OME RELATIONS WHOSE TRUTH WE FEAR

From 'Pseudoxia Epidemica'

Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous
unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but
whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital,
and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even
in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should
be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of
monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to
err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in
its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these
singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice in
some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is
one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former; for the
vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity of these present,
affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits, and soliciting those
unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely
principled as to invent them. In this kind we commend the wisdom and
goodness of Galen, who would not leave unto the world too subtle a
theory of poisons; unarming thereby the malice of venomous spirits,
whose ignorance must be contented with sublimate and arsenic. For surely
there are subtler venerations, such as will invisibly destroy, and like
the basilisks of heaven. In things of this nature silence commendeth
history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never
rise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.

WILLIAM BROWNE

(1591-1643)

Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of
nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the
list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton,
Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows
skill and charm of style in various kinds of verse, his name rests
chiefly upon his largest work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much
wider in scope than the title suggests, if one follows the definition
given by Pope in his 'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:--"A
Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered
under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or
narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners n