The Major Works

Some forty urns came out of a Norfolk field, unremarkable things full of burnt bone, and a Norwich physician looked at them long enough to write the finest pages in English on being forgotten. Sir Thomas Browne kept a notebook of every strange thing he had ever heard, and out of that habit came prose no one since has matched for sheer music: Religio Medici, where he confesses a faith made of doubts he loves rather than fears; Pseudodoxia Epidemica, where he patiently establishes that elephants do in fact have joints; and Hydriotaphia, wich begins with pot shards and ends staring into the dark.