Home > Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Its nominal subject was the discovery of a Bronze Age urn burial in Norfolk. The discovery of these remains prompts Browne to deliver, first, a careful description of the antiquties found. Browne then gives a careful survey of most of the burial and funerary customs, ancient and current, of which his era was aware.

The most famous part of the work, though, is the fifth chapter, where Browne quite explicitly turns to discuss man's struggles with mortality, and the uncertainty of his fate and fame in this world and the next, to produce an extended funerary meditation tinged with melancholia. The changes wrought by time and eternity, the fleetingness of mortal fame, and our feeble attempts to cope with the certainty of death are Browne's subjects. Yet, at the same time, Browne could be tersely witty, mocking human vainglory: "Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself."

A piece of exquisite baroque prose that George Saintsbury called "the longest piece, perhaps, of absolutely sublime rhetoric to be found in the prose literature of the world," Hydriotaphia displays an astonishing command of English prose rhythm and diction. The following is a sample, representative both in its beauty and its inscrutability. Browne rhetorically asks:

What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these OssuariesAn ossuary is a chest, building, well or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. In Persia the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function from the earliest times (c. 3,000 years ago) and called it astudan (literally, entered the famous Nations of the dead, and slept with Princes and Counsellours, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above Antiquarism.

Skepticism shows up even at the level of grammar. Note, in particular, how Browne begins these sentences with relative clauses—"who were the proprietaries of these bones," for example—which one would generally expect the main clause of each sentence to answer. Instead, Browne not only leaves us in uncertainty for the length of each relative clause, but makes that uncertainty permanent by refusing to give an answer in the main clause. This is a technique he uses throughout the fifth chapter and, indeed, the entire work. Perhaps this was part of what led Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf ( January 25, 1882 March 28, 1941) was a British author and feminist. Between the world wars, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury group. Life and Work Born Adeline Virginia Stephen in Lon to comment:

...while the Bible has a gospel to impart, who can be quite sure what Sir Thomas Browne himself believed? The last chapters of Urn Burial beat up on wings of extraordinary sweep and power, yet towards what goal?... Decidedly [Browne's] is the voice of a strange preacher, of a man filled with doubts and subtleties and suddenly swept away by surprising imaginations.

Browne deeply influenced Thomas de QuinceyThomas de Quincey ( August 15, 1785 December 8, 1859) was a British author and intellectual. He was born in Manchester. His father was a successful businessman with an interest in literature; he died when Thomas was quite young. Soon after Thomas's birth, who said of this work,

What a melodious ascent as of a prelude to some impassioned requiem breathing from the pomps of earth, and from the sanctities of the grave! What a fluctus decumanus of rhetoric! Time expounded, not by generations or centuries, but by the vast periods of conquests and dynasties: by cycles of PharaohsThis article refers to the historical Pharaoh. For Pharaoh in the Book of Abraham, see Pharaoh (Book of Abraham). Pharaoh Standard Hebrew Paro Tiberian Hebrew Paroh is a title used to refer to the kings (of godly status) in ancient Egypt. See History of E and PtolemiesPtolemy one of Alexander the Great's generals, was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexander's death in 323 BC. In 305 BC he declared himself King Ptolemy I, later known as "Soter" (saviour). The Egyptians soon accepted the Ptolemies as the successors to, AntiochiAntiochus was the name of thirteen Syrian kings between 280 BC to 65 BC. The most notable of these were: # Antiochus III the Great, who ascended the throne 223 BC. He is regarded as the "king of the north" referred to in Dan. He was succeeded (187) by his and Arsacides!

The Urn Burial has also been admired by Charles LambCharles Lamb ( 1775- 27 July, 1834) was an English essayist, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare which he produced along with his sister, Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb was the youngest child of John Lamb, a lawye, Samuel Johnson, Jorge Luis Borges, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said of it that it "smells in every word of the sepulchre." Which was, of course, the exact effect Browne wished.