[Thomas Browne, the writer of the foregoing letter, was a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge; but subsequently, with his friend Mr. Baker, became a Nonjuror. The letter appears to have been written to the Rev. Hilkiah Bedford, a Nonjuring clergyman, who was at this time preparing his masterly reply to Anthony Collins' work, _Priestcraft in Perfection_, which was published in 1709. Mr. Bedford's work was published anonymously, and is entitled, _A Vindication of the Church of England from the Aspersions of a late Libel entituled "Priestcraft in Perfection," &c._ By a Priest of the Church of England: London, 1710. The preface has been attributed to Dr. Joseph Trapp. Mr. Bedford has availed himself of the information conveyed to him in the letter given above, especially in pages 32. 35. 42. 78. 84. At page 101. he says, "I shall set down what farther account concerning this ancient MS. I have received in several letters from two persons of great learning and integrity at Cambridge, who have consulted these MSS. of Corpus Christi formerly, and been so obliging to examine them again now for my satisfaction, with all the care and exactness due to a matter of such moment." The _minium_ mentioned by the writer of the letter is the red lead pencil commonly used by Archbishop Parker, for noting particular passages in the documents he perused.] ON TWO PASSAGES IN DRYDEN. I have met with a notion in Dryden's _Poems_, which reads very like a blunder. It occurs in the "Spanish Friar," as follows:-- "There is a pleasure sure in being mad, Which none but madmen know." And again in this couplet: "And frantic men in their mad actions show A happiness, that none but madmen know;" There is a description of madness to which all men are more or less subject, and which Pascal alludes to in one of his "Pensées:" "Les hommes sont si nécessairement fous, que ce serait être fou par un autre tour de folie, que de ne pas être fou:" or, as Boileau has it in the couplet: "Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré leurs soins, Ne diffèrent, entre eux, que du plus ou du moins." There is another sort of madness which is described by Terence as ---- "cum ratione insanire." And there is a third species of it, which Dryden himself speaks of in the well-known line adopted from Seneca: "Great wits are sure to madness near allied." Now, it is obvious that, in the passages above quoted from Dryden, he does not refer to any of these three kinds of madness. As a man, he could say in regard to the first: "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."