Constructing a critical subject in Religio Medici; Wong, Samuel Glen
Studies in English Literature, 1500 - 1900
01-01-2003
Constructing a critical subject in Religio Medici
Byline: Wong, Samuel Glen
Volume: 43
Number: 1
ISSN: 00393657
Publication Date: 01-01-2003
Page: 117
Type: Periodical
Language: English
This
essay reexamines the relationship among three works: the Religio Medici
of Sir Thomas Browne which first appeared in 1642; Browne's preface to
the 1643 Religio; and Observations upon "Religio Media" the commentary
written by Sir Kenelm Digby near the end of 1642. Read in concert,
these works reveal how Browne's masterpiece became a public text
defined by the complex intercourse of authorial and critical intention.
While much of the criticism of Browne's work has been concerned with
parsing his prose, calibrating his religious beliefs, or assessing his
place in scientific history, critics have paid less attention to the
ways in which Religio, together with Observations, illuminates in
striking fashion the dynamics of early modern critical reception and
authorial defense-how the construction of author and book as subjects
of critical reading by Digby, and by Browne in response to Digby,
complicates the idealized performance of subjectivity in Religio
itself.' In what follows, I hope to show that Digby is a subtler reader
of Religio than has been generally granted and to consider Religio not
as an effusion of "winning naivete" (as Douglas Bush described it years
ago), but as a complex representation of the trials of authorship in
this period.2
I
In 1641, as tensions mounted between
parliament and King Charles I, Sir Kenelm Digby, a well-known royalist
and Catholic, was brought before Parliament to be questioned. Soon
after Digby fled to France, but difficulties resulting from a duel-he
killed a French nobleman who, he said, had insulted the bravery of the
English monarch-brought him back to England where he was imprisoned at
Winchester House in November of 1642. John Aubrey, who tells us that
Digby "was held to be the most accomplished Cavalier of his time,"
paints a charming picture of his activities during this incarceration:
"here Sir Kenelm Digby wrote his Book of Bodies, and diverted himself
in Chymistry, and used to make artificial precious Stones, as Rubies,
Emeralds, &c. out of Flint, as Sir Francis Dodington, Prisoner with
him at the same Time, told me."3 In addition to his reputation as a
gentleman, Digby was a philosopher well regarded by many, if not all,
of his contemporaries. One of these, Edward Sackville, earl of Dorset,
invited him to comment upon Religio Medici which, in two printings by
Andrew Crooke in 1642, had become remarkably popular. Digby agreed and,
in December of that year, wrote Observations upon "Religio Medici,"
more than a hundred pages of commentary addressed to Sackville in the
form of a letter.
Early in 1643, having heard of the impending
publication of Observations, Browne wrote to Digby asking him to
withhold it, arguing that Religio was a private piece never intended
for the press or public debate and scarcely worth Digby's attention:
[T]here
is contain'd therein nothing that can deserve the Reason of your
contradictions, much lesse the candor of your Animadversions: and to
certifie the truth thereof; that Booke (whereof I doe acknowledge my
self the Author) was pen'd many yeers past, and (what cannot escape
your apprehension) with no intention for the Presse, or the least
desire to obliege the Faith of any man to its assertions. But what hath
more especially emboldened my Pen unto you at present is, that the same
piece contrived in my private Study and as an exercise unto my self,
rather than exercitation for any other, having past from my hand under
a broken and imperfect Copy ... the liberty of these times committed it
unto the Presse, from whence it issued so disguised, the Author without
distinction could not acknowledge it.4
Browne goes on to say
that he will soon publish the "intended Originall" more fit for Digby's
consideration than the "imperfect Copy" brought out by an unscrupulous
printer: "If after that you shall esteem it worthy your vacant houres
to discourse thereon, you shall but take that liberty which I assume my
selfe, that is freely to abound in your sense, as I have done in my
own" (Works, 4:235-6). In a nicely evasive reply, Digby disavows any
plan to publish his notes on Religio and then dismisses them as too
slight to cause Browne concern in any case: "For such reflections as I
made upon yr learned and ingenious discourse, are so fame from meriting
the presse, as they can tempt nobody to a serious reading of them. They
were notes hastily sett downe, as I soddainly ranne over yr excellent
peece; wch is of so weighty subjects, and so strongly penned, as
requireth much time and sharpe attention but to comprehend it" (Works,
4:236). Having made clear the trivial nature of his work, Digby rises
to a pitch of self-effacement: "If I had the vanity to give myselfe
reputation by entring the listes in publike wth so eminent and learned
a man as you are, yet I know right well I am no wayes able to do it: It
would be a very una-quall congresse. I pretend not to learning" (Works,
4:237). Despite these pleas and denials, a flurry of publications
ensued. Crooke immediately brought out a corrected version of Religio
that included Browne's apologetic preface, "To the Reader," as well as
his exchange of letters with Digby (Works, 1:4). Observations quickly
followed, still based on the "imperfect" Religio of 1642 and printed by
Daniel Frere-the same printer Digby had used for his comments on Edmund
Spenser suggesting his original intention to publish despite his
denials to Browne. Crooke then issued a second printing of Religio in
1643 accompanied by a letter, presumably written by Crooke, addressed
"To such as have, or shall peruse the Observations upon a former
Corrupt copy of this Book" (Works, 1:4). Further editions of
Observations were printed by Frere later that year and by Lawrence
Chapman in 1644. Finally, in 1659, Crooke was able to print
Observations along with the fifth edition of Religio, in what became
the standard pairing in future editions of Browne's book.5
More
than a century later, Samuel Johnson would describe the correspondence
between Browne and Digby in his "Life of Sir Thomas Browne":
Of
these animadversions, when they were yet not all printed, either
officiousness or malice informed Dr. Browne; who wrote to Sir Kenelm
with much softness and ceremony, declaring the unworthiness of his work
to engage such notice, the intended privacy of the composition, and the
corruptions of the impression; and received an answer equally gentle
and respectful, containing high commendations of the piece, pompous
professions of reverence, meek acknowledgements of inability, and
anxious apologies for the hastiness of his remarks.
The
reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the
farce of life. Who would not have thought, that these two luminaries of
their age had ceased to endeavour to grow bright by the obscuration of
each other: yet the animadversions thus weak, thus precipitate, upon a
book thus injured in the transcription, quickly passed the press.6
For
Johnson, their exchange of letters can only be read as typical
authorial gamesmanship, and he dismisses out of hand any claims of
victimage or ignorance. His assumption that Browne and Digby are doing
what all writers do to establish precedence, moreover, speaks to the
power of Religio not as a "private exercise"-the description Browne
urges in his letter and repeats in his preface-but as a public work
shaped by critical conflict, authorial ambition, and literary
reputation.7 I want to embrace what I take to be Johnson's liberating
cynicism: his view of a Browne who is less poet in prose than author in
heat; and of a literary work that, for all its preciosity, operates in
familiar realms of authorial rivalry.8 In this arena, if Browne
possessed a greater literary skill, it was Digby who enjoyed superior
social and intellectual standing. His notice of Religio would not only
raise its profile (as Crooke, who took every opportunity to link both
writers, certainly realized) but also, as Browne understood,
effectively redefine the boundaries of its meaning and terms of its
reception.
If Digby neatly transforms the putatively private
discourse of Religio into a matter of public contention, his
Observations has usually been characterized as, at best, an interesting
misreading-a dryly rationalist critique of an exquisitely wrought
meditation: "While Browne wondered at the divine hand in human affairs,
Digby rationalized its existence and moralized on its effect. Digby's
system was too rigid and too mechanical to allow for the Janus-like
Browne, who enjoyed paradox and contradiction. Digby searched for
tangibility and reliability in his universe, so he expected the same
qualities in Religio."9 Yet I shall argue that Digby's failure to
appreciate Religio is no mere misconception. Indeed, Digby is as
sensitive as any modern critic to Browne's wit and reads Religio, in
its intended spirit, as a self-consciously idiosyncratic amalgam of
philosophical speculation and rhetorical play: "I doe not see how
seasonably he falleth, of a suddaine, from naturall speculations to a
morall contemplation of Gods Spirit working in us. In which also I
would inquire (especially upon his suddaine poeticall rapture) whether
the solidity of the lodgement be not out weighed by the ayrienesse of
the fancy. Assuredly one cannot erre in taking this Author for a very
fine ingenious Gentleman: for how deep a Scholler, I leave unto them to
judge, that are abler then I am."10 Again and again, Digby reads
Religio with a sharp, if condescending, appreciation of its author's
modus. So he playfully disparages Browne for insufficient rapture when
circumstances seem to demand: "In his concluding Prayer wherein hee
summeth up all hee wisheth; mee thinketh his arrow is not winged with
that fire which I should have expected from him upon this occasion" (p.
115). It is, then, with the liveliest sense of Browne's wit that Digby
finally dismisses it as a subversion of substance: "This language were
handsome for a Poet or Rhetorician to speake, but in a Philosopher,
that should ratiocinate strictly and rigorously, I cannot admit it" (p.
87). For Digby, philosophy is incompatible with rhetorical excess, and
in this regard his critique is distinctly modern: informed by current
belief that language must be disciplined for the purposes of
philosophical study. Yet his attack on Browne's rhetoric-a keynote of
Observations-- is not only a matter of philosophical belief, as we
shall see, but bound up in the way both authors strive to define their
authority and establish the claims of their work-to illuminate
themselves, in Johnson's words, by obscuring one another. If the
process of personal aggrandizement actually begins in the
self-commemoration of Religio, it is complicated by the radical
transformation of Browne's work into an object of reading in
Observations. For in every sense that matters, Digby is the
arch(e)-reader of Religio, assuming the role of interpreter, extending
authority over the text, creating the public sphere of a work that
clings to an enabling fiction of privacy. In Observations, Religio is
subjected: mastered by a reader who constructs a vision of the
author-"a very fine ingenious Gentleman" in Digby's nicely dismissive
words-who will be tested and found wanting. When Sackville invites
Digby to engage Religio, Digby's assent imposes a regime of authority,
meaning, and intentionality that, henceforth, Browne cannot evade but
only hope to enlist in his defense.
II
If, in the
modern view, Observations is filled with misprision, it succeeded
brilliantly in flushing Browne out. As we have seen, Religio reappeared
in 1643 accompanied by a preface defending the book against potential
criticism and recounting its unwarranted seizure by the press. And as
Browne admits paternity, he locates his Religio in an interpretative
space largely created by Digby:
This I confesse about seven
yeares past, with some others of affmitie thereto, for my private
exercise and satisfaction, I had at leisurable houres composed; which
being communicated unto one, it became common unto many, and was by
transcription successively corrupted untill it arrived in a most
depraved copy at the presse. He that shall peruse that worke, and shall
take notice of sundry particularities and personall expressions
therein, will easily discern the intention was not publick: and being a
private exercise directed to my selfe, what is delivered therein was
rather a memoriall unto me then an example or rule unto any other ...
It was penned in such a place and with such disadvantage, that (I
protest) from the first setting of pen unto paper, I had not the
assistance of any good booke ... It was set downe many yeares past, and
was the sense of my conceptions at that time, not an immutable law unto
my advancing judgement at all times ... There are many things delivered
Rhetorically, many expressions therein meerely Tropicall and as they
best illustrate my intention; and therefore also there are many things
to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the
rigid test of reason. (SW, 5-6).
The apology for his rhetoric,
complaints about a lack of books and "rigid testis] of reason," are all
responses to objections raised in Observations-responses more
personally affirmed in the letter to Digby reprinted in this new
edition. In his aggressive effort to regain authority over his book-in
preface, letter, and textual emendation-Browne's chief weapon lies in
privileging his work as "a memoriall unto me," an ideally reflexive
Religio that existed as writing but hovered above the corruption of
print. In this version of events, it is the printer, Crooke, who
despoils the author's state of innocence: "But because things evidently
false are not onely printed, but many things of truth most falsly set
forth; in this latter I could not but thinke my selfe engaged: for
though we have no power to redresse the former, yet in the other the
reparation being within our selves, I have at present represented unto
the world a full and intended copy of that Peece which was most
imperfectly and surreptitiously published before" (SW, p. 5). Yet, in
spite of his upset, the material differences between the texts of 1642
and 1643 were relatively minor. Browne added a few passages, corrected
errors in transcription, and actually retained Crooke's services for
the new edition. To Johnson, ever wary of the special pleading of
authors, the facts suggested that it was Browne, or a surrogate, who
had supplied Crooke with the text of Religio in the first place: "It is
easy to convey an imperfect book, by a distant hand, to the press, and
plead the circulation of a false copy as an excuse for publishing the
true, or to correct what is found faulty or offensive, and charge the
errors on the transcriber's deprivations. This is a stratagem, by which
an author panting for fame, and yet afraid of seeming to challenge it,
may at once gratify his vanity, and preserve the appearance of modesty;
may enter the lists, and secure a retreat" (Life, pp. 485-6).
Whatever
the truth of Browne's dealings with Crooke, Johnson reminds us that his
preface is a calculated intervention in the ongoing public history of
Religio.11 There Browne assumes the conventional role of the
unwillingly exposed writer, forced out of a world of "private exercise"
to reclaim Religio because "I could not but thinke my selfe engaged."
Yet he also admits that his "selfe" is as subject to internal change as
the predations of press and public; that his book has "many things
therein plausible unto my passed apprehension, which are not agreeable
to my present selfe." It is this sense of a "present selfe," now much
transformed as well as abused, that compels him to authorize his book
at last: "Lastly all that is contained therein is in submission unto
maturer discernments, and as I have declared shall no further father
them then the best and learned judgements shall authorize them; under
favour of which considerations I have made its secrecie publike and
committed the truth thereof to every ingenuous Reader" (SW, p. 6).
While Browne presents himself as a victim of the press, lamenting the
surreptitious seizure of his work, it is the violation of its
"secrecie" that affords him the chance to redefine the access to his
work by imagining a private space from which it can reemerge into
public view. The violation, directly blamed on the press and obliquely
assigned to Digby in the 1643 text, now becomes an ironic source of
power-closely akin to the potent presentation of self in Religio, where
Browne delights in describing a private discourse that easily resists
public incursion: "I have therefore one common and authentick
Philosophy I learned in the Schooles, whereby I discourse and satisfie
the reason of other men; another more reserved and drawne from
experience whereby I content mine owne" (SW, p. 79). If Browne
reaffirms in his preface the vision of a writer who has always
cultivated psychic distance, he must do so now in reaction to an
aggressive, and very public, act of critical appropriation. If Religio,
taken with its preface, now presents an extended meditation on self,
past and present, public and private, it is Digby who impels that
meditation; who forces the precipitate appearance of the authorized
text and creates the uneasy contretemps between .present selfe" and
"passed apprehension" that informs the authorized Religio.
As
the encounter between Digby and Browne turns on notions of private
writing and public reading, moreover, these issues converge in the
rhetorical excesses that Digby so often condemns and that Browne both
defends and demeans in his preface: "There are many things delivered
Rhetorically, many expressions therein meerely Tropicall and as they
best illustrate my intention; and therefore also there are many things
to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the
rigid test of reason." The tropes that mark Browne's earlier
self-imagination-figurative traces of an author once free to create
himself as he chose-now mark the present dilemma of a work set between
secrecy and exposure, old and new selves, soft rhetoric and hard
reason. In the rhetoric of Religio, in the "flexible sense" of its
tropes, Browne and Digby engage as author and critic in a mutual
interrogation of the ancient claims of rhetoric and philosophy,
adversaries in the Johnsonian mode contending over shared discursive
territory."2 In the next section, I examine how Digby and Browne's
authorial contention is mediated through questions of rhetoric and
philosophy in ways that crystallize the problems of critical reading
and critical subjection for them both.
III
Throughout
Observations, Digby balances occasional praise of Browne's wit against
frequent disapproval of his "wilde fancie" (p. 37), and his sharpest
readings focus on those parts of Religio where Browne brings his wit to
bear on the practice of philosophy-what Digby saw, not unreasonably, as
his particular preserve. Several pages into Religio, having set down
the tenets of his faith and made clear his distaste for theological
dispute, Browne offers his now famous views on divine mystery: "As for
those wingy mysteries in Divinity and ayery subtilties in Religion,
which have unhindg'd the braines of better heads, they never stretched
the Pia Mater of mine; me thinkes there be not impossibilities enough
in Religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ours containes,
have not only been illustrated, but maintained by syllogisme, and the
rule of reason: I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason
to an o attitudo" (SW, p. 14). For Browne, the chief delight in
speculating on the divine nature lies in the limits it imposes on
reason and in the opportunity it affords for displays of unquestioning
faith. And in such matters of faith, Digby is at one with Browne: "I am
extreamely pleased with him, when he saith there are not
impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith" (p. 14). Yet
the case is altered when Browne subdues his reason by giving free rein
to his fancy:
Since I was of understanding to know we know
nothing my reason hath beene more pliable to the will of faith; I am
now content to understand a mystery without a rigid definition in an
easie and Platonick description. The allegorical description of Hermes,
pleaseath me beyond all the Metaphysicall definitions of Divines; where
I cannot satisfie my reason, I love to humour my fancy; I had as leive
you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est Corpus Dei, as
Entelechia; Lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui: where there is an
obscurity too deepe for our reason, 'tis good to sit downe with a
description, periphrasis, or adumbration. (SW, p. 15)
As he
multiplies the tropes he will one day be forced to defend, Browne uses
stock terms of scholasticism-entelechia, actus perspicu-to suggest the
kind of and philosophizing he gladly abandons for the seductive
adumbrations of a Plato or Hermes.13
Though Digby himself has no sympathy for school philosophy, he has
little enthusiasm for this typical performance by Browne:14
I
confesse when I enquire what light (to use our Auth, example) is I
should be as well contented with his Silen as with his telling mee it
is Actus perspicui; unlesse the explicate clearly to me what those
words mean, which I finde very few goe about to do. Such meate they
swallow whole, and eject it as entire. But were such things,
scientifically, and methodically declared, they would bee of extreame
satisfaction, and delight. And that worke taketh up the greatest part
of my formerly mentioned treatise. For I endeavour to shew by a
continued progresse, and not by Leapes, all the motions of nature;
& unto them to fit intelligibly the termes used by her best
Secretaries: whereby all wilde fantasticke qualities and moods
(introduced for refuges of ignorance) are banished from my commerce.
(pp. 14-6)
As Digby argues for a methodical study of light and
the model of his own sober philosophy in response to Browne's
delightfully conceited play, it is tempting to view this as a simple
failure to grasp the spirit of Religio where, as Browne says (in words
clearly directed at Digby), "[t]here are many things delivered
Rhetorically ... and not to be called unto the rigid test of reason."
Yet I would argue that Digby's reading is less a misapprehension of
Browne's rhetoric, which he often disparages but rarely mistakes, than
a careful cultivation of his own role as Natural Philosopher: a role he
has been invited to play by Sackville-a request both flattering and
limiting-and grounded in displays of reason of the kind so wittily
abused in Religio. As Digby replays the battle of philosophy and
rhetoric (as Browne will replay it in his preface), he dismisses
Religio as poor philosophy not purely in the spirit of intellectual
engagement-indeed, he hardly wishes to elevate Browne by doing so-but
in fulfillment of his role, chosen and imposed, as philosopher and as
part of the self-conscious performance of his public authority. If
Observations takes the casual form of a letter to Sackville, it is in
passages like these, where Browne is in some ways only the putative
subject, that the force of its epistolary form is made clear; for here
Sackville is the true correspondent of Digby's work: the esteemed
friend for whom Digby displays his intellectual expertise. As Browne
rejects Digby's reading, he answers him in kind: reasserting the
rhetoric of Religio in order to represent himself in his role, chosen
and imposed, as private writer made against his will into public
author, indulging in soft rhetoric rather than hard reason. What is
striking here is not the old topos of sober philosophy versus specious
rhetoric, but how that contention mediates a present struggle over
precedence acted out in correspondence, commentary, and apology; how
Browne and Digby displace their vital interests in authorship-interests
they disclaim in transparent gestures of disdain-- onto the stormy
marriage of rhetoric and philosophy.
That displaced tension is
best revealed in Digby's consideration of Browne's views on the
resurrection of the flesh. There Digby reaffirms his philosophical
authority, but does so in the carefully defined context of his
reluctant authorship and friendly obligation to Sackville. In reading
Browne on resurrection, as we shall see, Digby's social and
intellectual authority are casually conjoined at Browne's expense in a
public demonstration of status that claims of privacy can hardly
resist. While Religio is replete with carefully choreographed
encounters between natural philosophy and divine mystery, the idea of
physical resurrection inspires Browne's most elaborate entrelacement of
faith, reason, and philosophy: "How shall the dead arise, is no
question of my faith; to beleeve onely possibilities, is not faith, but
meere Philosophy; many things are true in Divinity, which are neither
inducible by reason, nor confirmable by sense; and many things in
Philosophy confirmable by sense, yet not inducible by reason" (SW, p.
54). Where Browne set reason plainly at odds with faith in discoursing
on divine mystery, here the matter is more complex. For as Browne tells
us, resurrection of the flesh raises "no question of my faith" nor has
anything to do with speculations of "meere Philosophy." The promise of
resurrection inspires no witty tropes or hermetic periphrases, only a
simple declaration of belief: "I beleeve that our estranged and divided
ashes shall unite again; that our separated dust after so many
pilgrimages and transformations into the parts of mineralls, Plants,
Animals, Elements, shall at the voyce of God returne into their
primitive shapes, and joyne againe to make up their primary and
predestinated formes" (SW, p. 54). And in this affirmation of belief,
the practice of natural philosophy still plays a vital role:
Let
us speake naturally, and like Philosophers: the formes of alterable
bodies in these sensible corruptions perish not; nor, as wee imagine,
wholly quit their mansions, but retire and contract themselves into
their secret and inaccessible parts, where they may best protect
themselves from the action of their Antagonist. A plant or vegetable
consumed to ashes, to a contemplative and schoole Philosopher seemes
utterly destroyed, and the forme to have taken his leave for ever: But
to a sensible Artist the formes are not perished, but withdrawne into
their incombustible part, where they lie secure from the action of that
devouring element. This is made good by experience, which can from the
ashes of a plant revive the plant... This is that mysticall Philosophy,
from whence no true Scholler becomes an Atheist, but from the visible
effects of nature, grooves up a reall Divine. (SW, p. 55)
Instead
of school philosophy that sees destruction where there is hidden life,
Browne urges a "mysticall Philosophy" in sympathy with divine edict:
"God by a powerfull voyce shall command them backe into their proper
shapes" (SW, p. 55). Philosophy is conceived, in a nice pun, as "reall"
divinity that elides natural and supernatural and becomes like a trope
"soft and flexible," enclosing paradoxical phenomena: life in death,
form in dissolution.
Browne's discourse on resurrection and
philosophy inspires the longest sustained reading in Observations. It
opens, typically, with Digby praising Browne's wit while making clear
his limitations:
But when he meeteth with such difficulties as
his next concerning the Resurrection of the body ... I doe not at all
wonder hee should tread a little awry, and goe astray in the darker for
I conceive his course of life hath not permitted him to allow much time
into the unwinding of such entangled and abstracted subtilties. But if
it had, I beleeve his naturall parts are such as he might have kept the
chaire from most men I know ... Most assuredly his wit and smartnesse
in this Discourse, is of the finest Standard; and his insight into
severer Learning, will appeare as piercing unto such as use not
strictly the touchstone and the Test to examine every peece of the
glittering come he payeth his Reader with. (pp. 76-7)
Where
some-even Sackville-may be dazzled by the "glittering come" of Religio,
Digby intends to dismantle its ideas and begins by dismissing the
belief that our ashes will be reconstituted at last: "It is but a
grosse conception, to thinke that every Atome of the present
individuall matter of a body; every graine of Ashes of a burned
Cadaver, scattered by the wind throughout the world, and after numerous
variations changed peradventure into the body of another man, should at
the sounding of the last Trumpet bee raked together again from all the
corners of the earth" (p. 78). Yet as Digby concedes, "if we will be
Christians, and rely upon Gods promises, wee must beleeve that we shall
rise again with the same body, that walked about, did eate, drinke, and
live here on earth" (pp. 78-9). Having framed physical resurrection as
a clash between doctrine and philosophy-in the same terms Browne
pursues to notions of mystical philosophy-Digby asks, "How shall these
seeming contrarieties bee reconciled?" (p. 79). Where Browne trusts
divinity to resolve this question, Digby recasts it as a problem of
philosophy that entails, not mysticism or ecstasy, but a complex
physics of soul and matter-issues that form the very core of Digby's
philosophical concerns.
Digby first asks Sackville-his silent
companion throughout Observations-to consider if his own body is the
same as that once borne by his mother-"the same body, which your
vertuous and excellent Mother bore nine moneths in her chaste and
honoured Wombe?"-and Digby promptly answers his question: "Most
certainly it is the same" (p. 80). "And yet," he argues, "if you
consider it well, it cannot bee doubted, but that sublunary matter,
being in a perpetual) flux ... in long processe of time, all is so
changed" (p. 81). If all physical objects exist in a state of constant
change, he asks, then what can justify calling our bodies the same
"unlesse some higher consideration keepe up the Identity of it?" (p.
82). This "higher consideration"-what Digby calls "substantiall forme"
or, more simply, the soul-allows for the flux of matter while
guaranteeing our physical integrity across time: "Let us consider then
how that which giveth the numerical individuation to a Body, is the
substantial) forme. As long as that remaineth the same, though the
matter bee in a continual) flux and motion, yet the thing is still the
same" (p. 82). Here is the true philosophical solution to the quandary
of resurrection: "substantial) forme"joins matter to "maketh againe the
same man" (p. 83). Each resurrection is, in effect, a re-creation where
the soul, taking up the homogeneous matter Digby compares to "the
undigested Chaos" (p. 84), transforms it into our body of old:
"whensoever the same Soule doth, it must be understood alwaies to be
the same matter and body" (pp. 86-7). So he corrects the notion of
matter peculiar to ourselves, to be "raked together" from the ends of
the earth; for "there are no subsistent forms of Corporeal) things ...
whensoever that compound is destroyed, the forme perisheth with the
whole" (pp. 87-8). What survives such destruction is only the soul, the
"informing forme" (p. 88) that at the resurrection will recreate our
bodies out of a common store of matter.15
Throughout this
reading Digby writes with the assurance of an author who has dealt with
such issues before, and so he reminds his readers: "the mystery of all
which I have at large unfolded in my ... Treatise of the immortality of
the Soule" (p. 89). It is in his proprietary role as philosopher-a role
Browne blithely usurps-that Digby refutes Browne, and he ends his
alternative analysis of resurrection by drawing a sharp line between
true philosophy and mere rhetoric: "I may piece to it what our Author
with of a Magazine of subsistent formes residing first in the Chaos,
and hereafter (when the world shall have been destroyed by fire) in the
generall heape of Ashes? out of which Gods voyce did, & shall, draw
them out & cloath them with matter. This language were handsome for
a Poet or a Rhetorician to speake, but in a Philosopher, that should
ratiocinate strictly and rigorously, I cannot admit it" (p. 87). For
Digby, the discourse of Religio falls within the shadow of rhetoric,
where clever error may prevail over truth: "For even where he roveth
widest, it is with so much wit and sharpnesse, as putteth mee in minde
of a great mans censure upon Joseph Scaligers Cyclometrica... that hee
had rather erre so ingeniously as he did, then hit upon Truth in that
heavy manner as did the Jesuite his Antagonist" (pp. 76-7). Digby's
gibe at Browne-these words preface his analysis of resurrection-shows
how well he perceives the wit at the core of Religio as well as
Browne's unabashed affection for his own ingenuity. Yet it also reveals
the subtle contention that informs his reading here and throughout
Observations; it suggests how fully his analysis of Religio entails the
aggressive displacement of Browne's authority-an authority grounded in
the ingenious displays of wit Digby unfailingly admires and inevitably
disparages. If Digby and Browne cannot properly be called rivals or
disputants, their engagement suggests a kind of strained emulation: a
mutual cultivation of public prestige that both would be seen to
despise but that neither can resist.
The larger nature of that relation is clarified when, at the end of
Observations, Digby sums up his work for Sackville:
Thus
(my Lord) having run through the book (God knowes how sleightly, upon
so great a suddaine) which your Lordship commanded mee to give you an
account of, there remaineth yet a weightyer taske upon mee to performer
which is to excuse my selfe of presumption for daring to consider any
moles in that face which you had marked for a beauty. But who shall
well consider my manner of proceeding in these remarkes, will free me
from that censure. I offer not at Judging the prudence and wisdome of
this Discourse: Those are fit inquiries for your Lordships Court of
highest appeale; in my inferiour one, I meddle onely with little knotty
peeces of particular Sciences ... In which it were peradventure a fault
for your Lordship to bee too well versed; your imployments are of a
higher and nobler Straine. (pp. 117-8)
In apologizing for his
critique, Digby suggests that his concerns-- "peeces of particular
Sciences"-are beneath the attention of Sackville who alone is fit to
judge the wisdom of Religio (which Sackville may well overvalue as
Digby softly suggests). Yet even as he dismisses his work, a gesture of
deference that returns the compliment of Sackville's request, Digby
founds his authority on the expertise he has employed in service to him
and defines the bounds of an authorship commissioned by his estimable
friend. Digby writes not for personal gain or prestige, or for any
delight in censuring, but out of the duty he owes the earl and science
itself. It is, of course, a self-serving notion of authorship,
reluctantly but faithfully acceded to, and in its final focus on the
relation between Digby and Sackville, it neatly elides the actual
subject of Observations: Browne himself. Ironically, Digby's vision of
a courteous exchange of wisdom and knowledge with the earl of Dorset
resembles nothing so much as the ideal discourse envisioned by Browne
in his letter to Digby: "If after that you shall esteem it worthy your
vacant houres to discourse thereon, you shall but take that liberty
which I assume my selfe, that is freely to abound in your sense, as I
have done in my own" (Works, 4:236). Browne's hope for a free exchange
of "sense" with Digby would be disappointed. In Digby's reply to
Browne, he describes his reluctance to enter the "public lists" with
the learned author of Religio: a show of modesty that carries with it
an air of superior standing and neatly parries Browne's presumption.
His modesty was, of course, false in every respect and Digby quickly
proceeded to publish Observations where Religio is, as it were, put in
its place. Yet if Digby is jealous of Browne's status, he also finds in
Browne a writer remarkably like himself. So they share a tactical
wariness of authorship balanced by a mutual aggression in establishing
the claims of their work; and both of their books, elaborately composed
despite similar claims of carelessness and immaturity, betray every
sign of a profound interest in the publication and reception of their
writing. If Browne and Digby seem to disdain publication, they guard
their work, as Johnson observed, like common authors.
IV
In
effect, Observations offered Browne an opportunity to reimagine his
Religio as private work, taken against his will, and now reluctantly
presented to the public as the representation of an earlier self:
authorized, but not fully owned, by Browne.16 So the 1643 Religio
exists in a limbo between past and present intention, where every
reading is a potential misreading and each reader cast, preemptively,
as an eavesdropper. Mediating private discourse is the primary goal of
the preface and a hedge against the impending publication of Digby's
book, but it is also a recurring theme in Religio itself: "No man can
justly censure or condemne another, because indeed no man truly knowes
another. This I perceive in my selfe, for I am in the darke to all the
world, and my nearest friends behold mee but in a cloud; those that
know mee but superficially, thinke lesse of me than I doe of my selfe;
those of neere acquaintance thinke more; God, who knowes me truly,
knowes that I am nothing" (SW, pp. 72-3). As Browne questions the
validity of a public perception of private self (while he affirms the
validity of the divine perception of that self nicely compounding
private and divine insight) it leads him to argue against the
possibility of any objective interpretation: "for we censure others but
as they disagree from that humour which wee fancy laudable in our
selves, and commend others but for that wherein they seeme to quadrate
and consent with us" (SW, p. 73). These words form part of the
meditation on charity in the second part of Religio, but they might
well describe the relationship between Browne and Digby. For their
encounter turns not on any objective judgment, but on the calculations
of personal interest that inform their censure and praise. If, as
several recent readings suggest, Religio offers vital insight into
current political and religious controversy, an insight characterized
by its author's careful negotiation of the social and political
pressures that inform religious speculation in this period, then the
circumstances that transform Religio into a public text-manipulations
of printers, distinctions of class and reputation, negotiations of
authorship and audience, even the old war of rhetoric and
philosophy-reveal an equally careful negotiation of the pressures of
publication. 17 In turn, these pressures complicate the imaginative
self-sufficiency, the spectacle of serene subjectivity, that marks
Religio. They transform it from an act of self-commemoration, a
discrete "memoriall unto me," as Browne says, to a collective
enterprise, produced by the activity, real and supposed, of printers
and readers as well as the author. 18 In this view, Religio, as
remarkable as it is, is in many ways a typical text: born of a
collaboration larger than the author can control and defined by a
public reading that overrides the desires of the author. The encounter
between Browne and Digby suggests that Religio can be read not only as
an exquisite meditation fashioned as Browne says out of his "solitary
and retired imaginations," but also as part of a more worldly history
of authorial struggle over precedence and reception: part of the
spectacle of authorial striving that informs so much English writing in
this period. If Browne's book has not often been read in this turbulent
context-if Religio has enjoyed, in this respect, a kind of
privilege-returning to the critical encounter between Browne and one of
his most cogent readers helps to restore some of its force as a work
shaped by the public trials of writing.
FOOTNOTE
NOTES
FOOTNOTE
1
For a representative collection of criticism, see Approaches to Sir
Thomas Browne: The Ann Arbor Tercentenary Lectures and Essays, ed. C.
A. Patrides (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1982). More recently,
there has been a good deal of interesting work on Sir Thomas Browne's
religious views and, in particular, on his carefully mediated religious
politics. See, for example, Jonathan F. S. Post, Sir Thomas Browne
(Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), pp. 40-55; Michael Wilding, Dragon's Teeth:
Literature in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1987), pp. 89-113; Victoria Silver, "Liberal Theology and Sir Thomas
Browne's `Soft and Fle)dble' Discourse," ELR 20, 1 (Winter 1990):
69-105; and Achsah Guibbory, Ceremony and Community from Herbert to
Milton: Literature, Religion, and Cultural Conflict in
Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998),
pp. 11946. And for an arresting view of Browne that casts new light on
his scientific work, see Howard Marchitello, Narration and Meaning in
Early Modern England: Browne's Skull and Other Histories (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997).
FOOTNOTE
2 Douglas Bush, English
Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century: 1600-1660, 2d edn.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 349. The most thorough reading to
date of Sir Kenelm Digby's Observations upon "Religio Medici" may be
found in James Wise, Sir Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici" and Two
Seventeenth Century Critics (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1973).
Wise pays particular attention to the philosophical differences between
Digby and Browne and reaffirms the critical consensus that Digby is a
poor reader of Religio because his philosophy is inadequate to cope
with Browne's art. For
FOOTNOTE
this common view of Digby, see
F. L. Huntley, Sir Thomas Browne: A Biographical and Critical Study
(Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1968).
3 John Aubrey,
Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker and Warburg, 1950),
pp. 97-8. The best modern biography of Digby is Robert T. Petersson's
Sir Kenelm Digby, The Ornament of England: 1603-1661 (Cambridge MA:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1956). The circumstances that led to his composing
Observations are summarized in Wise, pp. 57-63, and Huntley, pp.
135-46.
FOOTNOTE
4 Browne, The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed.
Geoffrey Keynes, 4 vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 4:235. Keynes
reproduces both letter and reply. All subsequent references to this
work will be to this edition, hereafter abbreviated Works, and will
appear parenthetically in the text by volume and page number.
FOOTNOTE
5
Raymond Waddington summarizes the publication history in his
introductory note to Sir Kenelm Digby's Observations on "Religio
Medici" (Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1973), n. p. All subsequent
references to this work will be to this edition and will appear
parenthetically in the text. A brief discussion of this publication
history may be found in Huntley, pp. 143-4. On the roots of the
traditional disdain for the press, see J. W. Saunders's seminal essay,
"The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry," EIC
1, 2 (April 1951): 139-64. Recent work on this issue has deepened the
historical perspective and stressed the shifting attitudes toward print
in this period: Martin Elsky, Authorizing Words: Speech, Writing, and
Print in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989),
esp. pp. 184-208; and Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and
Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
1993), pp. 1-22.
6 Samuel Johnson, "The Life of Sir Thomas
Browne," in Sir Thomas Browne, The Major Works, ed. C. A. Patrides
(London: Penguin, 1977), pp. 481-511, p. 486. All subsequent references
to this work will be to this edition, hereafter abbreviated Life, and
will appear parenthetically in the text by page number. Johnson's Life,
the best reading of Browne that we have, was written for an edition of
Christian Morals published in 1756.
7 Sir Thomas Browne:
Selected Writings, ed. Keynes (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968),
p. 6. All subsequent references to this work will be to this edition,
hereafter abbreviated SW, and will appear parenthetically in the text
by page number.
FOOTNOTE
8 This view of an agonistic Browne
contrasts with recent readings that have stressed the urbanitas of
Religio. See Anne Drury Hall, Ceremony and Civility in English
Renaissance Prose (State College: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press,
1991).
FOOTNOTE
9 Wise, p. 121. In his acute analysis of
Religio, Leonard Nathanson expresses a similar view of Digby's reading,
which he describes as intelligent but "misjudged" (The Strategy of
Truth: A Study of Sir Thomas Browne [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1967], p. 75). For a slightly more sympathetic view of Observations,
see Joan Bennett, "A Note on Religio Medici and Some of Its Critics,"
Studies in the Renaissance 3 (1956): 175-84.
10 Digby, p. 38.
FOOTNOTE
11
The two most important modern editors of Religio express different
views on the matter. Keynes takes Browne at his word, assuming that
Religio was originally printed without permission and that Browne
"forgave the pub
FOOTNOTE
lisher his act of piracy" (see Keynes's
introduction, in Selected Writings, n. p.). Jean-Jacques Denonain is
more dubious; citing Browne's decisions to retain Crooke and correct
the printer's text rather than his own copy (allowing many egregious
errors to stand), he describes his handling of the 1643 edition as
"astonishing." See his introduction, in Sir Thomas Browne, Religio
Medici," ed. Denonain (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1955), pp.
x-xi. Johnson, long experienced in such matters, offers what is in my
view the most persuasive reading of Browne's relation to Crooke.
12
I am less interested in the details of this ancient antagonism than in
the ways it informs the conflict between Browne and Digby. For a lively
rendition of the war between philosophy and rhetoric from Plato to
Benedetto Croce, see Brian Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 148-213.
FOOTNOTE
13 For an
excellent analysis of the Christian rhetorics that may have inspired
Browne's interest in rhetorical adumbration, see Deborah Shuger, Sacred
Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988).
14 Digby shared with
Browne the antischolastic sentiment common in this period (and
exemplified in Digby's chief work of philosophy, Tivo Treatises);
elsewhere in Observations he praises Browne because "hee will not be
satisfied with such naked termes as in Schools use to be obtruded upon
easie mindes" (p. 14).
FOOTNOTE
15 Digby's speculations on
time, identity, and corporeality place him within the metaphysical
branch of early-modern philosophical tradition-a tradition that extends
to more recent British philosophy. Making allowances for his
theological terms, much of what Digby says here might easily be found
in the work of A. J. Ayer or P. F. Strawson. See the discussion on
individuality and corporeality in Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in
Descriptive Metaphysics (New York: Methuen, 1964), pp. 87-116; and
Ayer's critique of Strawson in Ayer, The Concept of a Person (London:
Macmillan, 1963), pp. 82-128.
16 In Privacy and Print: Reading
and Writing in Seventeenth-Century England (Charlottesville and London:
Univ. of Virginia Press, 1999), Cecile Jagodzinski describes the
various ways of authoring the private self in this period and, in
particular, the complex transformation of private histories, such as
conversion narratives and letters, into "spectacular" public texts (p.
58). Though she does not consider Browne, Religio typifies a kind of
writing that is characterized, as Jagodzinski argues, by its
simultaneous creation and invasion of privacy (p. 73).
FOOTNOTE
17Two
recent books offer brief but interesting analyses of the sociopolitical
background of Browne's scientific and religious speculation: in Heaven
and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1994), Philip C. Almond sets Browne's flirtation with mortalist
heresy-related in part 1, section 6 of Religio Medici-in the context of
the social and political agenda pursued by the more radical mortalists
among his contemporaries (pp. 41-7); and in The Bible, Protestantism,
and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1998), Peter Harrison discusses how the religious science of Browne
grew out of Protestant beliefs and interpretive practices that entailed
a renewal of the social order (pp. 129-38, 249-65).
18
Browne's enforced engagement with Digby exposes the authorial fiction
that sustains Religio: its potent imagination of the author
negotiating,
FOOTNOTE
freely and at his ease, the most
difficult questions of science and religion. In this sense, the
reflection on authorship and the perils of publication in Browne's
preface speaks directly to the nature of his primary meditation on
faith and natural philosophy in Religio proper. If the chief
distinction of Religio lies in the ability of Its author to mediate
contemporary controversy through a remarkable personal style, It is
important to consider how Digby's reading-and, more generally, the
difficulties of public reception it represents-- undermines the
carefully wrought pretences of Religio.
AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
Samuel Glen Wong is working on a book on the dynamics of authorial
defense in early modern England.
Copyright Johns Hopkins University Press Winter 2003