Amenities of Literature Part 55

The art of the ventriloquist to convey his voice to the place he wills--into the gaunt jaws of a dead man's skull--into the moveable lips of a tutored dog, or into the invisible spirits of a magical globe--may be easily recognised. Ventriloquism has been oftener practised than has been known to the listeners. Speaking _much in the throat_ identifies that fact.i.tious voice, which, drawing the air into the lungs, proceeds out of the thorax, and not from a lower region, as the ancient etymology indicated. The Pythonesses of the oracles exercised this faculty, and it was not less skilfully practised by Edward Kelley.

In the theurgic mysteries Dee would not deviate from what he deemed "the most Christian courses;" fervent orisons and other devotional ceremonies were to hallow the cabbalistical invocations,[6] and the astrological configurations and hieroglyphical cakes of wax, and other magical furniture. Among these was "a showstone," or an angelical mirror, placed on a pedestal.[7] By patient inspection at certain more blessed hours, the gifted seer could descry the apparitions of spirits moving within its cloudless...o...b.. for at other times less propitious the surface was indistinct, as if a misty curtain hung over it.[8]

By what natural progress of incidents the bold inventive genius of Kelley worked this fascination on the fatuity of the visionary might be curious to develope; but he who himself probably had been a dupe was the better adapted to play the impostor. Strange as this incident may appear to us, it was not rare at that day. A communion with invisible spirits entered into the general creed throughout Europe, and crystal or beryl was the magical medium; but as the gift of _seeing_ what was invisible to every one else was reserved for the elect, it was this circ.u.mstance which soon led to impostures. Persons even of ordinary rank in life pretended to be what they termed _speculators_, and sometimes women were _speculatrices_. Often by confederacy, and always by a vivacious fancy, these jugglers poured out their several artful revelations. We now may inscribe as an historical fact in the voluminous annals of human folly, from which, however, we have hardly yet wholly escaped, imaginary beings, and incantation of spirits, and all spectral apparitions.

Kelley was now installed into the office of _Skryer_; a term apparently of Dee's invention. Listening to the revelations of angelic spirits and to the mysterious secret, the alchemist inflamed the cabbalistical faith of the visionary. It is certain that Dee now abandoned his mundane studies, and for many a year, through some thousands of pages, when Kelley was in the act of "skrying," sate beside "the show-stone," the eager scribe of those imagined conferences with "the spirits," received, to use his own words, "through the eye and the ear of E. K." Kelley was a person of considerable fancy, which sometimes approached to a poetical imagination; the masquerade of his spiritual beings is remarkable for its fanciful minuteness. Voices were at times audible to Dee; but the terrific noises of supernatural agency which sometimes accompanied the visions could only have been heard by the poetical ear of Kelley, though a.s.suredly they shook the doctor. I will give the reader a notion of one of these scenes.

E. K. looking into the show-stone, said, "I see a garland of white rose-buds about the border of the stone: they be well opened, but not full out."

[Delta] "The great mercies of G.o.d be upon us; we beseech him to increase our faith."

E. K. "Amen! But while I consider these buds better they seem rather to be white lilies."

[Delta] "The eternal G.o.d wipe away our blackness, and make us purer and whiter than snow."

E. K. "They are 72 in number (angels), seeming with their heads _alternatim_, seeming with their heads one towards me and one towards you. A voice cometh shouting out from the lilies, and all the lilies are become on fire. I hear a sound as though it were of many waters poured or streaming down in the clifts of great rocks and mountains. The noise is marvellous great; I hear it as afar off, and through the stone, or as it were of a thousand water-mills going together."

A VOICE. "_Est. Et quo modo est?_"

ANOTHER VOICE. "_Male et in summo: et mensuratum est._"

E. K. "I hear a great roaring, as if it were out of a cloud over one's head, not perfectly like thunder."

ANOTHER VOICE. "_The Seal is broken!_"

E. K. "Now I see beyond like a furnace-mouth as big as four or five gates of a city, as if it were a quarter of a mile off, with a horrible smother of smoke coming out of it; and by it a great lake of pitch, and it bubbleth or simpereth as water doth when it beginneth to seethe.

There standeth by the pit a white man in a white garment tucked up; his face is marvellous fair: this white spiritual creature saith, 'My Lord, _Ascend_!'"

E. K. "Now there cometh out a thing like a lion in the hinder parts, and his fore parts hath many heads of divers fas.h.i.+ons upon one trunk; he hath like feathers on his neck; his heads are seven, three on one side, and three on another, and one in the middle, longer than the rest, lying backward to his tailward. The white man giveth him a b.l.o.o.d.y sword, and he taketh it in his fore-foot. The white man tieth this monster's fore-legs with a chain, that he cannot go but as one shackled. Now he giveth the monster a great hammer with a seal at that end where the hammer striketh. The white man has cried with a loud cry, 'A horrible and terrible beast!' The white man taketh the hammer and striketh him in the forehead of that head which is in the middle. Now all this vision is vanished away: the stone is clear."

On another occasion E. K. says, "I hear a marvellous noise, as of many mountains: which of the mouths do speak I cannot discern. I hear a greater noise still; I never heard any such noise; it is as if half the world were rus.h.i.+ng down a hill."[9]

During two years, in which Dee deserted his studies and sacrificed his fortune, the name of Dee still remained so eminent that learned foreigners in their visits to England continued their inquiries after him. A Polish prince, Albert a'Laski, who was received with high honours at our court, applied to the Earl of Leicester for an introduction to the great English philosopher, and the Earl appointed a day to dine with Dr. Dee. Then it was that our philosopher disclosed his mortifying condition, that he could no longer entertain his n.o.ble guests without selling his plate. The Queen instantly sent him forty angels in gold.

The ill.u.s.trious Polander became a constant visitor, was initiated into the theurgic mysteries; there came a whisper from the unseen "spirits"

that this palatine of Siradia might yet be the elected King of Poland!

Ambitious princes are as credulous as ambitious philosophers. The predictors of a crown, with a royal exchequer from the alchemists, seduced the imagination, and a'Laski invited the sages with their families to reside at his castle.

There the Polish lord seems to have wearied of the angelic communications; he transferred them to the Emperor, Rodolph, the Second, at Prague. In all the courts of Europe, occult philosophers found a ready admittance.

Dee came auspiciously recommended to the emperor; for our author had formerly dedicated to the emperor's father, Maximilian, his cabbalistical volume, which, when admitted to a private interview with Rodolph, the sage beheld lying open on the table.[10] The introduction of an author to an emperor by his own work may have something really magical in its effect, provided the spell is not disturbed by him who raised it. In an inflated oration Dee announcing himself like a babbling missionary, as a messenger from angels, the emperor curtly observed that he did not understand Latin! The Pope's Nuncio opportunely demanded that the two English necromancers should be questioned at Rome. Their flight relieved the emperor. A Bohemian count rejoiced to receive the fugitives at his castle of Trebona, where strange alchemical projections of pewter flagons turned into silver, which the goldsmiths of Prague bought, are attested solemnly by Arthur Dee, the son of the doctor, to the philosophical Sir Thomas Browne. This must have been that day of elation which Dee entered in his diary. "Master Edward Kelley did open the great secret to me. G.o.d be thanked!" This Arthur Dee, indeed, remained an inveterate alchemist all his life; but the man who in his medical character was recommended by James the First to the Czar of Russia, and, after several years' residence at Moscow, on his return home, was appointed physician to Charles the First, would be a reputable witness in any court of law.[11]

Dee and Kelley were abroad, living together, from 1583 to 1589. Their adventures would form a romance, but I am not writing one. Their condition was mysterious, as were the incidents of their lives.

Sometimes reduced to the most pitiable necessities for "meat and drink;"

at other times we find Dee travelling with a princely equipage, in three family coaches, a train of waggons, and an escort of fifty hors.e.m.e.n.

These extraordinary personages long attracted the wonder of the Continent; but whatever happened, their fortunes were variable. The pride of Dee was sensitive--there are querulous entries in his diary--there appeared some false play in his dangerous coadjutor--Kelley was dropping hints that he lived in a miserable state of delusion--preludes to the great rupture! Mephistopheles menaced his victim. It is evident that Kelley determined to break up the profitless partners.h.i.+p and set up for himself. The noise the parties raised in their quarrels on the Continent induced Elizabeth to command their return.[12] The alchemist did not return home with Dee. He obtained the patronage of the emperor, and was created a knight; but as usually happened with great alchemists, Sir Edward Kelley was twice cast into prison. Sir Edward, however, continued his correspondence with Dee, and sent her majesty a timely information of some design against her person.

This adventurer may appear a very suspicious personage. Lord Burleigh addresses this "Baron of Bohemia," as the minister designates him, with high respect and admiration, for his "virtues, his wisdom, and learning." However, in the same confidential letter, his lords.h.i.+p informs "the good knight" of some malicious reports; that "he did not come home, because he could not perform that, indeed, which has been reported of him:" and others had gone so far as to deem Sir Edward "an impostor." This letter, written by Burleigh's own hand,[13] shows the skilful falconer luring the bird. Dee a.s.sured the queen that "the Baron of Bohemia" positively possessed the secret of the great operation. The queen anxiously concerted measures to secure the escape of Sir Edward Kelley from his second imprisonment. Agents were despatched, the jailers were drugged, the horses were awaiting for the fugitive; scaling the wall, he fell, and died of his contusions, thus abruptly closing the romance of a daring disturbed spirit.

Dee returned to England in December, 1589, and presenting himself to the queen at Richmond, was received, as he was ever accustomed to be, with all graciousness. But the philosopher, after the absence of six years, returning to his studious abode, beheld it nearly dismantled; his chemical apparatus, with all his scientific implements, had been destroyed by a mob, and his library pillaged. Every day this victim of science experienced the effects of popular obloquy. He gathered up what fragments he could; and again rapt in study, he again relapsed into his old wants. The _res angusta domi_ once more disturbed his lares. Yet the queen was not unmindful of her philosopher; Mr. Cavendish was despatched to a.s.sure him that he might freely pursue his studies, and brought a royal Christmas gift of two hundred angels in gold, to be renewed with the season.

But the old man craved more than an uncertain eleemosynary bounty; his creditors multiplied, and the great will forget the man whom they rarely see. Dee has feelingly cla.s.sed those who had outwearied his generous nature, "the ungrateful and the thankless; and the scorners and disdainers." The royal hand alone could repair his injuries, and vindicate his genius. Dee addressed a memorial to the queen, praying that a commission might be appointed to inquire into his case, which, as he energetically expressed himself, had been "written with tears of blood." He did not draw up his pet.i.tion as an ill.u.s.trious pauper, but as a claimant for services performed.

A commission was immediately a.s.signed, and it was followed by a literary scene of singular novelty.

Dee, sitting in his library, received the royal commissioners. Two tables were arranged; on one lay all the books he had published, with his unfinished ma.n.u.scripts; the most extraordinary one was an elaborate narrative of the transactions of his own life. This ma.n.u.script his secretary read, and as it proceeded, from the other table Dee presented the commissioners with every testimonial; these vouchers consisted of royal letters from the queen, and from princes, amba.s.sadors, and the most ill.u.s.trious persons of England and of Europe: pa.s.sports which traced his routes, and journals which noted his arrivals and departures: grants and appointments, and other remarkable evidences; and when these were wanting, he appealed to living witnesses.

Among the employments which he had filled, he particularly alludes to "a painful journey in the winter season, of more than fifteen hundred miles, to confer with learned physicians on the Continent, about her majesty's health." He showed the offers of many princes to the English philosopher to retire to their courts, and the princely establishment at Moscow proffered by the czar; but he had never faltered in his devotion to his sovereign. He appealed to the clerks of the records of the Tower, and to other antiquaries,[14] for his free distribution of the ma.n.u.scripts which he had often discovered. He complains that his house at Mortlake was too public for his studies, and incommodious for receiving the numerous foreign literati who resorted to him. Of all the promised preferments, he would have chosen the Masters.h.i.+p of St. Cross for its seclusion. Here is a great man making great demands, but reposing with dignity on his claims; his wants were urgent, but the penury was not in his spirit. The commissioners, as they listened to this autobiography, must often have raised their eyes in wonder on the venerable and dignified author before them.

The report was most favourable; the queen spontaneously declared that Dee should have St. Cross, and the inc.u.mbent might be removed to a bishopric. She allotted him a considerable pension, and commanded Lady Howard to write "words of comfort" to his wife; and further sent an immediate supply by the hands of Sir Thomas Gorge. The letter to his wife and the ready money were, however, the only tangible gift, for St.

Cross and the pension he never received!

Two years after we find Dee still memorialising. He published "A Letter Apologetical, with a Plain Demonstration and Fervent Protestation for the Course of the Philosophical Studies of _a Certain Studious Gentleman_," 1599. This was a vindication against the odium of magical practices. At length, the archbishop installed him in the wardens.h.i.+p of Manchester College; but though our adventurer now drew into harbour, it was his destiny to live in storms. The inmates always suspected him of concealing more secrets of nature than he was willing to impart; and the philosopher who had received from great men in Europe such testimonies of their admiration, now was hourly mortified by the petty malice of the obscure fellows of his college. After several years of contention, he resigned a college which no occult arts he possessed could govern.

His royal patroness was no more. The light and splendour of the Court had sunk beneath the horizon; and in the chill evening of his life the visionary looked up to those who were not susceptible of his innocent sorcery. Still retaining his lofty pretensions, he addressed the King, and afterwards the parliament. He implored to be freed from vulgar calumnies, and to be brought to trial, that a judicial sentence might clear him of all those foul suspicions which had clouded over his days for more than half a century. It is to be regretted that this trial did not take place; the accusations and the defence would have supplied no incurious chapter in the history of the human mind. A necromancer, and a favourite with Elizabeth, was not likely to be tolerated in the Court of James the First. Cecil, who when young had been taught by his father to admire the erudition of the reformer of the Gregorian calendar, was not the same person in the Court of James the First as in that of Elizabeth; he resigned the sage to his solitude, and, with the policy of the statesman, only reasonably enough observed, that "Dee would shortly go mad!"

Misfortune could neither break nor change the ambitious spirit of the deserted philosopher. He still dreamed in a spiritual world which he never saw nor heard, and hopefully went on working his stills, deprived of the powder of projection. He sold his books for a meal; and if the gossiper Aubrey may be trusted, in such daily distress he may have practised on the simplicity of his humble neighbours, by sometimes recovering a stolen basket of linen, though it seems he refused the more solemn conjuration of casting a figure for a stray horse! It is only in this degradation of sordid misery that he is shown to us in the _Alchemist_ of Jonson. Weary, as he aptly expresses himself, of "sailing against the wind's eye," in 1608, in the eighty-first year of his age, he resolved to abandon his native land. There was still another and a better world for the pilgrim of science; and it was during the preparations to rejoin his Continental friends in Germany that death closed all future sorrows.

It was half a century after the decease of Dr. Dee, that the learned Meric Casaubon amazed the world by publis.h.i.+ng the large folio containing "A True and Faithful Relation of what pa.s.sed many Years between Dr. JOHN DEE and SOME SPIRITS," 1659, from a copy in the Cottonian Library. Yet is this huge volume but a torso; the mighty fragments, however, were recovered from the mischances of a kitchen fire, by Elias Ashmole, a virtuoso in alchemy and astrology, who toiled and trembled over the mystical and almost the interminable quires. Such is the fate of books!

the world will for ever want the glorious fragments of Tacitus and Livy, but they have Dee pa.s.singly entire.[15]

MERIC CASAUBON was the learned son of a more learned father, but his erudition much exceeded his judgment. He had written a treatise against the delusions of "Enthusiasm," from whence the author derived but little benefit; for he demonstrated the existence of witches. Yet Meric Casaubon, meek and honest, was solicited by Cromwell to become his historiographer; but from principle he declined the profit and the honour; during the Oliverian rule, he became an hypochondriac, and has prefixed an hypochondriacal preface to this unparalleled volume. His faith is obsequious, and he confirms the verity of these conferences with "spirits," by showing that others before Dee had enjoyed such visitations. The fascination of a conference with "spirits" must have entered into the creed even of higher philosophers; for we are startled by discovering that the great Leibnitz observed on this preface, that "it deserves to be translated, _as well as the work itself_!"[16]

When this book of marvels was first published, the world was overcome by the revelations. Those saintly personages, whose combined wisdom then a.s.sisted the councils of England, Owen, Goodwin, Nye, and others of that sort, held a solemn consistory for the suppression of the book. They entertained a violent suspicion that the whole of this incomprehensible jargon was a covert design by some of the Church of England party, by a mockery of their own style, to expose the whole sainthood, who pretended so greatly to inspiration. But the bomb exploded at once, and spread in all directions; and ere they could fit and unfit their textual debates, the book had been eagerly bought, and placed far beyond the reach of suppression.[17]

The "True Relation of what pa.s.sed many Years between Dr. DEE and SOME SPIRITS," long excited curiosity which no one presumed to satisfy.

During no less a period than five-and-twenty years was Dee recording what he terms his "Actions with Spirits," for all was written by his own hand. It would be an extravagant inference to conclude that a person of blameless character and grave habits would persevere through a good portion of his life in the profitless design of leaving a monument of posthumous folly solely to mystify posterity. Some fools of learning, indeed, have busied themselves in forging antiquities to bewilder some of their successors, but these malicious labours were the freaks of idle hours, not the devotion of a life. Even the imposture of Kelley will not wholly account for the credulity of Dee; for many years after their separation, and to his last days, Dee sought for and at length found another "Skryer."[18] Are we to resolve these "Actions with Spirits" by the visions of another sage, a person eminent for his science, and a Rosicrucian of our own times,--that ill.u.s.trious Emanuel Swedenborg, who, in his reveries, communed with spirits and angels? It would thus be a great psychological phenomenon which remains unsolved.

No one has noticed that a secret communication, uninterrupted through the protracted reign of Elizabeth, existed between the Queen and the philosopher. The deep interest her Majesty took in his welfare is strikingly revealed to us. Dee, in his frequent troubles, had constantly recourse to the Queen, and she was ever prompt at his call. The personal attentions of the Queen often gratified his master-pa.s.sion--often she sent kind messages by her ladies and her courtiers--often was he received at Greenwich, Richmond, and at Windsor; and he was singularly honoured by her Majesty's visits at his house in Mortlake. The Queen would sometimes appear waiting before his garden, when he would approach to kiss her hand and solve some difficult inquiry she had prepared for him. On one of these occasions Dee exhibited to her Majesty a concave mirror; a gla.s.s which had provoked too much awful discussion, but which would charm the Queen while this Sir David Brewster of his age condescended to explain the optical illusions. When Dee, in his travels, was detained by sickness in Lorraine, her Majesty despatched two of her own physicians to attend on this valued patient. The Queen incessantly made golden promises of preferment; many eminent appointments were fixed on. He had, too, a patron in Leicester, the favourite of Elizabeth, for in that terrible state-libel of "Leicester's Commonwealth," among the instruments of that earl's dark agencies we discover "Dee and Allen, two atheists, for figuring and conjuring," that is, for astrological diagrams and magical invocations![19] As, notwithstanding the profusion of the Queen's designs for his promotion, he received but little, and that little late, the sincerity of the royal patron has been arraigned.

Mysterious as the philosopher's cabbalistic jargon with which he sometimes entertained her, her Majesty seems to have remunerated empty phrases by providing notional places; but Elizabeth may not have deserved this hard censure; she unfailingly supplied her money-gifts, a certain evidence of her sincerity! The truth seems to be that royal promises may be frustrated by intervening compet.i.tors and ministerial expedients. At the Court, the evil genius of Dee stood ever by his side, saluting the philosopher with no friendly voice, as "the arch-conjuror of the whole kingdom!" The philosopher struggled with the unconquerable prejudices of the age.

If we imagine that Elizabeth only looked on Dee as the great alchemist who was to replenish her coffers, or the mystic who propounded the world of spirits, this would not account for the Queen permitting Dee to remain on the Continent during six years. Had such been the Queen's hopes, she would have hermetically sealed the philosopher in his house at Mortlake, where in her rides to Richmond she might conveniently have watched the progress of gold-making and listened to the theurgic revelations. Never would she have left this wanderer from court to court, with the chance of conveying to other princes such inappreciable results of the occult sciences.

What then was the cause of this intimate intercourse of the Queen with Dr. Dee; and what the occasion of that mysterious journey of fifteen hundred miles in the winter season to consult physicians on her Majesty's health, of which he had reminded the Queen by her commissioners, but which they could not have comprehended? Did these mysterious physicians reside in one particular locality; and in the vast intervening distance were there no skilful physicians equally able for consultation?

A casual hint dropped by Lilly, the famous astrologer, will unveil the mysterious life of Dee during his six years' residence abroad. Lilly tells us that "for many years, in search of the profounder studies, he travelled into foreign parts; _to be serious_, he was Queen Elizabeth's intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the secretaries of state." Lilly, who is correct in his statements except on the fabulous narratives of his professional art, must have written from some fact known to him; and it harmonizes with an ingenious theory to explain the unintelligible diary of Dee, suggested by Dr. ROBERT HOOKE, the eminent mathematician.

HOOKE, himself a great inventor in science, entertained a very high notion of the scientific character of Dee, and of his curiosity and dexterity in the philosophical arts--optics, perspective, and mechanics.

Deeply versed in chemistry, mathematics, and the prevalent study of astrology, like another Roger Bacon (or rather a Baptista Porta), delighting in the marvellous of philosophical experiments, he was sent abroad to amuse foreign princes, while he was really engaged by Elizabeth in state affairs. Hooke, by turning over the awful tome, and comparing several circ.u.mstances with the history of his own life, was led to conclude that "all which relates to the spirits, their names, speeches, shows, noises, clothing, actions, &c., were all _cryptography_; feigned relations, concealing true ones of a very different nature." It was to prevent any accident, lest his papers should fall into hostile hands, that he preferred they should appear as the effusions of a visionary, rather than the secret history of a real spy. When the spirits are described as using inarticulate words, unp.r.o.nounceable according to the letters in which they are written, he conjectured that this gibberish would be understood by that book of Enoch which Dee prized so highly, and which Hooke considered to contain the cypher. Hooke, however, has not deciphered any of these inarticulate words; but as the book of Enoch seems still to exist, this Apocalypse may yet receive its commentator, a task which it appears Dr. Adam Clarke once himself contemplated.[20]

There is one fatal objection to this ingenious theory of cryptography; this astounding diary opens long before Dee went abroad, and was continued long after his return, when it does not appear that he was employed in affairs of state.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] About the same time, in 1574, Ruggeiri, a Florentine, was condemned to the galleys for having conspired against the French monarch in favour of the Duke of Alencon, his brother. The act of treason consisted in making an image of wax, the perfect likeness of Charles the Ninth, which had a heart p.r.i.c.ked with pins. This was the exact peril into which our English queen had been cast--probably by some Romanist who fancied himself, or herself, to be an adept.

[2] A catalogue of Dr. Dee's library, in his own handwriting, may be found in Harl. MSS. 1879. Four thousand volumes, "abounding with a curious harvest of books ill.u.s.trative of the occult art," but also containing the ancient cla.s.sics. He expended on his collections the considerable sum of "thirty hundred pounds," as he tells us, for at that day they counted by "hundreds."

[3] These ingenious rolls, or maps, are now deposited among the Cottonian ma.n.u.scripts.