Note 52 — THE SUFFOLK WITCHES[49]

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was the well-known author of Religio Medici, published in 1642; Vulgar Errors, published in 1646; and numerous other mystic, pseudo-scientific and philosophical works. Mr. Leslie Stephen (Hours in a Library, vol. ii. p. 11) writes of him: 'Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no inexorably severe guide to truth; he will not too sternly reject the amusing because it happens to be slightly improbable, or doubt an authority because he sometimes sanctions a mass of absurd fables.' So he more or less believed in the griffin, the phœnix, and the dragon: he knew that the elephant had no joints, and was caught by cutting down the tree against which he leant in sleep; that the pelican pierced its breast for the good of its young; that storks refused to live except in republics or free states; and that men were struck dumb, literally dumb, by the sight of a wolf: he discusses what would have happened had Adam eaten the apple of the Tree of Life before that of the Tree of Knowledge; he discovers error in every recorded speech but one delivered before the Flood; he admits that the phœnix is mentioned in holy writers, and alluded to in Job and the Psalms, but nevertheless adduces eight reasons for not believing in his existence, of which one is that no one has seen one, another that in the Scriptures the word translated phœnix also means a palm-tree, another that he could neither enter the ark in a pair, nor increase and multiply. At the same time, he probably possessed a considerable knowledge of physical science, and holds a high, though peculiar, position in English literature. Evidently he was not a suitable witness in the present case, and his appearance as recorded above is far the most unamiable thing known of him; but it is possible that his neighbours did not take him more seriously as a trustworthy authority than do his modern critics.