Читать книгу The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1 - Browne Thomas - Страница 1

This edition is an endeavour to arrive at a more satisfactory text of the work of Sir Thomas Browne, and to reproduce the principal part of it, as faithfully as seems advisable, in the form in which it was presented to the public at the time of his death. For this purpose, in the first volume, the text of the Religio Medici follows more particularly the issue of 1682. The Pseudodoxia Epidemica here given is based upon the sixth edition of ten years earlier, with careful revision. In every case in which a spelling or punctuation was dubious, a comparison was made of nearly all the issues printed during the lifetime of the writer, and their merits weighed. By this means it is hoped that the true flavour of the period has been preserved.

The Annotations upon the Religio Medici, which were always reprinted with the text during the seventeenth century, are here restored. They will appeal to a certain class of readers which has a right to be considered. It is to be regretted that every quotation given in these pages has not been verified. Several have been corrected; but to have worked through them all, in these busy days, would have been a labour of some years, which it is not possible to devote to the purpose. It has been thought best to leave these passages therefore, in the main, as they stand.1

The portrait of Sir Thomas Browne here prefixed is reproduced from the engraving published in 1672 with the edition of the Religio Medici and Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

C.S.

August, 1903.