托马斯·布朗1605—1682

他的作品揭示了他广泛的学习领域，对科学和医学、宗教及西方秘契主义均有贡献。他的作品展示了他对自然世界的深层次好奇心，并且受到培根派科学革命思想的影响。这些作品还经常引用经典和圣经，并且具有自我风格。虽然据说他患有精神忧郁症，他的作品常常具有敏锐的幽默，十分风趣。

Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 1605 – 19 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science, medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the Scientific Revolution of Baconian enquiry and are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffused with melancholia, Browne's writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.

Biography

Early life

Thomas Browne was born in the parish of St Michael, Cheapside, in London on 19 October 1605. He was the youngest child of Thomas Browne, a silk merchant from Upton, Cheshire, and Anne Browne, the daughter of Paul Garraway of Lewes, Sussex. He had an elder brother and two elder sisters. The family, who had lived at Upton for several generations, were "evidently people of some importance" who "intermarried with families of position in that neighbourhood", and were armigerous. Browne's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Henry Birkenhead, Clerk of the Green Cloth to Elizabeth I of England and Clerk of the Crown for the counties of Cheshire and Flintshire.

Autobiography

On 14 March 1673, Browne sent a short autobiography to the antiquarian John Aubrey, presumably for Aubrey's collection of Brief Lives, which provides an introduction to his life and writings:

...I was born in St Michael's Cheap in London, went to school at Winchester College, then went to Oxford, spent some years in foreign parts, was admitted to be a Socius Honorarius of the College of Physicians in London, Knighted September 1671, when the King, Queen and Court came to Norwich. [Wrote] Religio Medici in English, which was since translated into Latin, French, Italian, High and Low Dutch.

Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into Common and Vulgar Errors translated into Dutch four or five years ago.

Hydriotaphia, or Urn Buriall.

Hortus Cyri [the Garden of Cyrus], or de Quincunce.

Literary influence

Browne is widely considered one of the most original writers in the English language. The freshness and ingenuity of his mind invested everything he touched with interest; while on more important subjects, his style, if frequently ornate and Latinate, often rises to the highest pitch of stately eloquence. He has a paradoxical and ambiguous place in the history of ideas, as equally a devout Christian, a promoter of the new inductive science, and an adherent of ancient esoteric learning. For these reasons, one literary critic succinctly assessed him as "an instance of scientific reason lit up by mysticism in the Church of England".

Recognition

In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson, who shared Browne's love of the Latinate, wrote a brief Life in which he praised Browne as a faithful Christian and assessed his prose.

The English author Virginia Woolf wrote two short essays about him, observing in 1923, "Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those who do are the salt of the earth."

Clive James included an essay on Browne in his Cultural Amnesia collection. James celebrated Browne's style and originality, stating that Browne was "minting new coin" with everything he wrote.

Portraits and influence in the visual arts

The National Portrait Gallery in London has a contemporary portrait by Joan Carlile of Sir Thomas Browne and his wife Dorothy, probably completed between 1641 and 1650.

More recent sculptural portraits include Henry Alfred Pegram's 1905 statue in Norwich of Sir Thomas contemplating an urn. This statue occupies the central position in the Haymarket beside St Peter Mancroft, not far from the site of his house. Unveiled on 19 October 1905, it was moved from its original position in 1973 and once more in 2023.

In 1931, the English painter Paul Nash was invited to illustrate a book of his own choice. Nash chose Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus, providing the publisher with a set of 32 illustrations to accompany Browne's Discourses. The edition was published in 1932.