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Rating: 
Summary: A Curious Knight
Review: Well, I imagine those of you considering buying this book have more than an inkling of what you're in for, unless, like a previous reviewer, you are upset by scholarly, editorial quibbles: Does anyone really care so much if the editor altered amphibium to amphibian or not? Trust me, if you adore verbal arcana, the editor (viz. Robbins) has left enough unexplicated for you to go running to your unabridged OED time and time again. If his notes and explanations are short, all the more reason to rejoice in such need for recourse into other resources to delve into the verbal rich and strange.
That being said, methinks the best, most philosophic and topical section of this compilation is the second part of Religio Medici, the first part of which is, for the most part, involved with theological abstrusities none too cogent to the modern reader due to the discoveries of modern science among other reasons. The second part, by contrast, abounds with speculation and contemplation cogent and arresting to all ages.
As for Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus, let's just say that if differing forms of burial in antiquity and the reasons pertaining thereto pique your interest, or if you're obsessed that the number five in the form as its displayed on the side of a die may hold the key to the cosmos, as another reviewer has felicitously noted, you will be amply rewarded. Otherwise, well, you may find yourself dozing at parts.
Aside from the delight in outdated and antiquated wording and a unique style of writing that I haven't seen duplicated anywhere, even in the works of Browne's most illustrious contemporaries, the best reason to buy this book is for insights like those below interlarded throughout the text:
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. Al things fall under this name: the sun itself is but the dark simulacrum. And light but the shadow of God.
We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.
For the world, I count it, not an inn, but an hospital, and a place not to live in but to die in.
United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other, which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.
If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do scorn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude-that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God; but confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity..
Thus we are men, and, we know not how, there is something in us than can be without us, and will be after us; though it is strange that it hath no history, what it was before us, nor can tell how it entered us.
Just a sampling of apothegms in this delightful compilation.-Four stars though: At times, one simply wants to shout "Oh what tosh!" to all Browne's ramblings anent his beloved "quincunx".
Rating: 
Summary: Great writer, awful edition (Robin Robbins, Oxford UP)
Review: I'm leaving aside considerations of Browne's importance as a writer. There are plenty of appraisals of him on the net, and if you've found this page, you probably already know what you're looking for.While this edition may be adequate for the casual reader, it's entirely unsuitable as a scholarly edition: 1) The editor has translated nearly all of Browne's notes without giving them in the original. 2) He has moved these notes from the margin to the foot of the page without bothering to number them. The reader will often find himself finishing a page, discovering a footnote and trying to backtrack to figure out where it fit in. Confusing to say the least, especially because Robbins intermingles his own commentary with Browne's, indicating the latter's with the initial B. 3) Protracted discussions of the text are confined to an appendix (and by protracted, I mean three or four sentences at most). They might as well be incorporated into the body of the text as footnotes, since he only provides six of these for Hydriotaphia, eight for the Garden of Cyrus. 4) The editor has modernized the spelling, despite Browne's well known preference for certain archaic forms. While updating the orthography is helpful (substituing 'j' for 'i,' 'v' for 'u,' etc.), Browne's occasionally unorthodox spelling should hardly present a problem to anyone with half a brain, and if you can't figure out that 'sceleton' means 'skeleton,' you probably won't understand why 'Man is a great and true amphibium.' 5) And obviously, modernizing the spelling vitiates the impact of Hydriotaphia, Browne's meditation on mutability, language and identity, and the anonymity of the grave. 6) Lastly, for such a shoddy edition, it's a pricey, slender paperback. The editor could at least have included Letter to a Friend or a selection from Christian Morals to round it out. Unfortunately, there are no popular editions of Browne's work available at this time, and it's doubtful whether any shall be in the near future. Search out something used, and avoid this one if you can.
Rating: 
Summary: What song the Syrens sang; meditations on time and eternity
Review: Sir Thomas Browne's works from the first half of the seventeenth century remain worthy of your attention. He is an essayist, akin in spirit to his rough contemporary Montaigne. He was yet another prose stylist of those fine days of the Stuart period, when the sun of English prose approached its zenith, only to be eclipsed by the English cultivation of melancholia.
The -Hydriotaphia-, or Urn Burial, is perhaps the most celebrated of these works. Its nominal occasion is the discovery and opening of an ancient gravesite, about which Browne, a physician, writes with better archaeological method than most of his antiquarian contemporaries. But this discovery is merely the occasion for what turns into an extended meditation on the funerary monuments of antiquity, and of the great themes of time, eternity, and the frailty of memory and fame.
The -Religio Medici- is a meditation, quite humane and somewhat skeptical especially given his period, on the prevailing religious doctrines and teachings of his day. It is a prayer for peace in an age that was marked by a great deal of religious strife and contention; not surprisingly, it gave doubts to most of the warring parties as to Browne's orthodoxy. Despite its generally skeptical tenor, it seems Browne himself was prepared to accept alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft.
The -Garden of Cyrus- is the most curious of these works. Its nominal subject is the "quincunx," the arrangement of five units like the fives on dice, and its use in ancient horticulture. But it treats this slight subject with such various learning, finding quincunxes everywhere on earth and in the heavens, so that when it's over it seems that understanding the quincunx might be the key to the secrets of the universe.
Rating:
Summary: What song the Syrens sang; meditations on time and eternity
Review: Sir Thomas Browne's works from the first half of the seventeenth century remain worthy of your attention. He is an essayist, akin in spirit to his rough contemporary Montaigne. He was yet another prose stylist of those fine days of the Stuart period, when the sun of English prose approached its zenith, only to be eclipsed by the English cultivation of melancholia.
The -Hydriotaphia-, or Urn Burial, is perhaps the most celebrated of these works. Its nominal occasion is the discovery and opening of an ancient gravesite, about which Browne, a physician, writes with better archaeological method than most of his antiquarian contemporaries. But this discovery is merely the occasion for what turns into an extended meditation on the funerary monuments of antiquity, and of the great themes of time, eternity, and the frailty of memory and fame.
The -Religio Medici- is a meditation, quite humane and somewhat skeptical especially given his period, on the prevailing religious doctrines and teachings of his day. It is a prayer for peace in an age that was marked by a great deal of religious strife and contention; not surprisingly, it gave doubts to most of the warring parties as to Browne's orthodoxy. Despite its generally skeptical tenor, it seems Browne himself was prepared to accept alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft.
The -Garden of Cyrus- is the most curious of these works. Its nominal subject is the "quincunx," the arrangement of five units like the fives on dice, and its use in ancient horticulture. But it treats this slight subject with such various learning, finding quincunxes everywhere on earth and in the heavens, so that when it's over it seems that understanding the quincunx might be the key to the secrets of the universe.
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