Mr. Gosse, in his volume on Sir Thomas Browne in the ’English Men of Letters’ Series, has evidently taken this view of his subject.  He has not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he has simply gone ‘about it and about.’  The result is a book so full of entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary tact, that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the obvious—­though surely irrelevant—­truth, that the general impression which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite presentment, in which the features of Sir Thomas have become somehow indissolubly blended with those of his biographer.  It would be rash indeed to attempt to improve upon Mr. Gosse’s example; after his luminous and suggestive chapters on Browne’s life at Norwich, on the Vulgar Errors, and on the self-revelations in the Religio Medici, there seems to be no room for further comment.  One can only admire in silence, and hand on the volume to one’s neighbour.

There is, however, one side of Browne’s work upon which it may be worth while to dwell at somewhat greater length.  Mr. Gosse, who has so much to say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the most important thing about the author of Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus—­his style.  Mr. Gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as a master of literary form that Browne deserves to be remembered.  Why then does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about his family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his porridge, and who fished up the murex?

Nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse’s treatment of Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his book:  for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen.  In spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne’s most splendid and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is so ready to admire.  In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns.  He ranks the Hydriotaphia among the gems of English literature; and the prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as fundamentally wrong.  The contradiction is obvious; but there can be little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal homage, Mr. Gosse’s real sympathies lie on the other side.  His remarks upon Browne’s effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely misleading a preconceived theory may be.