Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

[1] 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.

The most famous part of the work is the apotheosis of the fifth chapter, where Browne declaims: But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.

"[2] Urn Burial has been admired by Charles Lamb, Samuel Johnson, John Cowper Powys, James Joyce, and Herman Melville,[3] while Ralph Waldo Emerson said that it "smells in every word of the sepulchre".

The American composer Douglas J. Cuomo's The Fate of His Ashes: Requiem for Victims of Power for chorus and organ takes its text from Urn Burial.

Eric Ambler excerpts a passage from chapter 5 ("But the iniquity of oblivion blindely scattereth her poppy...") as the epigram for the novel The Mask of Dimitrios.