The author delights in two passages from Sir Thomas Browne’s works that exemplify the breadth of 17th‑century English. The opening of “On Dreams” and the closing of “Of the Picture of Dolphins” showcase his luminous beauty and daring flamboyance, a juxtaposition that brings sheer joy to anyandard reader.

Browne’s prose is described as a magnificent Baroque palace, with dizzying turns, grandiose lyricism, and opulent elegance. All of this is a monument to a brief enchanted period when English achieved a full range of expressive powers, unburdened by any conscience about employing them to their fullest.

Yet the same era produced the King James Bible, celebrated for simplicity, clarity, and plain diction. The contrast between Browne’s complex cadences and the Bible’s pellucid phrasing is striking, yet both belong to a continuum that moves from beautiful ornamentation to sublime restraint.

Across the great writers of the period—John Donne, John Dryden, Thomas Hobbes, and others—prose emerges only after a language has matured, balancing expressiveness and reticence. This tension between beauty and sublimity defines the pinnacle of any national prose.