Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/393

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EDITORS PREFACE


TO THE


GARDEN OF CYRUS, HYDRIOTAPHIA, AND BRAMPTON URNS.




In arranging the present edition, I have endeavoured to preserve the order in which the several works were first published; and at the same time to bring together, as far as possible, similar subjects. To secure these objects, I have placed the Hydriotaphia between the Garden of Cyrus and the Brampton Urns; though in the first edition of the two former pieces, the author placed the Garden of Cyrus last; as he has noticed in his preface to it.

That edition was published in 1658, in sm. 8vo.: the title, epistles (to both discourses), and a plate of four urns, occupy a sheet, on the last page of which is the plate, facing the first page of the work, which extends to thirteen sheets—208 pp. viz. Hydriotaphia, 84 pp.—Garden of Cyrus, 124 pp. the first four containing the plate and title, with two blanks, and the last six pp. containing "The Stationer to the Reader," "Books printed for Hen. Broome" and a label, "Dr. Browne's Garden of Cyrus," in large letters printed down the middle of the page, and evidently intended to be pasted at the back of the volume. This edition is not commonly met with perfect.

The Second edition is that which appeared with the Fourth edition of Pseudodoxia, under the direction of its author; who has prefixed to the volume two pages of "Marginal Illustrations omitted, or to be added to the Discourses of Urn-burial, and of the Garden of Cyrus;" with "Errata in the Enquiries," and "in the discourses annexed."

The Third edition, in double columns, was printed with the sixth of Religio Medici, as an addition to the third[B 1] of

  1. Erroneously called the fourth, in my preface to Religio Medici, vol. ii, p. x.