In common with other English writers of the seventeenth century,
Browne wrote out of the fullness of his erudition, deploying a vast
repertoire of quotations and the names of authorities who had gone
before, creating complex metaphors and analogies, and constructing
labyrinthine sentences that sometimes extend over one or two pages,
sentences that resemble processions or a funeral cortège in their
sheer ceremonial lavishness. It is true that, because of the immense
weight of the impediments he is carrying, Browne's writing can be
held back by the force of gravitation, but when he does succeed in
rising higher and higher through the circles of his spiralling prose,
borne aloft like a glider on warm currents of air, even today the
reader is overcome by a sense of levitation. The greater the
distance, the clearer the view: one sees the tiniest of details with
the utmost clarity. It is as if one were looking through a reversed
opera glass and through a microscope at the same time. And yet, says
Browne, all knowledge is enveloped in darkness. What we perceive are
no more than isolated lights in the abyss of ignorance, in the
shadow-filled edifice of the world.
~ from The Rings of Saturn
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