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jects of little importance. It feems to have been in all ages the pride of wit, to fhew how it could exalt the low, and amplify the little. To fpeak not inadequately of things really and naturally great, is a task not only difficult but difagreeable because the writer is degraded in his own eyes by standing in comparison with his subject, to which he can hope to add nothing from his imagination: but it is a perpetual triumph of fancy to expand a feanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from obfcure properties, and to produce to the world an object of wonder to which nature had contributed little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the frogs.of Homer, the gnat and the bees of Virgil, the butterfly of Spenfer, the fhadow of Wowerus, and the quincunx of Browne.

In the profecution of this fport of fancy, he confiders every production of art and nature in which he could find any decuffation or approaches to the form of a quincunx; and as a man once refolved upon ideal discoveries feldom fearches long in vain, he finds his favourite figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, facred and civil, fo that a reader, not ́ watchful against the power of his infufions, would imagine that decuffation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx.

To fhew the excellence of this figure he enumerates all its properties; and finds in it almost every thing of ufe or pleafure: and to fhew how readily he fupplies what he cannot find, one inftance may be fufficient: "though therein (fays he) we meet not with right angles, yet every rhombus containing four

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"angles equal unto two right, it virtually contains "two right in every one."

The fanciful sports of great minds are never without fome advantage to knowledge. Browne has interfperfed many curious obfervations on the form of plants, and the laws of vegetation; and appears to have been a very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched with great nicety the evolution of the parts of plants from their feminal principles.

He is then naturally led to treat of the number Five; and finds, that by this number many things are circumfcribed; that there are five kinds of vegetable productions, five fections of a cone, five orders of architecture, and five acts of a play. And obferving that five was the ancient conjugal, or wedding number, he proceeds to a fpeculation which I shall give in his own words; "the ancient numerifts made " out the conjugal number by two and three, the "first parity and imparity, the active and paffive digits, the material and formal principles in gene"rative focieties."

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These are all the tracts which he published. But many papers were found in his clofet: "fome of "them, (fays Whitefoot,) defigned for the prefs, "were often tranfcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fafhion of great and curious "writers."

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Of thefe, two collections have been, published; one by Dr. Tennifon, the other in 1722 by a namelefs editor. Whether the one

thofe pieces which the author

the other felected uld have preferred,

cannot be known: but they have both the merit of

1

giving to mankind what was too valuable to be suppreffed; and what might, without their interpofition, have perhaps perifhed among other innumerable labours of learned men, or have been burnt in a fearcity of fuel like the papers of Peirecius.

The first of these pofthumous treatises contains Obfervations upon feveral plants mentioned in Scripture: these remarks, though they do not immediately either rectify the faith, or refine the morals of the reader, yet are by no means to be cenfured as fuperfluous niceties, or useless speculations; for they often fhew fome propriety of defcription, or elegance of allufion, utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in Oriental botany; and are often of more important ufe, as they remove fome difficulty from narratives, or fome obfcurity from precepts.

The next is, of garlands, or coronary and garland plants; a fubject merely of learned curiofity, without any other end than the pleasure of reflecting on ancient customs, or on the industry with which ftudious men have endeavoured to recover them.

The next is a letter, On the fishes eaten by our Saviour with his Difciples, after his refurrection from the dead; which contains no determinate refolution of the question, what they were, for indeed it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning could fupply confifts in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea.

Then follow, Anfwers to certain queries about fifbes, birds, and infects; and A letter of hawks and falconry ancient and modern: in the firft of which he gives the proper interpretation of fomé ancient names of animals, commonly mistaken; and in the other has fome curious obfervations on the art of hawking, which he

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confiders as a practice unknown to the ancients. I believe all our sports of the field are of Gothick original; the ancients neither hunted by the fcent, nor feemed much to have practifed horfemanfhip as an exercife; and though in their works, there is mention of aucupium and pifcatio,. they seem no more to have been confidered as diverfions, than agriculture or any other manual labour.

In two more letters he speaks of the cymbals of the Hebrews, but without any fatisfactory determination and of ropalic or gradual verses, that is, of verses beginning with a word of one fyllable, and proceeding by words of which each has a fyllable more than the former; as,

"O deus, æternæ ftationis conciliator."
39 AUSONIUS.

and after this manner pursuing the hint, he mentions many other restrained methods of verfifying, to which industrious ignorance has fometimes voluntarily fub jected itself.

His next attempt is, On languages, and particularly the Saxon tongue. He difcourfes with great learning and generally with great juftnefs, of the derivation and changes of languages; but, like other men of multifarious learning, he receives fome notions without examination. Thus he obferves, according to the popular opinion, that the Spaniards have retained fo much Latin, as to be able to compofe fen. tences that shall be at once grammatically Latin and Caftilian this will appear very unlikely to a man that confiders the Spanish terminations; and Howel, who was eminently fkilful in the three provincial lan. guages, declares, that after many effays he never could effect it.

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The principal defign of this letter is to fhew the affinity between the modern English and the ancient Saxon; and he obferves, very rightly, that "though

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we have borrowed many fubftantives, adjectives, "and fome verbs, from the French; yet the great "body of numerals, auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepofitions, " which are the diftinguishing and lafting parts of a language, remain with us from the Saxon."

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To prove this pofition more evidently, he has drawn up a fhort difcourfe of fix paragraphs, in Saxon and English; of which every word is the fame in both languages, excepting the terminations and orthography. The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phrafeology is English; and, I think, would not have been understood by Bede or Elfric, notwithstanding the confidence of our author. He has, however, fufficiently proved his pofition, that the English refembles its parental language more than any modern European dialect.

There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one, Of artificial hills, mounts, or barrows, in England; in reply to an interrogatory letter of E. D. whom the writers of the Biographia Britannica fuppofe to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or fir William Dugdale, one of Browne's correspondents. These are declared by Browne, in concurrence, I think, with all other antiquaries, to be for the moft part funeral monuments. He proves, that both the Danes and Saxons buried their men of eminence under piles of earth, "which admitting (fays he) neither ornament, epitaph, nor infcrip❝tion, may, if earthquakes fpare them, outlaft

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VOL. XII.

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