on the contrary, I am persuaded, that his social deportment must have been distinguished by the kindliest courtesy; and, though "free from loquacity," he was too ardent in the pursuit of knowledge, not to have improved to the utmost every opportunity of increasing his stores, by conversation with those who were capable of enriching them. I am satisfied, in short, that had his earlier journals been preserved, they would have exhibited him to us as a traveller, in just as striking a point a view, as that in which "his diligence and curiosity," his originality of thought and fervour of feeling, and the creative richness of his fancy, have placed him under other characters.
Nor do we find either journals, or correspondence, (except a very few letters on scientific or literary subjects,) to guide us through the first twenty years of his residence at Norwich. To account for this almost total absence of autobiographical memoranda, I have sometimes felt inclined to suspect, that Browne might have occasionally indulged himself in the expression of opinions relating to the political aspect of affairs in his own country, which his subsequent position, especially when the civil war actually broke out, led him to think it most prudent to suppress. For though a royalist, he was utterly averse to all that was arbitrary, especially in matters of religion; and, therefore, might have seen much to disapprove in the measures of the court, as well as in the subsequent outrages of the popular party, which he was very likely, both in his private memoranda and in his confidential correspondence, to have denounced in terms which would have rendered him obnoxious to both parties, if "the liberty of those times had committed them to the press." But let this
ood of serious contemplation from all objects indifferently, and busied in perpetual abstractions. Ceremonious in observing times and seasons, as reverencing the inner mysteries of custom. Attached to old manners, as apprehending hidden wisdom in their properties, and as connecting him with remembrance and speculations on the past; curious, probably, in casting the fashion of uncertain evil, and, therefore, little inclined to innovation. He was at once Sir Roger de Coverley, directing the psalmody of the village church, and the melancholy humourist of Milton,—
'Whose lamp at midnight hour
Is seen in some high lonely tower,
Where he may oft outwatch the bear
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook, &c.'"
