; he relishes in it, to the point that it has

aesthetic value to him. He indirectly argues with himself, and the product of the

argument- the text of Hydriotaphia- becomes his objective, more so than his religious

goals. This is apparent by the care and craft with which he writes his text. Contradiction

allows him to indulge in word play as when he writes, “it were a martydome to live,”

“time which antiquates antiquities,” and “there is nothing strictly immortall, but

immortality” (64, 69, 79). It allows him to ask questions he knows cannot be answered,

such as in Chapter IV when he asks four consecutive, unrelated questions only to

abandon them all with the phrase “it cannot escape some doubt,” and two paragraphs

later when he randomly wonders how Agamemnon was able to foretell the future but was

ignorant of the present (62). There is no context for these questions unless the nature of

the text is to question and contemplate. If the main argument of the text is never resolved,

the reader understands the text was not written to solve problems; it has other motives.

The reader cannot reconcile learning pages and pages of information with finding out that

none of it actually matters. Contradiction devalues both sides of Browne’s argument so

that the aesthetic accomplishments of the text become its highlight.

The aesthetic aspects of Hydriotaphia are varied and include Browne’s rhetorical

expressions, word choice, imagined ideas, delivery of factual information, and factual

information itself. There are numerous places in the text in which Browne interrupts a

topic to deliver a clever metaphor, a fantastical rumination, or an adjective-lined sentence

obviously penned with great care. Especially impressive lines include: the objective of

Browne’s profession, “...to keep men out of their Urnes...”; the description of rust

formation when metals “...betray their green entrals...”; the designation of the ground as

“...the Land of Moles and Pismires”; the way time is measured when Browne writes,

“...old Families last not three oaks...”; and his great religious proclamation, “...the

Christian Religion, which trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition....” (vi,

36, 40, 74, 82). However, Browne’s use of florid language has negative consequences. At

times, the poetic way in which he writes a phrase confounds its meaning. In Chapter I,

Browne describes the burial practices of the Scythians: “...they declined all interrment,

and made their graves in the ayr...” (8). The Scythians buried their dead in mounds above

the ground. To say that they “made their graves in the ayr” is an exaggeration that

conjures up thoughts of floating corpses, rather than representing the use of burial

mounds. In the same sentence, Browne describes the burial practices of the “Ichthyophagi

or fish-eating Nations.” They disposed of their dead in the ocean and Browne adds,

“...thereby declining visible corruption, and restoring the debt of their bodies” (8). These

people lived off of the ocean and, according to Browne, returned the favor by giving their

bodies back to the waters that sustained them. However, because Browne is disposed to

displays of wit, there is no way of knowing whether the Ichthyophagi buried their dead at

sea to “restore the debt” or whether this is merely Browne’s clever explanation.

Chapter III opens with a long-expected physical description of the urns and in describing

their shape Browne makes a clever comparison, "The common form with necks was a

proper figure, making our last beds like our first; not much unlike the Urnes of our

Nativity, while we lay in the nether part of the Earth, and inward vault of our

Microcosme" (31). Earlier he writes that the urns have “ears” and “imitate a circular

figure” (30). The sentence immediately following this comparison is about the urns'

color, returning again to a straightforward account of their physical properties. Browne

provides no evidence suggesting the artisans who molded the urns deliberately shaped

them to resemble pregnant women. Indeed, Browne’s description of the urns’ shape is not

abnormal for that of an open-ended container used to store a pourable material. The line

has no purpose but to point out real-life imagery, and to entertain both the writer and the

reader with its ingenuity. A painter, a poet, or a storyteller could do wonders with

Browne's artistic observations. Indeed, Browne's essay is an artistic form like a poem or a

painting-- it starts with a physical object- a nude, a landscape, or, in this case, an urn- and

uses it as the subject for artistic expression. Part of the artistic cleverness of this passage

is that Browne never writes that the urns resemble women; he uses his rhetorical abilities

to suggest the metaphor and lets the reader make the connection.

In a description of the urns' contents Browne writes of "long roots of Quich, or Dogs-

grass wreathed about the bones" (33). Gosse writes of this as an "appeal to the visual

sense" (115). The image of dried grass tangled in bits of ash and bone is inglorious and

mundane until Browne uses the word "wreathed," a word that not only means "curled

around" but also "arranged or disposed flowers" (“wreathe”). The deceased is elevated to

the status of someone honored who, as Browne imagines in the Dedicatory, "brought

civility upon these countreys" (vii). As the dry bones are elevated, the potentially dry,

descriptive text is elevated as well as it becomes "wreathed" in ornate vocabulary and

metaphor.

Browne's passage bears striking similarity to John Donne's “The Relic” in which he

writes, "When my grave is broke up...he that digs it, spies...A bracelet of bright hair about

the bone" (lns. 1,5-6). Unlike Hydriotaphia, this poem about romantic love does not hide

its conceit behind a religious or scientific agenda. Had Browne read Donne's poem and

imitated it, he would be consciously adding to the artistic significance of his text and

cleverly using someone else's artistic creation to transform and perfect nature. However,

to do so in no way furthers his religious argument. Even if the grass is meant to represent

a halo, that nature would contribute to the glorification of the physical remains of the

dead is contrary to Browne’s concluding proclamations. This suggests that Browne’s

wording of this passage is motivated solely by aesthetic purposes.

At times Browne values the description of an image or a sensation over the

documentation of truth. Gosse points this out in the passage in which Browne explains

that some corpses are buried with vessels containing wine. Browne muses that the wine

that "hath been cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth," must have a taste that "far

exceeds the Palats of Antiquity" (33). Readers are treated to the thought of a taste of wine

far superior than any they have ever sampled. Yet as Gosse points out, "The tiresome

little fact that, after a short time, the process is reversed and the wine is ruined by

keeping...is well within Browne's range of observation, but he flings it indignantly away.

It has no place in the scheme of his beautiful florid vision of a glorified vinosity" (114).

Thousand-year-old wine doesn't taste good, but the thought of it does, and so Browne has

accomplished his goal of planting an alluring thought in the reader's mind. However, he

does so at the sacrifice of the text’s scientific accuracy. There was no wine in the

Walsingham urns and Browne, for once, does not offer any historical reference to support

this conjecture. That time increases the quality of a libation elevates the subject of the

book, antiquity, which, in turn, elevates the importance of the book, in that it pleases the

reader and exercises his or her mind in new ways. In this case, nature has not been

perfected but altered into something naturally impossible. Also, in that they can preserve

wine, the urns are described as having a supernatural ability, despite the dismissal of their

significance in Chapter V. It is as if Browne who has a tendency to construct texts

without a plan ( as he claims to have written Religio Medici without the use of any

outside sources ) lets his fancy guide him and sometimes get away from him so that some

of his reasoning is antithetical to his religious beliefs.

Browne's fancy also leads him to make claims that he can not justify with evidence.

Browne's credibility as a historian is dealt a serious blow by the fact that the Walsingham

urns were not Roman, as Browne maintains with "no obscure conjecture," but Saxon

(15). Yet, this seemingly crucial error does not degrade the value of the essay. Gosse

writes, "We do not go to Browne to-day for correct antiquarian information...but as we

should to the rhapsody of some great poet" (109). In the introduction to The Prose of Sir

Thomas Browne, Endicott even claims that to a large extent Hydriotaphia only becomes

the masterpiece that it is because Browne identifies the origins of the urns erroneously.

He writes oxymoronically, “We owe Hydriotaphia to erudite ignorance” (xiv). However,

I believe Browne would have found a way to include his Roman and other classical

allusions even if he correctly identified the urns as Saxon. The facts, or, sometimes, the

erroneous assumptions, are not central to Browne’s plan.

Browne does not seem terribly concerned with the accuracy of his speculation concerning

the urns' origins. In the same chapter in which he makes his claim he also admits that

there is "no historical assertion or deniall" whether native Britons made use of urns in

their burial procedures and proceeds to list native peoples in Northern Europe that did

make use of urns (26). His reasoning for the urns being of Roman origin is that they were

unearthed near the former locations of Roman settlements. However, if like Romans,

ancient Britons, who also must have been settled near the Walsingham field at some point

in history, utilized urns in their burial customs, then it is just as likely that the urns are

British. Browne is damaging his own claim by allowing for other possibilities but, more

importantly to the author, he gets to record more historical data. Browne even goes as far,

only a few pages after making his claims, to write, "Some men considering the contents

of these Urnes...might somewhat doubt whether all Urnes found among us, were properly

Romane Reliques, or some not belonging unto our Brittish, Saxon, or Danish

Forefathers" (24). It is difficult to believe that Browne is not one of these men; he

supports this possibility with evidence and provides no information to prove them wrong.

Despite Browne's determination concerning the origins of the urns, he almost seems to

brag that "the time of these Urnes deposited, or precise Antiquity of these Reliques,

nothing [sic] of more uncertainty" (20). The time period during which the urns were

buried is information that should be crucial in determining the society that produced

them. Browne is able to write an essay based on a historical event, fill that essay with

historical data, and yet have no idea when the original event actually took place.

In Chapter III, Browne again makes an assumption that is most likely false. Material

found in the Walsingham urns is considered to be wood. However, after testing the

material in fire and water and discovering that it does not burn or float, Browne decides

that the material is either bone or ivory (35). Considering that urns were unearthed in

England where it is unlikely that there were any nearby elephants or walruses (they are

tropical and arctic animals, respectively), Browne’s suggestion of the material possibly

being ivory is specious (though it seems slightly more likely if the urns had been Roman

in which case the ivory could have been imported from elsewhere in the Roman Empire).

Three paragraphs later Browne mentions the material again and this time he expresses no

doubt; the material is simply called “Ivory works” (36). Browne turns his suggestion,

which is already doubtful, inconspicuously into fact. This is similar to his treatment of the

origin of the urns; although he is noticeably doubtful about their origins he pretends that

he is not, perhaps because he finds it difficult to write an entire essay without some basic,

irrefutable information. Indeed, the second time that he mentions the ivory-like material,

it is only is passing as he describes the irons pins which fastened the material together.

Browne changes conjecture to fact when he needs a foundation on which to place more

conjectures and allusions.

Browne allows himself to make mistakes because he cannot help but document

information. Throughout Hydriotaphia, he embarks on tangents that are very loosely

related to the subject at hand. Even though little of importance is found in the

Walsingham urns ( or maybe precisely because of this reason ) Browne feels the need to

divulge to his readers the exact contents of other burial sites around the world. The sites

he describes are filled with unusual, intriguing objects. The monument of “Childerick”

contains three hundred golden bees (24). The urns found in the Spittle Fields of London

contained “Lacrymatories, Lamps, Bottles of Liquor, and other appurtenances of

affectionate superstition...” (21). In Norway, an urn was discovered containing a “brasse

guilded Jewes-harp.” (28). These are rare instances; they display the aesthetic value in the

variety of cultural artifacts. Immediately after the paragraph about the wood-testing

experiment Browne writes about bay leaves “found green in the Tomb of S. Humbert”

(34). There is no connection between these two passages other than they are both about

plant material. The thought of wood may have triggered Browne’s botanical partiality so

that he felt compelled to write about other instances that came to his mind in which

botany and burial practices overlap. Post explains that Browne uses “catachresis,” a

technique he describes as the use of “widely unlikely metaphors” and “unusual leaps in

Browne’s thought” (62). The term is also defined as the “improper use of words.”

(“catachresis”). Browne lets his stream of consciousness guide him, but sometimes to

jumbled ends.

Indeed, these instances of the inclusion of extraneous information do not lead to

anything. They have nothing to do with the Walsingham urns or Browne’s religious

agenda. Together they do not give the reader a thorough understanding of any particular

subject other than that of peculiar cases of body burial recorded in classical literature.

They do not hold much scientific or historical importance because the accounts are

casually mentioned, never authoritatively verified. Browne includes these peculiar

instances merely because they are interesting to write about. While they may have

increased Browne’s readership, this was not the author’s primary intention. He had

already achieved undesired fame through the unauthorized publication of Religio Medici

and the full title of the essay, “Hydriotaphia; Urne-Buriall or, A Brief Discourse of the

Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk,” offers no indication or enticement of the

aesthetically-motivated verbosity to be found inside.

Another aspect of Hydriotaphia’s aesthetic value is Browne’s use of humor. It is with a

certain amount of playfulness that he ends Chapter I with a paragraph about the burial

practices of animals. Browne even seems incredulous as to this far-fetched idea when he

writes [my italics], "Others doe naturally found it and discover it also in animals. They

that are so thick skinned as still to credit the story of the Pheonix, may say something for

animall burning..." (13). He mentions burial practices in elephants, cranes, pismires

[ants], and bees. Browne does not entirely believe these accounts but in including them

and lightly mocking those who do believe in them, he lightens the mood of an essay

about death. In Chapter III, Browne writes about how the facial features of a person can

be determined by the shape of his or her skull and makes a bizarre comparison: “A full

spread Cariola [haunch bones] shews a well-shaped horse behinde, handsome formed

sculls give some analogie of fleshy rememberance” (50). Browne playfully compares a

horse’s posterior to a human face. There is also humor expressed as part of the essay’s

thematic and stylistic climax in Chapter V. Browne, in denouncing the value of age,

writes, "If the nearnesse of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity unto it, there

were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses" (70). The alliteration in

the second clause and the embellished use of the negative in the third clause, along with

the obvious preposterousness of the conjecture, all add to the chapter's playfulness.

Browne also uses the negative for comedic purposes in the Dedicatory: "We mercifully

preserve their bones; and pisse not upon their ashes" (v).

At the same time that Browne borders on the vulgar with the word “pisse” in the

Dedicatory, he also flaunts a lexicon fit for scholars and classical poets in Hydriotaphia.

Indeed, word choice is another aspect of his aesthetic motivation. He uses terms like

“diuturnity” instead of “duration,” “expilators” instead of “graverobbers,” and

"inhumation" and "sepulture" rather than “burial.” The people who bury their dead at sea

are not just “Ichthyophagi” or “fish-eaters;” they are both. Browne shows an interest in

words; he talks of the urns as “testaceous” works and displays his understanding of the

word’s etymology: “as the word testa is properly to be taken” (262). Just as Browne

chooses to include a patchwork of information and focuses in his text, he writes in a

variety of styles. Post and Williamson both point out that Browne’s vocabulary is a

mixture of Latinate and Saxon words (59, 115). Both critics quote the line in the

penultimate paragraph of the essay which includes the list of ways one can become

unified with God after death: “...Chrisitian annihilation, extasis, exolution, liquefaction,

transformation, the kisse of the Spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine

shadow...” (83). Williamson remarks that in one line Browne uses “...five Latin

abstractions and three metaphorical extensions” (115). Browne includes this list of arcane

terms to conclude his essay in a sweeping flourish. Browne has shown how secular topics

can be made interesting with obscure list and outlines; at the end of the essay he shows

that religious terminology can be just as aesthetically intriguing. Post attributes Browne’s

verbal tendencies to his religiousness and writes, "Browne's unusual linguistic feats

reflect the wit and fecundity of God's creations" (60). Although there is contradiction

between Browne's love for artifacts along with the history and science that they reveal,

and his leanings toward spiritual, anti-materialistic Christianity, it is possible to view his

aesthetic love for words as a component of his love for God.

Post, in the chapter of his Browne biography, “Elements of Style,” examines the formal

structures utilized by Browne in his prose. Browne frequently uses the repetition of sound

for rhetorical effect. There are three structural devices Post attributes to Browne’s use:

alliteration; “polyptoton,” the use of words with the same root; and “homoioteleuton,” the

use of words with similar suffixes (61-62). These instances of sound repetition are found

throughout Hydriotaphia and are particularly noticeable in the first sentences of the five

chapters. Chapter I begins with [my underscoring] “deep discovery”; the first sentence of

Chapter II includes “The Solemnities, Ceremonies,” “so solemnly delivered,” and

“readers to repeat;” Chapter III opens with “...anciently affected in cadaverous, and

corruptive Burials”; Chapter IV begins, “Christians have handsomely glossed the

deformity of death, by careful consideration of the body...”; finally the first sentence of

Chapter V includes “out-lasted the living ones,” “out-worn,” and “strong and specious”

(1, 14, 30, 53, 69). Browne consciously commences his chapters (no pun intended) with

the use of formal rhetorical techniques to elevate the meaning of their contents. The

words mean more to Browne than just the facts that they convey; the documentation and

understanding of knowledge has a spiritual importance to the author. Norton Tempest, in

his article “Rhythm in the Prose of Sir Thomas Browne,” points out that while Religio

Medici, Hydriotaphia, and The Garden of Cyrus exhibit “prose-rhythm,” Browne’s other

writings do not, suggesting that the wording of the three essays intentionally fulfill an

aesthetic function. Tempest writes, “Chapter 5 of Hydriotaphia is, indeed, the supreme

example of Browne’s rhythm, and is probably unsurpassed for length and excellence by

anything else in the language.” (311-12). Even though they are unrelated and often

contradictory to the religious conclusion of the fifth chapter, because they eventually lead

Browne to his grand proclamation, the words that make up Hydriotaphia are decorated;

they are an intricate pedestal for Browne’s religious proclamations.

Hydriotaphia is a work of art in that the liberties Browne takes for the sake of aesthetics

come at the expense of the cohesiveness of his historical/scientific motivation and his

religious argument. In order to understand how Browne departs from his didactic

agendas, it is helpful to be aware of the scientific and religious environments during and

leading up to Browne’s lifetime. New ways of thinking that stemmed from the

Renaissance on the European continent were still affecting England during the

seventeenth century. It was a time marked by revolts against power structures and

dismissals of blind allegiances. Due largely to the beliefs of Francis Bacon as well as the

changing political climate, the scientific community began to modernize in England in

the mid-seventeenth century. Bacon recognized that with an antiquated educational

system no progress was being made: "It is idle to expect any great advancement in

science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old" (49). He argued

in The Advancement of Learning that knowledge should be acquired through observable

principles rather than accepted generalizations. An overdependence on "words," which

quickly became outdated and failed to accurately represent reality, had stifled the study of

"things." Man's creations had gotten in the way of studying God's creations.

Bacon and Browne both base their scientific methods on religious motives. Just as

Browne states that it is humanity’s duty to contemplate and study the world, Bacon

believed that by following his theories on induction and experimentation, mankind could

again attain its prelapsarian state when Adam enjoyed "that pure and immaculate Natural

Knowledge" (Parry 136). Browne respected Bacon greatly; he dedicates The Garden of

Cyrus to Nicholas Bacon, a relative of Francis, and in his dedication writes that he is "a

flourishing branch of that Noble Family, unto which we owe so much observance...but

long rooted in perfection" (v). However, as Browne struggles to be both an artist and a

scientist, he also struggles to balance his aesthetically-motivated love for knowledge and

documentation with his appreciation for the Baconian method. He begins Chapter II of

Hydriotaphia:

The Solemnities, Ceremonies, Rites of their Cremation or enterrment, so solemnly delivered by Authours, we shall not disparage our Reader to repeat. Only the last and lasting part in their Urns, collected bones and Ashes, we cannot wholy omit, or decline that Subject, which occasion lately presented, in some discovered among us" (14).

Taken out of context, this introduction seems true to the scientific leanings of the

seventeenth century; Browne considers the examination of the evidence at hand more

important than what has already been "delivered by Authours." Studying the urns

becomes a necessity, presumably because any opportunity to acquire knowledge is also

an opportunity to fulfill the function of man deemed by God. However, this statement

comes after an entire chapter reserved for outlining the burial customs of civilizations

throughout the ages and throughout the world. Browne's audacity-- to promptly disclaim

what he just spent an entire chapter writing about-- almost has comedic intent. It is as if

Browne is starting his essay over after getting out of his system the shameful desire to

research and document history-- except that he retains the fruits of that urge in the first

chapter of the essay.

Hydriotaphia is not a stable or cohesive piece of text; it is a Montaignian recording of a

thought process. The conclusion of the essay is not deduced from evidence stated in the

body of the work; rather, it is the favored stance after considering a variety of viewpoints,

many of which contradict each other. In this way, Browne's work is more like a

laboratory report than like a critical or expository article. A hypothesis is stated, tested,

and very often proved wrong. This does not mean that the experiment was a waste. Even

though he recognizes that the information is Chapter I is pointless, Browne enjoyed

writing it and intends for his readers to enjoy it too. In the differences between Chapter I

and the beginning of Chapter II of Hydriotaphia Browne is experimenting with the

concept of experimentation, a self-reflexive event that Bacon would be hard pressed to

condemn. Browne allows himself to fill pages doing this because the scientific and

religious motives behind the creation of the essay are not strong enough to warrant

substantial focus. Meanwhile, in that the text is an aesthetic event, he is allowed to shift

from motive to motive and from topic to topic as much as he likes, as long as he produces

interesting material.

Even more significant than Browne’s departure from a scientific motivation is his failure

to consistently support his religious conclusion. Before Browne’s time, the Protestant

Reformation saw Christians renouncing the leadership of the Catholic Church and basing

their faith directly on the words of the Bible. Anglicans, in turn, denied that God guides

his followers solely through one book and regarded the human ability to reason as almost

equally important to Scripture. Browne was a devout Anglican his entire life; he lists his

three guides: "Where the Scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, 'tis

but my comment: where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my

religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason" (Religio Medici 6).

The Bible offers no instruction concerning body disposal that is satisfactory to Browne.

He relies on his own judgment, as well as related quotes from Scripture, to write

Hydriotaphia and decipher God's instruction. Browne recommended the writings of Hugo

Grotius, a fellow Anglican who preached that the human mind and body are proof of

God's greatness (Huntley 21). Browne believed that God is best worshipped by exploring

the mysteries of the human form and using it to explore the mysteries of the earth.

Browne writes sarcastically, "I call the effects of nature the works of God...and therefore

to ascribe his actions unto her...[we might as well] let our hammers rise up and boast that

they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honors of our writings" (Religio

Medici 19).

Of course, it is not only the pens that do not receive honors; according to Browne's

religious philosophy, neither should the writer. Browne makes this analogy between God

and a writer though he himself is a writer and responsible for writing that is aware of

itself. It is not consistent with the selfless piety he claims to live by. Huntley writes that

"Inseparable from Anglican thinking about the Bible...is the distinction between

fundamental and nonfundamental points" (20). It is a similar type of distinction that

Browne struggles with making. Living by both Scripture and reason, how does one

designate the gaps in God's Word that can be filled by the abilities of the human mind

and body? Browne overcompensates for those gaps when he writes on subjects like the

physiognomy of skulls; on religious terms, the physical features of a person are

inconsequential once that person is dead and the soul has left the body. Browne's

interpretation of his reason as God's Word had serious implications in 1664 when his

testimony to his belief in witches aided in the implication and subsequent hanging of two

Bury St. Edmunds women (Huntley 241-42). Huntley's examples of "nonfundamental

points" in the Bible are the dimensions of Noah's ark or the features of Eve's apple. But if

these statistics are "hardly necessary to salvation," then neither are the contents of a

unearthed burial urn or the decomposition rate of a human corpse (20). Just as we cannot

believe Browne when he states that burial practices are irrelevant at the end of a lengthy,

detailed essay on the topic, it is difficult to accept that a scientist who spends his life

collecting data does so only to better understand God.

There a number of specific examples in Hydriotaphia in which Browne jeopardizes his

religious message. In a passage that almost sounds malicious, Browne writes, "Christians

abhorred this way of obsequies, and though they stickt not to give their bodies to be burnt

in their lives, detested that mode after death" (9). Christians pray that they will return to

dust upon death, not ash, but they are willing to be burned alive at the stake for their God.

It is a clever contradiction that Browne reveals but in revealing it he is being disrespectful

to the martyrs who gave their lives for their faith. Browne is showing off his intelligence

rather than furthering his religious cause. Later, in Chapter III, Browne nearly criticizes

God’s action as recorded in the Old Testament. When he writes, “To burn the bones of

the King of Edom for Lyme, seems no irrationall ferity; But to drink of the ashes of dead

relations, a passionate prodigality,” Browne is alluding to a passage in the Book of Amos

in which God “sends fire down into Moab” to punish the Moabites because they “burnt

the bones of the King of Edom to lime.” (269, Amos 2:1). Browne refers to the actions of

God’s enemies as the lesser of two evils in the process of alluding to ( as he reveals in a

marginal note ) the Greek Queen Artemisia drinking the ashes of her husband Mausolus.

He chooses to document a pagan legend at the expense of supporting the actions of his

Lord. Finally, in Chapter IV, soon before he begins his grand sermon, Browne writes,

“Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion” (55). While he is not

necessarily referring to his own religion, such a statement could easily make a reader

think twice about Browne’s own religious reasoning. Whether it be because of

carelessness or deliberate contradiction, the text of Hydriotaphia does not adequately

support its conclusion. Religious motivation does not guide the entire essay.

Willey means it as a complement when he writes that Sir Thomas Browne had “the

capacity to live in divided and distinguished worlds, and to pass freely to and fro between

one and another, to be capable of many and varied responses to experience, instead of

being confined to a few stereotyped ones” (42). However, to be open to multiple

perspectives also means to have no convictions, to have nothing to prove- to be an

observer and an ideal artist. Huntley writes that despite his many experiments Browne

never made any scientific discoveries; he only increased public awareness of the

discoveries of others (165). Instead, Browne produced, in many literary critics’ opinion,

some of the most masterfully constructed prose in the English language. Browne had a

scientist’s love for data and a clergyman’s love for religious truth but in Hydriotaphia he

too easily passed from these worlds into the artist’s to relish in uncertainty, contradiction,

and aesthetic beauty. The scientist and the clergyperson could pick quotes from

Hydriotaphia from which to live their lives by, but to read the text as a whole is to

appreciate its artistic merit.

Works Cited

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the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk." The Noel Douglas Replicas; Thomas

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---. “The Garden of Cyrus. or, The Quincunciall, Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the

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