Sir Thomas Browne Christian Morals 1682

The popular author and doctor used the phrase Beggars Bush in Christian Morals (written before 1682, though not published until 1716). He uses the phrase in the standard literary sense, but in an unusual classical context. His usage establishes the the usage of the phrase outside the vernacular. The most likely origin is through the play by Fletcher & Massinger; there is evidence that his son saw it. There is  no direct evidence that Browne saw or read it and there are other sources from which he may have acquired the phrase. His and his son’s library included the works of Ben Jonson.

Christian Morals – Part II Section X

“Court not Felicity too far, & weary not the favorable hand of Fortune. . . For Fortune lays the Plot of our Adversities in the foundation of our Felicities, blessing us in the first quadrate, to blast us more sharply in the last. And since in the highest felicities there lieth a capacity of the lowest miseries, she hath this advantage from our happiness to make us truly miserable. For to become acutely miserable we are to be first happy. Affliction smarts most in the most happy state, as having somewhat in it of Bellisarius at Beggers bush, or Bajazet in the grate. And this the fallen Angels severely understand, who having acted their first part in Heaven, are made sharply miserable by transition, and more afflictively feel the contrary state of Hell.”

Usage

Browne uses the phrase in the common sense of the prosperous brought low. Belisarius is nowhere else connected with Beggars Bush, but the context is clear from Browne’s earlier work. Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) where he wrote on Belisarius:

“We are sad when we reade the story of Belisarius that worthy Cheiftain of Justinian; who, after his Victories over the Vandals, Goths, Persians, and his Trophies in three parts of the World, had at last his eyes put out by the Emperour, and was reduced to that distress, that he begged relief on the high-way . .  .”

Bazajet appears in Christopher Marlow’s Tamburlaine and in Gibbon’s Decline & Fall. He is another great emperor brought down by events beyond his control, defeated by the Mongols of Tambourlaine and imprisoned in an iron cage.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682)

A physician and natural scientist, he was born in 1605 in Cheapside, London, the son of a member of the Mercers’ Company who died in 1613. Browne’s mother then married the courtier Sir Thomas Dutton a habitual debtor and borrower, notorious for killing his own colonel in a duel, who died in 1634 after another fight.  Browne’s mother and stepfather having “wasted & consumed” part of the inheritance the Court of Aldermen passed administration of the estate to his uncle.

Thomas Browne was educated at Winchester College and Broadgates Hall, Oxford. After travelling in Ireland studied further at Montpellier, a centre of herbal medicine, and Padua, a university of medical pioneers, and finally graduated in medicine at Leiden. Returning to England to practice Browne began his great work, the Religio Medici, in which he examined faith against reason and the human arguments for charity. In 1637 Browne moved to Norwich where he remained the rest of his life. He died in 1682.

Religio Medici, was printed in 1642 in an unauthorised version, and Browne issued an authorised edition in 1643. Browne’s other great work was Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), commonly known as Vulgar Errors, and described as “almost an encyclopaedia of seventeenth-century misconceptions and new knowledge”, applying  experimental investigation, ‘experience and solid reason’ to current beliefs about the natural world.

Christian Morals was discovered in his papers and published posthumously in 1716. It was edited and published by Dr Samuel Johnson in 1756 and re-printed as late as 1881. It was regarded as a continuation of the Religio Medici.

Browne’s writings are characterised by inventive thought and rich use of language. Johnson was an admirer of both his knowledge and his style. He wrote ‘there is no science, in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success . . . but the spirit and vigour of his persuit always gives delight’. Browne is known for his neologisms, being the first recorded user of over a hundred words, such as analogous, compensate, computer, cylindrical, electricity, exhaustion, generator, gymnastics, hallucination, inconsistent, indigenous, indoctrination, invigorate, jocularity, literary, locomotion, medical, polarity, precocious, pubescent, recurrence, and vitreous.
Browne was widely known in his lifetime as an author, scholar, antiquarian and scientist. In 1671, the year Browne was knighted by the King during a visit to Norwich, John Evelyn recorded a visit : “his whole house and Garden being a Paradise and Cabinet of Rarities . . . specialy Medails, books, Plants, natural things … a collection of Eggs of all the foule and birds he could procure . . . as Cranes, Storkes, Eagles etc: and variety of Water-foule”.

His works were popular in the seventeenth century, and appreciated by writers such as Lamb, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Southey, and Carlyle.

There is an intriguing connection between Browne and the Fletcher and Massinger play The Beggars Bush — his son Edward Browne, a medical student, left a memorandum book (Sloane MS, 1900) suggesting he saw the play in London in 1662, given by the King’s Players.

Further Reading

T. Browne, Religio medici and other works, ed. L. C. Martin (1964)

Complete Works 4 vols. pub. Faber and Faber  ed. Geoffrey Keynes 1964

Major Works ed. C.A. Patrides  pub. Penguin 77

1711 Sales Catalogue of the libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward ed. J.S.Finch  pub. E.J. Brill 1986

Sir Thomas Browne Green, P. Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Their Work, No.108 1959)

Sir Thomas Browne page of Thomas Eason, University of Chicago, including texts and other material

Thanks

Kevin Faulkner

Posted: April 7th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Literary, Sir Thomas Browne, The Play | 1 Comment »