We're all Heirs of Sir Thomas Browne...but some of us take it more seriously than others

[ellen_kushner]

Wonderful Samuel R. Delany posted his list of "Children of Dr. Thomas Browne" - that's Sir Thomas Browne to you, author of RELIGIO MEDICI ("A Doctor's Religion"), URN BURIAL, and like that - and invited people to discuss it.*

But one line of Delany's jumped out at me - and with his permission, I share it with you here (in context):

The Brontes?

Comments

Delany responds

[ellen_kushner]

Again, on Facebook:

" Ellen, without a pause, I would put Swordspoint and Thomas the Rhymer as books on the Browne line of descent--by the bye. I was staying away from living writers, when I made the first list, but I was thinking of you all through it. Just sayin' . . ."

My day - nay, my year! - is made.

https://www.facebook.com/ellen.kushner/posts/10154088925850061?comment_id=48354712&offset=0&total_comments=1¬if_t=share_comment

Hydriotaphia quotes

[ext_2545738]

OK, Ellen, a couple of favorite quotes. My copy is at school so I'm trying to do this by memory....

"The certainty of death is attended with uncertainties in time, manner, places. The variety of Monuments have often obscured true graves: and Cenotaphs confounded Sepulchres."

"If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live with death, and die not in a moment."

And (and I'm not sure I am going to get this exactly right but I will give it a shot since it's wonderfully snarky...)

"What Song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture."

More will have to wait till I get my annotated copy from the office tomorrow!