James Hain Friswell - Varia, Readings from Rare Books (Paracelsus included), 1866 by gnosisclassics

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. j|

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

.:,

>.COOPER- su

Sir Thomas Browne, Rnt. From, a Portrait preserved in the Vestry of St. Peter's,

Manor oft, Norwich.

W. W.

MY FRIEND

FIRTH,

Esq.

(OE NORWICH),

THIS VOLUME OE ESSAYS

AFEECTIONATELY

AND ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED.

PREFACE |HE

indulgent reader

enough

be kind

will

to take the sub-title of these

Bibliographic Essays in a somewhat restricted

sense.

The

celebrated

books discussed in them are widely known by

name, but with the majority of them

name would

And

to the general reader not only

their rarity

be a hindrance to perusal, but,

only.

should he by chance procure them, the task of

wading through the thick

folios

might be found

tiresome or distasteful.

But here he may men, and books, to the

find

in a

something of great causes,

volume which he can carry

chimney corner or read on a journey, some-

thing which

it is

hoped may induce him

after the treasures

which

lie

to seek

hidden in the dusty

and often but dimly -remembered

originals.

;

PREFACE.

viii

The thanks

of the author are due to the editors

of the Saturday Review and the

Spectator,

which these papers, which have had much added to

them,

G. H. Lewes, Esq., Editor of the Fortnightly

first

appeared, for permitting this reprint

Review, for courteously withdrawing from his pages the

title

" Varia," which he had assumed long after

the present

work was advertised; and

Mr.

who

adorns the same profession

as,

and

Firth,

holds a like position to Sir in the

same

city, for the

Thomas Browne, and photograph of a rare

picture of that worthy knight, never before en-

graved, a reproduction of which illustrates this

volume.

Few

honest writers dismiss a book without sin-

cerely wishing that

were worthier of the kind

and judicious readers' time and study

an earnest

expression of that wish shall close these few pre-

liminary words.

CONTENTS. Page |

Angelic Doctor

Nostradamus

Thomas a Kempis and the Imitatio Christi

irtmrrffi

Dr. John Faustus

Quevedo

Madame

105

Mothe

and

Guion

Quietism

Aureolus

137

Philippus

Theophrastus

Paracelsus,

Bombast of Hohenheim

163

Howell the Traveller

195

Michael Scot

217

........

lodowick muggleton Sir

237

Thomas Browne

251

George Psalmanazar

The Highwayman The

Spirit

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Real

World and

and Ideal its

....

Literature

283 309

323

THE ANGELIC DOCTOR.

BOOKS CONSULTED. Summa

TVieobgica, Sancti Thomae Acquinatis Divince Voluntatis inter-

pretis;

In qua

Sacri^ Ordinis Praedicatorum.

doctrina universa et quicquid in veterum

dignum observatu;

Catholicce

ecclesiae

Patrum monumentis

quicquid etiam vel olim vocatum

est, vel

est

hodie

vocatur ab haereticis in controversiam ; in omne ut erudite solide, et in tres partes ab auctore

dilucide ita pie atque fideliter explicatur ; Parisiis, m.d.C.xxxviii.

suo distributa. Baiter's Lives 7th.

Penny

March.

Vol.

Cyclopaedia.

Historical

and

Thomas

xiii.

Philosophy

Magnus ;

or,

;

vols. 8vo. vol.

Article: Aquinas.

By Monsieur

Bayle.

Wth

London and Glasgow, 1848.

Nouvelle Biographie Generate.

Miscellaneous Works of Pope. tinus Scriblerus,

of Aquinas's style.

the

Article

de Bury, 1832.

where a

a Treatise on Moral and Metaphysical

Denison Maurice, M.A.

By Richard

Vol.

more from

boasts, as well

strollers

doctors of the schools. for

gave and took

;

and, in return

knowledge thus acquired, cured hopeless maladies and

desperate diseases all

he might, that he learnt

and gipsies than from the learned

kinds.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

gout, dropsy, leprosy, and fevers of

w as received everywhere T

as the learned

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

PARACELSUS. doctor

and, vagabond and true

;

Bohemian

native country before

he was, had

But he was

owner.

its

him and reached

acquired a fame which far outran

until a

169

still

his

poor,

lucky chance led him to Basil, where Jacob Fro-

ben, a learned printer, lay suffering from an acute pain in

Froben had endured

torture

This

which no present leech could cure.

his right foot,

so long that

Paracelsus was called

eat nor sleep.

he could neither

in,

attended to and

bathed the patient's foot, and then exhibited his grand specific, little

which, as we

black balls

may

gather, was laudanum

tres jpillulas

nigras

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; did

low with, to him, immense service. in physic

and

slept, his faith

died, however,

could not be persuaded to follow the

apoplectic,

some months

The man,

advice of his judicious physician. old

three

was restored, and in a short time he was a

sound man. apoplexy.

;

Froben swal-

after of

was

in fact,

and he died, careless of consequences.

So says Erasmus, who believed in very

little

but, to the

;

glory of Paracelsus, he believed in him, and in his magistrate

arcanum,

The

his

grand

specific.

cure of this apoplectic printer raised Paracelsus to

He was

a pinnacle of glory.

elected to the chair of

medicine of Basil, and in this position gave vent to some of that grandiloquent spirit which seems to have inflated the

old alchemists, as

did that magnificent creation of

Jonson, Sir Epicure

Mammon.

teaching of Paracelsus

knowledge and for a

moment

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

intellect,

to that apotheosis of

when the

lay

freed from the priests,

Ben

the strange weird

mind

mundane

of the age,

seemed about

VABIA.

170 arise in its strength,

sky,

—

and snatch new triumphs from the youth of Germany, of

to this teaching flocked the

The

France, and Italy.

minstrel and the poet, the free-

lance and jongleur, the sucking physician and the lawyer, the unfrocked

monk and

the layman, in quest of

than the priestly schools could teach them, were alike

ready to

listen, to

There

admire, to applaud.

in the

museum at Antwerp a strange painting of the period of which we are writing, representing the procession to the crucifixion of our Lord.

world are seen cruel

work

—

types of

There, too,

full

artist,

and

there, too, the scholar

pressed together, pushing each life,

who aided

the people

all

the trades of the in the

There come

flocking forwards to the sight.

the pedlars and tinkers, musician,

man;

all

and handicrafts-

priest, joking, thickly

otljer, chaffing,

eager to watch for the Death,

—

laughing,

there they are,

the very images of the townsmen and countrymen of the painter,

who has taken

but with some meaning*

Jewish

mob

in the

care

—

surely not in ignorance,

to picture the ruffians of the

costume of

his

own

age.

What

kind

of import and signification would such a crucifixion have

painted in the costumes of our day

church

smug

curate, our

with our high or low

bishop, and ladies with ample crinoline ?

not bring the reality

dean and doctor, sleek tradesman,

home

men's business and bosoms

Thus, in Bernard Zan's piece of

Abraham about

son Isaac with a horse-pistol, the anachronism

exceedingly

droll,

Would

but surely intended.

to sacrifice his

at once great

and

— —

— PARACELSUS.

Such a mob,

as portra}r ed

the, to

171

me, unknown painter,

listened to the orations of Paracelsus.

thrill

discarded the

learned tongue, and lectured in German.

new

sent a

through the untaught bosoms of the people.

was not one

to hide his light

under a bushel

;

but, as

poured forth his words, told his audience freely that he

knew more than

all

Shouting

the old school put together.

aloud in the plenitude of his self-love, he took, in the sight of his audience, a brazen vase, from which flames darted,

when

and

which he placed

and sulphur

nitre

and

;

the lurid flame blazed up, he cast in the works of

Galen, Avicenna, and the Arab doctors, shouting out at the same time, " Thus, doctors, shall ye burn in everlasting fire

he continued

arriere-moi, Grec, Latin,

hitherto

told

Behind

behind me,

but

The

wives' tales.

old

;

" get thee

Arab !

secret

have

all

nature belongs to me." It is not alone Paracelsus

luvies jusculorum

so has,

we may

—

who has

slop-receptacles

day

making the ;

ages.

nor was

;

col-

but whoever has done

well know, braved the hatred of all the

The

rest of the pulse-feeling tribe.

tor

railed at his brothers

he alone has called their shops

in the healing art, not

sick

man

in his.

worse

possibility of a doc-

no novelty in our own

can trace

down through

Martial has a good epigram, one out of nearly thirty,

against the tribe

I slightly ailed

(With

;

a hundred doctors

finger icy-tipp'd

come

and gelid thumb),

Prescribe their nostrums vile, to purge or bleed

first I

ailed

;

but

now I'm

sick indeed.

172

VARIA,

And we may remember

that Sir Godfrey offered to take

anything of Dr. Eadcliffe save his physic

and Garrick

;

would accept any present of Sir John Hill save his professional advice, which

he contemned.

ing these quips and cranks,

it is

But, notwithstand-

a bold thing to raise one's

voice against the killing and draughting tribe racelsus raised a host of enemies

established favourites. laid

about him

A recent fact that,

fiercely,

was

and had

by like

salt in

;

and Pa-

his outcry against

Ishmael;

but he

him.

writer on the subject has noticed the obvious

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " In

the time of Paracelsus patients were even

more unfortunate than

Materia medica, or

in our days.

the arsenal from which the physicians drew their weapons,

contained a mass of heterogeneous substances, the selection of which the most grotesque fancy, rather than the

wisdom of the sage, appeared

have regulated.

Thera-

peutics resembled one of those armouries in which

hawks and arms from Patagonia are

laid

by the

tomaside of

the more effective weapons used in modern warfare. the

human body

a chemical laboratory,

trusted with transmutations which

The

rejected as impossible.

was then in-

modern science has

old pharmaceutical cata-

logues present horrors far surpassing those of Bluebeard's

forbidden chamber; for in those

lists

are seen scattered

about, not the limbs of poets, not the headless trunks of lovely

women, but the

serpents, toads

many

different parts of apes, lions, bats,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of almost

known European

all

exotic animals besides,

nance to monstrous quality

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

changed to

beasts,

and

from their ordi-

remedies given, not on

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ;

PARACELSUS. account of any empirically beneficial

173 effect of theirs,

but

solely because of the mystical correspondence supposed to exist

between them and the diseases they were made to

combat.

wolf's liver

pounded

liver,

Scorpions and spiders were ingurgitated whole.

honey.

affections of the liver, for instance, a dried

was prescribed, or a donkey's

Zwelfer extolled the virtues of the toad against the plague.

Moles on the face could be cured by being touched with a dead man's hand, which was to be kept on the face

Van Helmont, having

became warm. to death

by a toad, recovered by the use of

powder of

The medicine

vipers.

till it

almost been stared treacle

and the

of those days, half su-

perstitious, half scientific, resembles those illustrations in

old medical books, which display a strange mixture of

and sentimental occurrences, which represent a sur-

stern

geon boring a

head with a gouge, while surround-

patient's

ing ladies are wringing their hands, crying, or praying while,

by a touch of

symbolism, a cat

satirical

patient say,

if,

What would

devouring a mouse in a corner.

portrayed a modern

having succeeded in deciphering his doc-

tor's prescription,

he read,

mus

combustits

would

probably like to be allowed eggs for breakfast, but scarcely '

eggs of frog or

perceive the efficacy of tive persons

lizard.' '

deer's tears, dried

might object

pared lungs of fox.

yet

all

good old

Consump-

jpulmones pre/parati' pre-

Pale persons would scarcely relish

an infusion of the blood of

And

lady in hysterics might not

'bat,'

rhinoceros,'

rat,' (fee.

these things were prescribed and taken in the

times.'

But there were many more remedies

;

VARIA.

174 c

Abominable, unutterable, and worse.'

Every organ, every secretion or excretion of every strange

The

animal was used in medicine.

and gro-

ludicrous

tesque sometimes give place to the horrible in these no-

Thus we

menclatures.

was good

;

powder of human

cured Boyle

radically

hanged man

find that the fat of a

had many

virtues,

and

of a bleeding of the nose.

skull

beheaded man's blood was beneficial when drunk yet warm a

human

skin, well tanned, worn, used as a belt,

had a re-

storative efficacy."

But our physician

himself, although he abused his bre-

thren, seems to have been but

little

Let the

wiser.

fol-

lowing extracts from one of his books* bear this testimony

The

at least.

first is

a somewhat long dissertation on the

virtues of the herb Persicaria, or water-pepper, to which liberal shepherds, as well as

our English translator, "give

a grosser name."

" But now

show you the

you have pulled

virtues of this herb

out of the ground, draw

as soon

through

water, or through the streams of a river or a spring, wT hich best of

all,

then lay

cured so long as you it

away and bury *

ticle,

may

upon that part which

in a moist place,

In consequence of the long

we have given

his Dispensatory

the

title

be eating half an egg 9 then take

list

where

may

rot,

of books consulted in this ar-

of this one in a note:

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Paracelsus

and Chirugery (the Dispensatory contains the

choisest of his Physical remedies,

and

all

that can be desired of his

Chirugery, you have in the treatises of Wounds, Ulcers, and Apos-

thumes).

Faithfully Englished by

London, 1656."

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; PARACELSUS. and as

putrifies the sore heals

;

175

some do sign the signe

of the crosse and use a kind of prayer for

doings are impertinent and absurd the herb

but such

;

for the operation of

;

But

natural, not superstitious or magical."

way

other times he can use the magical and supernatural

of cure freely, and in his Celestial Medicines he speaks

thus of preserving the sight without physic

" Make thee a round lamen of the best lead of

<j>.

the > being in the signe

to wit in the

which you

<y>,

and

hour of 9? engrave the signes and

make

After-

;

when

same

in the

the characters which you will see in the figure

are to be engraven thereon, &c.

These are

to be en-

closed in wax, so that they receive no moisture,

piece of silk, and

hung about

day and hour of g best

letters

a copper lamen of the

quantity and form as the leaden one signe vj

same hour,

will see written in the following figure.

wards in the hour of

hour

in the

remedy

This, Paracelsus assures us,

to recover the sight of the eyes

serve the eyes from pain and disease. sight in old age as perfect as in the engraving

George III

;

sewn

in a

the neck of a patient in the

and

the

to pre-

It preserveth the

was in youth."

One lamen

about the size of a penny piece of

the smaller about the circumference of one

of the godless florins of Victoria.

While venting such

stuff as this, in

believe that he himself could have

which

had any

it is

faith,

hard to

Paracel-

bus does not forget to attack his opponents ; and, after treat-

ing of the spider,

hateful creature," he says, " Having

done with these hateful and poysonous creatures, now I

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; VARIA.

176

speak concerning other

will

small creatures

;

and

common and

hope I

contemptible

be blamed for

shall not

nor shall these things I speak be esteemed as famed

this,

do who will not use any common may be gotten cheaply and easily, not that God hath created nothing in vain,

tales, as false physicians

medicines, such as

remembering

this,

but that even the least and most contemptible things have their peculiar virtues according to

His divine pleasure."

doubt this severe recital served our physician well

;

pretended by lowly study to have penetrated the secrets

That the

of Nature and to be able to instruct mankind.

present generation

may

not miss his great

gift, it will

as well to transcribe firstly a cure for warts, which our

schoolboy readers can easily try

;

and secondly, an

infal-

cure for any wound, which will serye both our sol-

lible

diers, our volunteers,

" To cure warts.

and but too often our

Take

civilians.

oyl of juniper berries one ounce,

th oyl of spike two drams, oleum laterinum, or buck oyl,

seven drams

;

mix them, and with

this anoint the warts."

potion which being drunk will cure any

wound

Take

of adder's tongue three handfuls, of periwinkle the

lesser

one handful, of honeysuckle one handful and a

of rheubarbe one ounce, of rhaponticke three ounces

them

into

two gallons of water, boyl

drink of

may laugh

ahead of his

rivals.

put

to six quarts, or

put them into new ale or new beer four or let the patient

half,

five

days, then

it."

at Paracelsus

now

;

but in

skill

cured a judge, saved the

canon residentiary with three black

pellets,

tres

he was life

of a

murini

PARACELSUS. stercoris pillulas,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; some

medicine, opium, which,

When

177

say compounded of his secret

we presume, he got from the

the canon was cured, he would not pay the fee

patient before the judges.

only ordered the ordinary fee

;

sician to blame.

and our magical

it is

was suspected of magic, would not go out

money was worth Being sent

now.

iiis article

us that that clever man, who,

tells

of town to visit the sick under

Few

Nor, indeed, was our phy-

ages the fees of physicians were enormous.

since the

doctor, in

Bayle has remarked that in the middle

on Petrus Aponensis he like Paracelsus,

the

They, stupid fellows

a torrent of indignant eloquence, abused the judges.

can help siding with him now.

Paracelsus sum-

dose was so small, the charge so large.

moned his

East.

150

francs a day

;

a large sum,

at least fifteen times as

for

much

by the Pope Honorius IV,

Aporius, or Aponensis, demanded four hundred ducats a day.

Yander Linden

naming the

patient.

same thing, but without

relates the

Bayle quotes another physician

mentioned by Lancelot de Perouse

claiming

100

crowns a day, and as returning from the Pope richer

by 10,000 crowns. tion, is told of

The same

story, with

Paul Freher, professor of medicine

logna, that he was sent for from

never

left his

town under

fifty

all

enough, says Bayle, truly

;

Bo-

parts of Italy, but

crowns a day, and that for

curing Honorius he received 1000 crowns.

Variations

Honorius must have paid his

physicians highly, and Paracelsus

What evil

some varia-

may

plead precedents.

has been done by weak and incompetent pur-

veyors of the law from Pontius Pilatus downwards

Marry,

VABIA.

178 is this

law?

the

ISTo

wonder that Paracelsus devoted

his

judges to that place wherein he had already deposited the

him the next day, nates,

when

~No wonder also,

doctors.

had

the officers looked for

that he, dreading the ire of the

left at

Basil his chemicals, tests, and laboratory, in

charge of Oporinus, his scholar and friend, who

Wagner

wards him the place which

Marlowe's play

rich

;

and

it is

from

and afterwards

ful apostate,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

mag-

fled.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

this

filled to-

does to Faustus in

Oporinus, an ungrate-

therefore perhaps,

and highly-respected

learn something of the inner

world

citizen of Basil, that

life

of Paracelsus.

With

Oporinus, then a young and hungry scholar, the great

master also

left his

magistrate arcanum, laudanum, which

some time afterwards saved

his

life.

possible,

we hope

probable, for the sake of the physician, that the relation of

Oporinus et

greatly exaggerated.

noctibus,

dum ego

" Adeo erat totis diebus

familiariter per

biennium fere con-

vixi, ebrietati et crapulaB deditus," &c.

chummed

" Thus, whilst I

with him for nearly two years, was he both by

night and day given to gluttony and drunkenness.

was he sober to Alsatia

for

Hardly

one hour, whilst he went forth from Basil

amongst the noble

rustics

and the

rustic nobles,

healing them and teaching them, and everywhere received like another iEsculapius.

admiration of

all.

was a wonder

In the mean time,

in his

moments, he would return home, and

some

his wild philosophy.

his clothes in the night-time

Nor

and the

most drunken

dictate

did he ever put off

during the two years I was

;

PARACELSUS. with him;

but, girt

about with his sword, which, he

boasted, had been that of

down on

179

some executioner, he would

In a short time he would

hours of the morning.

the dead waste of darkness, and lay about

naked sword

;

now

once feared for the safety of

Melchior

Adam

that in the

tells

pommel

conversation, states

that I

his

the door-

more than

head (ut ego non semel

iri rnetuerem)."

would often embrace

familiar imp,*

manner

arise in

him with

striking the bed, the floor,

posts, or the walls, in so wild a

caput amputatum

lie

drunken with wine, towards the small

his couch,

talk

that perhaps he

man-slaying sword, boasting

was enclosed

and that with and

to this, that

us, in addition

this

wildly;

had only a

Azoth, his

his

imp he would hold but

Melchior

Adam

bit of the true stone

therein.

Possessed, then, of " that thirsty devil whose

Quaff," to quote Luther,

when speaking

of his

name

own coun-

trymen, we need not wonder that the respectabilities of the

* Bumbastes kept a devil's bird

Shut

in the

pummel

That taught him

all

of his sword,

the cunning pranks

Of past and future mountebanks. Hudibras, part

cant. 3.

ii.

Ne yet of guacum one small stick, Sir, Nor Raymond Lully's great elixir Ne had he known the Danish foxwort, Or Paracelsus with his long sword. Jonson's Volpone, act

ii.

sc. 2.

— 180

YAEIA.

•

various towns in which he stayed did not consort with him.

had offended the lawyers and the

doctors,

—

about to insult the third great power

man who,

a strong

and was wofully beaten.

peasant, he observed with

thing to his

"Has

lips.

the clerics.

in this roundabout world, dare fight

against law, physic, and divinity. it,

and he was

Paracelsus attempted

Called in one day to a dying

him a

priest,

who held some-

the patient taken anything?"

asked Theophrastus.

"Nothing," answered the

priest;

" I was about

him the Corpus

"If he

to give

Christi."

has called in another physician," returned the leech, " he doth not need

me;" and he

forthwith departed.

Whatever excuse may be made

for this hasty and,

looked at from a religious point, very profane speech,

whether the maker perceived that his patient was beyond help, or whether he only girded at the priest,

not

;

—we know

but the outcry raised against him was immense, and

he was again about

Oporinus joined the great

to fly.

body of respectables, taking with him what he could of

by which soon

his master's secrets,

saved his Basil.

own

life

;

He afterwards

a printer, and died,

With

and arose

his

devoted his

full of

magic drug,

after, it is related,

be professor of Greek at life to

the profession of

years and honour, in 1568.

his

Azoth and Astoroth, and

his

great, bold, braggadocio heart, Paracelsus again set forward in

life.

a nobleman

spent some time in Bavaria, where he healed ;

some months

the king's physician.

became

in Poland,

where he cured

Everywhere he and

celebrated, but he

grew not

rich.

his potent

drug

was born

PARACELSUS. out of his time,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

after or before

181

what matters ?

it,

was a wanderer, a Bohemian, a crapulous and drunken

man

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;drunken with great passions He who

the world.

the world then thought great, threw little.

and a strong scorn of

could have achieved everything which

Towards the end of

were forced upon him.

away

his time,

and did

some small honours

his life

In 1536 he dedicated

his Cliirur-

gia Major to the Emperor of Germany, vindicated the

own

character of his father and his of the property left

right to the^ succession

by him, ruffled

talked with and astonished priests,

with the nobles,

made a

convert of the

Archbishop of Salzburg, and was by him persuaded to settle in that city.

But he

did not long enjoy his settle-

ment, dying, after a lingering eight years.

The

affirms, in the

illness, in

legend under

it,

in the forty-seventh year of his

we know

not.

1541, aged forty-

brown book " was poysned " that he

portrait affixed to the little

They who

age

upon what authority

;

assert that Paracelsus boasted

of having discovered the Elixir of Life, add, no doubt for

the sake of antithesis, that he " died with a bottle of his

immortal Catholicon in his pocket ;" but, as these worthies

must be aware that there are some complaints in which laudanum, his Catholicon, cannot be exhibited, they might charitably have supposed that he died of one of these.

left

a very

full

and particular

will

;

and with a portion

of his fortune his executors built the hospital of St. Sebastian, in Salzburg, titling

him an "

where his tablet

yet to be seen, en-

insignis doctor," curer of leprosy, gout,

and dropsy, who

left

his

goods to the poor, and on the

VARIA.

182

date mentioned exchanged this

cum morte retto,

His

mutavit.

life for

portrait

and shows us a bold hard

a better, vitam

was painted bj Tinto-

face, with a

good forehead,

a prominent nose, a determined chin, and heroic bearing, bull-throated, broad-shouldered, sic occulos, sic or a tulit.*

This portrait we have engraved on our title-page. It will

The

now be

as well to glance at this master's works.

translator of the two tracts of Paracelsus

and Croillus

has told us, truly enough, that in both we shall meet with

" some uncouthe and unusuall words," which for better " understandinge " he has taken upon himself to explain.

Thus the

Aclecte,

the invisible and inward

tells us, is

man, which shapeth those things

in the

This

wards done with the hands.

mind that are

after-

an explanation of

the connection between the will and the muscles not at present dreamt

The world

of.

upon the Archaltes, those of Hercules

pillars

also stands,

or supports

whereon these

something like

pillars rest

prince of "physitions" does not inform us.

judge, however, that the world

flat

are told,

even this

may

as the dial of a

watch, and that the Yankee's wish, that he could walk right

away

to the

But with what early chemists

edge and peep over,

not impracticable.

curious and wondrous dreams did not our

lull

themselves to sleep

rode through the crowds of water-spirits in

Fouque's story, and as is

St.

surrounded by troops of

Anthony

the knight

Motte

in the old paintings

spirits, so also

* Epig. by Christ. Manlius.

myriads swarmed

PARACELSUS.

183 Archeus was the

round the brain of the old alchemists. chief invisible

the occult virtue, the artificer in

spirit,

Dases was the secret vapour, the

every one.

stones were formed spirits

who knew

and grew

the secret things of

spirits,

Lemures were

men the Gnomes, men scarce half ;

little

but living under the earth

either the spirits

those of the dead

come

;

and the

and elements of water, or

to life again.

the Penates our

physician understood, not those household gods with

our early lessons in Virgil

made

;

whom

us acquainted, but spirits

of the earth and of the element of

pigmies or dwarfs

from

Hagse were

in water.

made popular by Pope's poem, were a foot high,

spirit

and from the occult vapour Enur

which wood grows;

fire

;

the Sylps were

the Travames, the actions of the spirits

and ghosts of dead men, heard but not seen. Surrounded by these and by others, the philosopher of the middle ages, or indeed the priest, nun, or peasant with

any imagination, could not have

No wonder

at their ghosts

wonder that darkness

We should not love tion of

lived a very quiet

terrified

them out

of their wits.

be subject to the continued interrup-

any of the above

;

nay, nor to be courted by the

Melosinse, " despairing women now living ticall bruittish

life.

and midnight fears and horrors.

in a phantasta-

body, nourished by the elements into which

they will be changed, unless they chaunce to marrie with a

manne." Let us

manner

first

ascertain this

accomplished physician's

of accounting for the creation, a subject which

puzzles great philosophers even now.

Pie divides his mat-

VARIA.

184 ter into texts this

;

and the

This ejaculation

by a marginal

first,

" The great mysterie

expanded in the text in

all

manner:

this

things under the cope of heaven were

enclosed and lay hid ail

but one only principle or beginning.

all at first

In this principle

find is

things.

all

and perishing nature,

All created things are of a fraill

and had

note,

the mother of

which

;

thus to be understood, that

things proceeded out of one matter, and not every par-

own

ticular thing out of its

common matter

all

private matter

things

This

itselfe.

the Greate Mysterie, which

no certain essence or prefigured or formed idea could comprehend, nor could

comply with any property,

being

The

altogether void of colour and elementary nature.

scope of this greate mysterie

And

the greate mysterie

ments,

and

the

as large as the firmament.

was

the

grandmother of

carnall creatures.

mother of

all the ele-

children are born of a mother, so

created things, whether sensible or insensible,

all

and

all the Starrs, trees,

all

things

whatsoever were uniformly brought out of the great mysterie.

So that the greate Mysterie

perishing things, out of which they

all

the one mother of all

sprung, not in

order of succession or continuation, but they came forth together and at once, in one creation, substance, matter,

form, essence, nature and inclination."

not

much

wiser than before

;

but

After this

are

must be owned that

Paracelsus has a certain grand manner of venting nothing.

That water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen, two measures of the

latter to

one of the former, every reader

of the most elementary treatise on natural philosophy

now

PARACELSUS. The

knows. as

any other

following wT ill perhaps therefore serve as well

citation to help us to ascertain the

true chemical science possessed is

185

amount of Text 17

Paracelsus.

on " the various complexions of water/' and

lows

For there were

onely.

which yet were

all

infinite

truly waters.

moyst of

The Phylosopher cannot

live

and

JSTor

flourish onely in cold

no neither

onely cold and

fully

and moyst in one de-

and wholly of one degree.

waters are fountain es, which are of

Some

are seas, which also are

many and

are streams and rivers and none of which

Some watry elements were disposed Chrystal, Calceclony, Amethyst.

&c.

Some

many

divers. is

sorts.

Other

like another.

of into stones, as Berill,

Some

into plants, as

into juyce, as the liquor of

in the earth, as the

and

doth the element of

Some

rall,

cold,

not to be refer'd as well to

the hotnesse as the coldnesse.

hundred times more

It is an

it selfe.

not more moyst, and yet

water

as fol-

waters in that Element,

understand that the Element of water

gree

" Nor did water obtaine one kind of complexion

life.

moysture of the ground.

the Elements of water, but in a manifold sort.

Co-

Many

These are

For

that

which groweth out of the earth, from the seed that was sown, that also belongs to the element of water.

was

fleshy as the

water.

Though

Nymphs

So what

belong also to the element of

in this case

we may

conceive that the

element of water was changed into another complexion, yet

doth never put

off or

the element from which

passe from that very nature of proceeded.

the water, turneth again to water

Whatsoever

that which

fire

VAEIA.

186

that of earth into earth

into fire

;

aire."

From which

did not

Nor

know what is

it is

for

;

aire into

or water was.

fire

he any wiser as

storms of the air

and that of

;

very plain that our physician

to the electricity

and

electric

" thunder/' he writes, " comes from

the procreations of the firmament, because that consisteth of the element of

fire.

Thunder

is,

of the stars at the very instant of time to

work according

What

there

end"

much more

follows has

floundering braggadocio.

the store

(i.e.

were, the harvest

when

was ready

Magicall tempests

to its nature.

and

out of the aire

This

of the comic element in

Many

of nature) through mistake, or in (un)due

The

generations, proceed from the impressions.

of countries, the plague and famine,

infection

from the fatal!

Beetles, cankers, dalnes (?), breed in dung.

stormes.

its

things proceed out of

Deformed men, ivormes, and many more such

time.

rise

poetically grand.

the elements did there but four special kindes of the great

mystery belong, so they had but four principles.

had

hundred.

six

clopes another.

Crump -feeted men had

Gyants another, the Medchili another.

So had they that dwell in the earth, water, and in the

one

its

fire.

Things that

own proper mysterie so

Even when Paracelsus

in the aire, in the also

grow had every

in the Greate Mysterie

many kinds of creatures. many men, so many mysteries too." came out

Eut men

one, the Ci-

leaves his

So many

whence

trees, so

windy discourse on

things of which he knows nothing, for a few moments,

PARACELSUS. and

us that " Earthy

tells

men

are not happy/' as he does

in the eleventh text of the second

book of

sensible only for a short time.

tence might have been written by Sir

have been penned by Euskin philosophy to place

ment of

earth.

only are of

all

187

his philosophy,

The following senThomas Browne or

It is a silly

and vain

happiness and eternity in our ele-

foolish opinion is

creatures the most noble.

to boast that

There are more

worlds than one; nor are there none besides us in our

own.

But

know not

ignorance

this

men

those

as the Nocturnals,

much more

that are of the

Gnomes,

<fec.

capitall 'that

same element with

who, though they

we us, live

not in the clear glory of heaven, nor have any light of the

firmament, but hate what we love, and love what we hate,

and though they are not tentation

yet

;

like us in form, essence, or sus-

there no cause of wonder.

were made such in the great mystery. that are

made

;

there are

For they are not

all

many more whom we know

not of."

Would

that all that Paracelsus

this, but, alas

imposture.

man

believed,

like to

or pretended to believe, that

make

could himself create or

those born of

had written were

his medical writings are full of credulity or

a child resembling

women, only smaller and weaker, and

his

directions for this strange proceeding are, says a critic

very justly, "too absurd and indecent to be quoted."

He that

tells

us that " Stannar

metals

are

nothing

the mother of metals, and

but

thickened

smoke

from

188

VARIA.

â&#x20AC;˘

stannar

;

man

that

composed of smoke,

Man

coagulated fume/ and that the coagulation of the sper-

matick matter

made

of nothing

the

but

seething

vapours and spermatick members of the body.

see

nothing in our own selves but thickened smoke made

into

over,

man by humane

More-

predestination."

dragons and ghosts proceed from stones

fiery

and " things

invisible

and are nourished as well

eat

as things visible/' about which, at least, he could

nothing.

know

attempts closely to explain the analogy

which he supposes

between the Macrocosmos or

to exist

external world and the Microcosmos or

human body, and

believed that every physician ought to be able to point

out in

man

the east and west and the signs of the Zodiac,

according, indeed, to that ancient catalogue

the

human body

in curing a

cure

and

when

salt.

wound, to use the verba cabalistic all

printed

tells

us that

contains, or rather consists of nothing

but mercury, sulphur, and

logical

and Moore's almanacs.

in Zadkiel's

still

recommends people, constellata, or astro-

words, which would effect a certain

other methods had failed.

He made

great

Tennemann (" Manual

use

cabalistic

of Philosophy"),

writers,"

says

" which he endea-

voured to render popular, and expounded with a lively imagination."

belonged to the school of the Mystics,

and has himself founded a

school.

His mystic notions

were many, chief amongst them are those of an emanation

from the Deity, of an internal illumination, of the

influence of the stars, of the vitality of the elements,

PARACELSUS. we have

which, as

before seen, he thought were fed and

nourished, and of the universal

In the notes

189

to his

harmony

all

things.

wonderful poem, which the public at

received somewhat coldly,* Browning asserts that the

first

Azoth of Paracelsus shut

in the

pommel

of his sword

was

laudanum and Brande,in his " Manual of Chemistry,*' tells us " that through his discoveries, merely

his specific

;

original discoveries

merit

were few and unimportant

;

in introducing chemical preparations into the

Medica/ and physicians

-Materia

in subduing the prejudices of the Galenical

against

But, though we can

which

his great

the boldness and assiduity which he displayed

lies in

the productions fix

the

laboratory.

upon no particular discovery on

found his merits as a chemist, and though his

acumen and knowledge

writings are deficient in the

dis-

played by several of his contemporaries and immediate successors,

it is

undeniable that he gave a most important

turn to pharmaceutical

chemistry, and calomel, with a

variety of mercurial and antimonial preparations, as like-

wise opium,

came

into general use."

have a copy of the

first

edition, of

very small number were printed.

The

which probably only a is dated March, 1835,

preface

and the book was published by Effingham Wilson.

list

of Mr.

Moxon's books, dated 1846, is stitched up with it, and reveals the fact that eleven years had passed away, but that the first edition of one of the most remarkable print,

To compare

Browning poets.

poems written had not passed out

this neglect

will be both instructive

with the present estimation of

and consolatory

to unsuccessful

VARIA.

190

The

notices which

are by no

means

Mr. Hallam accords

to Paracelsus

few, but they are very unfavourable.

regards him in his truest light, that of a poetical

" Germany/' which Hallam truly says "

quack.

native soil of mysticism in Europe,

to reflex observation in the

that time accompanied of Deity;

presence

with

intellectual

judgment, and

theopathy,

theism."

a profound sense

of the their

became rather an impression than an

spirits,

shown

The tenGerman mind was at

"yet one which, acting on

thoughtful

definite

the

fond of the unin-

dreams of the school of Paracelsus."

telligible

dency

when

The tendency

settled into a mysterious init

did not evaporate in pan-

evaporate in pantheism

in the philosophy of Paracelsus,

his

accouni

of gnomes, sylphs, Sylvesters, montanes, and tonnets, of

which I have before spoken, and

to the creation of which,

long before Pope had used the machinery for his poem, Paracelsus has as one.

much a

any

right to be credited as

was followed by a whole school of mystics,

Boehm and

in which Jacob

even Swedenborg

may

classed.

" His chemical theories," Hallam says, " descended from Paracelsus through gated chiefly by

Van Helmont, and were

propa-

Sylvius, a physician of Holland.

His

leading principle was that a perpetual fermentation goes

on in the human body, from the deranged action of which diseases proceed

;

most of them from an excess of

acidity,

though few are of alkaline origin." " He degraded the physician," says Sprengel, " to the level of a distiller or a

PARACELSUS. There are many who

brewer.''*

whether

this theory

191 even now question

will

be not the true one after

much

medicine does indeed owe

man who was

if so,

a true Posicrucian had only to look at a

This seems

patient to cure him.

be merely the

first

budding forth of the doctrine of magnetic cure.

faint

" All things," says

Croillus, or Croll, of

phist after Paracelsus'

own

is Graballis,

which

force."

as a

thus attracts.

Macrocosm are

The inward and

actual

named.

This

from which the science

Gaballis or imagination

Hesse, a theoso-

heart, " in the

found also in the Microcosm.

man

;

These held that

spite of his followers the Posicrucians.

all

to Paracelsus, even in

magnet

to external objects,

Medicines act by a magnetic

This Gabalistic force or art which produces by natural imagination and all

changes that his

element

" per

ficlem

naturalem ingenitam,"

it is

may

all

those wonderful

can wish for in health or disease within

descanted upon continually by Paracelsus.

two elements in his body, a sidereal and material

;

and

this actual or sidereal part of

and

after death,

too

man

Microcosm,

Man has

but

faith,

magical operations, and indeed

him

survives

will explain the apparitions of the

dead

useless to again refer to his assertions, and, indeed,

conclude with our chief literary historian, perhaps

much

has been said about paradoxes so absurd and

mendacious

but literature

a garden of weeds as well

Hallam, Literature of Europe, vol. iii. p. 599. iii. 362, quoted also by Hallam.

t Sprengel,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; VABIA.

192 as of flowers

and Paracelsus forms a

;

link in the history

of opinion which should not be overlooked. Syllvesters, satyres,

montans and ton nets, undens and

melogens, vulcanals, salamanders, tumdel, and luperi, are

now

all laid,

thank Heaven,

to sleep, unless

they shall be

again brought into fashion by our modern rapparees.

needs this peep into mediaeval darkness to assure us that we live in

an age of progress and of

in the storm,

thrown

light.

We have, like Lear

off these fantastic

lendings

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

these

rags and remnants of the mythology which the Greeks

and Romans

us.

left

If Paracelsus believed in them,

which we doubt, seeing that he was mystic above

all

things, he yet believed in mercury and laudanum, two of the

most powerful props of modern medical science.

should be honoured, therefore, even whilst

with Coleridge, the old belief in gnomes and Oh, never rudely will

blame

recall,

spirits

his faith

In the might of stars and angels

For

still

Doth the

the heart doth need a language

;

still

old instinct bring back the old names,

Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth

With man

with their friend

;

and

to the lover

Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky Shoot influence down and even at this day :

who brings whate'er is great, And Venus who brings everything that's fair. 'Tis Jupiter

This poetical superstition seems just now to be flickering

for the last time, the

same

audible in knocks, cracks, and

After

all,

until this dies out,

in spirit, but corporeally

jumping

chairs

and

were better perhaps

tables. to

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

;

PARACELSUS. back his

to the unadulterated

Lemures,

193

spirit-world of Paracelsus

his Azoth, his Catholicon,

and

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

who

Referring to the death of Paracelsus, an author

more picturesque and

him

his Elixir Vita?.

startling than his facts warrant

to he, tells us that Paracelsus

died, after a

few

hours' illness, with a bottle of his immortal Catholicon in

his pocket."

this

known, save

will,

executed St.

statement nothing

was not sudden.

that the illness

His

Matthew's day, September 21st, 1541, says that the testator is sick in

his

chamber

then resided.

body but sound

in mind.

It is dated

from

the inn, the " White Horse," where he

described as " the venerable and

most learned Doctor Theophrastus ab Hohenheim." Ready

money,

travels,

and

rings, precious stones, plate, books,

some of the

curiosities

made up

the exception of

clothes,

and antiquities gathered in his

the chief part of his property, which, with

some legacies

and nearest

to his friends

of kin, he ordered to be expended in charitable purposes

and

his executors carried out his wishes

on the Hospital of

by bestowing

St. Sebastian, in the precincts of

which

he desired to be buried.

a mural tablet in the chapel of the Hospital

folio win o-

memorial of the once famous doctor

Condi tur hie

PHILIPPUS THEOPHRASTUS, Insignis Medicinae Doctor,

Qui dira ilia vulDera

Lepram, Podagram, Hydropisin, o

the

—

;

VARIA.

194

aliaque insanabilia corporis eontagia mirifica arte sustulit;

ac bona sua in pauperes collocanda

distribuendaq

erogavit.

Anno mdxxxxi. die xxiv. Septembris, vitam cum morte mutavit.* Possibly there

is little

in the history of the real

Para-

Browning

in his

celsus to bear out the noble aspiration of

Ideal

but there can be no question of the purity of that

;

poet's ideal, nor of the beauty of the is

apostrophized.

The

spirit of

must have been pleased by

language in which

Bombast von Hohenheim

this address

Men look up to the sun! For after-ages shall retrack thy beams, And put aside the crowd of busy ones, And worship thee alone — the master-mind, The

thinker, the explorer, the creator

I recognise thee first

saw thee

rise, I

watched thee early and

And though no glance revealed thou dost My homage— thus no less I proffer it, And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest * It

may

be as well here to add the epigram on the engraving

from which our portrait

Manlius of Gorlitz, and

taken.

may

fidelity of the painter,. just as

was supplied by Christopher

be received as a testimony to the

Ben Jonson's

lines

portrait of Shakespeare prove that its fidelity art

late,

was small

on the Droeshout

was

as great as its

otherwise the epigram, especially the second verse,

;

which we omit,

but a versification of names and dates.

Stemmate nobilium genitus Paracelsus avorum,

Qua

humo cum plurima longum

vetus Helvetia claret Eremus

Sic oculos, sic or a

tulit,

Discendi studio per loca

fecit iter.

w HOWELL THE TEAVELLEE.

^^^

BOOKS CONSULTED. EpistolcB Ho-Eliance; Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, divided into

Four Books, partly

Emergent Occasions. Epistolce Ho-Eliance torical,

Political,

By James Howel,

Historical, Political, Philosophical, upon

By James Howell.

Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren, Hisand Phylosophical, upon Emergent Occasions.

;

Esq., one of the Clerkes of His Majesties'

Honourable Privy Council. Retrospective Review.

Part

1821.

1688.

Art.

7th edition.

Most

1705.

Howell's Familiar Letters.

Vol. IV.

HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. EPISTOL^E-HO-ELIAJSLE.

EiBCHDEACON PALEY said letter

the purpose; and one.

that the best

was that which came most

The

directly to

sound

his definition is a

polite involutions, curious turns,

quaint images, and hyperbolical compliments with which

our grandfathers tickled the fancies of our grandmothers

and great-aunts, should be, and luckily have been, swept Letter-writing to some

away. it is

a passion.

a disease, and

With

a pastime

ladies this passion soon

when they

are under

its

influence

many

;

grows into it is

asto-

nishing what long letters they will write upon the slightest subject,

and how,

encouraged, a perennial spring of

correspondence will gush from them.

from

this

If suffering badly

mania, they are always " gushing;" but since

the disease would appear to be inevitable, that they should take

in the best possible

may

form

;

be well and,

VABIA.

198

a doctor be careful of the virus he chooses for vaccination,

we should be

surely

miliar "

the

dictum,

from which our

letter writer

venom

" Fa-

particular in the choice of the

of a lady's pen."

" take

relatives first

Basing ourselves upon Paley's

we may be somewhat astonished

to find that, in

age of euphemistic periphrasis, James Howell arrived at once at the highest point of excellence. His familiar

letters,

on subjects the enumeration of even a few of which would occupy too much of our space, are models of what should

beâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; humorous may

the case

require, but practical, clear, concise,

always direct and to the point.

There

very manly and delightful in their style

good-humour, and knowledge of

tions

life

Hence, of upwards of forty

immense.

this clever travelled

remain to us

letters

or serious, affectionate or severe, as

and

something also

and the reading,

;

they display are different publica-

gentleman, his

letters alone

and these are read again and again, each

time with a greater zest and pleasure by the true lover of old literature.

Travelling, in Howell's days, as easy, an

black letter

amusement critics

it is

was as fashionable,

now.

leave

not

to the

to determine the important question

whether Shakespeare had ever been to Scotland, or to Paris, or had u swum in a gondola." His descriptions of Italian scenery are

sufficiently

accurate to warrant the

supposition that he had visited the latter country.

he was not actually a fortunately born

But

traveller, the majority of the

and richer gentlemen of

his

day were, as

well as the poor scholars, who, mustering their few gold

HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. went afoot

pieces,

William Lithgow,

for

199

thirtie

and

sixe thousande of miles, perfitting his long nineteen years

by surveying forty-eight kingdoms, twenty-one re-

travel

publics,

ten

absolute

and two hundred

principalities,

islands/' said William, finishing his journeys (and being

himself finished, poor fellow

by torture

he was arrested as an English spy.

Malaga, where

greater education

than he was a son of the Archbishop of York, William Sandys, an accomplished gentleman, scholar, and tra-

which

James Howell

veller

;

Born

in Carmarthenshire in

tells

titles

also

1596 (one

may

lay claim.

child of fifteen, as

us incidentally), Howell was educated at Hereford

and Oxford, and repaired

London

There

1617.

abundant evidence that graduates of the Universities and

gentlemen of good family were not averse that age;

and, although

satirized the citizens,

men

still

to trade in

dramatists and courtiers

the

the sons of knights and noble-

sought employment of the merchants and chief traders

for their sons.

James Howell was appointed steward

a London glass factory, anj! in 1619 went abroad in that capacity to perfect his knowledge and engage " gentle-

men workmen." in the

travelled

meantime with high

till

1621, corresponding

dignitaries

and noblemen (one

of his brothers was Bishop of Bristol), and on his return still

followed his stewardship.

This connection of business

with literature, which undoubtedly did him good, lasted for

Upon

some time. companion

;

its

cessation he

became a

travelling

then a Government agent to Spain

he was witness to

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

where " Babie's " and " Steenic's " romantic

VABIA.

200

attempt at a Spanish marriage. tary to

Lord Scrope

elected

member

Richmond,

for

nearly four years

lie

as President of the

;

was then

which post he remained

and afterwards went

;

became Secre-

North

Copenhagen

as Secretary to the British Ambassador.

In 1640 he

was made Clerk of the Council by Charles

and three

years afterwards was, by the Parliament, imprisoned in the Fleet, where he maintained himself by translating and

working

After the King's death he

for the booksellers.

was released, and

at the Restoration

was made our

first

".historiographer royal," in which position he continued

using his pen

till

the year of the great

16.66,

fire,

when

he died.

From

so busy a life

five

we should expect much

hundred pages

is full

of observation, and

His

as the essays of Montaigne. to all sorts of people

bury,

Lady Digby,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

to the

letters are

amusing

addressed

King, Lord Herbert of Cher-

Secretary Conway, Sir Robert Mansell,

Sir Sacvil Trevor, Captain Francis Bacon,

Mr. Ed. Noy, and

and we are

;

Howell's thick volume of upwards of

not disappointed.

others.

Mr. Ben Jon son,

are inclined to think that,

with the method of a tradesman, he kept copies of letters

for,

;

from memory when in the Fleet, they are often too

amusing

trivialities,

freshness to have

we have

full

of local touch and colouring, the most

evanescent of qualities

are, as

all his

although some assert that he compiled them

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

in short,

originated in

have too great an

any other manner.

air of

They

before hinted, supposed to be the earliest

specimens of epistolary literature

our language. Howell's

—

HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. style

seems

in his motto

201

have been based upon tbe precept contained

clavis portara, sic pandit Epistola pectus

Claudetur hsec cera, claudetur

;

ilia sera.

keys do open chests, So Letters open breasts.

dedicates his letters to the

King

in a

Poem

Koyal,"

dated Oalendis JanuarU,

1641, which contains some

strong and excellent lines.

brings, he says

No medals or rich stuff of Tyrian dye, No costly bowls offrosted argentry, No Roman perfumes, buffs, or cordovans Made drunk with amber by Moreno's

hands.

but something I will bring

To handsel the new year

And

in a word, his

defines S.

letter

like a is

book of

what an

Charles,

—

letters.

Leeds Castle

King,

his very first

epistle should be, in

(John Smith) "

usher in bifronted Janus,

page he

one written to Sir J.

was a quaint difference the ancients did put and an oration

woman, the other

—

'twixt

that the one should be attir'd

like a

man

;

the latter of the two

allowed large side-robes, as long periods, parentheses,

similes, examples,

and other parts of

rhetorical flourishes

;

but a letter or epistle should be short-coated and closely couch'd; a hungerlin [a short scanty coat] becomes a letter

more handsomely than a gown. as

we speak

;

and

Indeed,

we should

that's a true familiar letter

scth one's mind, as

write

which expres-

he were discoursing with the party

VARIA.

202 to

whom he

The

writes in short and succinct terms.

tongue and the pen are both interpreters of the mind

;

I hold the pen to be the more faithful of the two.

but

The

tongue, in udo joosita, being seated in a moist slippery place,

may

pressions

;

and

fail

her sudden extemporal ex-

falter in

but the pen, having the greater advantage of

premeditation,

Now,

not so subject to error.

letters,

though they be capable of any subject, are commonly either narratory, objurgatory , monitory, or congratula-

There are some who,

tory.

are others that turn that trite

in lieu of letters, write

when they should

melies ; they preach

them

into tedious tractats

Ho-

There

epistolize.

and others

must go fraighted with meer Bartholomew ware, with and

trivial

phrases only, lifted with pedantic shreds

of schoolboy verses."

Really, Mr. Howell must have been reading, phetic vision, letters

some of the vacation and

which are now-a-days issued.

by pro-

lady-tourists'

equally se-

vere on the elder Balzac and the letter-writers of our

" transmarine " neighbours

" Loose

flesh without sinews,

simpering lank hectic expressions, a bombast of words

made up

of finical

and

affected compliments, I cannot

away

with such sleazy stuff;" and luckily he has backbone enough to prevent his

committing the

condemns. In an early

faults

which he so ardently

epistle to his father

tells

had he remained steward of the glass-house

us that,

Broad

Street, he should " have melted away to nothing amidst

those hot Venetians."

him

Broad

Captain Francis Bacon succeeded

Street, whilst

Howell was taken into the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. employment of of

Sir

Pembrook and

Court, had got a sole patent for the

ment

Prime Lords

making

Here

the

first

in the blast of our furnaces

favorit Sir

of glass from

;

hint of the improve-

but

would seem that

In the same

us something of the rise of the haughty

and grows strong

of the

huge loads of wood formerly used

the patent did not succeed.

" The new

my Lord

Robert Mansell, who, with "

divers others of the

pit-coal, only to save the

in the furnaces."

203

letter

Buckingham

tells :

George Villiers tapers up a pace,

His predecessor, the Earl of

at Court.

Somerset, has got a lease of ninety years for his so hath his Articulate lady

lated against the frigidity

life,

and

so called, because she articu-

;

and impotence of her former

[This was the notorious Countess of Somerset cele-

lord.

brated in our State Trials.]

and industry

She was

who had used

the Lord Chief Justice,

afraid that Coke,

extraordinary art

in discovering all the circumstances in the

poysoning of Overbury, would have made white broth of

them

;

but the Prerogative kept them from the pot.

the subservient instruments,

break thorow

;

amongst

flies,

Yet

could not

others, Mistriss Turner, the in-

ventress of yellow starch, ruff of that colour at

the lesser

was executed

in a

cobweb lawn

Tyburn, and with her, I

disappear that yellow starch, which so

much

believe, will

disfigured our

nation and rendered them so ridiculous and fantastic."

In the same

letter

Howell

tells

us of the execution of

Sir Gervas Elway, Lieutenant of the Tower, who, on being

hanged on Tower Hill as an accessory

to the

murder of

Overbury, declared that the reason he suffered was through

— VARIA.

204

Low

a rash vow, for when in the

Countries he swore an If he

oath that he would not play above a certain sum.

might he be hanged

did,

append a virtue

Pembrook,

Sir

James

whom

estate (above a

bestowed

and hanged he was, surely

In chronicling a crime

enough.

—

let

us,

when we

that, for instance, of

the

King gave

all

Sir Gervas Elway's

thousand per annum), and who at once

on the widow and her children.

Crofts,

Howell

tells

In a

voyage "

which

(it is

at first

adds the writer, "

myne

promised to be a hopeful boon

only one noun, it

i.e.,

companion), " but,"

seems that that golden myne

a meer chymcera, an imaginary airy

myne

wonders why Sir Walter ever came back

enemy, and

tells

proved

indeed,

;

Majesty had never any other conceit of

jester.

his

worth while remarking that we now use the

last adjective with

his

letter to

us of the probable fate of Sir

Walter Raleigh, who had just returned from " in Guiana,

can,

Lord William

His

Howell

it."

to the clutches of

an a projpos story of a king and his

Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador,

introduced

in a wonderfully characteristic huffling, braggadocio

way

" Count Gondamar desired audience with His Majesty

—he had but one word

to tell him.

His Majesty won-

dering what might be delivered in one word, when he

came before him, he and

said only Pyrats, Pyrats, Pyrats,

so departed."

This Gondomar seems, like the Count von Bismarck, to

have been a

man

some humour.

There

Kirby

Hatton Garden, a public-house which retains the name of the " Hole in the Wall ;" and to antiquaries the Street,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. memory

Lady Hatton

Hatton Garden, Sir

close by.

Edward Coke, had

village of Clerkenwell,

Gondomar, who

preserved in the street called

This proud lady, the wife of

thereat a wicket gate, which led

from the garden into the

House, begged

its

beyond, leading

fields

key

the

Count

Lady Hatton

Ely

which the

to this private door,

" She/' says Howell, " put him

lady refused.

green and may-pole.

lived next door to for a

205

off

with a

;

compliment " whereupon Gondomar, in a private audience with the King, exposed the whole

affair,

hinted at the tyranny exercised by

cringing husband.

and more than

Lady Hatton on her

" Lady Hatton," says

he, "

lady, for she will not suffer her husband, Sir to

come

domar,

go out in the

London, and the

compared

her back door

fields at

The smoke and

;

Gon-

and so

dinginess

sickly glare of the sun therein as

to Spain, are well hit off in

witty Spaniard

a strange

into her house at her front door, nor him, to

related the whole business."

Edward Coke,

a sentence by the

was despatching a Post

lately to

Spain, and the

Post having received his packet, and kiss'd his hands, he call'd

him back and

told

him he had

forgot one thing,

which was, that when he came to Spain, he should com-

mend him while, and

Travelling

the sun,

for he had not seen him a great

Spain he should the

he sure to find

Hague, Amsterdam, and

Howell draws a picture of the little

removed

Its streets

were

was from a

close,

him."

latter

city of the

mean, and

Paris,

which shows how middle ages.

dirty, except

some few

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

;

VARIA.

206

new houses

built of stone,

and the Louvre, with

great

its

" the king might place 3,000 men in the

gallery, wherein

The

very heart of this great mutinous city."

streets

stank like those of Cologne, in Coleridge's epigram, and

were so narrow that two coaches or carts passing would

The mud was

create a block.

so black

and greasy

(filled

with oyl, says Howell) that no washing could cleanse

from some colours

;

so that

name, he

ill

The

the crot of Paris, indelible.

At night-time

says, is like

stench of Paris might

be perceived with the wind in one's face

lives of

many

the city was full of thieves

;

miles

off.

by which the

night travellers -were constantly endangered

" Coming

late to our lodgings (near the Bastille) a crew

of Filous or night rogues surpriz'd and drew on us, and

we exchanged some lier

du Guet

blows.

It pleased

(a night patrol)

God

that the Cheva-

came by and

so rescued us

but Jaclc White was hurt, and I had two thrusts in cloake.

There's never a night passes by but some rob-

bery or murder

committed in

this

town."

In a subsequent letter Howell relates the assassination of

King Henry IV. by

which that wretch was put. It

Eavaillac,

and the horrid tortures

Henry, says Howell, who amassed a heap of gold

as high as a lance,

and who levied a huge army of 40,000

men, " whence comes the saying, the King of France Of course, Howell did not with forty thousand men." see the tially

murder of the king, but he

and minutely, as from the

French friend of

his.

relates

lips of

circumstan-

an eye-witness, a

HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. " Going nition, his

one

and

to the Bastile to see his treasure

ammu-

coach stopped suddenly, by reason of some col-

and other

liers

207

Mav iliac,

carts that

were in that

street

whereupon

;

a lay Jesuit (who had a whole twelvemonth

watched an opportunity

do the act), put his foot boldly

upon one of the wheels of the coach, and with a long

who were

knife stretched himself over their shoulders

the hoot of the coach, and reached the king at the end,

and stabb'd him right in the

left side to

the heart, and,

The king,

pulling out the fatal steel, he doubl'd his thrust.

with a ruthful voice, cri'd 'Je suis blesse

suddenly the Blood issued out of his mouth

am :

hurt),

and

the Eegicide

was apprehended, and command given that no

villain

violence should he offered him, that he might he reserved for the

Law and some

grew half

The Queen

exquisite Torture.

distracted here upon,

who had been crown'd

Queen of France the day before in great triumph

;

few days after she had something to countervail, overmatch, her sorrow she was

;

for,

made Queen Regent

minority,

how

not

according to St. Lewis's law, of France during the king's

who was then but about ten years

consultations were held

but a if

of age.

to punish Ravillac,

were some Italian physicians that undertook

Many

and there

to prescribe

a torment that should last a constant torment for three

days

;

but he 'scaped only with

this.

His body was

pull'd

between four horses, that one might hear his bones crack,

and

after dislocation

they were set again, and so he was

carried in a cart half naked, with a torch in that

which had committed the murder, and

in the place

hand where

VARIA.

208 the act was done

was cut

was clapped on the place gave a doleful shriek

when a new

was provided

Body was In

into the holes.

torture he scarce

and a Gauntlet of hot Oyl whereat he

then was he brought upon a stage,

;

pair of boots

with boyling Oyl, then his

Oyl poured

off,

to staunch the blood,

all

for

him, half

filled

pincered, and hot

the extremity of this

shewed any sense of pain but when the

gauntlet was clap'd upon his

arm

staunch the

flux, at

which time of reaking blood he gave a shrike only. bore up against before he died.

all

these Torments for about three hours

All the confession that could be drawn

from him was, That he thought Service, to take

away

have done God good

that king which

broiled all Chrestendom in

endless

would have em-

War."

Arrived at Venice, he found there " the best gentlemen

workmen

that ever blew crystal,"

attempt to get some

and was aided,

in his

workmen

of these gentlemen

England, by Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador and the author of two famous mots.

The

a retort to a Venetian nobleman, who had

first

was

asked him

" where the Protestant religion was before the Refor" Signor," said he, " where was your face mation." this

morning before

was washed ?"

celebrated definition of an sent to

lie

The second

ambassadorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; " A

exceedingly.

the

gentleman

abroad for the good of his country."

praises Venice glass

The makers

Howell thereof

were gentlemen ipso facto, and, after their work, dressed in silks

and buckled on

painted by Vandyke

;

their

swords like the gallants

but the lasses and glasses of Venice,

HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. Howell

were alike

says,

clean that

and with these and other of his observa-

he mingles

in a very

Venice, he adds, was so

brittle.

might be walked " in a Silk Stokin and Sat-

tin Slippers ;"

tions

209

and philosophical remark

story, history,

charming way.

Howell, when in London, appears to have lived very close to for,

Ben

Jonson, in Westminster, near Tothill Fields

;

from the pleasant gardens there, we find him in July,

1629, sending to Sir Arthur Ingram " a hamper of melons, the best that I could

gardens."

time with him at his noble

In thanking him letter writer

anywhere

new house

to stay

some

Temple Newsam.

for this courteous invitation our familiar-

anticipates

Joe Miller

down

^ound old jests, which he sets

man who had

find of Tothill Fields

Arthur had asked Howell

Sir

one of his very

a Norfolk country-

a " sute " before Sir Edward Coke, who,

asking him how he called a certain river, answered, " lord, I

come

need not

of herself."

me to any house

forward enough to

" So I may say that you need not

of yours, for I

without calling."

she

call her, for

call

am forward enough to come

In the next

extract, a letter

give whole to show fully Howell's style,

which we

learn that

Ben

Jonson narrowly escaped being burnt out of house and

home.

he addresses rare Ben, as did many of

contemporaries, as his poetical

" To

"Father Ben,

Father Mr.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Nullum

his

sire.

sit

Ben

Jonson.

magnum ingenium

sine

mixtura dementia, there's no great wit without some mixp

VARIA.

210

ture of madness, so saith the philosopher fool that

;

answered, nee jparvum sine mixtura

nor was he a stultitice,

small wit without some allay of foolishness.

the

first, it is

verified in you, for I find that

mad when you

often

writ your

nor

Touching

you have bin

Fox, and madder when

mad when you writ mad when you writ Sejanus ; but Epigrams and the Manetick Lady

you writ your Alchemist; you were your Catilin, and stark

when you

writ your

you were not so mad

insomuch that I perceive there are

degrees of madness in you.

with you.

The madness

Excuse

mean

that I

so free

that divine Fury,

that heating and heightening spirit which Ovid speaks

" Est deus in

nobis, agitante calesscimus illo

of.

that true

enthusiasm which transports and elevates the souls of poets above the middle region of vulgar conceptions, and

makes them

soar up to heaven and touch the stars with

walk in the Zodiac with Apollo

their laurelled heads, to

himself, and

command Mercury upon

" I cannot yet

mar; you

light

before Christmas I

to look better

chimney, which

from burning,

this

threatened you his wife,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

their errand. his

Welsh Gram-

promised one.

So, desiring

upon Dr. Davies

hereafter to your charcoal fire

and

glad to be one that preserved

being the second time that Vulcan has

may

be because you have spoken

and been too busy with

his horns

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;I

rest,

ill

Tour

son and contiguous neighbour, J. H.

"Westminster, 27 June, 1629."

have

little

space

left

a pudding from which so

;

but

it is

hard to part with

many plums may be

picked.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. Howell has always plenty facetious tale of a

say.

will

211 tell

you a

" Porter/' or an anecdote about the

" Election of Pope," or

will discourse

on the " Chemistry

of Glass/' " The Excise/' " Prayer and Praise/' " Auto-

logy/' "

Of a hideous

serpent lately found in a young

gentleman's heart in Holborn/' "

Yan Heyn's mighty

Plate Prize/' "

stein [Wallenstein] in

Stories."

the death of

Of Wiving," " Of Peter

Germany

Of what year

last

befel

Wal-

All sorts of

writes of "William Lily, the astrologer, of

Mr. Attorney-General

Bacon, and several times

Ben Jonson, "

1ST oy,

of that of

to his poetic or

dear father Ben,"

Lord

mental father,

who was

of a rugged

but fine nature, and too often

The Dogge

At the Sun, or triple Tun

as full of drink as of the poetic afflatus.

cannot pass

without extracting Howell's epitaph on Jonson, and part

Lord Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Duppa, " My Lord/' he writes, " It is well

of his letter to the

on Ben's death.

becoming and very worthy that you are about not

Mr. Ben Jonson suddenly.

go so

silently to his

Being newly come

to town,

grave or rot so

and understanding

that your Johnsonus Virbius was in the press, solicitation of Sir

Thomas Hawkins,

the insuing Decastich, which,

have room among the

fell

upon

may

rest.

thy glass run

Which

I suddenly

upon the

your Lordship please,

Upon my honoured Friend and A ND

to suffer

F.,

Mr. Ben Jonson.

out, is that oyl spent

light to such strong sinewy labours lent?

;

VARIA.

212 Well, Ben, I

Though they

now

perceive that

their

Cannot prevail 'gainst Night's

One

still

all

the Nine,

utmost forces should combine, but

three daughters,

must Spin, one Wind, the other

Cut.

Yet, in despight of distaffe, clue and knife,

Thou in thy strenuous lines hast got a life, Which like thy Bays shall flourish ev'ry age, While Soc

or Buskin shall attend the stage.

Sic Vaticinatur Hoellus."

He tells

writes a long letter on the death of the King, and

us that the city was

huying the mourning

all

much " annoyed

in white cloth,

dyed

This was a shrewd stroke of business, owing,

black."

we should

guess, to the citizens having, on the proximate

death of the Sovereign, bought up as to monopolize

it,

all

well,

that lead us to

price.

and perhaps never better than

gives an account of his daily

calls this narration

the black cloth, so

and charge their own

Howell always writes

when he

at the Court

and having

life.

his index

the " Self-travel of one of the

Heaven."

" Though there be rules and rubrics in our Liturgy ficient to

Wayes

guide us in the performance of

all

suf-

holy duties,

yet I believe every one hath some mode, or model, or

formulary of his own especially for his private or cubicular devotions;

for myself,

on Saturday evening I

which I have fasted ever since I was a youth, delivered from a very great danger.

fast,

for

being

On Sunday morning

I rise earlier, to prepare myself for the sanctifying of

nor do I use barber, taylor, shoe-maker, or any other

mechanic that morning.

Whatever

lets

may

hinder

HOWELL TEE TRAVELLER. the

week

before, I never miss, but in case of sickness, to

day before prayers begin, and

repair to God's bouse tbat to prepare

myself by previous meditation to take the whole

decentest

I prostrate myself in the humblest and

me.

service with

way of

lieve there

genuflexion I can imagine

nor do I be-

;

can be any excess of exterior humility in that

place, therefore I do not like

postures on one's hat, but with

apply every

tail,

unseemly squatting, bold

or muffling one's face ivith one's

bended knee

of the church

my own

213

I fix

and on Heaven.

tittle

eyes on the East part

...

I endeavour to

of the service to myself, to the service of

conscience

;

and I believe the want of

many

undervalue and take a surfeit

of our public service.

(i. e.

with

this,

make

the huddling and careless reading of some ministers,

at the length)

For the reading and singing of

Psalms, whereas most of them are either petitions or Eucharistical ejaculations, I listen to

and make them I think

my own

them more

when I stand

upon the custom they have in Poland, and

where, for gentlemen to draw their swords intimating thereby they will defend

blood

attentively

at the Creed,

and

for the

all

else-

the while,

with their lives and

Decalogue, where others

rise, I

even

kneel in the humblest and trembling'st posture of

all,

craving remission for the breaches of God's holy com-

mandments.

I love a holy

and devout sermon, that

first

checks and then chears the conscience, that begins with the law and ends with the Gospel, but I never prejudicate or judge any preacher, taking

" And now

that

him

as I find him.

are not only adulted bat ancient

VAEIA.

214

Christians, I believe the

send up to Heaven

mons are not

mj body

worldly

The

and

we can

to the true

rest of the holy sabbath, I

my mind

much

as I can from

affairs.

"Upon Monday morn thanks

sacrifice

them

so essential as either of

practice of devotion.

sequester

most acceptable

Prayer and Praise, and that Ser-

;

have a particular prayer of

and every day I knock thrice

Heaven's gate,

besides prayers at meals, and other occasional ejaculations, as

upon the putting on of a clean

and lighting the

also

upon

Friday night,

when, as soon as

field,

summer time

in the

washing

acts

often

night I

of devotion,

and on Saturday morn

senses are unlocked, I I

my hands,

Upon Wednesday

candles.

and perform some extraordinary

fast

shirt,

there to attend the rising of the sun

thrice a day, so I fast thrice a week.

;

And

up.

up abroad, in some

private

and as I pray

Before I go to bed

I make a scrutiny of what peccant humours have reigned in for

that day, and strike a tally in Heaven's Exchequer

quietus

burden on

est,

ere I close

conscience.

prayer

eyes,

Difference in opinion

fection in

me, not a

and so leave no

I use not to rush

detestation.

madly

may work

into

a disaf-

I rather pity than hate

a Turk or an Infidel, for they are of the same metal, and bear the same stamp as I do, though the inscriptions differ.

If I hate any,

it is

those schismatics that puzzle

the sweet peace of our Church. this fruit of

thank

God

that I have

foreign travels, that I can pray unto

him

every day in the week in a several language, and upon

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. Sunday

in seven, which in orisons of iny

perform in

ally

sic

215

own

punctu-

private Pomeridian devotions

aeternam contendo attingere vitam."

Few men will quarrel with God service, which is surely

such a method of doing a peaceful and Christian

Serious and calm writing like this strongly reminds

one.

us of the best passages in Sir

Thomas Browne's "

Beligio

Medici."

The

quoted

letter just

sembles Sir

dated July, 1635.

Thomas Browne's

style so

It re-

much that one may

MS.

doubt whether Howell had not seen the

of the

" Beligio Medici," which in that year was written,

may It

be,

was not given to the world

says,

or, it

was written before and circulated in manuscript. until

" About the year 1634, he

Dr. Johnson

1642.

(Sir

Thomas Browne)

supposed to have returned to London, and the next year to

have written his celebrated treatise called

Beligio

Medici,' the religion of a physician, which he declares

himself never to have intended for the press. says

Simon Wilkin

have proved that

in a note

Dr. Kippis,

this passage,

seems to

Beligio Medici' was written in 1635.

In Wilkin's additional memoir of Browne we are told that he returned

England

M.D.

England, and

Ley den,

after

having obtained his degree

in 1633.

settled as

then returned at once

a physician at Shepden Hall,

near Halifax, where he had enforced leisure enough to meditate upon his past

life

and

to write the

Beligio

Me-

VAEIA.

216 clici,'

one of the

fairest

monuments

If this were so, and in

amongst of

Ben

literary people,

Jonson, looked at

tionally,

reproduced

of the English mind."

1634 the MS. was it is it

in circulation

possible Howell, the friend

and, intentionally or uninten-

its style.

MICHAEL SCOT. >=d^

BOOKS CONSULTED.

Debrio.

Disquisitiones Magicce, Proloquium.

Bayle.

Dlctionnaire historique

et critique,

Moguntise, 1612.

revu par Prosp. Marchand.

Rotterdam, 1720.

Scot, Michael.

Liber physiognomies.

Scott, Sir Walter.

Dante.

Tutte

dal Conte

Dante,

Don

Lay of the Last

Opuscula.

Minstrel (Notes to).

Opere di Dante, con varie annot. Christ.

Zapata de Cisneros.

Translated by Henry Cary.

Lyons, 1531.

e copiosi

rami,

In Venetia, 1757.

fyc.

MICHAEL JMONGST

those

SCOT. who have obtained a very

great fame upon an unsolid foundation/' says a

modern

writer,

" Michael Scot holds

a very distinguished place."

Hallam, who

appears to have read everything, and to have neglected nothing, has very

little

about him, and that

satisfactory, to his friends at least.

note in Hallam's Scot,

first

little is

un-

It is contained in a

volume, and here

it is

" Michael

the Wizard of dreaded fame,' pretended to translate

Aristotle, but is

labours of one

charged with having appropriated the

Andrew, a Jew,

was, therefore, purchased at

as his

little

own."

Scot's

fame

expense, for his singular

learning in Greek, or rather the reputation of

it,

imposed

upon many people.

have seen, in the

had intended the

manner

to write a

of " Faust."

article

on Faustus, that Coleridge

drama upon Michael Scot It is well that

after

he did not carry

out his determination with so knavish a hero, for even

biographers of his

own country can

scarcely keep their

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; VABIA.

220

hands from belabouring him, and, groping in the darkness of mediaeval literature, are evidently enraged to find

Sir Walter, the great

whom

even Lord Eldon was

that the heroic figure described

magician and learned

man

proud to trace his ancestry,*

a mere windbag, a charla-

tan, a fellow of vast pretensions, possessed of the slenderest

basis of support, the smallest nucleus of reality, round

which

wound the biggest

possible ball of hypothesis,

conjecture, and fable.

The

celebrated and poetical character

who grew up

be regarded as

A wizard of such That when

Him

listed his

The

bells

dreaded fame,

in Salamanca's cave

magic wand

would ring

wave,

N6tre-Dame,

was born in an era particularly well adapted

* "

arms

When

for the

growth

the late Lord Eldon was elevated to the peerage, the

of the Scots of Balwearie

told that the

Lord Chancellor

renowned Scottish magician.

were added to his own felt

;

and we are

a pride in his descent from the

As nothing but modern evidence

produced in support of this connection of Michael with any family

now

in existence,

story.

we may be allowed

The members

nect their pedigree with some If

to withhold belief from this

of ancient families are always willing to con-

man

of intelligence in past times,

Michael had been a poor philosopher living in Lord Eldon's own

day, the prudent Chancellor would have taken particularly good care not to have given

him a sixpence

buy bread with

;

but the

son of the Newcastle coal merchant was willing enough to attest the antiquity of his brated Fife.

man

own

extraction by counting kin with a cele-

of the thirteenth century."

Lives of Eminent

Men of

MICHAEL SCOT. of an empiric fame.

Michael the Scotsman, Scotus,

certainly claimed as a Scotsman,

men

the celebrated

221

of Fife

and

inserted

by Mr. James Bruce, who

him

does not seem very well pleased with

Scotsman

man.

But he

all.

Leland

is also

for being a

claimed as an English-

he was English, and Ball and

asserts that

who both quote Leland, and cannot

Pitts,

therefore be

They

taken as authorities, assert the same thing. says

amongst

also,

Mr. Bruce, indignantly claim " Duns Scotus as an

Englishman;" and, indeed, there Anglicising

that the primary

better authority for

Duns than Michael.

take

it,

however,

and very heavy proof that Duns and

Michael were both Scots

that they were

called

so.

When

Leland quotes a passage from an unpublished trea-

tise of

Bacon, wherein the names of " Gerardus Cremo-

nensis, Michael Scotius,

Alwredus Anglicanus, Herman-

nus Alemannus " occur, we

feel that there is

German and Michael

a Scotsman by

Let Hermann

disturb the distinctive titles given to each.

be a

no reason

all

means, even

though Leland does say that the magician was born and educated in

the

county

What

Durham.

does

matter ?

Balwearie,

now

in the close neighbourhood of Baith,

in the parish of Abboteshall,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

1214

many

Bacon says

authorities tell us

;

Michael was born in but

as, in

1230, Koger

that certain portions of Aristotle's writings

(librorum Aristotelis partes aliquas de naturalibus mathematicis) had become of Michael Scot,

known through

the translation

seems evident that his birth should

VAB1A.

222 be placed

perhaps as far back as 1200 or 1190.

earlier,

flourished as the astrologer to the

Emperor Frederic

1233, and was contemporary with our Henry III,

II. in

Louis VIII. of France, and Alexander II. of Scotland,

and

it is firstly

to his (?) translation of Aristotle

fame acquired thereby that he owed service of Frederic, tions that

and secondly

his elevation to the

to his astrological predic-

he owes his present fame and enduring

and resided

for

time at Oxford, to perfect himself in the learning of

the day.

went

some time made

and studied there, and

to Paris

tured on astrology.

seems to have been born a

men, and

have been accepted in that

learned city, not as a mere pupil the art of magic.

necromancy

;

in,

but as a master

name

Boccaccio introduced his

thousands of readers, and

calls

of,

to his

him a great master of

aud when once thus placed,

fame was made.

after

Padua, where he lec-

his appearance at

favourite of literary

his

celebrity.

a roving and curious disposition, the son of a poor

Scottish knight, Scot crossed the border

some

and the

evident that

it is

In the eighth day, and the ninth

novel of the " Decameron," there of two painters, Messires

an amusing story

Bruno and Buffalmacco, who,

under the pretext of introducing one Master Simon, a physician, into a

gay

where they leave him

society,

throw him into a cesspool,

to get out as

he best can.

speaking to Master Simon of the society which they frequent, of course a fictitious one, that the painters introduce

the

name

secrecy,

Michael.

" After having sworn the physician

You must

know,' continued Bruno,

that twelve

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; MICHAEL SCOT.

223

or thirteen years ago there arrived in this

town a famous

necromancer called Michael Scot, because he was from Scotland, (the

French

translator prints

Michael Leseot).*

was received with very great honours and distinction

by the almost

best all

known gentlemen

And when he

dead.

at their solicitation

manded

two of

and their

all

who now he

left this place,

his disciples,

are

left also

whom he com-

gentlemen, who had so well

to render to those

received him,

of Florence,

those services which depended upon

them

These two necromancers served 'the said

art.

nobles, not only in their affairs of gallantry, but also in

other things, and

became

accustomed to the climate,

They

that they determined to fix their residence here.

bound themselves by of character

ties of friendship to several

persons

and personal merit, without inquiring whether

they were noble or roturiers, poor or rich, and these out of regard for their two friends, formed a

about

five

little

society, of

and twenty men, who assemble together twice

a month in a place they themselves have previously ?

named." t

One needs that the

not to say, since the story

by Boccaccio,

Society meets for the most immoral purpose.

Courtesans of the greatest beauty and of the highest rank are there to enjoy these

gay

feasts with

them

;

indeed the

" Egli non ha ancora guari, che in questa citta fu un gran

maestro in negronianzia, che di Scozia era."

quale ebbe

nome Michele

Boccaccio, Dec. Giorn.

viii.

Scotto, percio

Nov. ix.

t BOCCACCIO, Decameron^ Giorn. Ottava, Novella IX.

VABIA.

224

magic of the necromancers summoned these from the most If the persons were two thou-

distant parts of the earth.

sand leagues

off,

the potent magic taught by Michael Scot

could compel them to

come

some grand names.

to these

grand

the simple physician,

tells

ladies

Bruno gives " There is/'

in two minutes.

who

in the

end rightly

punished for his wicked desires, " the Lady of Barbanico,

Queen

the

of Basque, the wife of the Sultan, the

Empress

of Osbeck, the Schinchimurro of Prester- John, the Chian-

Chianfere of Norway, the Semistance of Berlinson, and

But Bruno was highly favoured

the Scalpedre of Narsia." as

w ell T

as his friend, the favourite mistress of the

being the Queen

first

of England, while Buffalmacco pos-

sessed the favours of the

Queen

of France.

It will be useless to follow this tale to its catastrophe,

which

The

in the usual style of Boccaccio.

story

was

written about one hundred years after our hero had been in Florence, vived. tale

and shows that

his

fame as a magician sur-

Scot was, however, the hero not only of the jovial

but the mystic romance, so

thought

fit

to introduce

Quel?

him

much

so,

that

Dante

in the Inferno, canto xx.

altro che ne' fianchi e cosi poco

Michele Scotto

fu,

che veramente

Delle raagiche frodo seppe

giucco.

This portrait of him, very vividly rendered by Cary, extremely Dantesque.

round the

loins,

see the

man, thin and

broad in his shoulders for his

weird and wild looking and small in his flanks. it is

said,

size,

girt

but

There

is,

a portrait of him, on vellum, amongst the 6a-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; MICHAEL SCOT. MSS.

nonici

in the Bodleian,

The

vigorous lines.

and

225

this agrees

with Dante's

poet has placed the necromancer in

the eighth circle with others because they had presumed

quiring

who

his guide

Upon Dante

and astrology.

to practise divination

in-

the spirits were, they are thus introduced by

That

from whose cheek

spirit,

The beard sweeps o'er his shoulders brown, what time Grsecia was emptied of her males, that scarce The cradles were supplied, the seer was he In Aulis, who, with Calchas, gave the sign

When

first to

Eurypilus

Him

cut the cable.

so sings

magic

they named

strain,

In which majestic measure well thou knowest,

Who

know'st

it all.

That

other

round

the loins

So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot, Practised in every sleight of magic will.

Slender, short, dark-haired, and weird in look, Michael

might well pass

for a wizard.

are told, in certain

Macaronic verses, published in 1519, that he was wonderfully clever in philtres

the love of

women.

and

sorceries that could secure

could also " call devils from the

wrap

vasty deep," ride on an enchanted horse,

his small

figure round in an invisible cloak, sail in a ship without

rudder,

sails,

he supplied

or other motive power but that with which it,

and walk about,

Peter Schlimmel,

without the inconvenience or convenience of a shadow.

has been placed," says

Bayle, in his

Scotus, " in the catalogue of magicians, that he frequently invited

several

him without providing anything

for

article

and we are

told

people to dine with

them

;

but

when

his

VAEIA.

226 down

guests sat

meat from company, the

King

parts; and

all '

he forced the

to table

Gentlemen,

when

this

spirits to

bring him

was come he

told the

comes from the kitchen of

of France, and this from the kitchen of the

of Spain;

comes from England,' &c.

this

poet Dante adopted the

common

The

Here Bayle

error."

quotes the lines I have given, and adds that "

John Bacon,

an English Carmelite and the Prince of the Averroists,

to be

great divine.

also a

who

he quotes Michael Scotus as a

credited;

who commends him very much,

Pitseus,

credible author.

This Pitseus

claims Scot as an Englishman, and

who

the Pitts says, that,

though Michael was accounted a magician by the mob

and the ignorant people, wise men passed another judgment on him.* " However," concludes Bayle, in his very short notice,

'tis

said that this pretended magician fore-

saw that he should

and foretold the place where the

die,

Emperor Frederic should But

was, after

all,

lose his life."

not by magic but by astrology that

Michael foretold the death of his patron. reference to this circumstance,

and

Probably, in

certainly to the science

of astrology, our good Martin Luther once gave the fol-

lowing opinion, which

so sound

science can add nothing to

with

all

it,

and wise that modern

and which should,

at least

Lutherans, have set at rest any belief in as-

trology.

In the year 1538, the Seigneur Von Minckwitz made * Prudentum tamen et cordatorum judicium.

hominum

longe aliud fuit

MICHAEL SCOT. a public

honour of astrology, wherein he

oration

227

sought to prove that the sentence in Jeremiah, chap, x,

" Be not dismayed

at the signs of heaven/' applied not

images of the Gentiles. Luther " These passages may be quibbled with, hereupon,

to astrology, hut to the

said

Jeremiah speaks, as Moses

but not overthrown. all

did, of

the signs of heaven, earth, and sea; the heathen were

not so

be afraid of the sun or moon, but they

silly as to

feared and adored prodigies and miraculous signs. trology

art

work.

has no principle, no demonstration

;

may

whereupon we

As-

take sure footing

'tis

;

all

haphazard

Philip Melancthon, against his will, admits unto

me, that though, as he says, the

art is extant, there are

none that understand

They

almanacs, that

thunder in winter

rightly.

shall

and

;

set forth, in their

have no snow in summer time, no this the country clowns

know

well as the astrologers.

" Philip Melancthon says

That such people as are

born in ascendente Libra, in the ascension of Liber, towards the south, are unfortunate people.' I

said,

The

astrologers are

troubles

stars

and

'tis

;

Whereupon dream

creatures, to

and mishaps proceed not from God, but

that their crosses

from the

silly

hence they are not patient in their

adversities.'

" Astrology

uncertain, and

the

predicamenta

are feigned words in dialectica, even so astronomy has

feigned astrology

;

as the ancient and true divines

nothing of the fantasies teachers,

the ancient

and

divinity

astronomers

the

knew

school-

knew nothing

VAEIA.

228

The

astrology.

shown me.

nativities of Cicero

I said,

I would gladly have

anything unto them.

bute

astrologers answer

and of others were

I hold nothing thereof, nor attri-

together, of one father

this

the

Esau and Jacob were born

and one mother,

and

at one time,

under- equal planets, yet they were wholly of contrary natures, kinds,

" What stars.

The

and minds.'

done by

God ought

not to be ascribed to the

upright and true Christian religion opposes

The way

and confutes

all

tivities is like

the proceedings in Popedom, whose outward

such fables.

of casting na-

ceremonies and pompous ordinances are pleasing to hu-

man

wit and wisdom, as the consecrated water, torches,

organs, cymbals, singing, ringing, but withal there's no certain knowledge.

" sells

astrologer or horoscope-monger

dice and. balls.

always come up to 12.' tell,

where they

one that

Behold, here I have dice that If once or twice their conjectures

they cannot sufficiently extol the art

infinite cases

is like

fail,

;

but as to the

they are altogether

" Astronomy, on the contrary, I

;

silent.

pleases

by reason of her (sic) manifold benefits. " General prophecies and declarations which declare generally what in future shall happen, accord not upon individuals

" When,

and particular things. at

one time,

many

are slain in battle, no

man

can affirm that they are born under one planet, yet they die altogether in one hour,

yea in one moment."*

* Luther, Colloquia Mensalia.

MICHAEL These two the birth of

Scot's time there

easily

However,

irrefragable.

fact,

were many who believed in the

The

he himself did not.

false

story of his feasting

his friends from the tables of the various kings of

may

and of

slain in battle,

astrologers, let us say Lieutenant Morri-

they are, in

science, if

many

points, of the

229

Esau and Jacob, would, no doubt, be

met by modern son, but

SCOT.

Europe

have been the foundation of the more wonderful

story of producing queens

same

and beautiful

ladies

places, as Boccaccio tells us, for the

England and France are

But Scot came

in both stories about the same.

gave vent

certainly

from the

position of

to various prophecies

which

Nostradamus, were twisted

true, or, like those of

into something like their realization.

Thus

Villain tells

us that " Master Michael Scot" said of Padua, a long time before it happened, " Paduce magnatum plorabunt filii

necem diram

nam"

horrendam, datam catuloque Vero-

" The sons of Padua

weep the

will

dire

and

horrid slaughter of her nobles, and

Verona

will

which was, of course,

fulfilled

when El Can

to the dog,"

be given

Grande, the great dog, entered Verona.

With the pretended prediction

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

patron Frederic, a

man

Michael was himself

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; given

of the wizard's prophecies

noticed by the reader that utterances are of the

same

interpretation, and, if they

of the

death

of his

more than probable

to licentious pleasures, the

may be all

closed.

It will

list

these pretended prophetic

family, capable of the widest

do not prove true at one time,

are warranted to keep fresh for a few years

;

or if the

VARIA.

230

place be mentioned whereat a death

names are suddenly changed

find

Thus Michael Scot

said to have

take place,

is to

to suit the occurrence.

predicted

that his

patron should die at the iron gates in Florence, whereon the

Emperor

to Francisco

" In the

But according

resolved to enter that town.

Pepino the prophecy came true in

last day, therefore, of his life,

this

way.

when he was

sick

Samnio, in a town the name of which was Florentinum,

a bed was made for him in a chamber beside the walls of

The gate

the tower, w^hich the head of the bed touched. of the town

in the wall

examined

what

to see

was

built up, but the iron posts

The Emperor

remained within.

was

caused the tower to be

like inside.

was

that in that part of the wall where he lay there

with iron posts

shut

meditate and said,

foretold to

The a

lie,

me.

This

Here

God's

shall I die.

told probably of Frederic because

Florence.

The

prediction it

fulfilment to be true.

a true solution

is after all

at its best,

in that

was a gate

my decease

the place of

him

he began

this,

will

story, according to Muratori, has the

tering fiend, taking its

Hearing

up.

told

already

be done.'"*

appearance of

he never did enter

one made by a pal-

and allowing both

and

A prophecy which is twisted into manner

worth very

little

any one. It is curious that a similar story is told of

kings,

Henry IV, and

* Chron. F. Francisci also

by Mr. James Bruce.

that

one of our

has been used with admirable

Pipini, cap. xl

;

apud Muratori, quoted

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

;

MICHAEL SCOT. effect

by Shakespeare. King Henry,

231

historians tell us,

was

praying before the shrine of Edward the Confessor in

Westminster Abbey, when he was seized with a attendants carried

he lay down which

to the

to die in the

said to

him

His

fit.

apartments of the abbot, and

Jerusalem chamber, the name of

have recalled an old prophecy, with the

make

notion that he had once entertained that he should

an attempt

for the recovery of the holy city.

prob-

able that the visit of Michael Paleologus to ^France and

England, Bajazet

beg aid of the western monarchs against

may

and the Turks,

have suggested to the

vigorous king the notion of resuscitating the almost for-

gotten crusades, and that the prophecy was vented to hinder

him from the undertaking.

the praying at the shrine,

Shakespeare, who omits

makes Henry swoon when,

council, after a time he asks

at his

King. Doth any name particular belong Unto the lodging where I first did swoon ? War. Tis called Jerusalem, my noble Lord. King. Laud be to Heaven even there my life must end. !

It I

hath been prophesied to

me many

Which

vainly

But bear me

suppos'd the Holy

to that

chamber, there

In that Jerusalem shall Harry

years,

should not die but in Jerusalem

Land

I'll lie

die."-*

did in effect die in the Jerusalem chamber at

minster

Abbey on

the 20th March, 1413, in the forty-

seventh year of his reign.

West-

King Henry IV, Part

II,

Act

iv,

Scene

iv.

VARIA.

232

According to traditional

return to Michael Scot.

Emperor Frederic before

history he left the court of the

the end of that monarch's reign, and, arriving in England,

was hospitably received by Edward

But chronology

would make this twenty years after the death of Frederic, as

Edward was crowned in 1271. and was sent

Norway in 1290

He to

then went to Scotland,

bring over, as one of the

ambassadors, the Princess Margaret.

his return to

Scotland he took up his residence there, the scenes of his

magic

One

feats

being partly in Ettrick and in Roxburghshire.

version of the

manner

of his death

that

took place

while he was engaged in devotional exercises;, but Sir

Walter

tells

a different story, and one that might have

suggested to Tennyson his very beautiful and exquisitely pictured scene between Vivien and Merlin.

" His wife or

concubine elicited from him a secret, that his art could

warn

off

made

of the flesh of a

any danger except the poisonous

ingly administered to the wizard, of eating it;

qualities of broth

breme sow. Such a mess was accord-

surviving,

who

died in consequence

however, long enough to put

to death his treacherous confidante."

was buried, some people

suits Sir

Walter

wizard rests at lief in his

where

to place his grave, others assert that the

Home Coltrame, in Cumberland.

magic continued long

when George

say, at Melrose,

Sempill,

;

minister

The be-

so late as the year 1614,

of Killelau, was

tried

before the Presbytery of Glasgow, for practising magic,

was brought forward as evidence against the unhappy man, and deposed

by one John Huchesoun, one of the

bail-

MICHAEL SCOT. lies

of Paisley, that he

233

had seen George Sempill buy an

Albertus Magnus, and that he had in his possession and frequently read a book of unlawful arts It

may be, indeed, that this book was

by Michael

Scot.

the cause of Sempill's

prosecution.

Besides the fame recently acquired by Michael in con-

sequence of Sir Walter Scott's "

Lay

of the Last Minstrel,"

the wizard was again called into prominent notice by a

romance by Allan Cunninghame, bearing his name, " Michael Scot ;" the romance is, however, now forgotten. Coleridge, as

we have seen

in the article

on Faustus,

contemplated a drama, of which Scot was to be the hero,

and numberless chap-books and children's story-books have spread the

name and fame

The fame

of the wizard far and wide.

of this man, if taken for what

worth but little.

His name alone

it is

worth,

survives; of his learning,

the means whereby to determine his position in letters

and science, we have

little left.

very meanly of him

but Leland, Pitts, Dempster, and

;

Roger Bacon thought

David Buchanan have, according

Mr. Bruce, " endowed

man

whom

him, as they do every other all

the accomplishments in the world.

Leland,

to the very

they write, with

ascended/ says

summits of theology.' According

David Buchanan, he was particularly eminent as a physician." Mr. Bruce's rebuke of the writers he to

many

biographers; and

names

applies

would seem that David

Buchanan, simply because Michael was a Scotsman, not only endowed his hero with the

skill

of curing leprosy, gout,

dropsy, and other incurable diseases, but has " heaped

VARIA.

234

upon Michael the knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee," while his little

Latin and

less

were not merely

real acquirements

Greek, but Latin only, with a very im-

perfect acquaintance with Arabic.

temporaries he could

know

little

Equally with his con-

What he

of Greek.

did

know was " through the unfaithful medium of the Arabians." " The writers," continues Mr. Bruce, " whom he quotes in his principal work are Hippocrates, Galen, and Pamphilus, amongst the ancients, and Constantinus Afer

among

the moderns.

Roman

classic in the

There

whole work."

Michael Scot's reputation seems stance of the

an allusion

not

a splendid in-

to us

omne ignotum pro magnifico.

try to

read any of his works we soon grow tired with the bold assertions, the groundless surmises,

them.

number

great on sneezing, and

of sneezes

and the nonsense of tells

made on entering on

why

business

a certain is

lucky;

and that one from any member of the family during the night

good, while two

bad.

In rising

in the

morning

&c* Of dreams,

of births, of

the height of men, the soles of the feet of

women, of a

one

good, but two bad,

dozen other galimatias, he discourses to his readers it is

doubtful whether he recounts one fact

won by

;

but

his

own

observation, f or one wise deduction from the facts

The head of the chapter is as follows

verbura et significat sternutare ipse

idem

;

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;" Sternuto

et haec sternutatio

sternutas, est

nugus nominis

est actus et quasi dicitur sternutatio."

f That is, in the book quoted, Liber Michaelis Scot, cited by James Bruce.

Phisionomie Magistri

;

MICHAEL SCOT. As

others.

that a child

may

said,

child

a specimen of his deductions he will is

Adam, why

tell

horn with his head foremost in order that

see the world, that a boy's

cries

235

O. E, or

cry

first

While a

didst thou sin ? !

why

Eve,

through thee I endure a miserable In his Liber Physionomie, cap.

life

xiv,

O. A, as

girl

wast thou guilty, in this world."

Michael discusses a

variety of questions which are indicative of his time, just

as those discussed

Errors,"

tell

by Sir Thomas Browne,

Michael

more than

love the eldest

tells

better than a stranger ;

why a man

;

earth

why

people love their

them why they why they love an only why a man loves his friend

rest ;

why a

likes a

a horse better than an ass

a stone

their children love

more than the

son more than one of several

Saracen

" Vulgar

us exhibit to us fairly his view of such mat-

ters in his day.

children

in his

;

Christian does not love a

dog better than a cat

and

;

a beast of any kind more than

more than water, and

fire

more than

air.

In the second book he solemnly warns us of the danger of meeting or keeping company with a

man

wanting an eye, or a leg, or an arm, as being unlucky

and he says that there

not a creature which,

deprived of a member, does not change

its

if it

nature into

better or worse than ordinary, rarely better, he adds, if

live long.

Shortly, we

may conclude with his countryman, Mr. James

Bruce, that the fame of Michael Scot

without any real

foundation, although " from writers in the present day

has received abundance of eulogiums."

lie

" These writers,"

VARIA.

236

continues Mr. Bruce, " have concluded, in utter ignorance of either his works or his character, that, as in rude ages philo-

sophers and

men

of true science have been looked

upon as

magicians, therefore Michael, having been regarded as a

magician, must have been a philosopher and a science.

This

the logic of

all

writers of the nineteenth century, to their readers."

man

the useful knowledge

and

quite satisfactory

LODOWICK MUGGLETON. *<33t2y

BOOKS CONSULTED.

Remonstrance from

the

Eternal God ; declaring several Spiritual

Transactions unto the Parliament and Commonwealth of England, $c,

fyc.

By John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton.

The New Witnesses proved Old Heretics. London, 1672.

1651.

William Penn,

4to.

True Representation of the Absurd and Mischievous Principles of commonly known by the name of Muggletonians. London,

the Sect

1694.

—

LODOWICK MUGGLETON. JONTENELLE Dead " ject

" Dialogues of the

in his

— a reproduction of a

familiar sub-

which Landor's u Imaginary Conver-

sation " has rendered

familiar

still

brings the shade of Montaigne, that instant dismissed from the earth, to meet with that of Socrates, lonely and unac-

The

companied, in Hades. to see

gossiping essayist

delighted

one from whom he has so often quoted, and begs the

philosopher to

tell

him

of the grand age in which he lived,

whom he was

and of the great men by

Plato and Phocion, Pericles

says Montaigne, " the able a contrast."

means

Socratic

—

men

Socrates

that

—

in a

Montaigne

—

whom,"

own days'formed

of his

To which replies,

surrounded

and Alcibiades, "

so piti-

method by no is

altogether

mistaken, that the age in which he lived was by no means

grand, that people then did not by sluj means fuss over

him which they do now,

both grand

enchanters,

that distance

had magnified

its

make

the

and time,

virtues

and

;

VABIA.

240 buried

its faults

rate, the fools

and

;

that, finally, the ages do not

degene-

world being always about the same compound of

and wise men.

This, which

Ages do

true.

not particularly new,

not particularly

differ considerably, especially in

forms, whether the proportion of wise

about the same or not.

differ so

men and

much,

outward fools

for instance,

from the age of John Bunyan, Milton, and the more earnest thinkers of their day, that

men

it is

quite difficult to realize the

In the comedies of Beaumont and

of their stamp.

Fletcher, of Jonson, Massinger, and Shakerly

find

swaggerer, as interesting to the student of

puritan, or

character as a bone of an icthyosaurus

house Hawkins.

The

may

fact

is,

Perhaps

characters die out.

Sharp

Mr. Water-

that ages do change

whom we

and

Sam Weller and Becky

appear as strange to our descendants as do the

" Copper Captain " and the " Koaring Girl "

trait,

Marmion,

an extinct species of bully, soothsayer, spendthrift,

can, indeed, trace scarcely one

to us

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

modern female

except that the young lady " dranke tobacco," and

that the leaders of fashion imitated her, out of politeness

no doubt, when entertained a few years ago on board the Pacha's yacht.

But

strangest of

all

strange characters was the fanatic

and Puritanic professor of

made

somewhat

religion, with

familiar.

whom

Butler has

no doubt suited the

cavaliers to represent these people as always hypocrites

but they were, in

body of men

thoroughly in earnest as any

fact, as

in the world

and one proof of

this is that

—

;

LODOWICK MUGGLETON.

Everybody joined

thej carried the world with them. the religious cry

241 in

The oyster-women lock'd their fish up, trudg'd away to cry no bishop The mousetrap men laid savealls by,

And

'gainst evil counsellors did cry.

Some cry*d the Covenant instead Of pudding-pies and gingerbread Botchers

left

And

to turn

fell

old clothes in the lurch,

and patch the Church.

Carried away and carrying others away as violently as

any in

this

crowd of prophets

—

as earnest,

and

at the

time more successful than their opponents, George Fox and

William Penn

—were two

obscure men, John Reeve and

Lodowick Muggleton, who achieved the honour of becoming the founders of a

sect of Christians

which has but

recently expired, after a duration of two hundred years.

As tor

every false prophet must have his

—as

Mahomet had

his brother

Hiram,

John Eeeve had

Lodowick Muggleton, a mad

him

tailor,

in his peculiar ministry,

" mouth."

first

aider and abet-

Abubeker, and Joseph Smith

his

his fervent disciple,

whom he

joined with

and pronounced

be his

About the year 1651 these two came promi-

nently before the English people, already disturbed enough

by so-called prophets, and

for

some time favoured the

people every year or so with Epistles and Gospels which

bear certainly a very distant resemblance to the Apostolic

and Evangelic writings. "

A Remonstrance

The

first

of these

from the Eternal

God

is ;

entitled

declaring

VARIA.

242

Parliament and

several spiritual transactions unto the

Commonwealth of England, unto His Excellency the Lord General Cromwell, the Council of State, the Council of

War,

&c.

By John

(fee.

Eeeve and Lodowick Muggle-

ton, the two Last Witnesses

for

the

Mad well,

and

true Prophets imprisoned

Testimony of Jesus Christ in Old Bridewell." as have heen

many of the

indwellers of Old Bride-

never held a madder pair.

year 1651 there were

shape of prophets.

who had

It appears that in the

many Bichmonds

the

first

in the field in the

of these, one

John Tanee,

affirmed that there was " no Personal God,"

Beeve and

his

John

" mouth " went, by virtue of a commission

which they had received from the Omnipotent, and with well-chosen and hard texts so puzzled and belaboured him that

he was fain to be

they gave him no

Still

still.

quarter, declaring that he

and the Banters were " the

cursed children of the Dragon-Devil Cain, sporting themselves in all fleshly filthiness, as the people of

Gomorrah

did, that they

selves in the great

may

justly be

day of the Lord.

Sodom and

damned

And

them-

much for

ungodly Banters and John Tanee their king."

This

all is

hard measure surely for the despised people called Banters, of

whom

will

be remembered John Bunyan, pious

and godly, was once one. Banter

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;from â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

randien, delilare, says Bichardson

the

Dutch randen,

one who tears a

passion to tatters, to very rags, and was at that time

almost a

new name.

Bichardson's earliest citations are

from Cowley and Bishop Hall's Satires

;

but certainly we do

not hear that the Banters were by any means a vicious

LODOWICK MUGGLETON.

243

people. It seems, however, to have heen the peculiar pro-

Eeeve and Muggleton

vince of

" deal damnation round

whom

the land/' for the next prophet

John Bobbins, then

New Prison

in the

they damned was

;

and him they ap-

proached for the express purpose of pronouncing a sentence

And

of eternal death against.

Prophet, used

here

learn that the word

time by Milton as meaning a

after this

preacher, had assumed a far more important meaning.

" For

this

person," says Eeeve, "

a God, for they called

him

fell

on their faces before him af

Lord and

their

pray'd unto, as unto a God.

commanding them not

God

many people honoured

God

their

;

his feet,

likewise he

and was

Moreover he gave them a law,

mention the name of any other

but him (his) only."

This

madman might have been deemed by far too mad to

yield to the two

" commissionated prophets," as he had not Yet, after hearing the sen-

yielded to the magistrates.

tence, he bowed his head saying, " It is finished, the Lord's will be done ;" and " so much for John Bobbins." After this the

two prophets were moved to deliver a general

damning warning ding them the

to all

clergymen and ministers, forbid-

preach unless commissioned by the two.

Clergymen, Eanters,

Shakers,

Independents,

As and

Quakers, did not pay the least attention to these warnings,

Eeeve and Muggleton proceeded straight " seized, apprehended,

to further acts,

and committed

by the Lord Mayor

and were

Newgate

upon which they at once damned the Lord Mayor and the " London Jewry "

for our faith,

(the

Mansion House was then

in the

Old Jewry), especially

VABIA.

244 one Alderman Andrews.

1653

;

This occurred on October 15,

and being thus made martyrs, there was a great

outpouring

grace which

that peculiar

made many

believe in Eeeve and " his Mouth," Muggleton.

Their next production

Holy

Spirit," dated

General Epistle from the

from " Great Trinity Lane,

Chandler's Shop, over against one Mr. Millis, a Brown

Bow Lane End, London

Baker, near

assume

plainly

;

closely

and

last witnesses

They were, undoubtedly,

the Revelation. Bible

be the two

they

spoken of in

well read in the

and, like John Bunyan, they took care to stick

never being without a text to quote in their

it,

support.

Prophet Eeeve which follows,

epistle of the

opens up somewhat more of their peculiar doctrines, which are, however, very undefined

they assert, it

dies

Ghost

and

sin against the

the rejection of the truth as preached by

blasphemous

Spirit.

The

will rise again.

God

ton and Eeeve. is

and foggy. The soul of man,

inseparably united to the body, with which

The

Muggle-

has the real body of a man, and

to assert that

Trinity

Holy

an impersonal

God

only a variety of names for God,

who Himself came down

earth and suffered death,

during which time Elias was His representative in heaven.

The founders their

own were

prophets.

The

of a sect very

little

less

erroneous than

the most violent opponents of the

new

State having, notwithstanding their flattery

of Oliver Cromwell,

represented as " Mortal

Hebrew Jew "

whom they whom all were

acts in putting to death the

bow down, and whose

king and assuming the Pio-

LODOWICK MUOGLETON. tectorate they approved, quietly put

them

245 and

in prison,

them there unnoticed, punishing them, indeed, by

left

whippings for their cursings and blasphemies, but doing no William Penn and George Fox,

more.

who claimed

for

themselves a Divine revelation, set upon them with their pens, and would indeed, have taken

them

they could.

more carnal weapons* to

These works continued

for nearly

twenty years, William Penn leading the way in a tract called

New

" The

Witnesses proved Old Heretics "â&#x20AC;&#x17E; (4to. 1672),

and another hand closing

by "

A True

Eepresentation of

the Absurd and Mischievous Principles of a Sect

commonly

called the Muggletonians " (4to. London, 1694).

years after this date, Muggleton,

who had

Three

long survived

his companion, died in great sanctity at the patriarchal

age of eighty-eight. Perhaps, as

little

causes determine great events,

it is

only to his peculiar surname that Lodowick owes the

honour of naming the sect the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;perhaps

more energetic and the longer

was because he was

liver of the two.

His

other opponents, for there were many, for the honour of

being the two last witnesses of the 11th chapter of Kevelation,

made no mark on

the world.

Who now

hears of

Bull

and Varnum, of John Tanee and John Bobbins ?

The

people appear to have accepted, on good faith, the as-

sertions of

dumb

John Keeve and

instructors, to

who choose

his

Mouth, and, in the midst

have listened to any rash

to cry out loud

enough.

had been pronounced a " Mortal and

madman

Oliver Cromwell Spiritual

Jew, a

natural Lion of the tribe of Judah, according to the flesh,'

VABIA.

246 to

whom Muggleton was "

—which,

to be fair,

coinmissionated " to give advice

was very good of

kind

its

—

so also the

" You

that are spiritual may know that Roman Gentiles spoken of by John, are those people by men called Cavileers], whose princely Race sprang from

people were told, the

King Herod,

the loins of

Lord of Glory, and nical

lioman Empire, or Popedom"

candid inquirers

fied

that bloody persecutor of the

so streamed into the line of the tyran-

Whether

this satis-

Some, in-

are not able to say.

deed, suggested that the Caviliers were Devil-born, and that

Laud was Old Nick

himself,

Oliver and his Parliament derive

same

just as others

made

from the

all their spirit

diabolical source.

A writer in

one of the encyclopaedias, who

tells

us that

a complete set of the works of Reeve and Muggleton was published by some of their modern followers in far

from complete), adds that these

and not very

men

inseparably with the bod}^, with which

again."

This doctrine

belief in the

may be

held very singular

it dies,

and

united

will rise

Church of England, which declares

—an

The

man

a mere expansion of the

creed the resurrection of the body belief.

concerning angels and

intelligible doctrines

According to them "the soul of

devils.

1832 (it

question therefore of what

in its

apostolic article of

became of the

soul

during the interval between death and judgment was not unreasonably solved by Muggleton, supposing that torpid its

and rose again

due punishment or

to reanimate the its

body and

gracious reward.

of purgatory, to which perhaps our

lay

to receive

As the

doctrine

High Church people pre-

;

LODOWIOK MUGGLETON. sentry

may

tend, was, and

247

by the Thirty-nine

Articles

declared to be a fond superstition and damnable error,

having no warrantry in Scripture, where indeed there

not the shadow of the shade of a sentence (the book of the Maccabees being out of court) to be quoted in

Muggleton's supposition that the soul subsides or

favour. is

withdrawn from the body

Xot one

reason.

a time,

for

not without

of us knows anything about

question asked Lazarus* lives

its

left

still

;

the

unanswered; there

Doctor Johnson arguing upon Kit

no record of reply.

Smart's madness, said that one charge against him was that he asked people to pray with said the doctor,

anybody

in the street,

and

with Lodowick

lief believe

as to the indivisibility of the

so with his

him

pray with Kit Smart as with

lief

So we may as

else."

Muggleton

Not

" I'd as

body and

soul.

anthropomorphism.

the whole, Lodowick,

a blasphemous heretic, as

William Penn called him, was

infinitely

purer and less

mischievous than such prophets as Joseph Smith, Orson Pratt, and the rest of the

ever has been in the

* "

Where wert There

Which

Had

human mind a

There

and there

credulous disposition

thou, brother, those four days ?"

lives

no record of reply,

telling

what

it is

to die,

surely added praise to praise.

Behold a

The

He The

Mormons.

man

raised up

by Christ

rest reraaineth unreveal'd

told

not

;

or something seal'd

lips of that evangelist.

TENNYSON, In 3Jemoriam, xxxi.

VARIA.

248 to believe in

men

of strong will

who have the madness

boldness to declare that the heavens have been opened to

them, and the decrees of

God made

plain.

Muggleton and

Eeeve declared, indeed, that they were the prophets from the Court of

time has seen

its

God

;

last audible

but every age since then-

dozens of like prophets, of

whom

the

world happily takes no heed, save when breaking the

Queen's peace they render themselves amenable to the laws of that society which they pretend to purify.

Muggleton, whilst he spread many

errors,

combated

was greatly opposed to those who believed only in King Jesus and his " Personal Reign " here

others.

"It

on earth. that

men

is,"

he says, "rank

folly to

believe

can read the designs of the Lord, and point out

the day, the year, or the century in which the Lord's reign shall begin."

But being himself " commissionated,"

permitted to

witnesses,

know

and the time of

the

names of the two

their call.

last

These were of course

" Self and Co.;" and one part of their proof was that the witnesses were not to be clothed like citizens,

and Aldermen,

in silk

Lord Mayors,

and plush, but in sackcloth.

they were to be put to death

;

Also,

and we greatly mistake the

temper of the mad self-styled prophets

the very fact of

their being permitted to die quietly in their beds

was not

the unkindest cut which they could receive from an ungrateful

and an unbelieving world.

The most

curious

benefit of the

work which they have

left

for the

spiritual discerning reader is called,

Divine Looking-glass, or the Third and Last Testament of

Our Lord, &c, whose

personal Eesidence

seated on

L0D0W1CK MUGGLETON. his

Throne of Glory

World."

in another

names

repetitions of the sacred

249

the two last Prophets were as fond of calling

Mussulman Fakir.

authors solve

many

form and nature of

this

They

mankind/' They

assert that there is

them out

tell

us, but in so loose a

us of the

eternal state

" no reason in God/'

and of what substances earth and water were from

They tell

They answer

all eternity.

"the highest Querico concerning the

many

titles, for

Testament the

last

scriptural riddles.

God from

omit

in giving these

manner

that

eternity.

we are no

wiser

than before, of what form and nature angels were, and

how they were

and who Antichrist

created,

;

and they

are especially learned about " the Serpent that tempted

Eve," who, they

young angel to our

was a very beautiful and graceful

assert,

in the form of

common mother "

but, in fact, seduced her

man, who

certainly did not offer

a mere apple from a wooden tree,"

from her allegiance

Adam, and

thus became actually the Father of Cain, and through of

all

him

the wicked people or sons of the devil upon earth.

But unfortunately we have heard

all

this

before.

should never have done," says Bayle, " were I to relate the fictions that are to be found in books concerning

and the Serpent

;" and, indeed,

all

Eve

from Josephus to Cajetan,

Lanjado and Nicholas de Lyra, there have been some pretty theories broached, none

over curious in the

first

so than those

by the

and second centuries of the Church.

are not to believe, therefore," sneers Bayle, "

all

the fine compliments which Alcimus Avitus reports to have

passed on both sides

Moses, this great

;

affair

for according to the narrative

was ended

in a

few words."

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ;

VABIA.

250

The remainder prophets

is filled

of the last Testament of these

two

with a great deal of what Mr. Carlyle

terms " clotted nonsense."

The

authors flounder from

Trinitarianism to Unitarianism, and in and out of each

they condemn the unlawfulness of cutting magistrate, and yet praise Cromwell errors than they preach against

a " damnation

to all

the head

they are ever ready with

;

how easily a little

;

effect

They

us.

incoherent but vivid assertion with-

out proof will attract the faith of

man, without even an ap-

peal to his cupidity or to his baser passions, such as

been made by other

false prophets

Smith the Mormon. free from

and,

mad, hot Gospellers they

Their books have a saddening

were.

off

they propagate more

eternity " for their opponents

in short, they act like the wild,

prove

;

from

Mohammed

have

Joe

Muggleton and Eeeve are singularly

any such base appeals, nor do they make any ex-

orbitant promises to their spiritually discerning brethren

never being, to use their own trope, at variance with what

they thought to be true, " any more than William Lily and his learned brethren, in the astrologian figure, dare say the

sun and

moon were

with themselves." Perhaps

want of mixture of the worst

traits of

scheme that they owe the decay of

1832 some of

human

their sect.

their followers reprinted in three

Epistles and Gospels according to

it is

to this

folly in their

late as

volumes the

Muggleton ; but

in the

Census of 1851, their names had disappeared from the classification of sects

and

was not found upon the

faith in the prophet

earth.

Muggleton

SIR

THOMAS BROWNE.

BOOKS CONSULTED. Rdigio Medici. The Eighth Edition, corrected and amended. With Annotations, never before published, upon sages.

Observations on Religio

Edition.

Three volumes.

Medici.

First

Edited by Simon Wilkin, F.L.S.

and

Miscellanies.

Sir

Thomas

Art.

vii.

Vol.

Article, Sir

Thomas

London, 1820.

The Eclectic Review. Browne.

Kenelm Digby.

Edinburgh, 1825.

The Retrospective Review. Browne.

Sir

London, 1852.

Burial, Christian Morals,

Browne.

the obscure pas-

1682.

Works of Sir Thomas Browne.

Urn

all

London, 1682.

No.

lxii.

New

Series.

Article, Sir

Thomas

SIE llE

THOMAS BKOWNE, THOMAS BROWNE

writers

who

stand quite alone.

one of those

There

one like him either in the literature which he adorned, or in that of any other country. also one of

whom we

are never tired of hearing or of

speculating, one whose very weaknesses are so peculiar

we would

not part with them, and whose faults shine,

in the eyes of

some, with a lustre that surpasses the virtues

that

of less original writers.

His

ture has heen very great indeed

effect ;

upon English

litera-

he seems to have inspired

half-a-dozen at least of our most weighty preachers it

was upon

style

his style that Dr.

Johnson formed

his own,

and

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

upon which many of the most thoughtful and weighty,

one indeed might say heavy, of our Quarterly reviewers and leader writers, yet huild their own, and which descended to,

and was admired when practised by, Dr. Parr, although

with him remained only the nodosities of the oak with-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; VARIA.

254

And we must remember

that

even

Johnson's best English was but an imitation, and

many

out

strength.*

its

hold but

feeble

imitation,

and

splendour

the

piled-up grandeur which abounds in almost every work or

And

pamphlet written by the Norwich physician.

yet few

people read Browne's works, few, or comparatively few.

They

are, it is true, appreciated in

America, where

new

old English literature seems to have struck a

and

to flourish with the luxuriance of plants

happy

fine

root,

which are

and whose people, descendants of

in a virgin soul,

our own, of a freer and more reflective growth, often appre-

whom we most

ciate those writers

with Mr. Herbert Spencer

;

who

well be classed as one

neglect, as

the case

facetious author of the

" Laconics

him ;"

may

A public

but rarely read.

writer and reviewer in conversation mistook

Brown, the

but in England Browne

for

Tom

and a lady,

hearing the name, suggested that he might be a living author, and writer of

book, "

Tom

Mr. Hughes's fresh and excellent

Brown's School- days, "f

* Speaking of Croft's imitation of Johnson's style, Burke said, " No, no,

it is

not a good imitation of Johnson

without his force strength

;

has

;

all

has

all

;

has

all

his

pomp

the nodosities of the oak without

its

the contortions of the sybil without the inspira-

of Burke. calmly ignorant some authors may be is seen in Lord Campbell's " Life of Chief Justice Hale." Hale believed in

tion."

Prior's Life

How

witchcraft,

and

alas, for direct

Denny and Rose

tried

and condemned,

trial

;

but,

Amy

women, who were accused Sir Thomas Browne was an important as the " Eclectic Review " points out,

Cullender, two poor old

of dealings with the devil.

witness in this

in 1665, very unrighteously

evidence went in favour of their innocence,

SIB THOMAS BROWNE.

A paper out of the

upon such a writer

way

255 be surely not

will therefore

in this collection of bibliographic essays.

" According

common

to the

Dr.

fate of orphans/' sa}7 s

Johnson, in a biography of this excellent writer, " Thomas

Browne, when a minor, was defrauded by the lawyers and trustees of father,

much

of the fortune which

was

left

a rich merchant* of London, where

The

son was born in the year 1605.

him by

family was a good

one, for there then obtained none of that despicable silly

feel

contempt for trade which

and express

it,

and

to those

so hurtful

who endure

which we openly despise soon degrades

When

of our contempt.

his

his celebrated

those

to'

and

who

since that

it,

itself to

the level

proud people look down upon

tradesmen they are not philosophical enough

to perceive

that they are absolutely inviting those very tradesmen,

whom

they ask to bow and cringe, to repay themselves

for their servility

pride.

by a golden plaster

Certainly like

Erasmus and

for their

others,

wounded

Browne

suffered

from his guardians, but was enabled to be educated

London, then Hall,

Winchester, and

now Pembroke

when he was of

finally at

first

Broadgate

College, Oxford, which he entered

of age, and after due time took his degree

M.A. June

11th, 1629."

Lord Campbell " either knew nothing about him or did not recognize him, for he

is,

misspells his *

as usual, inaccurate in his details,

and throughout

name, calling him Dr. Brown."

So Johnson

;

but

would appear that

this

merchant was a rich

tradesman, like Izaak Walton, a mercer, but a gentleman of good family in Cheshire.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; See European Magazine,

xi. p. 89.

VARIA.

256

His mother had married by the inducement of her

may

Sir

Thomas Dutton, probably and

fortune, says Johnson,

well have been so, for as the plays of

Beaumont and

Fletcher, and other contemporary writers, sufficiently prove, certain poor knights were ready city to pick

enough

up a golden cargo; and

as they would carry

away an ugly

golden frame which

surrounded

come

marry a

picture,

into the

rich

widow,

merely

for the

Browne's mother,

it.

lady Dutton, took as her fortune three thousand pounds, a

sum

equal at least to twelve thousand pounds now, leaving

her son, " by consequence, six thousand (this would be correct

had he been an only

and two

sisters),

a large

ing at that time,

sum

child, but

he had a brother

man

destined to learn-

for a

when commerce had not So speaks

with nominal riches"

Samuel Johnson.

Thomas Dutton and

filled

his pupil

the nation

and admirer,

perhaps lucky for us that Sir

the rich widow, aided by the gen-

tlemen of the long robe, made Sir Thomas Browne's fortune somewhat less than that

the

rapacity

of his

speaks, was ever resented

was.

But

does not appear

guardian, of which Johnson

by Browne.

After taking his

degree he settled in Oxfordshire, and practised physic

;

but

soon afterwards he quitted his settlement and accompanied his father-in-law,

who had some employment

visitation of the forts

Ireland

made

then

and

castles,

in Ireland, in

which the

state of

necessary.

left

Britain altogether, and went to Montpelier

and Padua, celebrated schools

for physic, and, indeed, for

the arts of astrology and necromancy.

Beturning home

SIB THOMAS BROWNE. about the year 1633, he visited his degree of

257

Ley den, where he

Doctor of Physic,

took

Johnson has

or, as

caused himself to be created doctor, no very

difficult

it,

thing

in those days for a graduate of Oxford.

About the year 1634 he returned

London, and the

next year he wrote his celebrated work, "

The Religion

a Physician " (Religio Medici), which he declares himself, although one can scarcely believe him, was never intended

an unnatural thing

It is but

for the press.

any wish or

to write without

for

desire for a public,

tainly our doctor created around

him a

fit

an author

and cer-

audience, though

few, for he lent his essay to several friends, and one of

these kind souls had

suffered

them

surreptitiously copied

(the

MSS.)

hand, says Johnson, " till at

last,

wander from hand

without his

they were, in 1642, given to a printer.

sometimes befallen others did really happen to Dr.

;

and

and printed.

this I

Browne but :

own consent,

This has, perhaps,

am willing to believe there

surely

some

reason to doubt the truth of the complaint so frequently

made

of surreptitious editions."

Reason enough, but

this does not

concern us now. Let

we have a whole and sound book, and world would not willingly let die. Upon this

us be thankful that

one that the

book

his

fame principally

rests,

and indeed, with three or

four other tractates included with

it,

such

the richness

of our English literature, the "Religio Medici" would be all

that one,

demand.

who

For

could not afford a large library, would

this

book contains specimens of

all

his

beauties, his noble faith, bordering, in fact, on superstition, s

TARIA.

258

as if indeed that were a necessary supplement to a bold

and

noble faith, founded on the dictum of Tertullian, Certum

quia im-possibile

and demanding a

est,

est

difficulty to exercise

strength, his tenderness, grandeur, pathos, wild sub-

its

limity, richness of thought

his

many

latinising

and word, are

and quaint

all

obscurities,

there, as also

and

some-

his

times teasing paradoxes.

Presuming the " Eeligio " its

have been written in 1635,

author was then settled at Norwich, where his practice

was very extensive, and where many patients resorted

him.

had there

Ooconienses,

Wood,

in the Athence

by the persuasion of Doctor Lushington,

tutor at Oxford,

who was

the neighbourhood. of Physic in Oxford,

settled, says

rector of

his

Burnham Westgate, in

In 1637 he was incorporated Doctor

and

1641 he married the daughter

Edward Mileham, Esq.

of Burlingham, in Norfolk.

With that county and town our London-born physician eternally connected; one almost wishes that he

was in-

deed Norfolk-born, so thoroughly do the best and most learned inhabitants of the county and city appreciate the

fame which

their

illustrious

has shed

indweller

over

them.

Browne's marriage called down upon him some from contemporary

wits, for his

raillery

book had been much read

In Howell's Letters, Book

and very widely

criticised.

No.

some rather broad fun made with a man

4, there

who had expressed a very

vivid,

wish that the generations of

and no doubt an earnest

man might

those of plants and trees, and

be carried on like

who had

said

some rude

THOMAS BROWNE.

SIB things of

woman

but

;

must be confessed

but only a twelfth

the whole world, but

woman

will not

woman's peace of mind, any more than

his wife,

St.

all

death

his

man."

Thomas had

Sir

eldest,

Bartholomew's hospital and

years before

Tennyson's

these " turned out," as the world has

Dr. Edward, the

very well.

will

break any

Woman is the lesser

Dame Dorothy Browne,

large family, and it,

merely a

only the rib or crooked part

These are sentences that

true-hearted declaration that "

The whole world was made for man, part of man for woman ;" and " man is

humorous way.

of him."

259

was physician

the king, and five

became President of the Col-

lege of Physicians, to which he presented that portrait of

his

father

lately

Thomas, the second

exhibited

South Kensington.

son, died at the age of twenty-one,

having proved himself to be an able

after

king's ship.

in a

officer

The daughters were well married, and The kind and patient physician

living

peaceably at Norwich.

Bishop Hall, the most notable citizen of that ancient

and

distinguished

city,

above his fellow -citizens by being

knighted by Charles II. when he visited Norwich, Sir

Thomas Browne, ripened

in age, wisdom,

and fame, and

died in 1682, like Shakespeare in this one point, that he

deceased on his birthday, after a violent attack of the cholic, to

seems

which he had been a short time

have died as he had lived and grown

very gracefully and nobly. book,

when he was but

even the cutting

off of

had asserted

thirty, that

subject.

old,

in his best

he could endure pain,

an arm without much noise

;

VARIA.

260

endured the pain of the cholic and fever with as " much patience as hath been seen in any

copying his

man/' says a biographer,

" without any pretence of animosity,

style,

being concerned thereat,

stoical apathy, or vanity of not

or suffering no impeachment of happiness.

I visited

dolor.

him near

strength to hear or speak

;

when he had not

the last words which I

him were, besides some expressions

did hear from ness, that

his end,

much

Nihil agis

he did freely submit

of dear-

God, being

to the will of

without fear."

His remains were buried in the church of St. Peter's, Mancroft, in

taken

Norwich

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Le Neve, who

says the cathedral,

mis-

a handsome old church above the market hill, which

has (1866) recently been repaired and restored.

His wife,

Dame Dorothy Browne, who had been his true helpmeet for forty-one years, placed a Latin inscription on a mural tablet of the south pillar near the altar, which recites that there lies

the body of

Thomas Browne, M.D.

Miles, that he was a

learned physician, very skilled in his art, that he was the

author of " Religio Medici," u Pseudodoxia Epidemica,"

and other works, that he was well-known world,

all

over the

per orbem notissimus, that he was most

religious,

honest, and

learned, and that his most sorrowful wife

("Da. Doroth. Br.") had piously placed memory. An English effect, is also is

added

;

that tablet to his

inscription, shorter, but to the

the tomb which completes the history, that of

Dorothy Browne, his true little

more than two

same

and on the opposite side of the chancel

years.

wife,

who

Of his

Dame

survived her husband

coffin

and

its

inscription,

SIB THOMAS BROWNE. and other matters which have have something

The at

add

lately

come

261

to light,

we shall

at the conclusion of this paper.

publication of the " Eeligio Medici,"

was followed

due intervals by those of " Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or

Vulgar Errors/'

" Hydriotaphia, or Urn Garden of Cyrus," of " A Letter to a

in seven books, of

Burial/' of the "

Friend upon the Occasion of the Death of a Friend," and the " Miscellany Tracts," some of which are very curious

and quaint, as, for instance, that of the " Musseum Clausum," or "Bibliotheca Abscondita," wherein the author discourses of certain books and pictures which do not exist, and revels in the parade of a very curious learning.

Medici," as chief work.

was

his

first,

will

jumped suddenly

But the " Eeligio

always be considered his

The Earl

into fame.

Dorset recommended this book to Sir Kenelm Digby, and

Digby, in twenty-four hours, part of which were spent in procuring and in reading the book, returned letter,

it,

not with a

but with a book, in which there are " some just re-

marks, acute censures, and profound speculations."* Such a review as that, issued by Sir

Kenelm Digby, and ad-

dressed to the Earl of Dorset, was

work, the public read

enough

sell

any

with avidity, and booksellers

showed an equal eagerness in pirating, with hack authors in imitating,

it.

So that in 1682, the year of his death,

had reached the eighth last

edition,

which

lies

published during the author's lifetime, but which

reality the eleventh.

It has a curious frontispiece

Dr. Johnson's Life of Browne.

before me, the is

of a

;

VABIA.

262

man

falling

from a high, rock into the sea, but upheld by

a hand from heaven ; written near his body are the words

Salus (there

Coelo

safety, or salvation,

and beneath the plate an only,

which

same

book

copy was surreptitiously printed

states that a

before under the

from above),

inscription, referring to the

title,

but that

it is

imperfect.

It is well to be thus particular, because this frontispiece,

which Simon "Wilkin does not appear

cates very fully the religious tendencies

But

Browne's mind.

have seen, indi-

Thomas

of Sir

just as hasty readers of prejudiced

Homo "

reviews could accuse the author of " Ecce

Atheism, so the enemies which his success raised up accused Browne also of that of either work, that is

said

proceeded from an Atheistic mind

Good and orthodox Chris-

and untrue.

utterly absurd

And whatever may be

sin.

Dr. Johnson himself, have 'long ago received

tians, like

Browne

as amongst themselves.

to do as

Dr. Johnson has done, namely, to select passages

from the work to defend the author. best defence

its

day went is

the whole

;

to church,

life

were an insult even

The whole work

of the author,

who every

and took the Sacrament every month,

the best answer to this cruel lying scandal.

Beyond

this

the book suffered from imitations, the " Religion of a Physician,

the

Religion of a

" Religio Jurisconsulti "

Layman" (Lord

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the

Religion

of a

the Beligion of a Physician" (Browne's

English), by Edmund Gayton;

" Religio by

Sir

Clerici

G. M.

;

or,

Herbert);

Lawyer

title,

but in

the " Religion of a Stoic;"

Short Discourse on Atheism,"

and the " Religio Philosophi Peripatetici

— SIB discutienda" (this

—

was an

Militis "

—

gion," in

THOMAS BROWNE.

263

the Eeligion of a Peripatetic Philosopher

an imitation); " Eeligio

earlier work, not

" A Gentleman's Eeli" and Eeligio Bibliopola? " the

the Layman's Eeligion

three parts

;

—

Eeligion of a Bookseller, written by a hack writer, Mr.

Benjamin Bridgewater, of Trinity Coll. Camb. M.A. " Alas " says Dunton, " love and wine were the ruin of !

gentleman;" possibly we

this ingenious

may add

to these

two causes that of overwork thrust upon the poor fellow

by the

The

booksellers.*

occasion of the open avowal of Browne's faith was

to refute the general scandal of his profession,

which as-

where there are three physicians two are Atheists,

serts that

ubi tres meclici duo Athei, and a wish to recite the causes of

and

his belief,

show, as he nobly says, that " I dare with-

out usurpation assume the honourable style of a Christian that he does not only

owe that name

his education, but that his riper years

and

judgment.

It is curious

any one should have been

bold as to declare Browne an infidel; it

nor to

he has examined and believed in

his confirmed

that after such a declaration

does

to the font,

still

more curious

appear after reading such very beautiful, such

wide and truly reverential sentences as these:

" Thus there are two Books from whence I Divinity

;

collect

besides that written one of God, another of his

servant Nature, that universal and publick manuscript, that

See Simon Wilkin's preface to his edition of Browne's Works,

where these and other imitations are mentioned.

VARIA.

264

expans'd unto the eyes of

lies

him

those that never saw

all,

in the one have discovered

him

in the other; this

was the Scripture and Theology of the Heathens; the

Sun made them more admire him,

natural motion of the

than

supernatural station did the Children of Israel

its

;

the

ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them

than in the other

knew

better

how

all his

to joy n

Miracles

;

surely the Heathens

and read these mystical Letters,

than we Christians, who cast a more careless

common

Nor do

the flowers of Nature. the

name

of Nature

;

and regular of

motion and

line, that settled

God hath

I so forget

every day

God

as to adore

rest,

but that streight

and constant course the wis-

ordained the actions of His creatures

To make a

according to their several kinds.

revolution

the Nature of the Sun, because of that neces-

sary course which

God hath

ordained

it,

from which

cannot swerve, by a faculty from that voice which give

these

which I define not with the Schools

to be the principle of

dom

Eye on

Hieroglyphicks, and disdain to suck Divinity from

motion.

Now

alters or perverts,

this course of

first

did

Nature God seldome

but like an excellent Artist hath so con-

trived his work, that with the self-same instrument, with-

out a

new

creation,

may

effect his obscurest designs.

Thus he sweetneth the Water with a Word, preserveth the creatures in the Ark, which the blast of his

have as easily created ; for trician,

who when more

God

easily

is like

mouth might

a skilful

Geome-

and with one stroak of

Compass, he might describe or divide a right rather do this in a circle or longer

line,

his

had yet

way ; according

to the

SIB THOMAS BROWNE. constituted

and

265

fore-laid principles of his art, yet this rule

of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the

World

with his Prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not

and

;

thus I call the effects of Nature the works of God, whose

hand and

instrument she

ascribe his actions unto her principal agent,

we may have

do, then let our

;

and therefore to

to devolve the

upon the instrument

built our houses,

our writing.

only

hammers

honour of the

which if with reason

;

rise

up and boast they

and our pens receive the honour of

I hold there

a general beauty in the

works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind of species of creature whatsoever; I cannot tell

Logick we

call

by what

a Toad, a Bear, or an Elephant ugly, they

being created in those outward shapes and figures, which best express those actions of their inward forms.

having past that general Visitation of all

that he

had made was good, that

Will, which abhors deformity, and

beauty

;

there

And

God who saw

that

comformable to his

the rule of order and

no deformity but in Monstrosity, wherein

notwithstanding there

a kind of Beauty.

Nature so in-

geniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become

sometimes more remarkable than the principal Fabrics.

speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or mis-shapen but the Chaos

speak

strictly

;

wherein notwithstanding to

there was no deformity, because no form,

God; now

nor was

nature

not at variance with Art, nor Art with Nature, they

yet impregnant by the voice

being both servants of his Providence

;

Art is the perfection

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

;

VABIA.

266 of Nature

were the World now as

was the

sixth day,

there were jet a Chaos. Nature hath

made one World, and

Art another.

artificial

brief, all

Art of God."

is the

afterwards

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

thing are

;

for Nature

Beligio Medici, pp. 31-33.

tells

us that which must have bitterly

offended the Puritans, while, on the other hand,

much

he has written must have been equally unpalatable

Romanists.

must have been regarded as a trimmer,

But

because he steered clear of excesses on either side. Sir

Thomas was

that

to the

true to himself.

firm friend of Bishop Hall,

after-life

who had,

in his

he was the

" Shaking

of the Olive-tree" bewailed "the (Puritan) pulling up of brasses

from the walls and graves, the destruction of

painted glass, the breaking of monuments, the demolishing of curious stone

work

that

had not any representation in

the world, but only the fancy of the founder and the of the mason, the breaking up of the organs,

skill

and the toting

and piping upon the destroyed organ pipes, and the hideous and

sacrilegious rout

Who would

wail such other it

and burning in the market place."

not bewail such work?

And who

work when the excess of

will not so be-

ritualism provokes

Against the good contained in the Romish Church,

Thomas Browne, nor

however, neither did Sir true Christian set himself.

" Yet have I not Resolvers ;*

who had

Browne

all editions this

writes thus nobly

shaken hands with those desperate

rather venture at large their decayed

bottom, than bring her in to be * In

any

will

word

new trimm'd

printed " resolutions

in the ;'*

Dock

which, as not

being a proper antecedent to the relative, I have taken the liberty of altering.

THOMAS BROWNE.

SIB who had

rather promiscuously retain

and obstinately be what they as to stand in

are,

267

than abridge any,

all

than what they have been,

Diameter and Swords point with them

have reformed from them not against them

Terms

those Improperations and

omitting

for

;

of Scurrility betwixt us,

which only difference our Affections, and not our Cause, there

between us, one common

Name and Appellation, one common

Faith and necessary body of Principles

and therefore I

to us both,

not scrupulous to converse and live

with them, to enter their Churches in defect of ours, and either pray with

them

or for

;

could never perceive

any rational Consequence from those many Texts which prohibit the Children of Israel to pollute themselves with the

Temples of the Heathens

;

we being

Christians,

all

and not

divided by such detested impieties as might prophane our

Prayers, or the place wherein resolved Conscience

may

we make them

especially in places devoted to his Service

it,

mine may hallow

(dangerous to the

common

ment, nor abuse

naturally inclined

Superstition.

austere,

out morosity

arm

if their

if theirs

pro-

Holy-water and Crucifix

people) deceive not

devotion

common

yet at

;

all

my I

judgconfess

that which misguided Zeal terms

behaviour :

or that a

where

;

may please him

Devotions offend him, mine fane

;

not adore her Creator anywhere,

full

conversation I do acknowledge of rigour, sometimes not with-

my Devotion

should violate

my own

rather than a Church, nor willingly defame the

name

of Saint or Martyr.

" At the sight of a Cross or Crucifix

can dispense with

VARIA.

268

hat, but scarce with the thought or

Saviour

I cannot

;

laugh

at,

memory

but rather pity the fruitless

journeys of Pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of

Fryars

though misplaced in Circumstances, there

for

;

something in

Mary

sufficient

rant because they erred in one circumstance, for in

all,

that

in silence

is,

and dumb contempt

fore they direct their Devotions to

God, and

Ave-

I could never hear the

of Devotion.

Bell without an elevation, or think

Her

;

war-

to err

whilst there-

I offered mine to

the Errors of their Prayers by rightly

rectifie

ordering mine own." It is in the curious

and nice questions of

faith, in

tions old as the first opponents of Christianity,

Dr. Colenso's book, that Browne

him strong nuts

and new as

These

revels.

ques-

afford

to try the teeth of his faith upon.

himself "could show a catalogue of doubts," he adds, "never yet imagined or questioned, as I know, which are not resolved at the

hearing

first

;

not fantastick queries or ob-

jections of air, for I cannot hear of atoms in divinity.

can read the history of the pigeon that was sent out of the ark and returned no more, yet not question out her

mate that was

raised from the dead,

Adam

assured which

who

Whether Eve was framed out

I dispute not

;

because

the right side of

edified out of the rib of

question

she found

behind; that Lazarus was

and yet not demand where in the

interim his soul awaited. of the rib of

left

how

Adam

I stand

man.

I believe

not yet

That she w as r

;

yet raise no

shall rise with that rib at the resurrection.

Likewise whether the world was created in autumn, sum-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; THOMAS BROWNE.

SIB mer, or the spring

;

because

269

was created in them

all

whatever sign the sun possesseth, those four seasons

for

are actually existent." So he continues, and then grandly, as

Samson broke the

bound him, he throws

withies that

" There are

these doubts away.

(sic)

a bundle of curiosities,

not only in philosophy, but in divinity, cussed by

men of most supposed

much

are not worthy our vacant hours,

Pieces

studies.

library, or It is

only

fit

p roposed

abilities,

and

dis-

which indeed

less

our serious

be placed in Pantagruel's

bound up with Tartaretus' Be Modo Cacandi."

in the

" Letter

a Friend " that Sir

achieves the most sublime heights

;

Thomas

and truly when read-

ing these we find that the praise of Coleridge was not excessive, hardly, indeed, sufficient,

For he

knight.

when

applied to the

indeed " rich in various knowledge,

exuberant in conceptions

â&#x20AC;˘

and

conceits

;

contemplative,

imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style

and

diction, though, doubtless,

hyper-Latinistic.

too often big,

stiff,

and

a quiet and sublime enthusiast,

with a strong tinge of the fantast

the humourist constantly

mingling with and flashing across the philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye."

The

following solemn passage, in which this

sublime fantast

meditates on a dying man, and resolves

how he himself

will pass

away,

worthy of

bestows upon his style

all

the praise that Coleridge

" In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the grave, he

mind, to

was somewhat too young and of too noble a fall

upon that stupid symptom observable

VABIA.

270

and which may be

divers persons near their journey's end,

reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their that

tenacious, unready to part with anything,

ready to part with

and

all,

have no

time

spend

know

many

are

mad

that

nation,

afraid

when they

are

want when they

meanwhile physicians who

;

but in a single depraved imagi-

and one prevalent decipiency ; and that beside and

out of such single deliriums, a actions

last disease;

become more narrow-minded, miserable, and

and good sense

man may meet

bedlam

;

with sober

cannot but smile to see

the heirs and concerned relations gratulating themselves on the sober departure of their friends

hold such in

mad

;

and though they be-

covetous passages, content to think they die

good understanding and in

" Avarice which

their sober senses.

not only infidelity but idolatry, either

from covetous progeny or questuary education, had no root in his breast,

who made good works

the expression of his

faith, and was big with desires unto public and lasting

charities

and surely where good wishes and charitable

;

intentions exceed abilities, theoretical beneficency

They

more than a dream.

who would leave

dations in heaven. that I could not

almost to

every

and though they

;

may

brief, his life

lay

good foun-

and death were such

blame them who wished the

the

man

like,

and

say; for though

prosperous

appurtenances of others,

happy

accidents, yet so intrin-

or to be another in his sical

earth

here,

have been himself; almost,

we may wish

build not castles in the air

build churches on

such structures

may

unto

himself, that

some doubt may

SIB THOMAS BROWNE.

271

be made, whether any would exchange his being or substantially

become another man.

He had wisely

seen the world at

home and

thereby observed under what variety the pursuit of that which

men

abroad, and

are deluded in

And

not here to be found.

although he had no opinion of reputed

felicities

below and

apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such happiness, yet his sober contempt of the world,

critism or cynicism,

wrought no demo-

no laughing or snarling

understanding there are not

felicities in this

it,

as well

world to satisfy

a serious mind, and therefore, to soften the stream of our lives,

are fain to take in the reputed contentions of this

world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes, and to

make

ourselves

mation

happy by eonsortion, opinion, or

and

co-existi-

from received and custo-

for strictly to separate

;

mary

felicities,

were

to contract the consolation of our beings unto too

to confine unto the rigour of realities,

uncomfortable circumscriptions.

" Not to fear death, nor tion

ditty.

it,

was short of

his resolu-

conceived his thread long, in no long course

of years, and

when he had

of Lazarus, esteeming his Saviour, to be old

desire

be dissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying

who

upon

scarce outlived the second

enough

so ordered his

earth.

be better than to desire

life

approach the years of

own human

state, as

not

may may make us

But to be content with death it

;

a miserable

life

wish for death, but a virtuous one to rest in

;

which

the advantage of those resolved Christians, who, looking

on death not only as the

sting, but the period

and end of

VARIA.

272

the horizon and isthmus between this

sin,

and the death of

this

and a

life

better,

world but as a nativity of another, do

contentedly submit unto the

common

and envy

necessity,

not Enoch or Elias. ei

Not

those

who

be content with

life is

the unsatisfactory state of

destroy themselves, who, being afraid to

run blindly upon their own death, which no

man

live,

fears

experience, and the stoics had a notable doctrine to take

away the

fear thereof, that

desire that which

might be feared, and with their

own

is,

in such extremities, to

not to be avoided, and wish what so

desires,

make

evils voluntary,

which took

and

off the terror of

to suit

them.

" But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies,

who, though they feared not death, were afraid

be their own executioners, and therefore thought

more wisdom

to crucify their lusts

than their bodies, to

circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than

kill

themselves." Sir

Thomas

very great in the art of approaching a

climax, and leads us gently onwards

till

we are astonished

And

with the force of the simple English words. the sublime fantast

though

seen everywhere even more than the

careful builder-up of sentences, yet his careful research, his personal observation, his painstaking labour,

finished accuracy should be especially noted

" I take

little

his

by the student.

pleasure," he says somewhere, " to drink the

waters of knowledge, instar canis

the Nile, as the proverb his

and

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

lick

ad Nilum,

and away."

" Vulgar Errors," although there are some

a dog at

Hence

absurdities

SIB TH02IAS BROWNE. doubtless which he

had observed and noted

added, in that instance,

The

Linnaean name. is,

his

Death Watch, the

as that of the

noise he

believes, yet there are

still

he corrects from

errors which

273

much

own

numbers of

observation, such

insect occasioning which ;

nor has modern science

knowledge, save the

to our

absurdity of some of these errors

of course, as a critic says, " obvious."

And

the critic

some heads from Browne's note-book as particularly foolish, such as, " Whether children before they are forty cites

days old laugh upon tickling

Whether

not often mistaken for witchcraft, and

be bewitched that are indeed possessed physician

when or

who had very minutely studied

Now, from a

his art, a question

may

grin spasmodically, is

much

Thomas Browne's

not so very ridiculous.

his

mind was

character.

have seen that he

so sincerely religious,

behold, as

God.

As he

Hence

his

and

;

the truth

so truly devout,

word he wrote, and in every action of

that in every life,

The

deeper, and gives us the keynote to

has been accused of atheism by the unthinkers is,

children really laugh, an act betokening intelligence,

other matter Sir

possession be

many now thought

his

were, a reference to the ever-present

believed in a God, so he believed in a devil.

undoubted faith in witchcraft, his by no means

ridiculous query, whether possession be not often mistaken for witchcraft,

and many now thought

be bewitched

Curiously, the resuscitated

that are indeed possessed?

belief in spirits recalls this very powerfully,

us that Sir

Thomas

much more

serious

and assures

was, as usual, not ridiculous, but only

and deep than T

his accusers.

The ex-

VARIA.

274

De Morgan,

periences of Professor

the attestations of the

Howitts, of Mrs. S. C. Hall and her husband, and of a

very well-known band of writers, the assertions of persons, of

whom

the present writer has seen some hundreds in a

room, who could hardly be that there

all

rogues and dupes, assure us

something now abroad which answers very

closely to demoniacal possession.

writer indeed, if one

little

known, has

very philosophical

asserted, after a seven

years' study of the subject, that spiritualism is diabolism,

and has traced very

lucidly the similarity of agencies in

the cases of witchcraft and spiritualism.

may,

all

that

we wish here

to maintain

that as

mind

that the

Thomas Browne was of far too high a class for any reviewer to pronounce him ridiculous. We have seen that Sir

he believed in witchcraft, and in the year 1665, when

Amy Duny stoft,

were

and Rose Cullender, two old women of Lowe-

Bury

tried at

bewitching people,

attested " that the

and women

St.

he,

devil did

Edmund's upon the charge then Dr.

Thomas Browne,

work upon the bodies of men

in a natural foundation, that

is,

he did

and excite such humours superabounding in

afflict

them with such distempers

were most subject to."

charged the jury, when,

alas, there

was but too good a

reason to acquit, to convict the prisoners is

as their bodies

Truly a philosophical and Brownish Chief Justice Hale presided, and

view of witchcraft.

observes, u there

whereby he did in an extraordinary

to a great excess,

manner

stir

their bodies

;

for, as

a writer

a vast difference between a witness

who honestly deposes

to abstract principles,

and a judge

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

SIB THOMAS BROWNE. and jury who

carelessly

prisoners at the bar.

275

apply those principles to the

In 1716, Archdeacon Jeffery printed, at Cambridge, a

work of Browne's, which, although heard lain hidden

" is

it,

of,

appeared in his " Letter to a Friend

paradoxical quaintness of many, serves to

make

The

sober thinkers.

began the closing

the

first

little

softly

fix

them on

one's

book a golden one

for

sentence, which, by the way,

reflections in the

once arrest the reader

"Tread

this is his

the sentences

language, and the

quite unsurpassed in the English

memory, and

The sonorous beauty of

Christian Morals."

will at

had hitherto

from the public, and which had, indeed part

" Letter

to a Friend,"

and circumspectly in

this

funambulatory*

track and narrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtu-

ously

leaven not good actions, nor render virtue dis-

;

putable.

" In

this virtuous

voyage of thy

life

hull not about like

the ark, without the use of rudder, mast, or

bound

for

pondency, nor

and

sail,

Let not disappointment cause des-

port.

difficulty despair.

" Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave, and reckon thyself above the earth by the line thou must be contented with

When God

when under

forsakes us Satan also leaves us

offenders he looks

;

for

upon as sure and sealed up, and

temptations then needless unto them.

* Narrow, like the

walk of a rope dancer.

Dr. Johnson.

it.

such his

VABIA.

276 " The

sick man's sacrifice is but a

" Let the fruition of things and think

lame

oblation.

bless the possession of them,

satisfaction to live richly

than to die

rich.

" Trust not unto

Thou

it,

to the

art

omnipotency of gold, and say not

confidence.

Kiss not thy hand to

that terrestrial Sun, nor bore thy ear unto

slave unto

mammon makes

" Persons lightly

dipt, not

its

servitude.

no servant unto God.

grained in generous honesty,

are but pale in goodness and faint hued in integrity.

" Let not the law of thy country be the non-ultra of thy honesty

law

;

will

nor think that always good enough which the

make good.

equity,

mercy.

right.

Sermon

Narrow not the law

of charity,

Join gospel righteousness with legal

not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, but

Mount be thy targum unto

in the

let

thy

the law of

Sinai.

"Let

not the Sun in Capricorn* go down upon thy

wrath, but write thy wrongs in ashes. of night upon injuries, shut oblivion,

and

let

them up

Draw

the curtain

in the

tower of

them be as though they had not been/'

These are noble sentences,

full

of a true poetic ring; prose

that, with very little transposition,

of Shakespeare himself.

might make verse worthy

critic, in

much, quarrelled with the present

a paper which assumes writer's interpretation

of diabolism from Aiafidtoco, I calumniate, deceive, tra-

duce

;

what

will the learned

gentleman say

Browne's derivation and injunction ? *

When

the days are shortest.

to Sir

Thomas

SIR THOMAS BROWNE. "While thou

so hotly disclaimest the

unclean

nor act his nature

spirit,

abhorrest

;

that

is,

whom

that

much

thou so

to accuse, calumniate, backbite, whisper,

Degenerous de-

detract, or sinistrously interpret others.

and narrow-minded

pravities

be not

devil,

name with

Fall not into one

guilty of diabolism.

277

vices

not only below St.

Paul's noble Christian, but Aristotle's true gentleman."

The " Musseum Clausum

;

or,

" Bibliotheca Abscondita

has been well characterized as " the sport of a singular

Emulating the singularity of others, Sir Thomas

scholar."

Browne appears

have rivalled Babelais in his " Cata-

logue of Books in the Library of St. Victor." is

but a bare

those that

and

of books, not those that

we ought

them,

terms

list

They

to have.

" remarkable

man

The

living."

Tomos,"

the

<fec.

first

tract

have, but

are indeed, as he

is,

never seen by any

Poem

of Ovidius Xaso,

Gethick language during his exile at

Then

follows

which he wrote in answer desiring

The

books, antiquities, pictures,

rarities of several kinds, scarce or

written

him an account

letter of

to his brother,

Quintus Cicero,

Marcus

Tullius,

of Britany, wherein are described

the country, state, and manners of the Britans of that

age."

Submarine Herbal, describing the several

vegetables found on the rocks, valleys,

bottom of the sea, with

many

meadows

polygonum, gramen, and others not yet described."

" Seneca's Epistles

has been partially done. is

certainly a

Caesaris

book much

Anti-Catones

; '

at the

sorts of alga, fucus, quercus,

This

Paul be desired, so are the " ' Duo to St.

two notable books of Julius

;

VABIA.

278

Caesar against Cato, mentioned by Livy," and

lamented

King Solomon's

the loss of

Umbris Idearum," which Chicus Asculanus

ment upon Sacroboseo would have us the library of the

do not so

much

Duke

of Bavaria."

desire, but a list of

" A neat

made

crucifix

"De

in his

com-

believe he

them opens

Why

to us

should he

out of the cross-bone on a

" Homeric

frog's head/' or the

saw in The " rarities " we

curious chamber in the knight's mind. desire

much

treatise

battle of frogs

and mice

neatly described upon the chisel-bone of a pike's jaw,"

" the skin

of a snake bred out of the spinal

marrow

He who

man."

knows where all this treasure is, Browne concludes drily, " is a great Apollo ; I am sure I

of a

not he."

his domestic correspondence

Browne proves himself a

very affectionate, careful, and indulgent father, looking after not only the temporal but the spiritual welfare of his sons.

Honest Tom," he writes to his son Thomas travelling in France, " I hope by this time thou art got somewhat be-

â&#x20AC;˘"

yond plaist-il, and ouy Monsieur, and durst ask a question and give an answer in French, and therefore now I hope

you goe

to the Protestant church to

which must not be

backward, for tho' their church order and discipline be different

from ours, yet they agree with us in doctrine and

Pray be

the main of religion. the

first

place.

you forget

Thy

make

handsome garb and whole course of your

writing

points. gait. life

;

careful to serve

much mended,

I shall be glad

God but

still

you get a

.Be temperate and sober the keep no bad or uncivil company

be courteous and humble in your conversation,

still

shun-

;

THOMAS BROWNE.

SIB

279

The wise Polonius*

ning pudor rusticus."

have given better advice.

could

not

have seen that the sons

and that Dr. Edward Browne, Presi-

lived to his credit,

dent of the Koyal College of Surgeons, cherished the

memory

Xow

of his illustrious father.

and then we

a sign in letters from that father that Edward

" Espargnez vous," he writes

been slightly extravagant.

in old French, " spare us as much as you can,

grown

and have much anxiety and trouble

old,

family."

us there

for I

something very delicate in

would hint that his favourite son was not

upon

pull

Tommy,"

his purse.

amuse him

—a

ceedingly and indulged in

to support

the old Knight's running into a foreign language

heavy a

find

may have

With little

all

when he

make

too

that son's son, " little

boy

sorts

whom

he loved ex-

of childish amuse-

ments, a pretty picture in a silver box from Flanders,

Punch and

his

Wife, a show king and queen and ladies

of honour, and a tumbler, a wooden fellow that turns his heels over his head," died, as

we have

came.

hymn

Thomas grew

pleasantly old, and

seen, boldly and manfully

Ken

to verse,

when

his time

and had written

has imitated in his beautiful even-

—

A character

and often by

Sir

was not unaddicted

that which Bishop

ing

—

always or almost always, mistaken by the players,

critics, as

a mere maxim-babbler, with a touch of the

pantaloon in him. f Teach

The grave Teach me

to live that I

as little as

may

to die, so that I

dread

bed

may

Rise glorious at the awful day.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 280

VARIA. Sleep is a death, let me try By sleeping what it is to die I And as gently lay my head On my grave as on my bed.

Howe'er I

Awake Alas

rest.,

great God, let

again at last with Thee.

the banes of the good knight have rested not with-

His

out disturbance in their grave.

handled, adorns the

Museum

skull,,

which I have

Surgery in Norwich,

rescued from private hands, and there deposited by

Firth, Esq., to

whom

Gr.

indebted for the following

its invention by Mr. Robert Fitch, F.C.S. " In August, 1840, some workmen, who were employed

narrative of

Church of

in digging a vault in the chancel of the Peter's,

St.

Mancroft, Norwich, accidentally broke, with a

blow of the pick-axe, the

lid of

a coffin, which proved to

be that of one whose residence within

its

honour on Norwich in olden times.

This circumstance

afforded

me an

The bones

walls conferred

opportunity of inspecting the remains.

of the skeleton were found to be in

good pre-

servation, particularly those of the skull, the forehead

was

remarkably low and depressed, the head unusually long, the back part exhibiting an

depth and capaciousness quantity, quite perfect,

;

uncommon appearance

the brain was considerable in

brown and unctuous

;

the hair profuse and

of a fine auburn colour, similar to that in the

portrait presented to the Institute in

1847, and which

carefully preserved in the vestry of St. Peter's, Mancroft.

The

coffin plate,

which was

also broken,

was of

the form of a shield, and bore the following

brass, in

SIR

THOMAS BROWNE.

281

Amplissimus Vir

D ns Thomas Browne D Annos Natus 77 r

Miles, Medicinae

Denatus 19 Die

Mensis Octobris, Anno

1682, hoc

Loculo indormiens, Corporis Spagyrici

pulvere

plumbum

aurum

Convertit.*

I succeeded in taking a few impressions from the plate,

and have presented one, with a counter impression, Institute, to

to the

be deposited amongst the collection of the

There was another singular circumstance con-

society.

nected with the discovery, the lead of which the coffin was

made was completely decomposed, and changed carbonate, crumbling at the touch.

monument

fixed to the

to his lady,

years after her husband

south pillar of the altar, and

opposite to this, upon the north pillar,

monument

Thomas' mural

Sir

another mural

Dorothy Browne, who died three ;

the inscription

in verse, pro-

bably written by their eldest son Edward, the physician to Charles the II, and president to the College of Physicians, as

was

Sir

on the

also probably the inscription

Thomas Browne,

of which the

coffin plate of

discovery has been

described." t

Which I (G. F.) render thus :â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The very distinguished man, Sir Thomas Browne, Knight, Doctor

of Medicine,

aged 77 years, who died on the 19th of October, in the

year of our Lord 1682, sleeping in this of his alchemic

From

body transmutes

coffin of lead,

by the dust

into a coffer of gold."

the proceedings of the Archaeological Institute at the

Annual Meeting held

Norwich

in 1847.

—

——

VABIA.

282

Mr. Firth has pointed out

me,

in Sir

" Urn-Burial," two passages, which,

Thomas Browne's

not regarded as

prophetic, have yet obtained a curious significance from

the despoiling of the author's resting-place

" But who knows the

fate of his bones, or

Who

be buried?

often

" To be knaved* out of our graves,

made drinking

how

hath the oracle of his ashes,

or whither they are to be scattered ? 2.

have our skulls

bowls, and our bones turned into pipes to

and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations,

delight

escaped in burning burials." f

Much

learned dust was raised even about the meaning

of the epitaph, written doubtlessly

* Wilkins's ed. has

W. W. t

Sir

gnawed."

—

by Dr. Edward Browne. J

have no doubt incorrectly.

Thomas,

it is

almost needless to say, was wisely in favour

of incremation. X I subjoin part of a letter from Mr. Fitch, who has taken great answer to a captious critic in the Norfolk

interest in the matter, in Chronicle,

who

for " Spagyrici "

would read " StagyricaB "

(sic)

" To Editor of Norfolk Chronicle.

—

" Dear Sir, Having furnished you with the inscription upon Sir Thomas Browne's coffin plate, permit me to reply to your corres-

pondent

S. N.'s

emendations of

it,

which appear to me

purpose than to mystify a very clear passage.

may

not be

classical,

but

writers in his profession.

no mean

authorities),

the sense intended.

and

was much used Boyle used

it is

;

to serve

no other

The word Spagyrici Browne's time by the

Johnson quotes

(surely

the only word capable of expressing

Your correspondent admits that the passage

has allusion to the doctrine of the Alchemists, and yet singularly

THOMAS BROWNE.

SIB

283

Neither the dictionary of Forcellini or of Freund, no, nor

even that of Dr. Smith, which professes to include mediaeval

and chemical words, contains the adjective spagyricus,

and many persons have desired

to alter

and emendate the

Dr. Johnson gives the word " Spagyrick,

inscription.

from Lot. spagyricus

;

and adds that

by Paracelsus from the Teutonic

meaning he gives

as u chymical."

and Johnson

a chymist;

cites

was a word coined

Spagyrist

chemical

believe

well

it,

change,

among

Boyle

to signify

"though," says he, speaking

"many

cannot

naturalists

more curious spagyrists

easily

be very

known."

So here

let

of the sexton it

the

therefore

from

a passage

wherein that meditative philosopher has used

an experimentaliser,

The

spaJcer, a searcher.

us leave this spagyrical writer

may have

hurt not the busy brain.

the brown

emblem of

;

the spade

grated against that dear head, but

Curious eyes

mortality,

and strangely small depth of

may

gaze upon

and note the vast length

skull,

and

materialists

may

laugh at the exploded rhetoric of a loving son, that the very coffin

which held the rare old thinker was by an alchemic

touch turned into gold

;

but they

who

love our noble

English literature well know that the boast has been fulfilled

in regard to the best

rejects the only

The phrase

and undying portion of Sir

word by which they could have been described. sleeping in this coffin, by the dust of his

simple

alchemic body he transmuteth lead into gold,'

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

viz. renders the

by making it the repository of his honoured remains, and thus doing what the alchemists vainly pretended to do." base metal precious

VABIA.

284 Thomas Browne, and

that his thoughts, transmitted to

paper, have indeed turned to something far nobler, spiritual

and imperishable than gold when received

hearts of docile readers and teachable disciples.

into the

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR.

BOOKS CONSULTED. *

Memoirs of

PSalmanazar, order

to be

* * commonly known by the name of George a reputed native of Formosa, written by himself in

published after his death,

of the " Jewish History," and

"The

He was

fyc. fyc.

the author

Life of Christ in the Universal

History " (added in MS. of the time on the title-page). printed for J. Wilson, J.

and

Williams.

Historical

Exshaw, E. Watts,

Dublin,

S. Cotter, J. Potts,

1765.

and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island Emperor of Japan, Giving an Account of the Religion

subject to the

Manners, Customs, tion

8fc.

Together with a rela-

of the Inhabitants.

of what happened to the author in his travels, 8fc. Second By George Psalmanaazaar, a native of the island, now

edition.

in London.

Adorned with

cuts, to

which are added a

figure of an idol, not in the former edition.

map and a

London, printed

Mat. Wotton, Abel Roper, and B. Lintot, in Fleet Street.

for

1705.

Price 6s.

Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, (Johnsoniana.)

of Dr. London, 1859.

Anecdotes

Curiosities

Â§Âťc.

Sir

John Hawkins, Knight,

London, 1859. Johnson.

of Literature.

By Mrs.

Piozzi,

Isaac D'Israeli.

(Johnsoniana).

A new

Memoir and Notes, by his Son, the Right Hon. B. London, 1859. iii. (and note, vol. i.)

edition,

with

Disraeli. Vol.

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. R.

YOUNG to

an excellent poem has pre" The Universal Pas-

fixed a telling title, sion,

Love of Fame; " and he

cites

tenth satire, " that the thirst for

satirists are, after all,

somewhat

a bold thing to say.

sion, too

grand

The

be widely

of great minds, as Milton

many

too is

about

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

in the wrong, although

love of felt.

Fame

a grand pas-

It is the last infirmity

tells us.

noble feelings to be universal

universal

ex-

Perhaps both of these

ceeds by far the thirst for virtue."

Juvenal's

Fame

that minor itching to

combines in ;

itself

but what really

be talked of and

that wish to rise to sudden notoriety, that restless

longing to become the head of a small

circle, that

small-

beer ambition of being the chief in a parish, the leader in

a deputation

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

in short, to be a notorious rather than a

note- worthy man.

may

a love of fame. not

All

this,

which

universal enough,

be put down rather to an ill-governed vanity than to

much

The man who

care whether his

will

be talked about does

name be amongst

the most

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; VAEIA.

288

fraudulent of bankrupts or in the Victoria Cross, published in the

list

of recipients of the

same Gazette.

Perhaps,

as a matter of safety, he would have preferred the latter,

with the exception that he would have had previously to

have exposed

his precious

Even when enduring brings with

name

that his

was,

it,

body

an almost certain death.

the punishment which his

the victim

before the world. Mrs. Catharine Wilson

know what

are told, particularly anxious to

papers said of her

;

him

in his gigan-

Fauntleroy, a short time before he was executed,

called for a glass,

and when he saw the

was anxious that

taken. "

the

was the only anxiety she showed.

Pullinger said that no one had excelled tic fraud.

face,

crime

of a voracious vanity exults

My God !"

his

said he,

reflection of his

portrait should not then

" can

this

some, the notorious Henry Fauntleroy ? " time, the

unctuous

be the once hand-

And

in our

own

Sunday-school teacher Hocker, in

reading some notes after his condemnation, remarked that

" he was not then the gay young man which the world had

known him."

men who

short, there are very

vanity, or, as Wickliff call

it,

few foolishly bad

could not be adduced as examples of this hungry

and Chaucer would more properly

vain -glory.

Forgers of manuscripts and literary impostors are especially the dupes of this vain-glory

;

and we are about

glance over one of the most extraordinary examples

namely, George Psalmanazar, the pretended native of

Formosa; a man whose is still

real

buried in obscurity

name,

so far as

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;who, himself

we can

learn,

learned for the

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. age in which he

lived, deceived

some of the best

289 scholars

of his time, and died at an advanced age, a true penitent,

and a

useful

member

Whatever may have

of society.

been his name, George was born somewhere about the

His parents' names, and the

year 1650, and in Europe.

place of his birth, he concealed, for a very good reason, whilst he for

still

was pretending better,

be a native of Formosa

;

never divulged them,

lest his sin

and

bring

folly should

We presume him to have

disgrace on his family.

and

when he became a repentant man.

been a

" Out of " I was not born, nor educated, nor

native of Switzerland, or the South of France.

Europe," he says,

even travelled, nor even went further northward than the

Ehine in Germany, or Yorkshire in England."

was

suspected of being a German, a Swede, or a Dane, nay,

even an Englishman

but he denied that he was a native

;

His parents were Koman

of any of these countries. Catholics, but

somewhat biassed

which would seem antism existed.

His mother was a pious good woman, but

before he was five years old he

miles

in favour of Protestantism,

argue that they lived where Protest-

left her,

away by a Franciscan monk

and was taken many

be educated.

This

monk, who did not know much, recognised George's capacities,

put him into a high class, pushed him forward, and,

indeed, found that the boy possessed great talent in ac-

quiring languages, and a tremendous ambition to excel.

As he most

increased in years, our hero

fitted to

nican, he

teach

him

to deceive.

was well versed

fell

into the

in all the subtleties of

hands

Taught by a Domi-

Thomas

VARIA.

290 Aquinas

lie

;

many

soon found, like

days, that he

knew more than

other boys in those

his masters

dazed with the philosophy of Aquinas, he

and came

of,

and learned

at last,

left his teachers,

where he was welcomed and

to a great city,

made much

and

;

to use his

edged

argu-

tools of

Determining to employ these, and pushed on by

ment.

Roman

ambition, he began to read the

Catholic theology,

with which he soon got disgusted, and proceeded to Avig-

non

Here he met with a

a tutor.

to take the place of

who proved

hypocritical priest,

him

that

many

of the

clergy no more believed in the doctrines of their Church

than they did in the Grand

were poor, the priests

whom he met off; their

Lhama

keep small cabarets

The

people

and small towns very badly

in the country

priests," as

of Thibet.

and the honest Lutherans

dissolute,

calls

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;some, no

them, being forced to

doubt, for

mere

subsistence,

others, perhaps, as a pretence to get their followers to

meet them under the cloak of going

The young

scholar found

and discovered that either little

much

to a public-house.

distress

and misery about,

was, indeed, hard to rise in the world,

talent or learning.

had no influence and

patience, and he resolved to try his fortunes in the

world in a different way.

He visited his parents, and,

upon

leaving them, determined to assume the character of an Irish pilgrim,

England

gown heart.

who had been maltreated and turned

for his religion.

With a long

the pretended pilgrim

His

direct

route

left

home

lay past

where he had studied theology; therefore, turned out of the way.

staff

out of

and a black

with rather a heavy

the

very university

and he necessarily,

The road he

took,

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR.

291

although " a considerable high road," contained objects not calculated to reassure him, and

its

description

may

quoted as exhibiting the state of the Continent at that

time

Now

carcass of a

and then, at some lonely

man

rotting

place, lay the

and stinking on the ground by

the wayside, with a rope about his neck, which was fas-

tened to a post about two or three yards distant

and

;

there were the bodies of highwaymen, or rather of soldiers,

mariners, or even galley-slaves, disbanded after

sailors,

the peace of Kyswick, who, having neither cupation, used

towns and

the roads

infest

villages,

home nor

oc-

troops, plunder

and when taken were hanged

at the

county town by dozens, or even scores sometimes, after which, their bodies were thus exposed along the high-

way, in terrorem. either of feet,

wood

At other

So that

of War, wherein

eries

Pray

for the soul

who was found murdered near

or, of a stranger

this spot.'"*

crosses,

or stone, the highest not above two or three

with inscriptions to this purport

of A.B.,

met with

places one

Callot's wild pictures of the

Mis-

the trees bear the most plenteous

crop of hanging ruffians that can be imagined, are true

enough. in the

many

Nay, even the exaggerated modern

illustrations of

shades too black.

These " deterring objects" made

our pilgrim associate himself with * Perhaps as

drawn ing

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

fine a quasi

many

people on the

contemporary picture

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and Thackeray excelled

atrocities depicted

Gustave Dore are not by

in the art of local

as ever

was

and time colour-

a picture somewhat similar to this and other passages in

Psalmanazar, in the " Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.," one of

Thackeray's

earliest

and best books.

VARIA.

292 road

and, as an illustration of his vanity,

;

marked

money

that he never once

begged

lic.

At Lyons, where he hopes

officer

may

be restore of

little

lasted, but spent that recklessly, like a gentleman,

the exigencies of the case threw

till

whilst his

him again on the pub-

meet with a harvest, an

him whether he wants a viaticum, and George,

asks

not knowing the consequences of refusal, simply answers

" yes

whereon the

told

him

city,

seeing

many grand

objects,

which he was not allowed to linger."

to observe

he came

" claps twopence in his hand,

officer

and. walks him about the

to the opposite gate,

whereat the

to take himself off, for there

he came back he would be punished. the good people of

Lyons were

quite

was

officer

last

pointing

his journey

;

Plainly, therefore,

awake

to the merits

of pilgrims, real or pretended, and struck a balance be-

tween charity and severity by providing them with a viati-

cum

of twopence, and showing

possible. this

Our

them the door

pilgrim was in great fear whether or no

conduct would be repeated at every great

found that this

as quickly as

was not the

city,

but he

Sometimes he fared well,

case.

he danced with beggars at

and even sumptuously

;

and enjoyed himself in

his wild

fairs,

way, for he was yet but a

young man, and one cannot read

his very dry,

and some-

what sorrowful narrative, without having the love of adventure stirred within one, and determining to follow Mr. Collins's example, to take a

but

fair to

and then, he seems what he has done.

" cruise upon wheels."

the impostor to state that, every to

filled

now

with sorrow and trouble for

The path

of the

most successful

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. roguery

All around the

after all, not a path of roses.

is,

293

hum-

pretender was evidently an atmosphere of religious

now and then by some

bug, relieved only

and these few and he was led

to regret that

Irish Papist

inflicted

he ever passed himself

and when questioned on

;

led to invent them.

bright spots,

If he saw one of these,

far between.

off as

his sufferings,

an is

Dirt and low company had, besides,

on him that disease which, in the time of John

Wilkes, was popularly supposed to be natural with Scotch-

men, and from officer at

this

he can by no means escape.

Liege engages him

for

some

little

A Dutch

time as a kind

of general servitor and minor bully at a gaming-house,

one

also of general entertainment

and, to

;

credit to the virtuous establishment, has

sicked, bathed,

and scrubbed, but

scabious disease"

it is

still

clings to him.

absolutely beneficial to him.

make him do

him

bled,

no purpose.

phy-

The

In one particular

About Liege there was

a kind of pretended Beguin nuns,* who assumed that sacred habit merely for the sake of being procuresses to the fine, idle ladies of the town, the virtue of these fair

Liegoises being evidently that of the ladies of the Count

Grammont,

or of the

Bussy Eabutin; and,

dames described by M. Le Comte as our pilgrim or servitor

good-looking young fellow, often

made

short

by a nearer inspection of

life

overtures to him, which were, of course, cut

with the Dutch

was a

these " pretended Beguines "

his

officer at last

hands and skin.

The

proves hateful to him,

speaks well of the real " Beguines, " as he calls them, and

says that they were noted for prayerful ness and charity.

VAEIA.

294

and he escapes from him, and

grandeur" of

whom he

his house,

flies

from the " seeming

and joins sqme

soldiers,

with

learns to drink, swear, dice, and fight.

Having listens to

still

an ear

some Jesuit

he one day

for curious learning, priests,

who

are talking of Japan,

India, and China, the wondrous Insula Formosa, and the

ravishing islands of the East.

The" bombastic

stirred Pistol,

in the hearts of the hearers.

when he wishes

greatly to interest

" speak of Africa and

his audience, does not hesitate to

golden joys."

impossible to

which the bare mention of these

realize the wild ideas

unknown lands

now

It is

every countryman, before the days of

stage-coaches, used to credit the hyperbolical expression

London

that

streets

Western mind, the

were paved with gold,

vision opened

East was truly gorgeous. loved

George

Fame truly, he would

scheme of deception.

felt this,

to the

and, had he as he

was

commenced forming

his

have gone thither

only inflated by vainglory, he

so,

up by the name of the

carefully treasured

;

up what he

had heard, and, knowing that he could not learn the language, undertook the immense task of making one.

invented names for the letters of his alphabet, formed

upon

new nomenclature,

divided the year into twenty

months, and laid the foundation of his imposture.

whom he is wish become " converted "

In the meantime, some monks with to use

him

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;he

was then a swearing

says,

"to a Capuchin of some piety who had been apprised

as a tool,

and beg him soldier.

" They took me," he

of the intended visit and the purport of

it.

When we came

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. to the monastery,

we found the good

on the bench, in an outer room of lusty

it,

old

295

Capuchin

young woman kneeling before him, barking

and making a great many other

sitting

facing the gate, with a like

a dog,

and noises

antic postures

;

upon which I was told that she was possessed, and that the good father was exorcising the evil spirit out of her.

was sent there on purpose or

not, I

Whether she

know not; but I remem-

ber to have seen her at some processions, and once or twice in church, in the

The power

same unaccountable

attitudes."

of face or of faith that these good priests

How

were possessed of must have been immense. it

could

have failed to have happened that, tickled by some

gross

part

own humbug, both possessed and

of their

exorcist did not burst into a long trollable

laughter?

and loud

of uncon-

fit

Surely, if such was not sometimes

the case, hypocrisy must have driven away, as does, the Divine Spirit of

o ne of

its

most

Humour, which

always

in this world is

and dreaded opponents.

skilful

Arrested, after again wandering at the gate of the town,

George

finds

officer

him and upon him he

who

first

takes a liking to him, and to

puts forth his grand

passed with him," he writes,

lie.

heathen, and was entered in his company under the of Salamanazar, which since altered

by a

letter or two, to

" as a Japonese and a

coming

make

name

England I have

somewhat

different

from that mentioned in the Book of Kings,* but whether * 2 Kings

Hoshea.

xvii. v. 3

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;The

And he (Hoshea)

King

of Assyria

who subdued

did that which was evil in the sight

of the Lord, but not as the Kings of Israel that were before

him

VABIA.

296

my new

captain believed or not what I told him, I was a

The

great favourite with him."

was a Colonel

officer

Lauder, of the garrison of Sluys, and George, who had

been more than once a pike, enlisted

mosan

still,

;

soldier,

and knew how

however, pretending to be a For-

native born, and once a bitter hater of Christi-

by the

anity, but since converted

The

Jesuits.

Scotch Colonel appears to have believed his officers

all

;

simple

but amongst

was a chaplain of the name of Innes, a man

utterly unprincipled,

and desirous of escaping from

and gaining preferment in the Church.

position

man,

to trail

as acute as

his

This

he was unprincipled, detected the im-

posture at an early stage; but, nevertheless, persuaded his Colonel to take

introduce

George Psalmanazar

him to the learned

London and

there as a precious convertite.

Here, then, was the crucial experiment, and the genius of the impostor for a long time carried successfully. self

him through

affected strange habits.

on the pity of men.

threw him-

declared that his love for

our holy religion had caused him to undergo unheard-of cruelties,

and afterwards to

fly

from his native land.

And

thus in his false narrative does he account for his conversion,

which Innes, who had suspected the imposition

along,

forced

him

make

so that the convert

all

might

thereby increase the popularity of the Eev. Mr. Innes.

" Being thus

(to

eternal Happiness I hope) con-

Against him came up Shalmaneser, King of Assyria ; and Hoshea

became

his servant

spelling the

name

and gave him presents."

The

impostor's

looks even more Assyrian than this way.

way

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR.

297 and being

vinc'd of the truth of the Christian Religion,

thorowly satisfied of the primitive purity of the Church of

England, I earnestly desir'd

Then

munion. with

gave out, that

me by

convert

the Ministers

strength

Member

be a

who

of that

good Guide Mr. Innes did not of Arguments,

but by large

God knows

promises, or some other indirect means, which false.

and I went

stop these uncharitable reports,

Mr. Hattinga

and desired him

amine

Com-

unsuccessfully disputed

Mr. Innes

(the eldest Minister of Sluyse)

and publickly ex-

to call a Consistory,

about the reasonableness of

Conversion.

Mr. Hattinga promis'd there should be a Consistory seven of the Clock that Evening.

and I went again sitting

;

at that

hour and found the Consistory

was compos'd of the two Butch and one French

Minister, the

rest

of the

members were Wine- sellers,

Apothecaries and other Tradesmen onel, Captain,

me in

;

Accordingly Mr. Innes

;

hither also

and the Captain-Lieutenant came

but because I could not very readily express

Coll-

to hear

self

Dutch (and none of them understood Latin, except Mr.

knew very

Hattinga, and he indeed

little

it)

they chose

Monsieur D'Amalvy, the French Minister, to discourse in French ;

who

said to

me,

Sir, the

whole Consistory in

general, and I in particular, rejoyce to see you resolv'd to

be baptiz'd into the Christian Church, but I hope your conversion doth not proceed from any other motive than a true and conscientious Conviction.'

" Mr. Innes and I both thought that savour

much

of Charity

;

this

and therefore I

speech did not

reply'd,

Sir, I

VARIA.

298 came

were ordered

D'Amalvy see

little

You

hither on purpose to declare the Eeasons of

Conversion,

Then we

the Consistory please to hear me.'

withdraw

me,

told

called in,

Monsieur

embrace Christianity, but that

so desirous to

too soon for

and being

;

That indeed they were very glad

was

me to give an account of my Conversion Weeks or :

should (says he) converse with us for three

a Month, and then we

you

will publickly baptize

in our

Great Church, where a rational account of your conversion

may be much for

you

me,

to hear

sure

it is

be not too soon

time for

to speak,

thorowly convinc'd of the Truth of the Christian

Religion, and

not willing the initiating Sacrament of

Baptism should be long not

But

to the edification of the Congregation.'

I perceiving their design answer'd,

fit

to hear

deferr'd ; wherefore if

now, you must not take

you think

amiss

make all

the haste I can to obtain the blessing of Baptism,

whereby

I may

made a Member of

Christ,

a Child of

God, and an Inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven J Then they again desir'd us to withdraw, and when we came in, they advis'd

to follow their directions before given,

that they had nothing to add.

and

So we took our leaves of

them and in my way home, I agreed Mr. Innes should bap;

tize

me, without taking any more notice of the Consistory,

But

they, mistrusting what

we intended, went

Lauder (the Governour of Sluyse) and

Mr. Innes

of a different

lish'd in our Country,

The Brigadier

Communion from what

he ought not

reply'd,

(

to Brigadier

told him, that

since

estab-

to Baptise the Convert.'

no Bishop, neither

will I

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. meddle with Church-Affairs

Formosan, and

299

however, I will send for this

;

will consent,

one of jou shall baptize

Accordingly I was sent for and ask'd whether I

him.'

would be baptiz'd by one of these Ministers ?

Had

I been, or

I intended to be, a

Communion, then I would

Hands I ow'd

;

of their

Baptism from

their

but since Mr. Innes was the only Guide to

whom

desire

Conversion, I hoped he might be allow' d to

The Dutch

baptize me.' well,

I reply'd,

Member

Ministers answer'd, 'â&#x20AC;&#x17E;You say

but the laws of our Country

will

not permit

it.'

which I reply'd, 'Tis true I don't understand your Laws, '

but had the Jews of this place converted

you would have circumcis'd me.'

can't think

Judaism, I

Thus finding

they could not prevail, they went away, telling Mr. Innes that they would complain to the States of Holland.

while after

came Deputies from the

Garrison and Fortification

;

A little

States to view our

then the complaint was

made

that Mr. Innes, a Minister of the Church of England,

taken the liberty there converted

baptize

had

a Pagan that he had

But their Highnesses only smil'd at the

Com-

plaint.

" In the mean while the Chaplain of our Regiment hearing of the contest thought to put an end to saying to the Brigadier,

Sir,

it,

I have one favour to beg of

you, that you would please to hinder your Chaplain from

Baptizing the Formosan he has converted, for that privilege

man

You

my self, because I am Chaplain to my Captain being present reply'd, Chaplain and the Convert my Soldier, but

can claim but

the Eegiment. are our

But

VAEIA.

300 since (to your

shame) you never attempted

why you

I see no reason

him,

to convert

Upon

this

the Chaplain went in a pet to the Collonel and desir'd

him

me.

to imprison

has he done?' '

should baptize him.'

'Why,' answer'd the

None that

know

of,'

Collonel, 'what evil

reply 'd the Chaplain,

but I would have him so confined that nobody might speak

him but

for the

self,

who

Brigadier's Chaplain

converted him intends to baptize him, which would be a

reproach to me.'

But

Collonel was so far from

plying with his request, that he told him ignorant young he, I would

man and knew not what he

much

com-

'He was an

ask'd ; for says

rather Mr. Innes should baptize

him

than give offence to a new convert by such scandalous practises.'

"So God,

at last all obstacles

being remov'd, by the grace of

at about seven of the clock in the

French Church, some of our

officers

Evening, in the

and some of the Burg-

hers being present, the Honourable Brigadier Lauder was

God-father and desir'd I might be christen'd by the

name of George. " The next day reasons of

I set about writing the Grounds and

Conversion to Christianity, the Objections

I made, and the convincing solutions I received from Mr.

Innes to bring

me as

to the

me and

good Guide made

man

me with him

giving

out of his

England, in order

this

known,

own Company

w as discharg'd; T

into

most celebrated University of Oxford

the officers and ;

send

God-father gave

to serve in

the following Testimonium

; as soon

room

the Consistory

the Original any

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. Man

shall see that will give himself the trouble to

and see

de ville nomme la Belle Isle, dans la Japon, le quel a servi dans le Regiment de Bockgiihall pendant quelque terns, converti a la Religion s'est Chretienne & en estredevable

tif

soins

come

V[ OUS soussignes certifions que Âą\ George Psalmanazaar, Na-

aux

301

aux

Instructions

de Monsieur Innes, Aum6nier du Regiment de Lauder; Dieu aiant beni ses justes desseins, le dit George a renonce tres sincerement a l'ldolatrie Paienne pour croire en Jesus Christ nostre Redempteur. Depuis la Conversion il a vecu comme un bon Chretien doit vivre, & a edifie par sa bonne conduite tout ceux qui en ont et6 temoins.

Nous done

aiant reconnu en

une droiture de Coeur, & beaucoup d'autres qualites qui lui

w r

whose names are underwritten do certify^

That

George Psalmanaazaar,a Native of the Isle called Formosa near Japan, and who has for some time been a soldier in the Regiment of Buchwald, is now converted to the Christian Religion by the Charitable care and instruction of Mr. Innes, Chaplain to the Regiment of Lauder, God having so blessed his just

hath renounced his atry

designs,

George with

the said

and

believed in

that

all sincerity

Pagan

Idol-

Jesus Christ

our Redeemer.

And

that since his Converbehaved himself like a good Christian, and that his example has been edifying to all who have seen him. sion he hath

We tegrity

then

his Inof his good

observing

and many

other

qualities, think him worthy to be recommended to all good people, rendent recommandable, prions and we pray them to succour and tons les gens de bien de lui donner les secours dontilpourra a assist him in all his necessities, hoping that he will always be a avoir besoin dans la Creance que true member of the Church of nous avons qu'il sera de toutes les Christ. manieres un digne Membre de Dated at Sluyse the PEglise de Jesus Christ. Fait 23rd of May, 1703. a VEcluse le 23 de Mai, 1703. Sign'd and Seal'd by D''Buchwald, Collonel, De Van' G. Lauder, Brigadier, Abdias Hattinga, Minister of Sluyse, in deuil, Lieutenant -Collonel, W. F. Warnsdoff, Major. the name of the Consistory."

The Bishop

of London, to

lieved all he said,

whom he was introduced,

be-

and in pitying zeal extended both notice

and protection to the

fugitive.

Innes,

believe,

was re-

VARIA.

302 warded.

favour of the Bishop of Oxford, convenient

apartments were prepared at that University,

Psalmanazar might improve himself in

drew up

in Latin

that

his studies.

an account of the island of Formosa, a

not very inconsistent and entertaining work, which was

had a rapid

translated, passed through the press,

and

sale,

was quoted without suspicion by Buffon and other more popular naturalists.

To keep up call

we may now

the sham, Psalmanazar, as

him, burnt candles in his rooms

all

night, slept in an

arm-chair, not in his bed, ate roots and herbs, and drank

only water, and was, perhaps,

much more

Japanese, in the

English idea, than the Japanese themselves. for

imposture, and

His genius

immense memory, saved him

his

for a

long time from detection, although the keen scepticism of

Doctors Halley, Mead, and Woodward, and the exceeding regularity and western style of his virulent

grammar,

called

down

and earnest denunciations of the imposition, and

caused the learned to battle amongst themselves. cuse of the Bishops and others

who were

In ex-

deceived,

must

be remembered that Japan was a terra incognita, and that what was

known

and embodied in to

it,

his account.

London with a

his native

Psalmanazar had picked up

He came

version of the

tongue," which was

back from Oxford

Church Catechism "

examined, and by the

learned of the time pronounced to be

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

was

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

real

language, regular, grammatical, and capable of great elo-

quence and beauty. differently

placed the order of letters very

from our own, but

significant that his

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR.

303

alphabet forms a jargon easy to be remembered, and that the

first letter

of each

name

our actual letter

thus

;

Am,

Mem, Neu, Taph, Lamdo, Samdo, Vomera, Bagdo, Pedlo, are A, M, TS T, L, S, V, B, and P. The figures of 9

these signs, of which there are only twenty, are partly like

Hebrew, and

bably haphazard.

partly formed like Uncial letters, pro-

translated the Apostles' Creed, the

Ten Commandments, and the Lord's

Prayer, while the Bev.

Mr. Innes must have grinned a satiric approval

memory

that he baffled the ordinary methods of detection.

would

words, and

translate, viva

when

voce,

these were

a long

three, six, or even twelve

affix

of success he gained both

riety

;

and one of

It is

now known

little

of.

money and noto-

his contemporaries hints that

we have

said,

has, perhaps, never been heard

he led an

extravagant, and, sometimes, even an immoral such, however,

months afterwards.

memory

full tide

of English

the same terms to

greater effort of

the

list

marked down,

without his knowledge, he would

them

of the sub-

So strong was Psalmanazar's

jects chosen for translation.

life

;

proof.

that the Bev. Chaplain of Lauder's

regiment had found him tripping in his vocabulary, and thus discovered his imposture.

Doctors Meade, Halley, and

others did not cease in their attacks

;

but

whether or not they would have prevailed.

knew

all

about his imposture, was the one

strings of the puppet.

doubtful

Innes,

who

pulled the

This man, who more resembles the

villainous chaplains of Fielding,

Hogarth, and Congreve

than an English clergyman, had made Psalmanazar his

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; VARIA.

304 tool.

Taking a passage of Cicero's " De Natura Deorum,"

he made George translate after

some days read

manazar was unripe, and afterwards

made use

his

into

Fonnosan, and then

The plan

dismay assured the

him

made Chaplain General

into Latin.

;

of Psal-

cleric,

his introduction

who

he was

to the Forces in Portugal, a place

wherein he indulged his " inveterate passion for wine and

women." manazar

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

his

return to

England he found Psal-

reformed and the public tired of him.

his degree

Dr. Innes

had been obtained of a Scotch University

then quietly appropriated a work of some merit, called

A modest Inquiry after Moral Virtue,"

which one might

fancy a racy satire on such a man, and on the strength of the book obtained, from the Bishop of London, the living of

The

Braintree, in Essex.

real author of the

" Inquiry,"

an " Episcopal Clergyman of Scotland," finding out the fraud, made Dr. Innes disgorge the " copy money" of the book, and write an apology

;

after which, exit

Innes from

these memoirs, living quietly at his illgotten living at

Braintree, and,

it is

The Romanists,

to be hoped, reforming.

George Psalmanazar was of the

Anglican creed, went virulently against him, but others as

warmly defended him.

Advertisements in his favour

were published in the " London Gazette ;" but in the

meantime the impostor had become no longer one. withdrew from

life,

became penitent upon reading Law's

" Serious Call," and withdrew from

society, not so

much

discovered and disgraced, as that he gradually dropped out of the view of the public.

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR.

305

When Psalmanazar at last fully awoke to a full consciousness of his degraded position, he was only thirty-two years of age, and he lived upwards of so far as

we can judge, during He,

man.

tent

fifty

all

years after that

;

and,

that time he was a peni-

paraded his penitence, hut

at least, never

supported himself hy writing for the booksellers

;

and as

those gentry did not pay their poor hacks very heavily,

he must have had much together.

difficulty in

Yet he never seems

keeping body and soul

have complained.

worked on periodical publications from seven ing

morn-

seven at night, drinking nothing but tea, and a

till

w eak punch r

little

in the

as soon as he left off writing

;

was em-

ployed in the dry and laborious undertaking of a universal history, to execute

learning

which he conscientiously

Hebrew, translating

various libraries, and, above

all,

the

fitted himself,

Psalms,

consulting

saving his employers more

than a hundred pounds in books by reading at Sion College

and

and, although he did not openly confess his impos-

;

ture,

it is

said he often

tears.

irritated his

owned

to his friends with sighs

had made other pretences, which perhaps

medical opponents

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

these he also confessed.

pretended to heal himself of the gout by laudanum, yet

he confesses he " had not the

least

tendency thereto ;" he

took opium, and said that he had a secret method of strip-

ping

its

pernicious effects

acids, " particularly the

juice of Seville oranges." All these rogueries he rehearses

in his last will his death, in sinful,

and testament, published with

his life after

which he speaks of himself as " a poor, weak,

and worthless creature, commonly known

George

VARIA.

306

Psalmanazar."

and that weakly

only once attempts to excuse himself,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;" I was,

some measure, unavoid-

my-

ably led into the base and shameful posture of passing self off as a native of all

Formosa, and a convert

of which was hatched out of

gard

and honesty."

to truth

coffin;

it,

brain, without re-

Finally, he says,

burial-ground, in some obscure

in the lowest

and cheapest manner, without

laid in the earth, with nothing to hinder

covering

desire

common

to be buried in the

corner of

my own

to Christianity,

round."

all

Such stand as

from

his last words.

we read them we cannot but believe him to have been a sincere penitent

;

and, whilst

we abhor

his deception,

yet be struck with the originality and boldness of ception,

and the

and the vast acquirements which tact,

cleverness,

we must its

con-

called forth,

and nerve which the deceiver

exhibited.

His

will is

dated " Ironmonger

Eow,

in the parish of

St. Luke's, Middlesex, April 23, 1752, O. S.," and in the

seventy-third year of the writer's age.

was about

this

time that Dr. Johnson knew him and often visited him.

"When I asked,"

says Mrs. Piozzi,

who was

the best

man

he had ever known, Dr. Johnson replied unexpectedly, '

Psalmanazar.'

said also, that,

though a native of

France, he possessed more of the English language than

any one of the other foreigners who had

fallen in his way.'

Piozzi adds that Psalmanazar's " pious and patient endur-

ance of a tedious

illness,

ending in an exemplary death,

confirmed the strong impression his merit had

Johnson."

It is so very difficult," said he,

made on Dr. "

for a sick

GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. man not to be

a scoundrel.

Mr. Grumbler

will

Oh,

Mr. Grumbler *a-coniing.

307

set the pillows soft,

let

here

air in for the world,

be here presently."

Mrs. Piozzi imagines that Psalmanazar had studied, adorned, and disgraced

Formosan as

much

was quite a creature of

faith

many religions,

forgetting that the

own

his

brain, just

the religion of the inhabitants of Utopia

was imagined by More, and that of Atlantis by Lord Bacon.

From " Knight Hawkins,"

as Carlyle has

it,

we have

another glimpse of Psalmanazar, as well as a proof of the

exceeding delicacy of feeling of Dr. Johnson, which, in

and beaux, must have

spite of his brusquerie to fine ladies

kept him always a gentleman.

had never seen the

He,

the doctor, said he

close of the life of

any one that he

wished so much his own to resemble as that of Psalmana-

and devotion.

zar, for its purity

He told many anecdotes of

him, and said that he supposed him, by his accent, to have

been a Gascon accent,

smoke

;

" but that he spoke English with the

and coarse enough." and spend

his pipe

near Old Street, where

city

for some years used to

his evenings at a public-house

many

people, and

among them Dr.

Johnson, who was admitted to his private friendship, went to see him.

When the Doctor was

tradicted him,

said,

tradicting a bishop."

asked

he had ever con-

" I should as soon thought of con-

When

he was asked

he had ever

mentioned Formosa before him, the Doctor exhibited that fine feeling

allude to,

was afraid even

and

said,

mention China."

Sir, I

was unwilling,

VARIA.

308 It

man

was on one of Johnson's

visits to this interesting old

having adjourned to the public-house club, the

that,

Doctor took occasion, probably speaking of the acquire-

ment

of the

Hebrew

tongue, and

much

Psalmanazar, to remark, that the "

various learning

human mind had a

necessary tendency to improvement, and that

would fre-

quently anticipate instruction and enable ingenious minds to acquire

ting by,

knowledge."

that I deny

never one that could

;

Sir,' said

I have had

make a

pains in teaching him."

coat

a master tailor

many I

till

sit-

apprentices, but

had taken great

This objection to his dogmatic

and rather vapourish assertion must have struck Johnson, for

he mentioned

many

years afterwards to Sir John

Hawkins.

The

will

of Psalmanazar

Ten

from Ironmonger Eow, 1752. ratified it in these terms,

dated, as

we have

seen,

years afterwards he

being then in expectation of a

speedy release from this world

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;" January

1762, being

the day of the Circumcision of our Divine Lord, then, blessed be God, quite sound in

mind, but weak

body, I do ratify and confirm the above particulars of

last will

made."

few days after

this

he died, in the

eighty-fourth year of his age, and so calmly that

all

who

witnessed his dissolution were at once edified and awestruck.

much

strange ending; strange, because happily so

at variance with the

beginning of his

life.

THE HIGHWAYMANâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; EEAL AND IDEAL.

BOOKS CONSULTED. The Life of John Everett, who kept

the

Cock Tavern, in Fleet

and was executed at Tyburn, 20th February, 1729. Himself.

Eugene

Street,

Written by

London, 1730.

Aram

Unfinished Tragedy.

The Chronicles of Crime;

or, the

New Newgate

Bulwer.

1849.

Calendar.

den Pelham, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law.

By CamW.

London,

Tegg, 1851.

Rookwood:

A Romance. By William

Harrison Ainsworth. London,

1857.

Paul

Clifford.

Sir E. L. Bulwer.

London, 1862.

THE HIGHWAYMANâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; EEAL AND IDEAL. OTHING is

at once so vulgar, so pernicious,

or so outrageous in

its results

tion without taste.

When

most delightful sult

when

;

we can

separate,

works

as imagina-

combined, the

will

be the

expect

only

re-

falsehood,

exaggeration, and the horribly grotesque, as well as too frequently

which

that

simply vicious.

To Fancy,

combined with taste, we may trace Milton's " Allegro" and " Penseroso," Shakespeare's " Tempest," Puck, Ariel,

and a thousand delightful creations

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the best works

of the painter, the purest forms and idealisms of the sculptor.

the same power, uninformed,

we owe

the ghastly

fancies of the Spanish painters, the grotesque vulgar cari-

catures of the

Germans

that with us

murder

and that and

thieves,

;

also

owe

the circumstance

treated as one of the Fine Arts,

highwaymen, common burglars, footpads,

prostitutes are elevated into the heroes

romance.

hardly

authors of such books

know whether

and heroines of

to pity or

blame the

where Nature has stayed her hand

VABIA.

312 and

;

of vulgar taste,

the

we hold

condemned. will not

their

on the other hand, they were capable of

if,

and turned

better,

we must commiserate

out due knowledge,

left

condition

worse simply on account

that

they are greatly to

hear of one author who, very rightly,

permit his own books to enter his own house

;

and

others have any conscience, surely their old age will be

made

miserable by remembering that they have used the

moments

precious

of their youth in inditing not a good

matter, but a contemptible fiction, which the further penetrates the

more deeply

will

This worship of highwaymen, for instance, once rage,

corrupt. all

the

a modern invention, and proceeded from one of

the most conceited and foolish of brains.

shall not

argue upon the matter, because we have only to place the

and

real

ideal side

and people

side to

show that the writer

will find in his day, at least, the robber

was painted in his true colours as a type

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of

sions

too low a calibre for

and the most vulgar

Clifford " or

modern

Take honest Henry Fielding from the

as foolish as false. shelf,

ruffian of the lowest

any but the most brutal pasBut take " Paul

selfishness.

" Jack Shephard," the creations of more

brains, in

hand

;

shall find

that these

low

wretches are gifted with the sentimental feelings of the

hero of romance, and often ejaculate sentences worthy of the cynic philosophy of a Rochefoucauld or a Chesterfield.* * Thus, for instance, in Bulwer's romance, or rather find a

which in his mature, more than mature age, he has determinately defended, we

highwayman speaking

in the high-polite style.

— THE HIGHWAYMAN. The

true hero

Mr. Ainsworth's " Eookwood "

Richard Turpin, and

all

the art of the writer

describing the celebrated ride to

spent upon

York and the equally

In the Valhalla of highwaymen,

wonderful Black Bess.

Dick

313

permitted to share an immortality with this fine

horse, and finds, like Pope's Indian, that admitted to that equal sky,

His

faithful

mare

much

Dick, too, has

shall bear

him company.

of the kingly bearing and

magna-

nimity of the hero, and when, after saving him by her

mare dies, he weeps like a man of true feeling. " Dick's eyes were blinded as with rain. His triumph,

fleetness, his

though achieved, was forgotten, his own safety disregarded.

He "

stood weeping and swearing like one beside himself. '

And

agony,

art thou gone,

lifting

Bess?'

cried he, in-a voice of

and kissing her

his courser's head,

covered with bloodflecked foam.

Gone, gone

have killed the best steed that I ever crossed

what?' added Dick, beating

hand— The

for

what?

illustrious

when he wrote of Gibbon line of his

for

brow with

that celebrated passage.

Lausanne,

after

—he My

for

his clenched

how he

The

felt

feelings last

opus, were small compared with those

After informing the public on the impor-

continues

fever into which I sition.

And

having written the

tant point where he " achieved " this

Kilburn

lips,

and I

what?'"

author himself has told us

magnum

of Ainsworth.

his

pen

—" Well

—

at the

Elms

do I remember the

was thrown during the time of compoliterally

scoured over the pages.

VARIA.

314

thoroughly did I identify myself with the flying highway-

man, that once

started I found

impossible

Animated by kindred enthusiasm, I cleared every in

path with as

much

facility as

the impediments that beset his

flight.

halt.

object

Turpin disposed of In his company,

I mounted the hill-side, dashed through the bustling

vil-

lage, swept over the desolate heath, threaded the silent street,

plunged into the eddying stream, and kept an on-

ward course

pause, without hindrance, without

With him I shouted,

fatigue.

Nor

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;without

did I retire to rest

York Minster

bell of

till,

sang, laughed, exulted, wept. in imagination, I heard the

toll forth

the knell of poor Black

" a'most

too fine," as the muffin-

Bess."

This

is fine

writing,

loving law stationer of Cook's court, so admirably described

by Dickens, would

say.

It is to be

hoped that

all

popular

authors are not thrown into such ecstasies, or their landladies

would simply wait,

Dick

outside their doors from ^ye in the

eight to give

Swiveller's landlady,

morning

them warning when they came

pity, too, to spoil

till

out.

half-past It is a

such fine writing by declaring that Tur-

pin never rode to York, and that Black Bess never existed, save in the brain of the penny chap-book from which the

Let us see

great author probably obtained the creation.

what the really dashing highwayman was. deference

space,

ask

our readers to

We call

must, in

on their

memories for the picture of the ideal. We quote from the " New Newgate Calendar," a trustworthy compilation by a Barrister of the Inner Temple, for that of the real high-

wayman.

THE HIGHWAYMAN. Turpin, says this gentleman,

"was

heartless plunderer, a brutal murderer

315

a petty pilferer, a ;"

he was the son

of an Essex farmer, and early distinguished himself for the brutality of his disposition. set

up in that

trade,

and

Apprenticed to a butcher, he

his earliest

known

essays in dis-

honesty were those of stealing his neighbours'

them up, and thus underselling

ting

Mr.

servants of

him

discovered

him

;

Giles, of Plaistow,

his

cattle, cut-

The

rivals.

having by watching

stealing two oxen, obtained a warrant for

but his wife giving him notice, he escaped from the

back door while the

were detained at his

front.

His wife then furnished him with money, and he hid

in the

officers

hundreds of Essex, joining gangs of poachers and smugglers,

and often brutally

brave companions

His

illtreating his faithful wife.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the

Zoroaster,

Jerry Juniper, and

other rufflers, with the Knight of Malta (" to his side was

and doughty sword, which he termed,

girt a long

phrase, Excalibur," &c.)

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;were

in knightly

a set of poor cowardly

rogues whose bold plan was for one of them to knock at the doors of lone houses, ask for charity, and then the whole

would rob and abuse the helpless in-

troop, rushing in,

Old men and women were Turpin' s

mates. tims.

One

on the

fire if

gold).

woman

she did not

She refused

which the held her

old

to give the desired information,

placed her on the

fire,

where he

the tormenting flames compelled her to dis-

cover her hidden treasure."

pounds.

to set

make immediate discovery (of her

villain actually

till

especial vic-

Loughton "he threatened

This was above four hundred

Murder, arson, and rape were frequently com-

mitted by this gang

;

and, having

made the county

too hot

VARIA.

316 for him,

Turpi n

stole a horse,

and took

Here

to the road.

Tom King, with whom he robbed in whom he is represented in romance as

he met with

concert,

and of

the fast

friend, whilst

the road.

King

the fidus Achates of the iEneas of

But we cannot

too often refute the foolish old

saw of there being honour amongst arrested,

and crying out

for help,

thieves.

King being

Turpin deliberately shot

he should not " peach " (give information against him). " Dick," cried King, thinking that the

his friend, so that

shot was

meant

for the

officer,

" you have

killed

me."

Nevertheless, he Hved for a week, and long enough to give

information of his friend's hiding-place at Hackney-Marsh.

Turpin then,

moved

euphuism of

to use the

this historian,

" re-

where he supported himself by a

into Yorkshire,"

cunning mixture of horse stealing and horse dealing.

Taken

at last

under his assumed name of John Palmer,

found out by a returned

letter, of

which he had not paid the

postage, he was tried, condemned, and executed.

Finely as

they dress this hero on the stage, he was so shabbily dressed

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;no

sticking-plaster boots, silver-hilted swords, gold-laced

hats, or velvet coats

pumps and a

left

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

that he bought " a

fustian frock to

new

wear at the time of

pair of

his death."

a ring and some other articles to a " married

woman," not

his wife, with

whom

he had been cohabiting,

trembled and turned white when he came to the ladder,

stamped his foot with some bravado, mounted the ladder,

and there " conversed with the executioner for half an hour before he threw himself off."

Now

fitted the halter,

And

often took leave, but

now

traversed the cart,

seemed loath

to depart.

THE HIGHWAYMAN.

317

We find we have made the trifling omission of a and a round dozen of such is

trifles

are of

murder

brutalities in this short sketch, but

little

moment

" It

in the life of a hero.

needless to add that the story of the ride to York,"

writes the barrister, with

some contempt, "and of the

wondrous deeds of the highwayman's are like

many other tales

of this fellow

steed, (!),

Black Bess,

the fabrications

of some poetical hrain."

That Turpin was but the ordinary highwayman, a vulgar fellow,

who

lived in constant dread of being taken

thief- catcher,

and who generally went

by the

to the gallows be-

wailing his hard fate, and repenting of " burnt brandy and

bad women," as the facetious Thomas Brown puts

Everett, wherein

see,

it,

will

Mr. John quote Thackeray's " Irish

be next shown by our extracts from the to

life

Sketch Book," speaking of Freeny, a notorious Irish footpad, "the exceeding inconvenience as well as hazard of the heroic highwayman's in

company with a

life,

which a certain Ainsworth,

certain Cruikshank, have (has) repre-

sented as so poetic and brilliant, so prodigal of delightful adventure,

so adorned with

champagne, gold

lace,

and

brocade."

The gold

lace

away altogether

and brocade, we may here remark, fade

in the criminal trials,

where copper-headed

whips, tarnished silvered lace, and brass-hilted hangers

purchased at

Monmouth

Street, adorn the thieves not

longer than a theatrical suit

man. faces

Even

much

worn by a stage highway-

these poor suits, which rendered the vulgar

and figures of the thieves

all

the

more hideous, were

VARIA.

318

" about twopence/'

soon exchanged for the old wig worth

the rug coat or wrap-rascal, the old shoes and hayband stockings, in which they perpetrated their robberies.

Mr.

Everett was a soldier, he had " listed in the Foot-Guards of

my Lord

Albemarle's company, as a precaution against

Whilst there, he met with a companion,

misfortune."

Richard Bird, and they agreed road.

One

and take to the many adventures was to " stop a

of their

coach in the

to desert

evening on Hounslow heath, in which,

amongst other passengers, were two precise but courageous Quakers, who had the assurance to

call

us sons of violence,

and, refusing to comply with our reasonable demands,

jumped out

of the coach to give battle, whereon

we began

a sharp engagement, and showed them that the arm of flesh

was too strong

move very powerfully

the

for

spirit,

within them.

they submitted

which seemed

After a sharp contest

they were stout fellows,

and men every inch of them, we scorned but contented ourselves with rifling

amounted There was little

them

a circumstance in this affair

The

of the

and

to thirty or forty shillings,

diversion.

to abuse

they had about

of unrighteousness which

precisians for the

them,

mammon

them, which their watches.

which created a

most

part,

though

they are plain in their dress, wear the best of commodities,

and though a smart toupee

an abomination, yet a bob or

a natural of six or seven guineas' price

ing allowed by the saints. furnished in this particular

become me, I resolved

;

One and

make

the modest cover-

of the prigs was well

flattering

myself

lawful plunder.

would

Without

further ceremony than alleging that exchange was no rob-

THE HIGHWAYMAN. I napped

bery,

his poll

with an old black

tie

319

and dressed him in masquerade

which I had purchased the day before

The

of an antiquated Chelsea pensioner for half-a-crown.

dumps

other company, though in the doleful

the coriander seed, could

metamorphosis

for our

;

for the loss of

not forbear grinning at the

Quaker looked more

like a devil

than a saint." After

this,

and u tipping " the coachman and guard (too

often confederates) a " twelver to drink their healths/' the

highwaymen brushed

off.

Everett, after several adventures,

was apprehended, and remained three years in prison.

was even promoted

fession to

brewer's

be turnkey, but he

keep a thieves' alehouse, and

bill

left this

pro-

make up

his

again took to the road, purchasing " a brace

of pistols, a hanger, a red rug coat, and a hat with a cock

Although he had " a nag that

and a copper edging." would

fly like

taken at it,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;"

a hare and leap like a greyhound," he was

his first

job, robbing a chariot with two ladies in

the husband and miss's sweetheart,"

hind, pursuing him.

who were be-

was condemned and hung, and

confesses, naively enough,

all

" wilful perjuration" " i I had,' says this gallant

his

guilt,

soldier,

for

especially one

some time en-

tertained implacable hatred against one Picket, a cooper,

and

to satiate

revenge, though the poor

man was

entirely innocent of the fact laid to his charge, I swore

upon him, and appeared on evidence against him at the

Old Bailey, for which wicked crime I hope God

will forgive

for thirsting after innocent blood.'

Such an incident as

this

swearing away a man's

life is

— VARIA.

320

commend

very heroic, and we dish

—

;

in a

Even

other crimes.

When

get squeezed myself;

fellow

;

" better

so after

who can

as has been done with

betrayed by Everett. to

hang twenty than

some reluctancy, I im-

man, Richard Bird.

I was brought

Chelmsford gaol, where I appeared as evidence

safe to

against

to the novelist

sworn friend

his

taken up, he thinks

peached

most romantic way

was capitally convicted, and

shifts,

the meanness, the dirt and

man.

fellow

suffered accordingly."

The poor cowardly

misery of these poor wretches are seen very well in the original

Old Bailey Sessions papers.

In proving the chain

how one animal depends on

another, nay, often

life,

feeds on

a professor the other day quoted Dr. Swift's

it,

well-known verse

Big

fieas

Upon

have

little fleas

their backs to bite 'era

And little fleas have still And so ad infinitum.

less fleas,

The wretched highwayman had around him more wretched horrible women, who often betrayed him,

accomplices

—

Jews, informers, publicans, and a whole tribe of harpies.

himself was often only the creature of the thief- taker,

who, for mere blood-money, would put him up to a robbery, inform against him, and

hang him

in due course.

This was well understood by Jonathan Wild's gang, and constantly peeps out in the old

have

filled

much

trials.

space in stripping the lace off

THE HIGHWAYMAN. we have

the highway, that

little

321

to say about the philoso-

phic robber or murderer of Sir E. L. Bulwer Lytton.

more monstrous Horace's

—

maxim

A man

outraged.

a low, brutal, cowardly murder

defended

it:

—" The burning me

me, that whether tality,

ill,

God

profanity follows the excuse].

noxious to the world afflicted society

Gan

the

these

tell

a things of immor-

....

[After this

I have destroyed a

man

means of blessing many."

Well may one of our

—"

its

parodying

general practice might chance

Think what would be the world's

do harm.

men

satirists say,

I would not have this doctrine

vulgarly promulgated, for

—

the folly and wickedness of perverted imagination

go further

known

the sublime aspirings

with the wealth by which he had

I have been the

the baronet's style

were

Edward thus

from sense and clay

good or

for

Sir

desires I have

—

so often

the creature of a

commits a murder

— and

mused

resplendent visions I have that have lifted

any brain.

creation never proceeded from

condition,

without any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt

Ke-organize Society, to re-distribute Property, and

Avenge Wrong." Quitting

satire,

and remarking that every boy, in some

sort or another, does truly

gine what amount of

worship the heroic, can we ima-

harm must have been done by placing

before youth the robber and the murderer as heroes, and

not only palliating these crimes, but representing them as virtues ?

and Redpaths

this base is

how many Robsons Nor have the faults

literature for

society indebted ?

of taste of the higher or richer novelists stayed with them-

VABIA.

322 selves.

Their imitators are, indeed, numerous.

the time

when

been

was

first

fifteen variations of

published until

now

From

there have

" Jack Sheppard;" indeed, in

one form or another, that book

perpetually reproduced.

Hundreds of " Knights of the Eoad " and " Blueskins " have also appeared, and attest

day

after

will appear.

In vain the police

day that youthful thieves are arrested

with bundles of such literature in their boxes or pockets.

The cheap

press

still

teems with the nauseous

desire to recall this the

cleverest sinner in this way, Bulwer,

ministry

made Lord Lytton,

stuff.

because by far the

forcibly,

now by

a grateful

declares that, from " real or

affected ignorance of the morality of fiction, a few critics reiterate the charge of selecting heroes

from Newgate or

investing murderers with interest " against him, and de-

fends himself in a lofty way, as critics

wrong.

he were right and the

THE SPIRIT WORLD AND LITERATURE. ffis^

ITS

BOOKS CONSULTED, Apparitions, a

New

Theory,

revised and enlarged. Footfalls on the tions

By Newton

Crosland, second edition,,

London: Effingham Wilson.

1856.

Boundary of Another World, with narrative

illustra-

by Robert Dale Owen, formerly Member of Congress and

American Minister to Naples. Outlines of

Ten Years'

Spiritualism,

London

Triibner and Co.

Investigations into the

By Thomas

P. Barkas.

1860.

Phenomena of Modern

London: F. Pitman.

1862.

The Life of Wesley and

and Progress of Methodism,

the Rise

Robert Southey, Esq., LL.D.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Southey, M.A.

new

edition,

with notes, by

Edited by the Rev. C. Cuthbert

London, 1864.

THE SPIRIT WORLD AND

ITS

LITERATURE.* ARTHST KOBKY, Kepler,

a pupil of the astronomer

one whose doubt and recantation

should be famous.

doubted, in the face

of every proof, that the planet Jupiter had

" The earth," said Martin, " has only one

four satellites.

why

should Jupiter have four ?

;

I never will concede his

four planets to that Italian from Padua.'*

also the

cardinals in full conclave would not concede to Galileo the

movement

of the earth

place, they tore

and

recant.

;

and as they were

his treatises,

in the strongest

made him swallow them

did so, but again asserted; a second

time he had to swallow his theses and recant old

man !

muove " *

words burst

rose, the celebrated

was

right,

Amongst modern books which

worth while

will think

will eventually is

E piu si

become very rare,

so curious that I

to include this article.

with me.

but for being right he had

the literature of the Spirit World it

but, as the

forth,

It is to

have thought

be hoped the reader

VAR1A.

326

thenceforward to spend his

life

The

in prison.

religious

conclave never dreamt of conceding that they might have

heen mistaken, and in

this case

they were inferior to Martin

" I have taken him

Korky, who very sincerely repented.

again into favour/' wrote Kepler to Galileo, " upon this

express condition, to which he has agreed, that I

show him Jupiter's

own

satellites,

and he

that they are there."

Presuming every kind of scepticism were as as that of Martin,

would not do much harm.

like the Sybil's books, often

whilst

know

the same price

still

easily laid

But Truth,

grows smaller and smaller,

God

demanded.

The

end in only one generation, but, which never ceases to enlarge spread, with this difference

itself,

such does not

effect of

circle in the water,

so ignorance

however, as

we have on

every person

at.

;

we have on one

We may be

in the other

for every

are surely in

to reject ? these

age deals in the marvellous,

The modern

naturally greedy of novelty.

not unlike that of Athens in the time of the

Apostles

;

What are we to believe and what

are the questions

world

the other Charybdis.

in the frying-pan in one fire.

circle

Great,

the evil of incredulity, on the other hand

the evils of credulity are quite as bad. side Scylla,

and error

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;by wide spreading the

brought to nothing, while the error increases.

the

only can

the results of a determined and stupid ignorance

which refuses to be taught.

them, and

to see

people go about seeking what they

It is so pleasant to indulge

phrenologists

tell us, is close to

Wonder

that of

may wonder Its organ,

Hope, and the one

;

THE SPIRIT WORLD. If the faculty be pleasant,

excites the other.

be surprised at the unknown.

its

we cannot

We can all talk learnedly about

abuse.

Dr. Dash and the Reverend Blank can grow

perfectly eloquent

upon the

glories of the world to come.

need the genius of Bunyan, who knew, by the

It does not

way, when to drop the curtain, of the shining city seen,

327

to expatiate

That which we are

becomes as familiar

to the oily

on the wonders

told eye hath not

tongue of the eloquent

preacher as Regent Street, and as well trodden as Whitechapel

;

Smith hurries

off

Johnson.

"But might we

not

Dr.

" Madam," said the honest old thinker, " we may

suppose everything, but we

we may

credulity,

holds

The voluble Miss

cried one of the class to

into ecstasies.

suppose, dear doctor ? "

light,

Wisdom

nor can we deny his statements.

her tongue, but fools rush in to describe.

know nothing." Taken

honestly guard ourselves with a

in this

little

in-

and say with the Poet Laureate that There

lives

faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds

especially if half, or for

more than half the creeds are wrong

we must remember

other

mundane

creeds arise and die out as well as

matters.

The

creeds of some of our early

Christian sects have gone as utterly as the worship of Isis,

and popular

religious delusions have

numbered

their thou-

sands and hundreds of thousands of adherents, and only

now are

known from the answers which learned schoolmen

thought

fit

give to their errors.

almost immortal;

its

Religious error

dissolution before perfect light

and

;

VARIA.

328 knowledge

will synchronize

that very reason

can

;

and,

with that of the world

;

but for

much

are ready to crush a budding error,

should guard against

should be just as ready to help to raise a struggling truth,

Some such remembrances we

as these are necessary before

enter into the consideration of our subject.

therefore incumbent

upon us

It is

to treat this matter firmly,

but as wisely as we can, seeing that there are but very

few indeed who have not read of the modern assertions, that disembodied spirits have the power of conversing with

human

beings, that they can

make

noises,

play upon

break flowers and carry them about the

instruments,

room, carry large tables to a great height,

Home)

the case with Mr.

man up

a heavy

lift

(as in

in his chair, so

that he shall float in the air about the ceiling, pinch people's legs, squeeze their hands, touch their lips,

hibit their

hands, and (as lift

the

it is

warm and

to the lips of

asserted

delicate

an Emperor

These are very

was done

little

at the Tuileries)

hand of a disembodied for

him

spirit (?)

to kiss.

startling facts to assert in the nine-

teenth century, that boasted epoch of assertions

and ex-

own forms (partially) as to white and dark

all

knowledge.

The

more than two hundred years ago would

have procured one's condemnation to a death by fire.

Fifty

years ago the asserter would, had he property, have been

consigned to a mad-house.

Twenty years ago he would

have been laughed at as a dupe, or avoided as a charlatan to-day he disciples.

run

after, listened to,

applauded, and gains

Amongst a people descendants

of our own,

THE SPIRIT WORLD.

329

but more acutely nervous, the Spiritualists, as they

number nearly

themselves, that solemn

half a million

and

;

it is

and keen merchants keep a medium

call

said

for the

purpose of consulting him or her as to their success in Certainly the Faith counts upon

business during the day.

twenty periodicals in that free land, upon several in our

own, and can number amidst of such a

work

by a man high

in office,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;an

Amongst

power.

first-rate

its

triumphs the production

second on our

as the one

ambassador, in

its

fact, of

popular

letters,)

and lawyers, comic

lishers,

This

ministers.

is,

physicians,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

artists,

those of the trade of

pub-

empirics,

doctors,

and dissenting

writers, actors,

strange

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

certainly stranger than fic-

Whatever the cause may have been, the

tion.

most prominent defenders

and apostles are men and women of genius preachers, literary men, (that

written

list,

effect is

remarkable.

Now Either lies

there are three points upon which all

and

we can

stand.

these disciples are liars, and their productions

collusions

;

or,

secondly, they are

themselves, but honest victims thirdly, the

who

all

deceived

deceive others;

or,

narrations are true, and are worthy of our

deep and grave consideration

;

and, as

appears to us,

" Footfalls on the Boundary of another World," one of the most important productions of the body,

written to prove

this last.

The way

which Mr. Robert Dale Owen, who,

must be remembered, centric

the son of our old friend of ec-

memory, Robert Owen, proceeds

to establish the

330

VAJRIA.

truth of spiritual interference in the matters of this world, is

very straightforward and very simple.

easily proves his assertion, that

that there are

more things

asserts,

and

we do not know all things

Heaven and

;

earth than are

dreamt of in our philosophy, and that to declare that certain occurrences do not take place because

stand them not,

narrow and

foolish.

we under-

to place the

extent of the world at the horizon of our vision.

But, as

we know

there are lands and places beyond our vision, so

we know

there are matters which surpass our knowledge

Our

and our understanding.

pleader next deprecates the

expression of a judgment before

matter

;

for that is simply

we have thought on

prejudgment or prejudice.

are not to contradict an assertion because

but rather^ as a stranger, give

an error must come

after investigation, never before

matter before he heareth

it, it is

phenomena

actual

folly is

not the proper

true than this.

Had we

it.

that answereth a

and shame unto him."

win over a misled or diseased mind.

strange,

Exposure of

welcome.

are told in the Proverbs that "

To deny

the

mode

Nothing can be

always thus proceeded,

should have far advanced in philosophic inquiry

;

but

we we

and Mr. Dale Owen must remember that there are many useless semi-philosophic assertions

disprove, although

and

useless.

Many

feel that

we know

that they are false

of the opponents of Paracelsus

that his assertion that

pommel

which we can hardly

he had a familiar

of his sword was perfectly untrue

knew

spirit in ;

the

but, as they

had never seen the sword, they could not disprove

it.

;

THE SPIRIT WOULD. When Lord

331

Cochrane brought Lord Gambier to a court-

martial, prejudice, ignorance,

and incompetence triumphed

over valour and knowledge, because the latter could not disprove assertions of the former, and his

case.

also

Lord Cochrane

Admiral Byng was

Crimean blunders were

left

shot,

unpunished.

The deduction from Mr. Owen's candid that

we should be

lost

while the

inquiries is

seekers rather than judges, and that

should accept that which

we cannot disprove; and

this

being conceded, he proves abundantly and easily that spirits

and " ultra-mundane," or other-world interferences,

have been talked of from the beginning ; that every age furnishes

pearances

many

well- authenticated narratives of these ap-

that Scripture does not

;

ances, but constantly affirms

deny

appear-

spiritual

them; that

history, sacred

and profane, gives instances of them, such as the appearance of Samuel to Saul, Csesar's wife's (Calphurnia's)

dream, and the

and

that, as

visit

we cannot overthrow

cloud of witnesses,

we would

of Caesar's ghost or wraith to Brutus

the testimony of such a

are bound in honour to accept

therefore believe in spiritual interference. that these arguments have gained for

the praise of some contemporary that

accept that of others in a court of law, and

critics,

Mr. Owen's reasons are acute and

presume

Mr. Owen's book

when they say

logical,

which we

do not deny, that being certainly logical enough, only they simply prove what

two and two make

know

not,

four.

but every

we already know as surely What other churches may Christian

community

as that

say

believes in

;

VARIA.

332

Our Church and

spiritual interferences.

constantly affirm

to the assertion.

New

the

;

that of

Testament owes

Eome

its vitality

believe in the orders of angels

agree that there are innumerable devils

;

host of Heaven, and of the multitude of the

;

talk of the

damned

;

pray against the machinations of the devil or man, and that " as

they

Thy Holy angels do Thee service in Heaven, so may succour and aid us here on earth." To an edu-

cated Christian therefore,

the

possibility of spiritual interference,

as well

known and recognised Mr. Owen

istence of a world of spirits.

as the ex-

consequently

doing a perfectly unnecessary work as regards an English

when he proves

audience so far

over again a spiritual existence

are with him.

mises, but

we must

agree entirely as to his pre-

await his conclusions before

we give

him our judgment. After having set forth his argument, our spiritualist pro-

duces his proofs ; and these are the gist of the book.

They

are perhaps the best collection of well-authenticated ghost stories ever written.

There

not one, perhaps, which

entirely new, but every single one interest,

and the book deserves

central portion.

ghost,

There

entrancing in

be read,

only for

that narrative of the

its its

Wesley

a spirit-rapping which pursued John Wesley's

father for years at

Epworth

rectory,

which knocked as

loudly in the kitchen a as a huge piece of coal being

broken

to pieces,"

which pushed against Wesley's

father,

and which was heard over and over again by dozens of witnesses,

and which used

be called " Old Jeffrey " by

THE SPIRIT WORLD. one of the

little

girls

;

333

nay, which would play with her,

running and knocking from corner to corner, and which always knocked loudest when the good clergyman's family

prayed for the king;

memoirs of the Wesley

Then

pages.

the account of this

and abridged from Doctor

cinctly given,

there

that of Neville

where

family,

very suc-

Adam

Clarke's

covers forty-six

Wynyard

the story of the

Norman's murder, and the dream

ghost, at sea,

Count Felkesheim's story of the " Iron Stove," that of Goethe's grandfather, of Mrs. Howitt's dream, and of a

very curious dream of the widow of General Torrens antecedent to the Indian mutiny.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " â&#x20AC;&#x201D;but

not only old stories the saddest tale

modern) ghost

These, as one will see, are

not those of " the oldest aunt telling of well-authenticated (and

narratives,

many

and as such they deserve at-

tention.

While we are

quite ready to concede the possibility of

spiritual interference in the matters of this world,

shown

this belief to

and have

be no new thing, which scarcely needed

the heavy lumbering of logical reasoning to prove

must

once deny our credence

in the

common

it,

spirits of

the day, spirits which appear for no end, or merely to excite

vulgar curiosity or village scandal.

cannot admit that

summoned

the spirit of Shakespeare can be

at will to rap

out nonsense or verses on the drawing-room table of a

grocer at Clapham, nor that the spirit of Washington will

be made

to utter platitudes about liberty in the

of a store in

New

York.

the vasty deep, they must

If spirits are

come

for

back room

summoned from

more than

that.

VARIA.

334

must remember that the recognised were

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

all for

some

that thej all took place at

The appearance

history.

spiritual

appearances

some evident purpose which they accomplished

waking up of the dead

the world's

Jerusalem at the crucifixion,

that solemn warning which Brutus

marks on the world's

crisis in

of the apparition to Saul, the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

had

The few

history.

have

all

appearances throughout past ages have only been to

keep

left their

other authenticated sufficient

alive the faith in the immortality of the soul,

and

Christians of every denomination have been quite justified in believing that since the times of the Apostles spiritual

interference in worldly matters has ceased.

Indeed the

Founder of Christianity himself gave the death-blow ghostly revelation.

Nothing can be more plain than

declaration of the inutility of such;

to his

and, as usual, the

teachings of the highest intelligence will be found consonant

with

common

reason,

experience, and

common

In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, the rich man

sense.

in torments riority,

represented

still

clothed in his fancied supe-

but touched with pity for his own kin, begging

Abraham

send Lazarus to warn his brethren.

But the

spiritual re-appearance on earth of the beggar at the rich

man's beck and

call is strictly forbidden.

It is useless to

warn people by

spiritual interference.

" They have Moses and the prophets

;

they hear not

them, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."

dead,

cannot doubt this Divine dogma.

commonly and

have no power over us

;

often appearing, would

and

The

and could

appearing to one,

why

not

THE SPIRIT WORLD. Why

to another ?

should not each have a special revela-

of our north country families have an especial

tion ?

Some

spirit,

some of the

Irish their

its

would be the common deduction.

ad absurdum ; and the

the reductio

Why

own banshee.

not each family, rich and poor, keep

335

should

own ghost ? This the Spiritualists

might

ghosts, too,

They might say with Bulwer, in The why should Caxtons, " The kingdom of the dead is wide Why, indeed? Yet they have the ghosts jostle us?"

have a word in

it.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

jostled us,

and are continually doing so in

print,

and have

" jostled" the peace of many a private family away, and as

many hundreds

this is is

The commencement

into madness.

worth inquiry; the time of

remarkable.

of It

nothing less than in the very centre of the nineteenth

century, an era of boasted civilisation and progress. spirits first

The

rapped in 1848, about the same time when

Odillon Barrot, Ledru Bollin, and Louis Blanc were rap-

ping down the throne of Louis Philippe, and three years before the century, culminating in the glory of the Exhibition of

851, became over-glorious of

advancement. the people,

That Exhibition,

made

us conscious of our

took stock of what everything.

its

own

like the

own

progress and

numbering of strength.

we knew, and fancied that we knew had machines of

all

kinds, from the

steam hammer to the cradle-rocking machine, and the sewing apparatus to the expanding man. apotheosis of

human

intellect;

was a grand

but in the midst of our

natural congratulations and bragging, those

who

believe in progress could point to great folly,

and show us

did not

VABIA.

336

much

that,

we had

done, the weakness of superstition

had not jet died out of the mind of man and philosophic

believing Christians

and

;

that,

amidst

materialists, whilst

Stephenson was bridging space, and Faraday resolving the

who were

elements, there were those

a senseless Fetishism

headed negro in

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

as ready to believe in

we may so term it

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

any woolly-

St. Kitts.

Acting on the already existing belief in spiritualism, or

duped by some designing persons, a poor family obscure village in America was the

new

first

promote the

A small

schism, which has since distracted thousands.

farmer, Mr.

John D. Fox, resided

in a

not far from Newark, in the county of

New

York.

whatever that family

;

The house

may

his wife

visions.

Soon

be.

and

in an

wooden dwelling

Wayne,

State of

" a storey and a half high,"

Mr. Fox was married, and had a

wife's sister

after they

were dreamers, and had

had taken the house

1848, they heard rappings,

like the

January

hammering

of a shoe-

maker; sometimes the door was shut with a slam, or a upon the persons of people, and chairs were

hand was

laid

moved.

Altogether the members of this excitable family

were not very pleasant people to cried out that a

live with.

The

dog was lying on them, but

before the mother could see. it.

;

and so the matter con-

when Kate Fox, " a

child," cried out as she snapped her fingers, Splitfoot,

do as I do

was gone

Mr. Fox rose every night,

but could not find out the ghost tinued for about four months,

children

lively

" Here

old

" The knocking instantly responded.

That was the very commencement,

says

Mr. Owen,

;

THE SPIRIT WORLD. solemnly

;

who can

tell

where the end

family also hit

Where,

be ?

will

The

indeed, of this flood of nonsense ?

337

lively child

and the

upon the method of the alphabet, and the

ghost spelt out

name, and the

its

letters inferred, or the

name was Charles B. Rosma, that he (or it) was a pedler, who had been murdered Foxes did for them, that the

by Mr.

spirit's

Bell, a former occupant,

and buried

This was pleasant for Mr. Bell;

in the cellar.

and a servant

came forward and confirmed the statement called, but that she

night.

The

cellar

girl

that a pedler

had been sent out of the way

for the

was dug up, but nothing was found but

about three bones, one of a skull, two from the hands but these might have

been bones found, as they are

Mr. Bell came

everywhere, on the banks of a river.

forward with an attestation of his character, signed by forty people, nearly all in Hydesville, that he

of such a crime, and

capable

nothing came of

Hundreds of people surrounded the house, cellar of the

rap

till

Cock Lane

engaged is,

it.

as they did the

ghost, but the spirit would not

Books were published about

nearly dark.

Foxes may be said

was in-

;

the

have made their fortunes, and were

as media, or, as they call them,

as professional rappers.

his character in his pocket,

Mr. Bell

" mediums," that

left

the country with

and the house has been taken

by a farm -labourer, who never hears the raps, lives peaceably, and " does not believe in spooks " (spirits). Such was the lame and impotent conclusion of a Heavenly, or least spiritual interference.

But the news

and was taken up by hundreds of z

of course spread,

believers.

VABIA.

338

It is a pleasant sensation to believe in

Hundreds have

Canterbury , and Joe Smith. their martyrs

and

something new.

Joanna Southcott, Thorn of

believed in

These prophets have had

their victims

the

;

new dogma

of spiritual

interferences for the slightest purposes, or for no purposes

was

at all,

Fox

have

martyrs

The

first

result of the

was, that a young pedler, with a

waggon and

spirits

its

two horses, known

be possessed of several hundred

Public opinion at once said he had

dollars, disappeared.

been murdered.

also.

enthusiastic spiritualist

had the sur-

Through the same medium the

mise confirmed by raps.

credulous inquirer was told where the body lay in the Several spots were dragged, but to no purpose.

canal.

The

dupe's wife was required to go to the same spot,

where she nearly

lost

her

life

Canada, to avoid his

made to

creditors,

capital out of the

Mr.

Owen

to state that

but some months after the

;

alleged victim reappeared.

new

had departed secretly

and by cheating them, had

belief.

It does great credit

he frequently in

his

book brings

forward these matters against the creed, as well as instances in

its

favour.

The

spirits

were soon everywhere rampant, and people

of a nervous and excitable temperament, those

who

could

be easily acted upon by mesmerism, and put into a state of

coma

or mesmeric sleep, were found to be the media.

The most

enthusiastic believers in

that the spirits told an enormous also exhibited

them have never denied

number

an alarming state of ignorance.

writes nonsense verses

when

in the spirit,

lies.

They

Shakespeare

Bacon makes

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

THE SPIRIT WORLD. monstrous mistakes

and Cicero his spirit

was

;

339

Plato talks the veriest commonplaces,

Had

not eloquent. at

;

; ;

once summoned.

any great

man

departed,

Fathers called up through

these media the spirits of their lost children, mothers con-

versed hy rapping with their daughters, children with their

Did anything happen

parents, husbands with their wives. to

be revealed or guessed

at, at all

consonant with truth, a

great fuss was made, and the fact published far and wide

was nothing evolved or anything mistaken, and falsehoods it was said that the " spirits " were not in a good

alleged,

humour, or that they purposely deceived.

Mr. Owen quotes some pertinent

how

far they

were

of a remonstrance with the spirits If in your

But must

new

estate

return, oh

which show us

lines,

They

be credited.

are in the form

you cannot

rest,

grant us this request

Come with a noble and celestial air, And prove your titles to the names you

bear

Give some clear token of your heavenly birth

;

Write as good English as you wrote on earth

And, what were once superfluous Don't

tell, I

But, in spite of

lies

to advise,

beg you, such egregious

lies.

and mistakes, the number of disciples

every day grew larger, and the printing press was called in to

expand the doctrine.

honour of the press and the

and preached against the

must be

said, greatly to the

pulpit, that both

folly

;

have written

but there were

many

not

proof against the tickling vanity of wishing to believe.

And many

disappointed

preachers went over to the

and second-rate

camp

of Rappers.

writers

and

In England;

;

VABIA.

340

as well as the rest of the world, they

made head-way.

Tables were turned, keys and Bibles flew about the room and,

testimony

of any value,

men were

lifted

up and

carried to the ceiling, spirit hands plucked flowers,

posed tunes, and played them

com-

painted pictures of Heaven's

;

flowers, read books through their covers,

and two years

after Sir

John Franklin's death, a clairvoyant medium

described

him

his

as alive

companions on the

and ice

well, but

very sad, sitting with

now know how

true that

was.

To sum up seems as

all,

we may add

number many

that

In our own

lively as ever.

believers, but they one

The

do not see any use in the creed.

now

spirit-rapping

circle of friends

and

all

add that they

raps are supra -mun-

dane, and therefore not likely to be put to worldly use.

There are many media illiterate,

and

will not

London, but they are generally

perform

They live on

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

or the spirits will not

after

dusk

for it

must be added that the majority of educated

ualists

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

spirit-

were religious sceptics before they grasped at

shadow.

The

unbelievers in the matter

to the character of these raps,

The

this

seem divided as

some holding that they are

the work of the devil, others that they are

a delusion.

till

the credulity of the incredulous

all

a sham and

plain, straightforward Christian is pre-

pared and forearmed in either case.

cannot believe

that the souls of the departed can be called up to entertain

a party of ladies in a drawing-room, or of curious nobodies in a public-house tap-room, nor that a divinely-visited

woman,

Mrs. Marshal, would be permitted

to let out

THE SPIRIT WORLD.

341

her inspiration for ten shillings a night, and while deliver-

ing the very oracles of Heaven, would speak bad English.

Mr. Barkas, whose book whose enquiries seem

the most philosophical, and

have been the most regular and

properly disciplined of those of any one spiritual writer,

phenomena

holds that the

This

diabolism.

concession

from a very low form of

result

conceding part of their claim, and this

are unwilling to make.

that spirits should manifest themselves,

the matter culminates, and believe

so.

Till then

we can

rest

be necessary

we can

possible

wait

when

till

does

upon our own creed, firmly

convinced that in this doctrine of playing with a future state there is but

and

very surely,

manifestations since, if

one step from the sublime to the wicked

and that the Eappers have taken

ridiculous,

we may judge

made

must

revolt thereat,

degradation.

THE END.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

for

of immortality from the

public, our souls

they be true, death

it;

CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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