SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 67 imagination ; for the biography of Browne does not afford us any remarkable occurrences to relate ; on the contrary, is as uniform and devoid of ad- venture, as that of the most retired man of letters could possibly be. His history, therefore, will be chiefly comprised in the history of his works, which were numerous, and full of interest and curiosity. Dr. Browne settled, in 1636, at Norwich, where his practice soon became very extensive, many patients resorting to him for advice ; and in 1637, he was incorporated doctor of physic in the Uni- versity of Oxford. A few years after, he married Mrs. Mileham, of a good family in the county —
- ' a lady (as she is described) of such symmetrical
proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism." This marriage could not but draw the raillery of contemporary wits upon a man who had just been wishing, in his " Rehgio Medici," that " we might procreate like trees," and had lately declared, that " the whole world was made for man, but only the twelfth part of man for woman ;" and that man " is the whole world, but woman only the rib, or crooked part of man." Whatever were the opi- nions of her husband, or by whatever motives the lady herself had been induced to marry a man pro- fessing such strange notions, she had no reason to repent her choice, for she lived happily with him one and forty years, and bore him ten children, of whom one son and three daughters outlived their parents. In 1646, his work entitled Enquiries into F 2
