new light of his own commentator. The Garden of Cyrus has, by general consent, been regarded as one of the most fanciful of his works. The most eminent even of his admirers have treated it as a mere sport of the imagination, "in the prosecution of which, he considers every production of art and nature, in which he could find any decussation or approaches to the form of a quincunx, and, as a man once resolved upon ideal discoveries, seldom searches long in vain, he finds his favourite figure in almost every thing;"—"quincunxes," as Coleridge says, "in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in every thing. "[B 1] The increased attention, however, which modern naturalists have paid to the prevalence of certain numbers in the distribution of nature, and Mr. Macleay's persevering and successful advocacy of A QUINARY ARRANGEMENT would naturally lead an admirer of Browne to look at this work in a higher point of view than as a mere jeu d'esprit. How far, in short, has he anticipated in this work—as he certainly must be allowed to have done in the Pseudodoxia,—those who have conducted their inquiries in the midst of incomparably greater light and knowledge, and with the advantage of an immensely increased accumulation of facts and observations of every kind? For an answer to this question I refer to the notes of E. W. Brayley, Jun. Esq. especially at pp. 413, 423, 439, 446.
- ↑ See Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. vii, 169.
