[Footnote 1:  As for this business of the knighting, one hesitates fully to adopt Dr. Johnson’s remark that Charles II. “had skill to discover excellence and virtue to reward it, at least with such honorary distinctions as cost him nothing.”  A candid observer of the walk and conversation of this illustrious monarch finds room for doubt that he was an attentive reader or consistent admirer of the ‘Religio Medici,’ or ‘Christian Morals’; and though his own personal history might have contributed much to a complete catalogue of Vulgar Errors, Browne’s treatise so named did not include divagations from common decency in its scope, and so may have failed to impress the royal mind.  The fact is that the King on his visit to Norwich, looking about for somebody to knight, intended, as usual on such occasions, to confer the title on the mayor of the city; but this functionary,—­some brewer or grocer perhaps, of whom nothing else than this incident is recorded,—­declined the honor, whereupon the gap was stopped with Dr. Browne.]

Mr. John Evelyn, carrying out a long and cherished plan of seeing one whom he had known and admired by his writings, visited him at Norwich in 1671.  He found Sir Thomas among fit surroundings, “his whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collections, especially medails, books, plants, and natural things[2].”  Here we have the right background and accessories for Whitefoot’s portrait of the central figure:—­

“His complexion and hair ... answerable to his name, his stature moderate, and habit of body neither fat nor lean but [Greek:  eusarkos;] ... never seen to be transported with mirth or dejected with sadness; always cheerful, but rarely merry at any sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest, and when he did, ... apt to blush at the levity of it:  his gravity was natural without affectation.  His modesty ... visible in a natural habitual blush, which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any observable cause....  So free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he was so, it was always singular and never trite or vulgar.”

[Footnote 2:  These two distinguished authors were of congenial tastes, and both cultivated the same Latinistic literary diction.  Their meeting must have occasioned a copious effusion of those “long-tailed words in osity and ation” which both had so readily at command or made to order.  It is regrettable that Evelyn never completed a work entitled ’Elysium Brittannicum’ which he planned, and to which Browne contributed a chapter ‘Of Coronary Plants.’  It would have taken rank with its author’s ‘Sylva’ among English classics.]

A man of character so lofty and self-contained might be expected to leave a life so long, honorable, and beneficent with becoming dignity.  Sir Thomas’s last sickness, a brief but very painful one, was “endured with exemplary patience founded upon the Christian philosophy,” and “with a meek, rational, and religious courage,” much to the edification of his friend Whitefoot.  One may see even a kind of felicity in his death, falling exactly on the completion of his seventy-seventh year.