Before assessing Browne's impact on Melville, we should first note that Melville came to Browne at a most auspicious time-auspicious in terms both of Melville's own career and of Browne's substantial reputation in the nineteenth century. Although Browne's once considerable popularity had diminished markedly in the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century greeted him with open arms.' Leader of the new wave of enthusiasts, Charles Lamb reveled in Browne's largely forgotten pages. Indeed, as Olivier Leroy observes, "Lamb a fait plus que lire Browne, qu'aimer Browne, il s'en est inspire, presque nourri."' Lamb did not horde his treasure, however. His enthusiastic commentaries on Browne were widely circulated. He sent a copy of the Religio to Wordsworth in 1804. And, most importantly, he commended Browne to Coleridge, whose enthusiasm rivaled Lamb's own: "I have never read a book, in which I felt greater similarity to my own make of mind-active in enquiry, & yet with an appetite to believe,-in short, an affectionate and elevated Visionary!"3 If Lamb inspired the revival of interest per se, Coleridge inspired the revival of critical interest with his famous letter to Sara Hutchinson, published in Blackwood's Magazine, in which he remarks of The Garden of Cyrus that Browne finds "Quincunxes in Heaven above, Quincunxes in Earth below ... in every thing!"4 Coleridge's contagious enthusiasm spread through British literary circles and soon reached New England, where Browne became a favorite among many of the Transcendentalists as well as among the group of New York literati headed by Evert A. Duyckinck. Publisher of the Literary World and owner of a large private library of some fifteen to twenty thousand volumes, Duyckinck numbered among his favorites both Lamb and Coleridge. And fittingly, when Duyckinck bought Simon Wilkin's four-volume edition of Browne's Works in 1836, he copied into one volume some of Coleridge's comments on Browne and noted that Lamb had been the purchasing agent.5 Following in their footsteps, Duyckinck mounted a public campaign to restore Browne to prominence, publishing excerpts from Browne's prose in the Literary World with astonishing regularity. At a more personal level, Duyckinck obviously encouraged his friend Melville to read Browne, for when Melville began borrowing from Duyckinck's library, three volumes of Browne's Works were