Modern philosophy, theoretical or experimental, only amuses while the
action of discovery is suspended or advances; the interest ceases with
the inquirer when the catastrophe is ascertained, as in the romance
whose _denouement_ turns on a mysterious incident, which, once unfolded,
all future agitation ceases. But in the true infancy of science,
philosophers were as imaginative a race as poets: marvels and portents,
undemonstrable and undefinable, with occult fancies, perpetually
beginning and never ending, were delightful as the shifting cantos of
Ariosto. Then science entranced the eye by its thaumaturgy; when they
looked through an optic tube, they believed they were looking into
futurity; or, starting at some shadow darkening the glassy globe, beheld
the absent person; while the mechanical inventions of art were toys and
tricks, with sometimes an automaton, which frightened them with life.
The earlier votaries of modern philosophy only witnessed, as Gaffarel
calls his collection, "Unheard-of Curiosities." This state of the
marvellous, of which we are now for ever deprived, prevailed among the
philosophers and the _virtuosi_ in Europe, and with ourselves, long
after the establishment of the Royal Society. Philosophy then depended
mainly on authority--a single one, however, was sufficient: so that when
this had been repeated by fifty others, they had the authority of fifty
honest men--whoever the first man might have been! They were then a
blissful race of children, rambling here and there in a golden age of
innocence and ignorance, where at every step each gifted discoverer
whispered to the few, some half-concealed secret of nature, or played
with some toy of art; some invention which with great difficulty
performed what, without it, might have been done with great ease. The
cabinets of the lovers of mechanical arts formed enchanted apartments,
where the admirers feared to stir or look about them; while the
philosophers themselves half imagined they were the very thaumaturgi,
for which the world gave them too much credit, at least for their quiet!
Would we run after the shadows in this gleaming land of moonshine, or
sport with these children in the fresh morning of science, ere Aurora
had scarcely peeped on the hills, we must enter into their feelings,
view with their eyes, and believe all they confide to us; and out of
these bundles of dreams sometimes pick out one or two for our own
dreaming. They are the fairy tales and the Arabian Nights'
entertainments of science. But if the reader is stubbornly mathematical
and logical, he will only be holding up a great torch against the muslin
curtain, upon which the fantastic shadows playing upon it must vanish at
the instant. It is an amusement which can only take place by carefully
keeping himself in the dark.[197]
What a subject, were I to enter on it, would be the narratives of
magical writers! These precious volumes have been so constantly wasted
by the profane, that now a book of real magic requires some to find it,
as well as a great magician to use it. Albertus Magnus, or Albert the
Great, as he is erroneously styled--for this sage only derived this
enviable epithet from his surname _De Groot_, as did Hugo Grotius--this
sage, in his "Admirable Secrets," delivers his opinion that these books
of magic should be most preciously preserved; for, he prophetically
added, the time is arriving when they would be understood! It seems they
were not intelligible in the thirteenth century; but if Albertus has not
miscalculated, in the present day they may be! Magical terms with
talismanic figures may yet conceal many a secret; gunpowder came down to
us in a sort of anagram, and the kaleidoscope, with all its interminable
multiplications of forms, lay at hand for two centuries in Baptista
Porta's "Natural Magic." The abbot Trithemius, in a confidential letter,
happened to call himself a magician, perhaps at the moment he thought
himself one, and sent three or four leaves stuffed with the names of
devils and with their evocations. At the death of his friend these
leaves fell into the unworthy hands of the prior, who was so frightened
on the first glance at the diabolical nomenclature, that he raised the
country against the abbot, and Trithemius was nearly a lost man! Yet,
after all, this evocation of devils has reached us in his
"Steganographia," and proves to be only one of this ingenious abbot's
polygraphic attempts at _secret writing_; for he had flattered himself
that he had invented a mode of concealing his thoughts from all the
world, while he communicated them to a friend. Roger Bacon promised to
raise thunder and lightning, and disperse clouds by dissolving them into
rain. The first magical process has been obtained by Franklin; and the
other, of far more use to our agriculturists, may perchance be found
lurking in some corner which has been overlooked in the "Opus majus" of
our "Doctor mirabilis." Do we laugh at their magical works of art? Are
we ourselves such indifferent artists? Cornelius Agrippa, before he
wrote his "Vanity of the Arts and Sciences," intended to reduce into a
system and method the secret of communicating with spirits and
demons.[198] On good authority, that of Porphyrius, Psellus, Plotinus,
Jamblichus--and on better, were it necessary to allege it--he was well
assured that the upper regions of the air swarmed with what the Greeks
called _daemones_, just as our lower atmosphere is full of birds, our
waters of fish, and our earth of insects. Yet this occult philosopher,
who knew perfectly eight languages, and married two wives, with whom he
had never exchanged a harsh word in any of them, was everywhere avoided
as having by his side, for his companion, a personage no less than a
demon! This was a great black dog, whom he suffered to stretch himself
out among his magical manuscripts, or lie on his bed, often kissing and
patting him, and feeding him on choice morsels. Yet for this would
Paulus Jovius and all the world have had him put to the ordeal of fire
and fagot! The truth was afterwards boldly asserted by Wierus, his
learned domestic, who believed that his master's dog was really nothing
more than what he appeared! "I believe," says he, "that he was a real
natural dog; he was indeed black, but of a moderate size, and I have
often led him by a string, and called him by the French name Agrippa had
given him, Monsieur! and he had a female who was called Mademoiselle! I
wonder how authors of such great character should write so absurdly on
his vanishing at his death, nobody knows how!" But as it is probable
that Monsieur and Mademoiselle must have generated some puppy demons,
Wierus ought to have been more circumstantial.
Albertus Magnus, for thirty years, had never ceased working at a man of
brass, and had cast together the qualities of his materials under
certain constellations, which threw such a spirit into his man of
brass, that it was reported his growth was visible; his feet, legs,
thighs, shoulders, neck, and head, expanded, and made the city of
Cologne uneasy at possessing one citizen too mighty for them all. This
man of brass, when he reached his maturity, was so loquacious, that
Albert's master, the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas, one day, tired of
his babble, and declaring it was a devil, or devilish, with his staff
knocked the head off; and, what was extraordinary, this brazen man, like
any human being thus effectually silenced, "word never spake more." This
incident is equally historical and authentic; though whether heads of
brass can speak, and even prophesy, was indeed a subject of profound
inquiry even at a later period.[199] Naude, who never questioned their
vocal powers, and yet was puzzled concerning the nature of this new
species of animal, has no doubt most judiciously stated the question,
Whether these speaking brazen heads had a sensitive and reasoning
nature, or whether demons spoke in them? But brass has not the faculty
of providing its own nourishment, as we see in plants, and therefore
they were not sensitive; and as for the act of reasoning, these brazen
heads presumed to know nothing but the future: with the past and the
present they seemed totally unacquainted, so that their memory and their
observation were very limited; and as for the future, that is always
doubtful and obscure--even to heads of brass! This learned man then
infers that "These brazen heads could have no reasoning faculties, for
nothing altered their nature; they said what they had to say, which no
one could contradict; and having said their say, you might have broken
the head for anything more that you could have got out of it. Had they
had any life in them, would they not have moved as well as spoken? Life
itself is but motion, but they had no lungs, no spleen; and, in fact,
though they spoke, they had no tongue. Was a devil in them? I think not.
Yet why should men have taken all this trouble to make, not a man, but a
trumpet?"
Our profound philosopher was right not to agitate the question whether
these brazen heads had ever spoken. Why should not a man of brass
speak, since a doll can whisper, a statue play chess,[200] and brass
ducks have performed the whole process of digestion?[201] Another
magical invention has been ridiculed with equal reason. A magician was
annoyed, as philosophers still are, by passengers in the street; and he,
particularly so, by having horses led to drink under his window. He made
a magical horse of wood, according to one of the books of Hermes, which
perfectly answered its purpose, by frightening away the horses, or
rather the grooms! the wooden horse, no doubt, gave some palpable kick.
The same magical story might have been told of Dr. Franklin, who finding
that under his window the passengers had discovered a spot which they
made too convenient for themselves, he charged it with his
newly-discovered electrical fire. After a few remarkable incidents had
occurred, which at a former period would have lodged the great
discoverer of electricity in the Inquisition, the modern magician
succeeded just as well as the ancient, who had the advantage of conning
over the books of Hermes. Instead of ridiculing these works of magic,
let us rather become magicians ourselves!
The works of the ancient alchemists have afforded numberless discoveries
to modern chemists: nor is even their grand operation despaired of. If
they have of late not been so renowned, this has arisen from a want of
what Ashmole calls "apertness;" a qualification early inculcated among
these illuminated sages. We find authentic accounts of some who have
lived three centuries, with tolerable complexions, possessed of nothing
but a crucible and a bellows! but they were so unnecessarily mysterious,
that whenever such a person was discovered, he was sure in an instant
to disappear, and was never afterwards heard of.
In the "Liber Patris Sapientiae" this selfish cautiousness is all along
impressed on the student for the accomplishment of the great mystery. In
the commentary on this precious work of the alchemist Norton, who
counsels,
Be thou in a place secret, by thyself alone,
That no man see or hear what thou shalt say or done.
Trust not thy friend too much wheresoe'er thou go,
For he thou trustest best, sometyme may be thy foe;
Ashmole observes, that "Norton gives exceeding good advice to the
student in this science where he bids him be secret in the carrying on
of his studies and operations, and not to let any one know of his
undertakings but his good angel and himself:" and such a close and
retired breast had Norton's master, who,
When men disputed _of colours of the rose_,
He would not speak, but kept himself full close!
We regret that by each leaving all his knowledge to "his good angel and
himself," it has happened that "the good angels" have kept it all to
themselves!
It cannot, however, be denied, that if they could not always extract
gold out of lead, they sometimes succeeded in washing away the pimples
on ladies' faces, notwithstanding that Sir Kenelm Digby poisoned his
most beautiful lady, because, as Sancho would have said, he was one of
those who would "have his bread whiter than the finest wheaten." Van
Helmont, who could not succeed in discovering the true elixir of life,
however hit on the spirit of hartshorn, which for a good while he
considered was the wonderful elixir itself, restoring to life persons
who seemed to have lost it. And though this delightful enthusiast could
not raise a ghost, yet he thought he had; for he raised something aerial
from spa-water, which mistaking for a ghost, he gave it that very name;
a name which we still retain in _gas_, from the German _geist_, or
ghost! Paracelsus carried the tiny spirits about him in the hilt of his
great sword! Having first discovered the qualities of laudanum, this
illustrious quack made use of it as an universal remedy, and distributed
it in the form of pills, which he carried in the basket-hilt of his
sword; the operations he performed were as rapid as they seemed magical.
Doubtless we have lost some inconceivable secrets by some unexpected
occurrences, which the secret itself it would seem ought to have
prevented taking place. When a philosopher had discovered the art of
prolonging life to an indefinite period, it is most provoking to find
that he should have allowed himself to die at an early age! We have a
very authentic history from Sir Kenelm Digby himself, that when he went
in disguise to visit Descartes at his retirement at Egmond, lamenting
the brevity of life, which hindered philosophers getting on in their
studies, the French philosopher assured him that "he had considered that
matter; to render a man immortal was what he could not promise, but that
he was very sure it was possible to lengthen out his life to the period
of the patriarchs." And when his death was announced to the world, the
Abbe Picot, an ardent disciple, for a long time would not believe it
possible; and at length insisted, that if it had occurred, it must have
been owing to some mistake of the philosopher's.
The late Holcroft, Loutherbourg, and Cosway, imagined that they should
escape the vulgar era of scriptural life by reorganizing their old
bones, and moistening their dry marrow; their new principles of vitality
were supposed by them to be found in the powers of the mind; this seemed
more reasonable, but proved to be as little efficacious as those other
philosophers, who imagine they have detected the hidden principle of
life in the eels frisking in vinegar, and allude to "the bookbinder who
creates the book-worm!"
Paracelsus has revealed to us one of the grandest secrets of nature.
When the world began to dispute on the very existence of the elementary
folk, it was then that he boldly offered to give birth to a fairy, and
has sent down to posterity the recipe. He describes the impurity which
is to be transmuted into such purity, the gross elements of a delicate
fairy, which, fixed in a phial, placed in fuming dung, will in due time
settle into a full-grown fairy, bursting through its vitreous prison--on
the vivifying principle by which the ancient Egyptians hatched their
eggs in ovens. I recollect, at Dr. Farmer's sale, the leaf which
preserved this recipe for making a fairy, forcibly folded down by the
learned commentator; from which we must infer the credit he gave to the
experiment. There was a greatness of mind in Paracelsus, who, having
furnished a recipe to make a fairy, had the delicacy to refrain from its
formation. Even Baptista Porta, one of the most enlightened
philosophers, does not deny the possibility of engendering creatures
which, "at their full growth, shall not exceed the size of a mouse;" but
he adds, "they are only pretty little dogs to play with." Were these
akin to the fairies of Paracelsus?[202]
They were well convinced of the existence of such elemental beings;
frequent accidents in mines showed the potency of the metallic spirits,
which so tormented the workmen in some of the German mines by blindness,
giddiness, and sudden sickness, that they have been obliged to abandon
mines well known to be rich in silver. A metallic spirit at one sweep
annihilated twelve miners, who were all found dead together. The fact
was unquestionable; and the safety-lamp was undiscovered.
Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that exquisite
_Palingenesis_, as it has been termed from the Greek, or a regeneration:
or rather the apparitions of animals and plants. Schott, Kircher,
Gaffarel, Borelli, Digby, and the whole of that admirable school,
discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were
again raised up by the force of heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in
nature; all is but a continuation, or a revival. The semina of
resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood of man;
the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, though smaller and
paler than if they had been planted; unsubstantial and unodoriferous,
they are not roses which grow on rose-trees, but their delicate
apparitions; and, like apparitions, they are seen but for a moment! The
process of the _Palingenesis_, this picture of immortality, is
described. These philosophers having burnt a flower, by calcination
disengaged the salts from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass
phial; a chemical mixture acted on it, till in the fermentation they
assumed a bluish and a spectral hue. This dust, thus excited by heat,
shoots upwards into its primitive forms; by sympathy the parts unite,
and while each is returning to its destined place, we see distinctly the
stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a
flower coming slowly forth from its ashes. The heat passes away, the
magical scene declines, till the whole matter again precipitates itself
into the chaos at the bottom. This vegetable phoenix lies thus concealed
in its cold ashes till the presence of heat produces this
resurrection--in its absence it returns to its death. Thus the dead
naturally revive; and a corpse may give out its shadowy re-animation
when not too deeply buried in the earth. Bodies corrupted in their
graves have risen, particularly the murdered; for murderers are apt to
bury their victims in a slight and hasty manner. Their salts, exhaled in
vapour by means of their fermentation, have arranged themselves on the
surface of the earth, and formed those phantoms, which at night have
often terrified the passing spectator, as authentic history witnesses.
They have opened the graves of the phantom, and discovered the bleeding
corpse beneath; hence it is astonishing how many ghosts may be seen at
night, after a recent battle, standing over their corpses! On the same
principle, my old philosopher Gaffarel conjectures on the raining of
frogs; but these frogs, we must conceive, can only be the ghosts of
frogs; and Gaffarel himself has modestly opened this fact by a
"peradventure." A more satisfactory origin of ghosts modern philosophy
has not afforded.
And who does not believe in the existence of ghosts? for, as Dr. More
forcibly says--"That there should be so universal a _fame_ and _fear_ of
that which never was, nor is, nor can be ever in the world, is to me the
greatest miracle of all. If there had not been, at some time or other,
true miracles, it had not been so easy to impose on the people by false.
The alchemist would never go about to sophisticate metals to pass them
off for true gold and silver, unless that such a thing was acknowledged
as true gold and silver in the world."
The pharmacopoeia of those times combined more of morals with medicine
than our own. They discovered that the agate rendered a man eloquent and
even witty; a laurel leaf placed on the centre of the skull fortified
the memory; the brains of fowls and birds of swift wing wonderfully
helped the imagination. All such specifics have now disappeared, and
have greatly reduced the chances of an invalid recovering that which
perhaps he never possessed. Lentils and rape-seed were a certain cure
for the small-pox, and very obviously--their grains resembling the spots
of this disease. They discovered that those who lived on "fair" plants
became fair, those on fruitful ones were never barren: on the principle
that Hercules acquired his mighty strength by feeding on the marrow of
lions. But their talismans, provided they were genuine, seem to have
been wonderfully operative; and had we the same confidence, and melted
down the guineas we give physicians, engraving on them talismanic
figures, I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. Naude,
indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his
defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast
into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to
drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Naples.
Naude positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult
virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naude should have
gone this length, giving the lie to so many authentic authors; and
Naude's paradox is indeed as strange as his denial; he suspects the
thing is not true because it is so generally told! "It leads one to
suspect," says he, "as animals are said to have been driven away from so
many places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from any
one place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper his indignant
feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox on its maker:--"As if,
because of the great number of battles that Hannibal is reported to have
fought with the Romans, we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether
he fought any one with them." The reader must be aware that the strength
of the argument lies entirely with the firm believer in talismans.
Gaffarel, indeed, who passed his days in collecting "Curiosites
inouies," is a most authentic historian of unparalleled events, even in
his own times! Such as that heavy rain in Poitou, which showered down
"petites bestioles," little creatures like bishops with their mitres,
and monks with their capuchins over their heads; it is true, afterwards
they all turned into butterflies!
The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were
the baby-houses of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old
Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members
of "The Society of Arts," instead of flying in the air, collecting "a
wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes;" or catching the disjointed
syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these early dilettanti had
not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the
aforesaid "Society of Arts" as they received from what Cornelius
Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls "things vain and superfluous,
invented to no other end but for pomp and idle pleasure." Baptista Porta
was more skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his
day. Having founded the Academy _degli Oziosi_, he held an inferior
association in his own house, called _di Secreti_, where none was
admitted but those elect who had communicated some _secret_; for, in the
early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a
secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably
a fine genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that
he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of
divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and, what was more
unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and
secrets are harmless, provided they are not believed: but his Holiness
finding Porta's were, warned him that magical sciences were great
hindrances to the study of the Bible, and paid him the compliment to
forbid his prophesying. Porta's genius was now limited to astonish, and
sometimes to terrify, the more ingenious part of _I Secreti_. On
entering his cabinet, some phantom of an attendant was sure to be
hovering in the air, moving as he who entered moved; or he observed in
some mirror that his face was twisted on the wrong side of his
shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he clapped
his hand on it; or passing through a darkened apartment a magical
landscape burst on him, with human beings in motion, the boughs of trees
bending, and the very clouds passing over the sun; or sometimes
banquets, battles, and hunting-parties were in the same apartment. "All
these spectacles my friends have witnessed!" exclaims the self-delighted
Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he
had used, they were mortified with wonder; for he drank wine, and they
only water! or on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he
would freeze his guests with cold air in the room; or, on a sudden, let
off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat
tied on his back; shrill was the sound, and awful was the concussion; so
that it required strong nerves, in an age of apparitions and devils, to
meet this great philosopher when in his best humour. Albertus Magnus
entertained the Earl of Holland, as that earl passed through Cologne, in
a severe winter, with a warm summer scene, luxuriant in fruits and
flowers. The fact is related by Trithemius--and this magical scene
connected with his vocal head, and his books _De Secretis Mulierum_, and
_De Mirabilibus_, confirmed the accusations they raised against the
great Albert for being a magician. His apologist, Theophilus Raynaud,
is driven so hard to defend Albertus, that he at once asserts the winter
changed to summer and the speaking head to be two infamous flams! He
will not believe these authenticated facts, although he credits a
miracle which proves the sanctity of Albertus,--after three centuries,
the body of Albert the Great remained as sweet as ever!
"Whether such enchauntments," as old Mandeville cautiously observeth,
two centuries preceding the days of Porta, were "by craft or by
nygromancye, I wot nere." But that they were not unknown to Chaucer,
appears in his "Frankelein's Tale," where, minutely describing them, he
communicates the same pleasure he must himself have received from the
ocular illusions of "the Tregetoure," or "Jogelour." Chaucer ascribes
the miracle to a "naturall magique!" in which, however, it was as
unsettled whether the "Prince of Darkness" was a party concerned.
For I am siker that there be sciences
By which men maken divers apparences
Swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play.
For oft at festes have I wel herd say
That tregetoures, within an halle large,
Have made come in a water and a barge,
And in the halle rowen up and doun.
Sometime hath semed come a grim leoun,
And sometime floures spring as in a mede,
Sometime a vine and grapes white and rede,
Sometime a castel al of lime and ston,
And whan hem liketh voideth it anon:
Thus semeth it to every mannes sight.
Bishop Wilkins's museum was visited by Evelyn, who describes the sort of
curiosities which occupied and amused the children of science. "Here,
too, there was a hollow statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by
a long concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through
it at a good distance:" a circumstance which, perhaps, they were not
then aware revealed the whole mystery of the ancient oracles, which they
attributed to demons rather than to tubes, pulleys, and wheels. The
learned Charles Patin, in his scientific travels, records, among other
valuable productions of art, a cherry-stone, on which were engraven
about a dozen and a half of portraits! Even the greatest of human
geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal patronage, created a
lion which ran before the French monarch, dropping _fleurs de lis_ from
its shaggy breast. And another philosopher who had a spinnet which
played and stopped at command, might have made a revolution in the arts
and sciences, had the half-stifled child that was concealed in it not
been forced, unluckily, to crawl into daylight, and thus it was proved
that a philosopher might be an impostor!
The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first institution of the Royal
Society, were of the most amusing class. The famous Sir Samuel Moreland
had turned his house into an enchanted palace. Everything was full of
devices, which showed art and mechanism in perfection: his coach carried
a travelling kitchen; for it had a fire-place and grate, with which he
could make a soup, broil cutlets, and roast an egg; and he dressed his
meat by clock-work. Another of these virtuosi, who is described as "a
gentleman of superior order, and whose house was a knickknackatory,"
valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in "sowing
salads in the morning, to be cut for dinner." The house of Winstanley,
who afterwards raised the first Eddystone lighthouse, must have been the
wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying
in your way, up started a ghost before you; or if you sat down in a
certain chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in.
There was an arbour in the garden, by the side of a canal; you had
scarcely seated yourself when you were sent out afloat to the middle of
the canal--from whence you could not escape till this man of art and
science wound you up to the arbour. What was passing at the "Royal
Society" was also occurring at the "Academie des Sciences" at Paris. A
great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a
stranger, would point to his legs, to show the impossibility of
conducting him to the door; yet the astonished visitor never failed
finding the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final
bow! While the visitor was going down stairs, this inventive genius was
descending with great velocity in a machine from the window: so that he
proved, that if a man of science cannot force nature to walk down
stairs, he may drive her out at the window!
If they travelled at home, they set off to note down prodigies. Dr.
Plott, in a magnificent project of journeying through England, for the
advantage of "Learning and Trade," and the discovery of "Antiquities and
other Curiosities," for which he solicited the royal aid which Leland
enjoyed, among other notable designs, discriminates a class thus: "Next
I shall inquire of animals; and first of strange people."--"Strange
accidents that attend corporations or families, as that the deans of
Rochester ever since the foundation by turns have died deans and
bishops; the bird with a white breast that haunts the family of Oxenham
near Exeter just before the death of any of that family; the bodies of
trees that are seen to swim in a pool near Brereton in Cheshire, a
certain warning to the heir of that honourable family to prepare for the
next world." And such remarkables as "Number of children, such as the
Lady Temple, who before she died saw seven hundred descended from
her."[203] This fellow of the Royal Society, who lived nearly to 1700,
was requested to give an edition of Pliny: we have lost the benefit of a
most copious commentary! Bishop Hall went to "the Spa." The wood about
that place was haunted not only by "freebooters, but by wolves and
witches; although these last are ofttimes but one." They were called
_loups-garoux_; and the Greeks, it seems, knew them by the name of
[Greek: lukanthropoi], men-wolves: witches that have put on the shapes
of those cruel beasts. "We sawe a boy there, whose half-face was
devoured by one of them near the village; yet so, as that the eare was
rather cut than bitten off." Rumour had spread that the boy had had half
his face devoured; when it was examined, it turned out that his ear had
only been scratched! However, there can be no doubt of the existence of
"witch-wolves;" for Hall saw at Limburgh "one of those miscreants
executed, who confessed on the wheel to have devoured two-and-forty
children in that form." They would probably have found it difficult to
have summoned the mothers who had lost the children. But observe our
philosopher's reasoning: "It would aske a large volume to scan this
problem of _lycanthropy_." He had laboriously collected all the
evidence, and had added his arguments: the result offers a curious
instance of acute reasoning on a wrong principle.[204]
Men of science and art then passed their days in a bustle of the
marvellous. I will furnish a specimen of philosophical correspondence in
a letter to old John Aubrey. The writer betrays the versatility of his
curiosity by very opposite discoveries. "My hands are so full of work
that I have no time to transcribe for Dr. Henry More an account of the
Barnstable apparition--Lord Keeper North would take it kindly from
you--give a sight of this letter from Barnstable to Dr. Whitchcot." He
had lately heard of a Scotchman who had been carried by fairies into
France; but the purpose of his present letter is to communicate other
sort of apparitions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to
Glastonbury, "to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which
flowered every Christmas day."[205] The original thorn had been cut down
by a military saint in the civil wars; but the trade of the place was
not damaged, for they had contrived not to have a single holy thorn, but
several, "by grafting and inoculation."[206] He promises to send these
"berries;" but requests Aubrey to inform "that person of quality who had
rather have a _bush_, that it was impossible to get one for him. I am
told," he adds, "that there is a person about Glastonbury who hath a
nursery of them, which he sells for a crown a piece," but they are
supposed not to be "of the right kind."
The main object of this letter is the writer's "suspicion of gold in
this country;" for which he offers three reasons. Tacitus says there was
gold in England, and that Agrippa came to a spot where he had a prospect
of Ireland--from which place he writes; secondly, that "an honest man"
had in this spot found stones from which he had extracted good gold, and
that he himself "had seen in the broken stones a clear appearance of
gold;" and thirdly, "there is a story which goes by tradition in that
part of the country, that in the hill alluded to there was a door into a
hole, that when any wanted money they used to go and knock there, that a
woman used to appear, and give to such as came.[207] At a time one by
greediness or otherwise gave her offence, she flung to the door, and
delivered this old saying, still remembered in the country:
'When all _the Daws_ be gone and dead,
Then.... Hill shall shine gold red.'
My fancy is, that this relates to an ancient family of this name, of
which there is now but one man left, and he not likely to have any
issue." These are his three reasons; and some mines have perhaps been
opened with no better ones! But let us not imagine that this great
naturalist was credulous; for he tells Aubrey that "he thought it was
but a monkish tale forged in the abbey so famous in former time; but as
I have learned not to despise our forefathers, I question whether this
may not refer to some rich mine in the hill, formerly in use, but now
lost. I shall shortly request you to discourse with my lord about it, to
have advice, &c. In the mean time it will be best to _keep all private_
for his majesty's service, his lordship's, and perhaps some private
person's benefit." But he has also positive evidence: "A mason not long
ago coming to the renter of the abbey for a freestone, and sawing it,
out came divers pieces of gold of L3 10_s._ value apiece, of ancient
_coins_. The stone belonged to some chimney-work; the gold was hidden in
it, perhaps, when the Dissolution was near." This last incident of
finding coins in a chimney-piece, which he had accounted for very
rationally, serves only to confirm his dream, that they were coined out
of the gold of the mine in the hill; and he becomes more urgent for "a
private search into these mines, which I have, I think, a way to." In
the postscript he adds an account of a well, which by washing, wrought a
cure on a person deep in the king's evil. "I hope you don't forget your
promise to communicate whatever thing you have relating to your IDEA."
This promised _Idea_ of Aubrey may be found in his MSS., under the title
of "The Idea of Universal Education." However whimsical, one would like
to see it. Aubrey's life might furnish a volume of these philosophical
dreams: he was a person who from his incessant bustle and insatiable
curiosity was called "The Carrier of Conceptions of the Royal Society."
Many pleasant nights were "privately" enjoyed by Aubrey and his
correspondent about the "Mine in the Hill;" Ashmole's manuscripts at
Oxford contain a collection of many secrets of the Rosicrucians; one of
the completest inventions is "a Recipe how to walk invisible." Such were
the fancies which rocked the children of science in their cradles! and
so feeble were the steps of our curious infancy!--But I start in my
dreams! dreading the reader may also have fallen asleep!
"Measure is most excellent," says one of the oracles; "to which also we
being in like manner persuaded, O most friendly and pious Asclepiades,
here finish"--the dreams at the dawn of philosophy!