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Having all the books together in one place- constituting a library of sorts- has meant that I'm going to the shelves more often and picking up things that have been gathering dust for decades. And not only picking them up but applying myself.
And currently I'm applying myself to Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici- a slim volume of solipsistic tendencies from the Civil War era. Browne's purpose is to convince us that his gentle, latitudinarian Anglicanism is the purest religion in the world- and he is by turns wise, moderate, complacent, smug- but always likeable- oh yes- definitely likeable. By the bye, is it possible to write about one's own delightful self and not come across as comically lacking in self-awareness? Never mind. I'm not going to take that question any further because Browne's subject matter isn't really the point. The first half of the 17th century was the golden age of English prose- a time when even even boring folk were capable of doing gorgeous things with a language that hadn't yet quite settled down- and Browne- this quaint, retired, pedantic, antiquarian, Norwich doctor wrote the most gorgeous prose of them all. It's not what he says but the way that he says it- and while Religio Medici isn't his most cloud-scaling work- that would be Urne Buriall- it is the most sustained- with the beautiful periods rolling out like molasses from a staved-in barrel. The fixing of English prose, which started around the time of Charles II- who, incidentally, gave Browne, by then an old man, his knighthood- was a necessary development; we needed to be able to understand one another- and that involved reining in a propensity to use words the way Alice's Humpty Dumpty does- but something was lost. Echoes of the old splendour crop up now and again- in de Quincey, the now little-read Thomas Carlyle, even in Dickens- but generally speaking the glory had departed.
And we all know what glory means: it means "a nice knock-down argument."
And currently I'm applying myself to Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici- a slim volume of solipsistic tendencies from the Civil War era. Browne's purpose is to convince us that his gentle, latitudinarian Anglicanism is the purest religion in the world- and he is by turns wise, moderate, complacent, smug- but always likeable- oh yes- definitely likeable. By the bye, is it possible to write about one's own delightful self and not come across as comically lacking in self-awareness? Never mind. I'm not going to take that question any further because Browne's subject matter isn't really the point. The first half of the 17th century was the golden age of English prose- a time when even even boring folk were capable of doing gorgeous things with a language that hadn't yet quite settled down- and Browne- this quaint, retired, pedantic, antiquarian, Norwich doctor wrote the most gorgeous prose of them all. It's not what he says but the way that he says it- and while Religio Medici isn't his most cloud-scaling work- that would be Urne Buriall- it is the most sustained- with the beautiful periods rolling out like molasses from a staved-in barrel. The fixing of English prose, which started around the time of Charles II- who, incidentally, gave Browne, by then an old man, his knighthood- was a necessary development; we needed to be able to understand one another- and that involved reining in a propensity to use words the way Alice's Humpty Dumpty does- but something was lost. Echoes of the old splendour crop up now and again- in de Quincey, the now little-read Thomas Carlyle, even in Dickens- but generally speaking the glory had departed.
And we all know what glory means: it means "a nice knock-down argument."
