Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“ Fond of the curious, and a hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceived himself, with quaint and humourous gravity a useful enquirer into physical truth and fundamental science,- he loved to contemplate and discuss his own thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's, that they too were curiousities, and so with a perfectly graceful and interesting ease he put them too into his museum and cabinet of varieties. ”

“ Read his Hydriotaphia above all:- and in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive Sir Thomas-Browne-ness of all the fancies and modes of illustration, wonder at and admire his entireness in every subject, which is before him- he is totus in illo; he follows it; he never wanders from it,- and he has no occasion to wander;- for whatever happens to be his subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. ”