ition of them is as just as the book-binder's, a
setting or glueing of them together. He is a great discomforter of
young students, by telling them what travail it has cost him, and how
often his brain turned at philosophy, and makes others fear studying as
a cause of duncery. He is a man much given to apothegms, which serve
him for wit, and seldom breaks any jest but which belonged to some
Lacedaemonian or Roman in _Lycosthenes_. He is like {25} a dull
carrier's horse, that will go a whole week together, but never out of a
foot-pace: and he that sets forth on the Saturday shall overtake him.

(_Microcosmography_.)

SIR THOMAS BROWNE 1605-1682

CHARITY

Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to nourish the
merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents,
and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity. And, if
I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed
to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution so general that
it consorts and sympathizeth with all things; I have no antipathy, or
rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything. I wonder not at
the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools, nor at
the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but, being amongst them, make
them my common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach as well as
theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in
a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion,
lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper, I find in me no
desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those
common antipathies that I discover in others: those national
repugnances do not touch me, {26} nor do I behold with prejudice the
French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but, where I find their actions in
balance with my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them, in the
same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed
and constellated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of
a garden. All places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in
England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwrecked,
yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or sleep in
a tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing: my conscience would
give me the lie if I should say I absolutely de