Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial by Sir Thomas Browne

First published: 1658

Type of work: Philosophy

The Work:

Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial is one of the great glories of Renaissance scholarship and without doubt one of the greatest essays in English literature. The work is ostensibly a study on some forty or fifty Roman funeral urns that had been discovered near Norfolk. The wonderfully associative mind of the author immediately reads philosophical implications out of, and rich analogues into, the urns.

Regarded as one of the finest specimens of Baroque prose of the seventeenth century, Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial is also a superb example of the occasional essay. It is distinguished for a number of reasons. Like all of Sir Thomas Browne’s works, it displays a combination of education and sensibility characteristic of the writers of the seventeenth century, for whom science was an equal partner with classical learning. Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial is a demonstration of Browne’s enormous reading, enviable memory, and intense interest in humanity’s beliefs, habits, and hopes.

Browne uses the incidence of the discovery of these burial urns as a prompt for philosophical speculations about humankind, specifically the concepts of mutability and impermanence. The first chapters, largely descriptive of burial customs and living habits of past civilizations, are merely prelude to the more significant topic toward which the author is aiming in his thoughtful and provocative conclusion. The thrust of Browne’s method becomes clear at the end of the fourth chapter, when he begins the process of reexamining various burial customs in the light of theological, and specifically Christian, concerns.

The final chapter of Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial takes readers beyond the immediate subject of burial customs to contemplate the nature of death, life, and afterlife. In a poignant meditation on the inevitability of death and the vanity of human aspirations to overcome it, Browne muses in his conclusion on the implications of his findings. His vision, however, is not ultimately pessimistic. Paradoxically, the inability of people to guarantee immortality by their own efforts is balanced by the great comfort the author finds in his Christian faith. The promises of Christ provide him assurance that all people—even those whose deaths are marked by no monuments, whose remains are not preserved in funeral urns—may find true immortality in a realm where time and change have no meaning.

In the “Epistle Dedicatory,” addressed to “My worthy and Honoured Friend, Thomas Le Gros, of Crostwick, Esquire,” Browne sets his tone. He broods on the common fate of all people, asking who can know the fate of one’s own bones or how often one is to be disinterred and scattered, as the bones in these Roman urns are now being brought again from their private seclusion. The uncertainty of one’s ashes depresses his enthusiasm for earthly affairs at the same time that it excites his curiosity. He feels that it is his right and duty as physician, and man, to read the bones of our ancestors and learn from them, to make the living profit from the dead and to keep the living alive as long as possible.

Browne begins with a study of burial customs of ancient times, touching first on biblical Abraham and the patriarchs, and Adam, then proceeds whimsically to the assertion that God interred but one body, that of Moses. Browne next takes up the subject of the burning of corpses, which he asserts was widespread in ancient times. He begins with Homer’s account of Patroclus and Achilles, discusses the older tradition in Thebes, and then ranges to Israel, to the Amazons, and even to the Americas.

Next Browne says he will not discuss the ceremonies and rites of cremation or interment that are generally touched on by authors, but will talk only on the collected bones and ashes of the Romans discovered recently in England. He then moves from this narrower subject to a learned discussion of the burial customs of the peoples loosely associated with, or suggested by, the predecessors of seventeenth century Englishmen—the Romans, Druids, Danes, and others.

He points out that Caesar expressly says that the priests of the Druids used to burn and bury. History is silent on whether this custom held in the land of the early Britons, but since history speaks out clearly that the Romans distinctly influenced these early natives of Britain in many ways—for example, in getting them to build temples and wear gowns and study Roman law with the intention of following it—probably, Browne believes, these people also followed their religious rites and customs in burial.

Browne further reminds his readers that in Norway and Denmark numerous burial urns obviously not of Roman origin in design are found containing not only bones but also numerous other substances, such as knives, pieces of iron, brass and wood, and, in Norway, one containing a “brass gilded Jewes-harp.”

In the next chapter Browne continues with an inquiry into the various ways people have decorated the insides of sepulchres and tombs. He observes that people have not been so much concerned with how great they have been in life if they can be richly memorialized in death. He observes that the great affect great tombs, and large urns contain no mean ashes. He observes also the changing customs about the artifacts that have been placed in tombs, from the earliest customs, when want dictated that only the most meager items be included, to more opulent times, when objects of much value were buried with the remains of the great people. Browne also discusses the inscriptions that have headed graves, what kinds of bones make the best skeletons, the various positions in which peoples have placed their dead, and the time allowed between death and interment.

From the physical facts of life and death Browne rises to the spiritual. In these flights of fancy he, as a Christian, reaches his greatest heights of philosophy and poetry. He realizes that life is transitory, that it is of short duration, and that life after death should be of greater importance than life on earth. He believes, however, that many people, perhaps most people, throughout the ages have failed to anticipate the wonders of the next world because of eagerness to exhaust the pleasures of this world. His feelings on the subject are at the same time an affirmation of faith in religion, which is characteristic of his general attitude, and a horror at those people who are shortsighted in their overall view.

The full value of this magnificent work can be appreciated only by reading of some of the great organ-music lines, of which the following are typical:

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdome to live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to dye, which makes us amazed at those audacities, that durst be nothing, and return into their Chaos again.

But to subsist in bones, and be but Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.

One of Browne’s most eloquent meditations deserves a long quotation:

But the iniquity of oblivion blindely scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it; Time hath spared the Epitaph of Adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equall durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, then any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselahs long life had been his only Chronicle.

Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven Names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living Century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Aequinox? Every hour adds unto that current Arithmetique which scarce stands one moment.

In many ways the most philosophically incontrovertible and stylistically memorable of Browne’s statements in this work is the oceanlike roll of “Grave-stones tell truth scarce fourty years. Generations passe while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.” As these examples demonstrate, Browne’s prose stands at a summit of the English language. It represents the achievement of an especially rich period in the history of literature, and study of his vocabulary, rhetoric, and style continues to reveal not only the achievement of the Renaissance but also many truths that have not changed.

One of the curiosities associated with Browne is the fact that the author of Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial became a victim of persons interested in burial places. His coffin was invaded in 1840 and his skull was stolen and subsequently sold by the sexton of the church in which he was interred.

Bibliography

Bennett, Joan. Sir Thomas Browne: A Man of Achievement in Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1962. A chapter on Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial examines Browne’s thought and how the prose style reflects Browne’s character and temperament.

Donovan, Dennis G., Magaretha G. Hartley Herman, and Ann E. Imbrie. Sir Thomas Browne and Robert Burton: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. A useful list of publications from 1643 to 1977 emphasizes criticism and interpretation of Browne and his work. Augments previous bibliographies of Browne; many annotations are extensive.

Fish, Stanley E., ed. Seventeenth-Century Prose: Modern Essays in Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. A compendium of useful essays on the various prose styles in Browne’s era. Of particular interest are “The Styles of Sir Thomas Browne,” by Austin Warren; “Sir Thomas Browne: The Relationship of Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyprus,” by Frank L. Huntley; and “Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial: The Ethics of Mortality,” by Leonard Nathanson.

Killeen, Kevin. “Duckweed and the Word of God: Seminal Principles and Creation in Thomas Browne.” In The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, edited by Kevin Killeen and Peter J. Forshaw. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Demonstrates how Browne’s reading of the Bible influenced his ideas about natural philosophy and science.

Nathanson, Leonard. The Strategy of Truth: A Study of Sir Thomas Browne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Analysis and interpretation of Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial occupy a whole chapter, placing it in the larger framework of Browne’s work.

Preston, Claire. Thomas Browne and the Writing of Early Modern Science. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Analyzes Browne’s works on literature, science, and philosophy within the context of early modern empiricism and natural philosophy. Preston demonstrates how the emerging essay form, scientific experimentation, and the work of Francis Bacon influenced Browne’s writings.

Schwyzer, Philip. “Readers of the Lost Urns: Desire and Disintegration in Thomas Browne’s Urn-Burial.” In Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Schwyzer examines English Renaissance concepts of archeology by analyzing images of excavation, exhumation, and ruin in works by Browne and other writers.