Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

The title is Greek for "urn burial": A hydria (ὑδρία) is a large Greek pot, and taphos (τάφος) means "tomb". ==Survey of funerary customs==

Its nominal subject was the discovery of some 40 to 50 Anglo-Saxon pots in Norfolk. The discovery of these remains prompts Browne to deliver, first, a description of the antiquities found, and then a survey of most of the burial and funerary customs, ancient and current, of which his era was aware. ==Description of human nature==

The most famous part of the work is the apotheosis of the fifth chapter, where Browne declaims: George Saintsbury, in the Cambridge History of English Literature (1911), calls the totality of Chapter V "the longest piece, perhaps, of absolutely sublime rhetoric to be found in the prose literature of the world." ==Influence==

Urn Burial has been admired by Charles Lamb, Samuel Johnson, John Cowper Powys, James Joyce, and Herman Melville, American nonfiction writer Colin Dickey compares some of Browne's writing on death in Urn-Burial to the fate of Browne's skull in his book Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius. ==References==