Like the encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Musaeum Clausum (the Sealed Museum) is a catalogue of doubts and queries, only this time, in true Borgesian style, in the form of extremely brief, thumb-nail descriptions of supposed, rumoured or lost books, picures and objects. Indeed the twentieth century Argentinian short-story writer Jorge Borges himself once declared-
To write vast books is a laborious nonsense, much better is to offer a summary as if those books actually existed.
Browne was not however the first to engage in such a fantasy . the French author Rabelais in his epic Gargantua and Pantagruel also penned a list of imaginary and often obscene book titles in his 'Library of Panatgruel' which is alluded to in Browne's Religio Medici.
As the seventeenth century scientific revolution progressed the popularity and growth of antiquarian collections, some claiming to house highly improbable items grew. Browne himself was an avid collector himself of antiquities and natural specimens possessing amongst other items a supposed Unicorn's horn, presented to him by his friend Arthur Dee whilst his eldest son Edward, visited the famous scholar Athanasius Kircher, founder of the Museo Kircherano at Rome in 1667, whose exhibits included an engine for attempting perpetual motion and a speaking head, which Kircher called his Oraculum Delphinium. Edward later wrote to his father of his visit to the Jesuit priest's closet of rarretys.
Early museums such as Browne's and Kircher's were private affairs, wooden arks or cabinets where antiquarians kept collections of curious objects. The intellectual collector of such curiosities was the forerunner of today's professional natural historian and scientist. Physicians in particular took an interest in natural history, sometimes to the neglect of their medical duties. One of the best known of early collectors was Hans Sloane. Distinguished in medicine and science, President of both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, the books and objects Sloane collected became the foundation of the British Museum.
The sheer volume of book-titles, pictures and objects listed in the Musaeum Clausum is testimony to Browne's fertile imagination, however his major editors, Simon Wilkins in the nineteenth century (1834) and Sir Geoffrey Keynes in the twentieth (1924) summarily dismissed it. Keynes considered its humour to be too erudite, and as 'not to everyone's taste'. However this minor literary masterpiece deserves to be better known for it alludes to motifs and symbols from the worlds of Classical literature, the Bible and alchemy which Browne was fixated upon throughout his life; it is therefore a 'snap-shot' in précis of the symbols which preoccupied his unconscious psyche. Musaeum Clausum also confirms that the ideas, imagery and symbolism of esoteric thought were of great interest to one of the leading intellectuals of seventeenth century Europe . Upon reading its slender pages one may concur with the French art critic Andre Malreaux's observation that-
The human imagination is a museum without walls.
Browne's miscellaneous tract can be read as a parody of the rising trend of private museum collections with their curio's of doubtful origin, and perhaps also of publications such as the so-called Museum Hermeticum (1678) one of the last great anthologies of alchemical literature, with their divulgence of by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, near common-place, alchemical symbols and secrets.
The full text of Musaeum Clausum or Bibliotheca Abscondita can be found at http://penelope.uchicago.edu.
'Book-titles
In his Religio Medici Browne confessed, I can looke a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. Here he gives full vent to his imaginative visual faculties which permits the reader to glimpse his fertile imagination. Examples include-
In Pseudodoxia Epidemica Browne devoted two chapters upon the colour black in which he considered why a considerable proportion of humanity are coloured black and debated at length upon makes human beauty. He concluded that beauty has no specific ethnic group and that what is considered beautiful by one proportion of society is not necessarily appealing to another. Browne's early defence that Black is beautiful cites the Bible, specifically the Song of Solomon in which one reads-
I am black, but comely (Song of songs Chapter 1 verse 5)
Amongst the many honoured and worthy Norfolk gentry whom Browne was acquainted with were the Paston's of Oxnead Hall, Sir William (1610-62) and Sir Robert Paston ( 1631-83). The wealthy landowning family were the owners of one world of curiosityes and some very rich ones, as cabinetts and juells and it possible that Browne visiting the Pastons would have viewed the canvas known as 'The Yaremouth Collection'' which was commissioned by Sir Robert circa 1665 to record the family treasures and believed to be the work of a travelling Dutch master named Franciscus Gysbrech.
The Yaremouth Collection depicts a black servant and a blonde girl holding a bloom of roses, a strombus shell , a silver-gilt flagon, a shell-flask and two nautilus cups. The painting also shows many musical instruments including a lute, bass viol and a cornett . The Yaremouth Collection is a good example of symbolism in Dutch and Flemish still-life painting. The theme of Vanitas and the passing of time are represented in the painting by a hour glass, a watch, a clock, and a guttering candle. With its crowded inventory of material possessions and moralistic symbolism of mortality, the Yaremouth Collection would have appealed to Browne's artistic sensibility and because it depicts a fair English lady attended by her blackamoor servant it may have been the inspiration for him to visualise a painting in which notions of skin colour and beauty are challenged and reversed.
When Mens faces are drawn with resemblance to some other Animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn in Caricatura.
Modern caricature however reverses this definition and most modern cartoons are of animals which resemble human faces.
there is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe,...for there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls.
Browne took an interest in all forms of the seemingly bizarre or unusual. His Commonplace notebooks contain several humorous verses upon dwarfs, whilst in Pseudodoxia Epidemica there is a chapter upon the supposed existence of pygmies (4:XI).
After debating upon the possible location for a dwarfish race of people and describing the Italian zoologist Ulysees Aldrovandus as, a most exact zoographer and the occultist Albertus Magnus as, a man oftimes too credulous, Browne queried Paracelsus stating,
and wise men may think there is as much reality in the pygmies of Paracelsus; that is, his non-Adamical men, or middle natures betwixt men and spirits.
The Swiss alchemist-physician proposed that a particular spirit resided over each element. Nymphs ruled the water, the Salamander fire, Sylphides the air and citing Germanic folk-lore he claimed that deep in the earth there exists a race of dwarf- like Earth-spirits which he named Gnomes. The word Gnome originates from the Greek word gnome meaning knowledge and intelligence for according to Paracelsus these little people were the guardians of the earth who knew where precious metals and hidden treasure were buried.
The first ever Gnome in literature was named Umbriel in Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' (1712). An imaginative aural depiction of a Gnome can be heard in the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition'.
Browne himself in his encyclopaedia was open-minded enough to conclude his speculation upon the existence of little people stating -
we shall not conclude impossibility, or that there might not be a race of Pygmies, as there is sometimes of Giants.
Objects
As if the listing of obscure books and curious pictures were not sufficient, a listing of truly bizarre objects is also included in the imaginary inventory.
Two birds are mentioned, the Vulture and the Ostrich which along with their attributes, an egg and a 'noble stone' both of which have a distinct affinity to alchemical symbolism. Throughout history each and every major civilization has developed its own specific avian symbolism. Such symbolism is often of great antiquity. The ancient Egyptian god Thoth was invariably portrayed Ibis-headed, whilst the Falcon was associated with the god Horus .The Owl was emblematic of the wisdom of Athena to the ancient Greeks whilst the white dove was representative of the Holy Spirit to early Christians.
There is in alchemical literature and iconography a wealth of imagery relating to birds. Birds were popular in alchemical symbolism because their ability to fly served as a symbol of the link between heaven and earth. Their song was believed to be a form of Ursprache or Original language as spoken by Adam to the fowl of the air before the Biblical Fall; It was believed that Adam in his sojourn in Paradise named and could converse with every fowl of the air. After the Fall. The speech of the birds was reputedly revealed to King Solomon, and the language of the birds was said to be revealed to the neo-Pythagorean sage Apollonius of Tyna as well as to early Christian saints, notably Saint Francis of Assisi.
Because alchemists worked with volatile chemicals (Latin volatilis meaning flying) imagery of flight and ascending often occurs in their writings. In the Golden Tract of Hermes Trismegistus a black crow announces its colour transformations. Crows and Ravens often symbolize the initial nigredo black beginning of the alchemical opus.
Other birds associated with alchemy (and this list is far from exhaustive) include - the eagle, the phoenix, emblematic of death and rebirth, the cockerel, the dove and the peacock whose tail the cauda pavonis represents the multi-coloured success and completion of the opus; whilst in the alchemists laboratory the Pelican was the name of a circulatory vat.
Its of particular interest to note that Martin Ruland's Dictionary of Alchemy (1612), defines a Quandros as-
a Stone or Jewel which is found in the brain and head of the Vulture, and is said to be of a bright white colour. It fills the breasts with milk, and is said to be a safeguard against dangerous accidents.
The noble stone visualized by Browne could as easily originate from Biblical symbolism where the philosopher's stone in the form of wisdom extracted from the Book of Job. Written in the form of poetry the book of Job is one of the profoundest spiritual texts to deal with the problem of Man's suffering and was well-known to pious alchemists .Indeed the Bible itself contains alchemical imagery of refinement and dross and the 'testing' of human souls being likened to the testing of metals.
In the Biblical book of Job one reads, -
There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen whilst Chapter 28 contains a description of various precious metals, including silver, gold, topaz and contrasts their material value to that of spiritual Wisdom.
In the language of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the egg represented potentiality, the seed of generation and the mystery of life. In Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus an egg signifying the hope of life hereafter, is depicted floating above a mummy . More specifically the egg in the alchemical tradition held particularly potent symbolic power; not only did it represent the philosopher's stone which slowly incubated in the Vas Hermeticum, the sealed vessel , but it was also a symbol of the Cosmos and the Creation.
Sir Thomas Browne was well-familiar with avian alchemical symbolism for in Religio Medici he utilized avian imagery to describe the Creation thus-
This is that gentle heate that brooded on the waters, and in six dayes hatched the world; R.M.1:32
Browne's relationship to the avian world was also practical. He was by all accounts acquainted with the gentleman's sport of falconry and amongst his miscellaneous writings there exists a short tract upon falconry. He used falconry terms in Religio Medici -
thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoope unto the lure of faith R.M. 1:10
Browne was a keen bird-fancier, at one time or another having an owl, eagle and ostrich as pets. He assisted John Ray and Francis Willoughby with notes, descriptions and illustrations of various birds for the first definitive work of British ornithology and is also credited with coining the word incubation into the English language.
Consider Juno's bird, which wears stars on its tail, think of the eagle that carries Jove's thunderbolt, and Venus's doves, and the whole race of birds - who would believe that they could come from the inside of an egg, if he did not know that it happened. Some people also believe that when a human body is shut up in the tomb, and its backbone rots away, the marrow changes into a snake. Metamorphosis Bk. 15 lines 385-90
Amongst the Gnostics of the early Christian era the snake was regarded as an emblem of the brain-stem and spinal cord. In Jungian psychology because like the Spider the snake is a cold-blooded creature remote from our evolution which arouses our greatest fear, the snake is interpreted as an excellent symbol of the unconscious. The Uroboros, the alchemical symbol for the mercurial serpent and symbol of psychic transformation was termed by C.G.Jung as 'the basic mandala of alchemy'.
Browne was well familiar with the Snake as symbol of the Uroboros. Twenty years earlier he wrote of the symbol in A letter to a Friend whilst in his Discourse Urn-Burial he considered, some speak of snakes out of the spinal marrow.
Browne's transcendent Perfume is an example of his usage of olfactory imagery and appreciation of humour in the Classics whilst in Jungian psychology the two Indies are an example of the quaternity (Cw. 9 I para 206).
The image of a Glass of Spirits made of Ethereal Salt is utterly Hermetic in content, Ethereal being synonymous to the "heavenly" of the alchemists, whilst Salt was symbolically associated with wisdom. Browne's allusion to the "heavenly wisdom" of Hermetic philosophy is itself kept in Quick-silver, the chemical frequently associated with the Hermetic art and his allusion to the scientific term 'Hermetically Sealed' is an early recorded reference to the technical term.
Finally, it is interesting to note that the mythic Hermes Trismegistus was credited with a magical ability to seal treasure-chests so that no-one could ever access their contents.
As ever however the ambiguity of Browne's credulity of the claims of alchemists is cunningly camouflaged in his concluding jest -
He who knows where all this Treasure now is, is a great Apollo. I'm sure I am not He. However, I am, Sir, Yours &c.