DIVINATION IN PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA: THOMAS BROWNE’S HABITS OF REVISION

Hugh Adlington

The number and types of divination or augury known to early modern savants such as Thomas Browne were as various as the creatures of the earth: from dowsing to hepatoscopy (divination by entrails), from rune casting to critomancy (divination by cakes), and from ornitho- mancy (construal of bird patterns) to tyromancy (divination by the coagulation of cheese).1 Attitudes to such practices varied just as widely. While (1561–1626), in his Advancement of Learning (1605), dismissed augury from natural phenomena as ‘for the most part [. . .] superstitious’, seventeenth-century Britons nevertheless continued cast- ing lots, scrying clouds, and predicting the weather using pigs’ spleens.2 Given the enduring fascination of such popular customs, it is no surprise that Thomas Browne should hold them up for scrutiny in Book V of Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Browne’s survey of augural practices reveals not only the quality of his scepticism regarding divination per se, it also sheds light on aspects of his method of inquiry more generally. In particular, small but signifi cant revisions made by Browne to the section on divi- nation in Book V of Pseudodoxia – traced through the evolution of the work’s six printed editions between 1646 and 1672 – refl ect Browne’s responsiveness to a changing intellectual climate in mid-seventeenth- century Britain, and demonstrate his willingness to adapt his approach to popular practices such as divination accordingly. As Robin Robbins has observed, the focus of modern scholarship on Browne’s works has shifted away from an earlier emphasis on prose

1 See Thorndike L., A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: 1923–1958) 8.446–502. See also Burnett C., Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Aldershot: 1996) passim; and Hanegraaff W.J. (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and (Leiden: 2006) 313–319. 2 Bacon F., The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the profi cience and aduancement of Learning, diuine and humane (London: 1605) 2.45r; Thomas K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: 1971) 121–124, 231–244; Brand J., Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Chiefl y Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar and Provincial Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions, 3 vols (London: 1853–1855) 3.329–359. 88 hugh adlington style; instead, recent critical work has been particularly interested to debate the extent to which Browne might be classifi ed as ‘creator of a persona, epistemologist, Baconian discoverer, and popularizer of the new learning’.3 This seeks to contribute to this continuing debate by drawing attention to the emergent of Browne’s thought through the early editions of Pseudodoxia – the characteristics of which are revealed in a telling shift, between 1646 and 1672, in the vocabu- lary (if not the method) of Browne’s inquiries into the truth or falsity of enduring popular customs such as divination.

1. Divination in the Works of Thomas Browne: Literary Context

In 1826 William Hazlitt (1778–1830) reported that the two authors from the past whom (1775–1834) would most like to have met were Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville (1554–1628). Hazlitt quotes Lamb’s justifi cation for his choice: ‘their writings [Browne’s and Greville’s] are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles.’4 Lamb’s reported remarks are directed both at Browne’s self-declared willingness in Religio Medici (1642) to lose himself ‘in a mystery’, and more particularly at ‘that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition, the Urn-burial’.5 But to what extent does Browne’s work consider the practice of divination and ‘doubtful oracles’ themselves? Aside from Browne’s extended treatment of divination in Book V of Pseudodoxia, his writings contain three signifi cant references to the subject. First, in a letter written on “A Prophecy Concerning the Future State

3 Robbins R., “Browne, Sir Thomas (1605–1682)” in ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb .com/view/article/3702 (accessed 5 February 2008). The most signifi cant recent work to consider Pseudodoxia Epidemica in the context of the development of early modern science is Preston C., Thomas Browne and the Writing of Early Modern Science (Cambridge: 2005) esp. chs. 3 and 5. See also Robbins R., “Browne’s Cosmos Imagined: Nature, Man, and in Pseudodoxia Epidemica” in Patrides C.A. (ed.), Approaches to Sir Thomas Browne: The Ann Arbor Tercentenary Lectures and Essays (Columbia, MO and London: 1982) 155–165; and Guibbory A., “Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica and the Circle of Knowledge”, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 18,1 (1976) 486–499. 4 Hazlitt W., “Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen”, in Selected Essays of Wil- liam Hazlitt, ed. G. Keynes (London: 1934) 524. First printed in New Monthly Magazine, January 1826. 5 Hazlitt W., “Of Persons” 525.