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Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial is a treatise by Sir Thomas Browne who is "a physician by profession and a divine or preacher by inclination". It was inspired by the discovery of some fifty urns containing the remains of human bones in a field in Norfolk.
This sets the author meditating on death and oblivion which comes upon man, the hope of immortality through monuments and tombstones and on the various modes of disposal of the dead bodies recorded in history and practiced in Britain. The tone is philosophical and mystical. Man's hope of immortality through remembrancers, according to the writer, is becoming madder as the world grows old and nears its end. The book is an intimate self-revelation, resembling the works of Montaigne, the French philosopher and the "father of the Essay". The author's remarks of his courage, charity, pity for other's ills, freedom from pride etc. are genial and have no strain of vanity or egoism. Thus it is the charm of a mystic and sweet personality that gives the enduring interest to his writings a feature that so much attracted Charles Lamb, the master of the intimate, familiar essay.
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| Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial |
Browne's title to fame rests on the fact that he is a literary artist rather than a philosopher. He shows the ornate style of the time in its richest bloom. His sentences are short, clearly outlined and modern in construction. His style is Latinized, because of his love of the cadences of the Latin words. It has a solemn beauty of its own. It reaches the highest level of rhetorical prose all through the book.