There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his
reading or memory. It is scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars
he has amassed together, in a treatise which seems to have been
occasionally written; and for which, therefore, no materials could
have been previously collected. It is, indeed, like other treatises of
antiquity, rather for curiosity than use; for it is of small
importance to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which
threw them into the sea, or which gave them to birds and beasts; when
the practice of cremation began, or when it was disused; whether the
bones of different persons were mingled in the same urn; what
oblations were thrown into the pyre; or how the ashes of the body were
distinguished from those of other substances. Of the uselessness of
these inquiries, Browne seems not to have been ignorant; and,
therefore, concludes them with an observation which can never be too
frequently recollected:
"All, or most apprehensions, rested in opinions of some future being,
which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted
conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which christians pity or laugh at.
Happy are they, which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men
could say little for futurity, but from reason; whereby the noblest
mind fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions:
with these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against the cold
potion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of
the night in reading the immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his
wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt.
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