Domesttc Correspondence,
THE earliest specimens of Sir Thomas Browne's
family correspondence, which have been discovered,
are his letters to his younger son Thomas, while in
France ; of which the following thirteen, preserved in
No. 391 of the Rawlinson Collection of MSS., at the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, seem to have been tran-
scripts by Mrs. Elizabeth Lyttelton, his daughter.
They are in the same hand-writing as those addressed
to herself, which are inserted at the close of the
Domestic Correspondence. The series is entitled,
Letters of my Fathers, which he writ to my Brother
Thomas when he went into France, at 14 years of
age; 1660. I have not thought proper to alter the
spelling of these letters ; but would observe that its
faultiness must not be charged on Sir Thomas. He
wrote so illegibly (as those are well aware who have
been fated to decypher his hieroglyphics) that his or-
thography was left at the mercy of the copyist, who,
in the present case, seems not to have been remark-
ably skilled in that accomplishment.
