Amenities of Literature Part 54

[3] When Rawleigh was himself in the place where he had put Ess.e.x--on the scaffold, he solemnly declared that "he had no hand in his blood, and was none of them that procured his death." How are we to reconcile this declaration with the extraordinary letter which first appeared in Murdin's Collection, and which Hume a.s.serts "contains the strongest proofs to the contrary?"--Mr. Lodge understands the advice of Rawleigh in the very worst sense; Mr. Tytler, with ingenuity, suggests that Cecil, with "a prospective wariness, which--not satisfied with deceiving his contemporaries--provided _blinds for posterity_," procured Rawleigh to address this letter to him; and, in a word, that, in composing this energetic epistle, he was not so much the writer as the agent in the plot. I am more disposed to believe that when Rawleigh wrote so remarkable a letter, he was fully aware of its import, and looked forwards to the result.

[4] The extraordinary means of the duplicity of this wily minister are stated by Mr. TYTLER in the Appendix to his "Life of Rawleigh."

[5] As _Rawleigh_, like all his contemporaries, including Shakspeare, wrote his name diversely, so that we are at a loss to p.r.o.nounce it, this spontaneous sally of the Scottish monarch reveals its real p.r.o.nunciation; which is also confirmed by a sort of epigram of that day.

[6] The secret history of this state-riddle--the conspiracy of Cobham, a disappointed courtier--as Mr. Lodge observes, might fill a moderate volume of speculations on its darker parts. All historians agree that it must remain insolvable, and "hopelessly obscure." It is, however, opened with great vigour and novelty of research by Mr.

TYTLER in the Appendix to his biography of Rawleigh. But he pa.s.ses over too slightly the conversation and the offer of the "eight thousand crowns;" and "the pension," of which Rawleigh said--"he would tell him more when he saw the money." It is quite evident that Rawleigh had been tampered with by the silly Cobham, whose ricketty brains had been concocting a crude, fantastic plot, which was hardly the initial of one. But Rawleigh had listened; he had not positively refused his partic.i.p.ation, neither had he yielded his consent. When "the eight thousand crowns" had safely arrived, where were they to go? Rawleigh declared that "when he saw the money, he would be ready to talk more on the subject." Mr. Tytler, like Sir Walter, is pleased to consider that the whole affair was "one of Lord Cobham's idle conceits."

[7] This incident in the life of Rawleigh is told in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. I have been enabled to give the secret history of this Sir Lewis Stukeley, who having first despoiled, then betrayed his great kinsman. That history offers one of the most striking instances of moral retribution.

[8] The explanatory stanzas prefixed to this "Mind," though unsubscribed by the name of the writer, were composed by Jonson, for they appear in his works.

[9] Rawleigh notices a singular instinct in the birds in these new regions, which built their nests on the twigs of trees, pendent over the waters, rather than in the branches, to save their young from the attacks of the monkeys. In such relations he is full and particular.

He collects the marvellous accounts of the _Ficus indica_--the Banian, or sacred tree of the Brahmins; we nowhere find such a lively picture of that singular curiosity of nature, the self-planting tree, here minutely described.

[10] The authors of the "General Dictionary" censure Wood for his unauthenticated a.s.sertions; and they infer that, as he was thus evidently erroneous in his notion of Rawleigh's history, he may have been equally so in his idea of the philosophical theology of Hariot.

Wood, however, could have alleged his authority, though a very indifferent one. We have recently discovered that Wood here was only transcribing the crude hearsays of his friend Aubrey; and, in these matters, the Oxford antiquary, and the "magotie-headed" gossiper, as Wood afterwards found him to be, were equally intelligent.

[11] Hoskyns wrote many poems. A ma.n.u.script volume of his poems, fairly written we may presume for the press, and "bigger than all Donne's works," was "lent by his son Sir Benedict," A. Wood tells us, "who was a man that ran with the usurping Parliament, to a certain person, in 1653, but he could never retrieve it." We are left in the dark to know whether we have lost a great poet or only a loyalist; whether the "certain person" was a parliamentary _enrage_, or only utterly reckless of a collection of poems "bigger than Dr. Donne's!"

One poem of this great critic has come down to us, of which there is more than one ma.n.u.script in the Museum, and one in the Ashmolean,--"A Vision," addressed to the king during his confinement, in which he introduces his mother, and his wife, and his child. By the frequency of these copies we find how much temporary pa.s.sion gave an interest to very indifferent writings. It is printed by Dr. Bliss in the "Athenae Oxonienses."

[12] Preface to the "History of the World."

[13] The name of Rawleigh proved too attractive for the booksellers to escape their grasp; they have forged his name on various occasions, and they have done worse; for they have unquestionably adulterated his genuine works by admitting writings which he never could have written. Rawleigh composed some "Instructions to his Son and to Posterity." The publisher of his "Remains" probably considered that "The Dutiful Advice of a Loving Son to his Aged Father" must be equally acceptable. Sir Walter had no aged father to address; and if he had, he would not have written such a mean piece of puritanic insolence. I suspect that "The Advice" was nothing but a parody on "The Instructions" by some very witless scribbler.

[14] Hume was bitterly attacked in the "Biographia Britannica" by a Dr. Philip Nicoll, one of the writers calling himself one of the proprietors, for his account of the conduct of Rawleigh--art.

"Ralegh," note (cc). The spirit of nationality was rife in 1760, when we find that a cruel apology is inflicted on Hume as "a foreigner!

for this writer may be allowed the privilege of that plea, as being born and bred, and constantly living among a people, and under a const.i.tution, of a very different nature, genius, and temper from the Englis.h.!.+" I cannot believe that Hume, to remove the odium of Rawleigh's death from the Scottish monarch, purposely depreciated the hero; but probably looking hastily into the account of Guiana, stuffed with the monstrous tales of a lying Spaniard, and considering the whole to be a gross artifice of the great navigator for an interested purpose, he gave way to his impressions.

[15] The Dean of Westminster was astonished at Rawleigh's cheerfulness on the day of his execution, who "made no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey." The divine was fearful that this contempt of death might arise from "a senselessness of his own state," but the hero satisfied the dean that he died "very Christianly." Yet the gossip of Aubrey tells, that "his cousin Whitney said, and I think it is printed, that he spake not one word of Christ, but of the great and incomprehensible G.o.d with much zeal and adoration, so that he concluded he was an a-Christ, not an a-theist." In this manner great men were then judged whenever they "ventured at discourse which was unpleasant to the churchmen," as this confused recorder of curious matters has sent down to us. This indicates that Socinian principles were appearing.

THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR. DEE.

At the dawn of philosophy its dreams were not yet dispersed, and philosophers were often in peril of being as imaginative as poets. The arid abstractions of the schoolmen were succeeded by the fanciful visions of the occult philosophers; and both were but preludes to the experimental philosophy of Bacon and Newton, and the metaphysics of Locke. The first illegitimate progeny of science were deemed occult and even magical; while astronomy was bewildered with astrology, chemistry was running into alchemy, and natural philosophy wantoned in the grotesque chimeras of magical phantoms, the philosophers themselves pursued science in a suspicious secresy, and were often imagined to know much more than the human faculties can acquire. These anagogical children of reverie, straying beyond "the visible diurnal sphere,"

elevated above humanity, found no boundary which they did not pa.s.s beyond--no profundity which they did not fathom--no alt.i.tude on which they did not rest. The credulity of enthusiasts was kept alive by the devices of artful deceivers, and illusion closed in imposture.

Shakspeare, in the person of Prospero, has exhibited the prevalent notions of the judicial astrologer combined with the adept, whose white magic, as distinguished from the black or demon magic, holds an intercourse with purer spirits. Such a sage was

--------transported, And rapt in secret studies;

that is, in the occult sciences; and he had

Volumes that he prized more than his dukedom.

These were alchemical, astrological, and cabalistical treatises. The magical part of _The Tempest_, Warton has observed, "is founded on that sort of philosophy which was peculiar to JOHN DEE and his a.s.sociates, and has been called 'the Rosicrucian.'"

Dr. DEE was a Theurgist, a sort of magician, who imagined that they held communication with angelic spirits, of which he has left us a memorable evidence. His personal history may serve as a canvas for the picture of an occult philosopher--his reveries, his ambition, and his calamity.

Dee was an eminent and singular person, more intimately connected with the patronage of Elizabeth than perhaps has been observed. It was the fate of this scholar to live in the reigns of five of our successive sovereigns, each of whom had some influence on his fortunes. His father, in the household of Henry the Eighth, suffered some "hard-dealing" from this imperious monarch injurious to the inheritance of the son; the harshness of the sire was considered by the royal children, for Edward granted a pension; Mary, in the day of trial, was favourably disposed towards the philosopher; and Elizabeth, a queen well known for her penurious dispensations, at all times promptly supplied the wants of her careless and dreamy sage.

That decision of character which awaits not for any occasion to reveal itself, broke forth in his college-days. His skill in mathematics, and his astronomical observations, had attracted general notice; and in his twentieth year, Dee ventured on the novel enterprise of conferring personally with the learned of the Netherlands. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, little experimental knowledge was to be gathered out of books. Like the ancient, our insular philosophers early travelled to discover those novelties in science which were often limited to the private circle; there were no Royal or Antiquarian Societies, no "Transactions" of science or the arts. Robert Fludd, the great Rosicrucian, who became more famous than Dee in occult studies, before he gave the world his elaborate labours, pa.s.sed six years in his travels in France, Germany, and Italy.

Our youthful sage on his return to his college presented them with several curious instruments of science which were not then always procurable in the shops of mechanics. Philosophers often made as well as invented their implements. The learned Mercator was renowned for his globes; and mathematical instruments, of a novel construction, were the invention of the scientific Frisias.

Our young philosopher, already suspected of a dangerous intimacy with the astral influences, did not quiet the murmurs by his improved dexterity in mechanics. In the elation of youth, he astounded the marvelling fellows of his college. Dee has himself confessed, that "his boyish attempts and exploits scholastical may not be meet to repeat." In a lecture, Dee executed a piece of mechanical invention which now would have been pantomimical, but was then necromantic. When a greater magician, Roger Bacon, by his art, had made the apparition of a man to walk from the top of All-Hallows steeple in Oxford to the top of St.

Mary's, this optical illusion had endangered his life; and another great occult philosopher set forth a compa.s.sionate apology for the science of optics, but could only allege it was not magical, though it seemed so.

Two centuries and a half had not sufficed to enlighten the fellows of a college at Oxford.

Dee has suffered hard measure from those who have only judged of him in the last days of his unprotected distress. In his age, if we except mathematics, there were few demonstrable truths in science; disguised as it was by rank fables and airy hypotheses; nature was not interpreted so often as she was misunderstood. The ideal world seemed hardly more illusive than the material. While his sovereign, and the nation, and foreigners were looking up to the solitary sage, may we not pardon the honest egotism which once declared, that if he had found a Maecenas, Britain would not have been dest.i.tute of an Aristotle? BACON had not yet appeared; and however we may deem of his aspiration, we cannot censure his judgment in discovering there was yet a vacant seat for him who was worthy to fill it.

Dee was an eminent mathematician, but the early bent of his mind was somewhat fanciful; an inextinguishable ambition to fix the admiration of the world worked on a restless temperament and a long vagrant course of life; and his generous impulses burst into the wild exuberances of the reveries of astrology, alchemy, and the cabbala.

The restlessness of a mind ever escaping from the bounded present to the indefinite future, directed his flight to the University of Louvain; there he attracted a n.o.ble crowd from the court of Brussels, whom he charmed like a new oracle of science. Then he rambled to Paris, to lecture on his favourite Euclid, explaining the elements not only mathematically, but by their application to natural philosophy, like another Pythagoras. A professors.h.i.+p was offered him on any terms; and the curious may still decide on his skill by a remarkable English preface which Dee furnished to the translation of Euclid by Sir Henry Billingsley. Admiration seemed more real to Dee when he attracted it on different spots. Preceded by his reputation, with a name which had received the baptism of fame, he returned homewards, where he had potent friends, in Sir John Cheke and in Cecil, and others who had been his auditors or his pupils; and he was pensioned by the youthful Edward.

In the jealous reign of Mary, he gave umbrage by a correspondence with the confidential servants of the Princess Elizabeth; and Dee had now grown into such repute for his occult sciences, that there was little difficulty in accusing him of practising against the queen by enchantments. Cast into prison, the magician witnessed his "bedfellow,"

a meek religious man, dragged to the flames, an incident which long after he could not remember without horror. The spirit of the sovereign fails not to betray itself in each succeeding reign. Mary bound men to the stake, Elizabeth sent them forth into new seas and new lands, and the pacific James, turning them into babbling polemics, only shed much human ink. The inquisitors unexpectedly detected no act of treason; but as possibly he might stand in peril of heresy, they recommended that he should be placed under the surveillance of Bishop Bonner, which probably was a royal protection. It is evident that Mary was as favourably disposed towards the philosopher as were her brother and her sister; and the literary memorial Dee addressed to the queen showed that he had no leisure to become an heresiarch.

Dee proposed "the recovery and preservation of ancient writers and monuments." These had been lamentably dispersed and wasted by the spoilers of the dissolved monasteries. The moment was favourable for the acquisition, not only by obtaining ma.n.u.scripts, but by procuring transcripts of all which their possessors would not part with. In this memorial Dee has recorded, that Cicero's treatise "De Republica"

perished at Canterbury, and it was the single copy which authenticated its existence. With such a collection, he proposed to erect "a library royal"----a future Vatican, or a British Museum! A n.o.ble design, when as yet no national inst.i.tution for general learning existed. This glorious opportunity was lost! Governments rarely comprehend those prescient minds which antic.i.p.ate wants posterity cannot always supply.

The early intercourse of the Princess Elizabeth with our philosopher suffered no interruption, as we shall have occasion to show, during her protracted reign, notwithstanding the ill fame of his awful skill in the occult sciences. We must throw ourselves into his times to judge of the calamity of this celebrity. This, and the succeeding age, were troubled by the faith of omens, meteors, and of "day-fatality," combined with the astral influences, malignant witchcraft, and horrible magic. It was only at the close of the seventeenth century, in 1682, that Bayle ventured anonymously in his "Thoughts on Comets," cautiously to demonstrate that these fugitive bodies in the heavens had no influence whatever over the cabinets of princes! Our own historian, Arthur Wilson, in describing "a blazing star," opined that it was not sent as "a flambeau" to usher in the funeral of the simple queen of James the First; the Puritan had no notion that heaven would compliment royalty; but he was not the less alarmed for the Protestant interest, as it concerned "the war then breaking out in Bohemia;" and so difficult was it to decide between the two opinions, that Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards, very carefully chronicles both. Such was the philosophy of the Elizabethan age, and truly much later, in France as well as in England.

It was therefore in the spirit of the age that the minister of Elizabeth held a formal conference with Dr. Dee to fix on a fortunate day for the coronation, and which the sage opened to them on "the principles of the most ancient astrologers;" and the Privy Council punctually placed the crown on the head of the Queen of England. Nor was this the only occult lore for which his protection of the queen's safety was earnestly sought. Dee one morning was hastily summoned to prevent a sudden mischief impending over her majesty's person. A great puppet of wax, representing the queen, was discovered lying in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, with a huge pin stuck through its breast. Dee undertook to quiet "Her Majesty and the Lords of the Honourable Privy-Council" within a few hours, but first insisted that, in the solemn disenchantment, Mr.

Secretary Wilson should stand beside him to witness that Dee only used "G.o.dly means." It is not in our histories of England that we learn the real occasion of the coronation-day of Elizabeth, nor of the panic of "the Privy-Council" on the incident in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields; yet such domestic annals of a people enter into the national character, and have sometimes strangely influenced it.[1]

Though Dee was imbued with the occult sciences of his age, he ardently cultivated arts and literature which would have honoured him in the present. He had formed a great library, rich in Irish and Welsh and other ancient ma.n.u.scripts, which probably no other person then possessed;[2] an observatory where he watched, to read in the volume of the heavens; a laboratory of chemistry where the furnace rarely ceased; and a collection of philosophical instruments, too many of which were deemed magical. All these attested his energetic pursuits, to the manifold injury of a very moderate fortune, and the carelessness of a life of abstraction and reverie.

But his ambition had accomplished its proud object; and on all public events wherein science was concerned, recourse was had to the sage of Mortlake. Camden refers to Dr. Dee's astronomical observations of a new star which had gradually vanished, though the celestial apparition had spread great fears and doubts; but our philosopher entertained the Queen the length of three days with the phenomenon. A more important labour was his reformation of the Gregorian Calendar, which even later mathematicians have deemed correct. The versatility of the pursuits of this scientific man was as remarkable as their ingenuity. In that reign of maritime enterprise many of our adventurers had taken nominal possession of many new countries, and the Queen had expressed a wish to learn their sites. One day, in her garden at Richmond, Dee unrolled to the royal eye a s.p.a.cious scroll, hydrographical, geographical, and historical, where the rivers were tracked, and the coasts indented, and the authorities of the records inscribed on its page, by which the sovereign founded her t.i.tle to dominions of which she had not always heard the names.[3] The genius of Dee was as erratic as the course of life he shortly fell into, but it kept great objects in view; and, as he projected a national library under Mary when literature itself seemed lost, under Elizabeth, when "this incomparable islandish monarchy" was menaced by the foreigner, he investigated "the art of navigation," and proposed "the perpetual guard and service of a petty navy royal, continually to be maintained without the Queen's charges or any unpleasant burdens to the Commons." Our inventor was antic.i.p.ating our future national greatness, and such minds are only comprehended when they can no longer receive our grat.i.tude.

Our author published eight or ten learned works, and left unfinished fifty, some far advanced.[4]

The imagination of Dee often predominated over his science; while both were mingling in his intellectual habits, each seemed to him to confirm the other. p.r.o.ne to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, (which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains occult ceases to be science,) Dee lost his better genius.

The mathematician whom the sage Burleigh had valued for his correction of the vulgar calendar must have amazed that statesman by a proposal to search for a mine for the royal service! claiming for his sole remuneration a letter patent granting him all _treasure trove_, as, in the barbarous law-French, is termed all wealth hidden in the earth, which, no claimant appearing, becomes appropriated by the sovereign. The mysterious agency of the _virgula divina_, or the divining rod, was to open the undiscovered mine, and to detect, in its progress, for the use of the bearer, the unsunned gold or silver which some had been foolish enough to inter, and not extract, from the earth.[5]

The luminous genius who had ill.u.s.trated the demonstrations of Euclid was penetrating into the arcane caverns of the cabbalists, and in a state of spiritual elevation fell into many a dreamy trance. The soul of the mystic would have pa.s.sed into the world of spiritual existences, but he was not yet blessed with theurgic faculties, and patiently awaited for the elect. If Dee had many reveries, he had also many disciples both of rank and of name. Whatever a mind thus preoccupied and predisposed earnestly seeks, it usually finds; its own infirm imagination aids the deception of the artful. The elect spirit, long expected, was at last found in the person of Edward Kelley, a young apothecary, but an adept in the secret sciences: his services were engaged at a moderate salary.

Kelley had to make his fortune.

This KELLEY, who afterwards became an English alchemist, renowned among the votaries of the hermetic art, and of whom many a golden legend is recorded with which I dare not trust the reader, it appears, once lost his ears at Lancaster for coining; the judges not perhaps distinguis.h.i.+ng the process by which the alchemist might have trans.m.u.ted the baser into the precious metal. This neophyte, moreover, was a wizard--an aspirant in more supernatural arts--an incantator--a spirit-seer! Once with impious temerity he had ventured on questioning the dead! This "deed without a name" was actually perpetrated amid the powers of darkness in the park of Walton-in-the-dale, in the county of Lancaster. A recent corpse was dragged forth from the churchyard; whether the erected spectre made any sign of resuscitation is not recorded, but it probably did--for it spoke! A voice was heard delivering its short but awful responses, sufficient for the evil curiosity of the guardian of a ward, eager to learn the doomsday of that frail mortal's existence.

For this tale our antiquary WEEVER has been quipped by our antiquary ANTHONY a WOOD, for his excessive credulity, as if Anthony would infer that he himself was incredulous on all supernatural disclosures! The authority was, however, unquestionable, for it came from the agent himself in this dark work, the opener of the grave, the spectator of the grim vaticinator, the listener to the sepulchral voice. He had often related this violation of "G.o.d's acre" to many gentlemen in Lancas.h.i.+re, as well as to the faithful scribe of our "Ancient Funeral Monuments."

Many strange unexplained accounts have come down to us where _Voices_ have been introduced, and it has been too usual at once to suppose that the attestations were nothing more than what Butler deems "solid lying."

Leibnitz, a philosopher who seems to have delighted in the wonderful, gives an account of a dog who spoke different languages; the evidence is undeniable; and certain it is that the docile animal at his master's bidding opened his mouth--and good French or Latin was distinctly heard.

When the astrologer Lilly a.s.sures us of one of the magical crystal globes or mirrors from whence the spirits absolutely gave responses, he has described their tones: "They speak, like the Irish, _much in the throat_." "This, if it proves nothing else, will serve to show that the Irish was the primitive language," sarcastically observes Gifford; but his ac.u.men might have discovered that "it proved" something else, and that Lilly here really delivered a plain truth in this description of the _voices_ which gave the responses of the spirits.