Contents

ences (1788, published together in 1794) dealt with magic at some length, lifting considerable Swedenborgian material and segments of Scot’s Discouerie of Witchcraft.

69 Francis Barrett also borrowed considerable material from various sources when he compiled his book The Magus (1801).70

Manuscripts also played a role in this process, although the survival of such works has dropped considerably. Earlier in the century, we see them in Sloane 6481–6484, a collection including magical and Rosicrucian materials, copied by a Peter Smart and attributed to a “Dr. Rudd.”71 Nearer to the end, copies of an English translation of the Key of Solomon, supposedly translated from the French by Ebenezer Sibly in 1789, began to appear.72 Although wealthy collectors often snapped up older manuscripts for their own ends, we know that Douce MS. 116 made it into the hands of not only a practitioner, but also one who further transformed it.

Contents

Whosoever Harrington may have been, he went to considerable effort to make the text useful to himself. He may have been responsible for the brown leather binding, as well as adding additional pages at the beginning and end for additional text. He paginated the work—although this was often done carelessly, as the text will show— and included a table of contents and many notes indicating sources and references to other works in his library. These included a manuscript copy of the Fourth Book attributed to Agrippa, a “red book” in quarto, and a “little manuscript.” The numerological methods for determining good or bad fortune seem to have been popular, as he adds a chart of common English given names and their Latin equivalents in both the front and back of the book. Most of the Latin passages remain untranslated, although Harrington has added some translations of section titles.

The most notable change to the book was the insertion of a title, “The Key to Cornelius Agrippa’s Fourth Book,” on the new first page of the manuscript. Although the original and annotations are indebted to the Fourth Book for some of their contents, the work is by no means dependent upon, or able to grant many insights into, the work of pseudo-Agrippa. This is perhaps more a statement of lineage and aspiration than relation to the text.

69. Sommers, The Siblys of London, 160–61 70. For a breakdown of Barrett’s sources, see Priddle, “More Cunning Than Folk.” 71. For those of Smart’s works that have been published, see McLean, A Treatise on Angel Magic; Skinner and Rankine, The Goetia of Dr. Rudd. 72. Sibley [Sibly], Solomon’s Clavis, or Key to Unlock the Mysteries of Magic; Solomon, The Clavis or Key to Unlock the Mysteries of Magic.

The author’s introduction on pages iii to iv is intriguing for its emphasis. Harrington writes eloquently of the importance of pursuing the art, but he also realises that a learned person of his time would be steeped in knowledge of—or at least respect for—science, have a more secular mindset, and find many of the manuscript’s contents questionable or ridiculous. For this prospective reader, Harrington emphasises that a discerning and dedicated individual will certainly find “amusement” from the material within, but it might yield much more to the right person. He notes the gaps in the scientific knowledge of his day and compares the secrets of magic to the wonders yielded up by a microscope. He brings the pursuits of ritual magic and scientific knowledge into parallel, attempting to lend one’s public legitimacy to the other.

Most of Harrington’s references seem to be to printed works. For instance, although our first scribe used the 1665 edition of the Fourth Book, Harrington’s annotations are taken from the 1655 edition, as listed in the sale catalogue, although he also mentions a manuscript edition of which we have no clear trace. Many of these references include errors in page numbers, indicating that he might not have had access to the original texts when he made them.

One section also includes seals and incomplete information on spirits taken from the section of the Lemegeton known as the Goetia, along with a few notes on summoning the spirits. This content is closest to Sloane 3846, although it is different enough that it must have derived from another manuscript in which part of the incantations for compelling spirits had been torn out. It is unclear why these particular spirits were chosen; they do not seem to share a function in common, and indeed some have no function whatsoever listed in the Goetia. At any rate, this indicates he had access to another lost manuscript.

We have three clues to the date on which these comments were written. One is a reference to a divination technique given in the Memoirs and Anecdotes of Philip Thicknesse, published in 1790.73 Another matter added near the beginning also quotes a newspaper story from the Morning Post for May 29, 1792.74 Elsewhere Harrington quotes from the “Love” article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, including information that first appeared in the third edition of that book. A full set was published in 1797, but the first fascicles were published and issued to subscribers as early as 1788. The publication schedule for those fascicles might help us narrow down the dating of the composition of that section, at least of one section.

In the latter portions of the book, the author presents a paraphrase of many of the initial passages from the Clavicula Salomonis, summarised and supplemented with references to and material from the Lemegeton, the Three Books and Fourth Book of

73. Thicknesse, Memoirs and Anecdotes of Philip Thicknesse, 13–14. 74. Given the incomplete set of the archives of the Post, this cannot be officially confirmed.