Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/394

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378
EDITOR'S PREFACE.

Pseudodoxia, in folio. But one title-page only accompanied the three pieces: viz. Religio Medici; whereunto is added a Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes, lately found in Norfolk. Together with the Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunciall Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically considered. With Sundry Observations. By Thomas Brown, Doctour of Physick. Printed for the Good of the Commonwealth. No date. That the later edition of the Tracts should have accompanied the earlier of the two editions of Pseudodoxia, published in 1658, requires explanation. It appears that in 1658 Ekins published the third edition, in folio, and Dod the fourth, with a corrected reprint of the two "Discourses," in 4to. To meet this, Ekins printed the very inferior edition, just described, of Religio Medici, &c. and brought out his folio, with a fresh title, dated 1659.

The Fourth edition of the two Discourses was printed with the fifth of Pseudodoxia, in 1669. But, most absurdly, the "Marginal Illustrations, &c." instead of being incorporated in the edition, are reprinted as a table, and not even the pages altered to suit the edition!

The (Fifth) edition was published by Abp. Tenison, with the "Works" in folio, 1686.

In 1736, Curl reprinted, (in an 8vo. tract of 60 pages, with 6 pp. of Epistles, &c.) the Hydriotaphia, Brampton Urns, and the ninth of the Miscellany Tracts, "Of Artificial Hills, &c." followed by the first three chapters only, (unless my copy is imperfect,) of the Garden of Cyrus—in 40 pages—with 6 pp. of Title and Epistle Dedicatory. This is called the Fourth edition, but is in fact the Sixth.

Of the Garden of Cyrus, the present is the Seventh edition; but of Hydriotaphia it is the Eighth; for Mr. Croseley included this latter discourse with Letter to a Friend and Museum Clausum. He has altered the division:—calling the first chapter Introduction, and the remaining chapters Sections 1, 2, 3, 4. I observe, too, that he has, in several instances, altered the phraseology, in his neat little selection of Browne's Tracts, published at Edinburgh in 1822.

The First edition of the account of the Brampton Urns