[darklybrightpress.com]

Browne and Dickens were touchstones for Machen's imagination. Here Machen got to see manuscript pages of the Dickens work he reread regularly.

Have you read Browne's Urne-Buriall? Its a very well crafted prose style not overly euphuistic but has a certain pleasing cadence to it, with many rare allusions.

Yes, I've read the Urne-Buriall/Hydriotaphia, plus the Religio Medici, an abridgment of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, etc. Do you know his little Musaeum Clausum? --

[publicdomainreview.org]

There's a link there for reading it in an old edition. Speaking of reading things in scans of old editions, thanks to archive.org one can read other interesting things from the 17th century as well, e.g. Richard Baxter on ghosts, philosophical works of Henry More, or Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus. That had three known editions, but I posited a fourth in a story:

[thelampmagazine.com]

I've started reading Religio Medici although haven't finished it yet. I have the tendency to jump from many different books. I was able to obtain from a library a facsimile of Pseudodoxia Epidemica which was very enjoyable to read (I love the typefaces). I started reading Henry More's Psychodoia Platonica: or, a Platonicall Song of the Soul which is also amazing. It's a philosophical poem drawing on the mystical strands of Christian Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, etc and has a glossary of some rare Greek terms and coining's in these traditions. Unfamiliar with Richard Baxter, I'll look into him. I know of Sadducismus Triumphatus but also never finished it. Although a book I feel you would also like: Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart I absolutely loved and did finish. CAS even has a quote, I forget the exact poem, that runs "infant Rabelais". I'm also interested in and will read your own tale. Musaeum Clausum looks very interesting and I'm definitely going to take a look at it.

I have an abridgment of Urquhart's Rabelais on hand, a pretty skinny (!) book.

The Baxter I had in mind for you is part of his long book The Saints' Everlasting Rest, pp. 274 in the scanned text, or pp. 354ff. at the bottom of the screen:

[archive.org]

I should be able to mention one or two more 17th-century references.

Have you read any Phyllis Paul? (20th-century novelist, not much at all known about her)

I hadn't heard of Phyllis Paul will look into her and Baxter. I'm always interested in 17th century literature. I just read Musaeum Clausum; a very fun read. The reference that was most interesting to me was the many volumes of a the Book of Enoch at the library of Alexandria.

There's a lot about Paul and some of her hard-to-find novels here:

[www.sffchronicles.com]

[www.sffchronicles.com]