E. K. "Now I see beyond like a furnace-mouth as big as four or five
gates of a city, as if it were a quarter of a mile off, with a horrible
smother of smoke coming out of it; and by it a great lake of pitch, and
it bubbleth or simpereth as water doth when it beginneth to seethe.
There standeth by the pit a white man in a white garment tucked up; his
face is marvellous fair: this white spiritual creature saith, 'My Lord,
_Ascend_!'"
E. K. "Now there cometh out a thing like a lion in the hinder parts, and
his fore parts hath many heads of divers fashions upon one trunk; he
hath like feathers on his neck; his heads are seven, three on one side,
and three on another, and one in the middle, longer than the rest, lying
backward to his tailward. The white man giveth him a bloody sword, and
he taketh it in his fore-foot. The white man tieth this monster's
fore-legs with a chain, that he cannot go but as one shackled. Now he
giveth the monster a great hammer with a seal at that end where the
hammer striketh. The white man has cried with a loud cry, 'A horrible
and terrible beast!' The white man taketh the hammer and striketh him in
the forehead of that head which is in the middle. Now all this vision is
vanished away: the stone is clear."
On another occasion E. K. says, "I hear a marvellous noise, as of many
mountains: which of the mouths do speak I cannot discern. I hear a
greater noise still; I never heard any such noise; it is as if half the
world were rushing down a hill."[9]
During two years, in which Dee deserted his studies and sacrificed his
fortune, the name of Dee still remained so eminent that learned
foreigners in their visits to England continued their inquiries after
him. A Polish prince, Albert a'Laski, who was received with high honours
at our court, applied to the Earl of Leicester for an introduction to
the great English philosopher, and the Earl appointed a day to dine with
Dr. Dee. Then it was that our philosopher disclosed his mortifying
condition, that he could no longer entertain his noble guests without
selling his plate. The Queen instantly sent him forty angels in gold.
The illustrious Polander became a constant visitor, was initiated into
the theurgic mysteries; there came a whisper from the unseen "spirits"
that this palatine of Siradia might yet be the elected King of Poland!
Ambitious princes are as credulous as ambitious philosophers. The
predictors of a crown, with a royal exchequer from the alchemists,
seduced the imagination, and a'Laski invited the sages with their
families to reside at his castle.
There the Polish lord seems to have wearied of the angelic
communications; he transferred them to the Emperor, Rodolph, the Second,
at Prague. In all the courts of Europe, occult philosophers found a
ready admittance.
Dee came auspiciously recommended to the emperor; for our author had
formerly dedicated to the emperor's father, Maximilian, his
cabbalistical volume, which, when admitted to a private interview with
Rodolph, the sage beheld lying open on the table.[10] The introduction
of an author to an emperor by his own work may have something really
magical in its effect, provided the spell is not disturbed by him who
raised it. In an inflated oration Dee announcing himself like a babbling
missionary, as a messenger from angels, the emperor curtly observed that
he did not understand Latin! The Pope's Nuncio opportunely demanded that
the two English necromancers should be questioned at Rome. Their flight
relieved the emperor. A Bohemian count rejoiced to receive the fugitives
at his castle of Trebona, where strange alchemical projections of pewter
flagons turned into silver, which the goldsmiths of Prague bought, are
attested solemnly by Arthur Dee, the son of the doctor, to the
philosophical Sir Thomas Browne. This must have been that day of elation
which Dee entered in his diary. "Master Edward Kelley did open the great
secret to me. God be thanked!" This Arthur Dee, indeed, remained an
inveterate alchemist all his life; but the man who in his medical
character was recommended by James the First to the Czar of Russia, and,
after several years' residence at Moscow, on his return home, was
appointed physician to Charles the First, would be a reputable witness
in any court of law.[11]
Dee and Kelley were abroad, living together, from 1583 to 1589. Their
adventures would form a romance, but I am not writing one. Their
condition was mysterious, as were the incidents of their lives.
Sometimes reduced to the most pitiable necessities for "meat and drink;"
at other times we find Dee travelling with a princely equipage, in three
family coaches, a train of waggons, and an escort of fifty horsemen.
These extraordinary personages long attracted the wonder of the
Continent; but whatever happened, their fortunes were variable. The
pride of Dee was sensitive--there are querulous entries in his
diary--there appeared some false play in his dangerous coadjutor--Kelley
was dropping hints that he lived in a miserable state of
delusion--preludes to the great rupture! Mephistopheles menaced his
victim. It is evident that Kelley determined to break up the profitless
partnership and set up for himself. The noise the parties raised in
their quarrels on the Continent induced Elizabeth to command their
return.[12] The alchemist did not return home with Dee. He obtained the
patronage of the emperor, and was created a knight; but as usually
happened with great alchemists, Sir Edward Kelley was twice cast into
prison. Sir Edward, however, continued his correspondence with Dee, and
sent her majesty a timely information of some design against her person.
This adventurer may appear a very suspicious personage. Lord Burleigh
addresses this "Baron of Bohemia," as the minister designates him, with
high respect and admiration, for his "virtues, his wisdom, and
learning." However, in the same confidential letter, his lordship
informs "the good knight" of some malicious reports; that "he did not
come home, because he could not perform that, indeed, which has been
reported of him:" and others had gone so far as to deem Sir Edward "an
impostor." This letter, written by Burleigh's own hand,[13] shows the
skilful falconer luring the bird. Dee assured the queen that "the Baron
of Bohemia" positively possessed the secret of the great operation. The
queen anxiously concerted measures to secure the escape of Sir Edward
Kelley from his second imprisonment. Agents were despatched, the jailers
were drugged, the horses were awaiting for the fugitive; scaling the
wall, he fell, and died of his contusions, thus abruptly closing the
romance of a daring disturbed spirit.
Dee returned to England in December, 1589, and presenting himself to the
queen at Richmond, was received, as he was ever accustomed to be, with
all graciousness. But the philosopher, after the absence of six years,
returning to his studious abode, beheld it nearly dismantled; his
chemical apparatus, with all his scientific implements, had been
destroyed by a mob, and his library pillaged. Every day this victim of
science experienced the effects of popular obloquy. He gathered up what
fragments he could; and again rapt in study, he again relapsed into his
old wants. The _res angusta domi_ once more disturbed his lares. Yet the
queen was not unmindful of her philosopher; Mr. Cavendish was despatched
to assure him that he might freely pursue his studies, and brought a
royal Christmas gift of two hundred angels in gold, to be renewed with
the season.
But the old man craved more than an uncertain eleemosynary bounty; his
creditors multiplied, and the great will forget the man whom they rarely
see. Dee has feelingly classed those who had outwearied his generous
nature, "the ungrateful and the thankless; and the scorners and
disdainers." The royal hand alone could repair his injuries, and
vindicate his genius. Dee addressed a memorial to the queen, praying
that a commission might be appointed to inquire into his case, which, as
he energetically expressed himself, had been "written with tears of
blood." He did not draw up his petition as an illustrious pauper, but as
a claimant for services performed.
A commission was immediately assigned, and it was followed by a literary
scene of singular novelty.
Dee, sitting in his library, received the royal commissioners. Two
tables were arranged; on one lay all the books he had published, with
his unfinished manuscripts; the most extraordinary one was an elaborate
narrative of the transactions of his own life. This manuscript his
secretary read, and as it proceeded, from the other table Dee presented
the commissioners with every testimonial; these vouchers consisted of
royal letters from the queen, and from princes, ambassadors, and the
most illustrious persons of England and of Europe: passports which
traced his routes, and journals which noted his arrivals and departures:
grants and appointments, and other remarkable evidences; and when these
were wanting, he appealed to living witnesses.
Among the employments which he had filled, he particularly alludes to "a
painful journey in the winter season, of more than fifteen hundred
miles, to confer with learned physicians on the Continent, about her
majesty's health." He showed the offers of many princes to the English
philosopher to retire to their courts, and the princely establishment at
Moscow proffered by the czar; but he had never faltered in his devotion
to his sovereign. He appealed to the clerks of the records of the Tower,
and to other antiquaries,[14] for his free distribution of the
manuscripts which he had often discovered. He complains that his house
at Mortlake was too public for his studies, and incommodious for
receiving the numerous foreign literati who resorted to him. Of all the
promised preferments, he would have chosen the Mastership of St. Cross
for its seclusion. Here is a great man making great demands, but
reposing with dignity on his claims; his wants were urgent, but the
penury was not in his spirit. The commissioners, as they listened to
this autobiography, must often have raised their eyes in wonder on the
venerable and dignified author before them.
The report was most favourable; the queen spontaneously declared that
Dee should have St. Cross, and the incumbent might be removed to a
bishopric. She allotted him a considerable pension, and commanded Lady
Howard to write "words of comfort" to his wife; and further sent an
immediate supply by the hands of Sir Thomas Gorge. The letter to his
wife and the ready money were, however, the only tangible gift, for St.
Cross and the pension he never received!
Two years after we find Dee still memorialising. He published "A Letter
Apologetical, with a Plain Demonstration and Fervent Protestation for
the Course of the Philosophical Studies of _a Certain Studious
Gentleman_," 1599. This was a vindication against the odium of magical
practices. At length, the archbishop installed him in the wardenship of
Manchester College; but though our adventurer now drew into harbour, it
was his destiny to live in storms. The inmates always suspected him of
concealing more secrets of nature than he was willing to impart; and the
philosopher who had received from great men in Europe such testimonies
of their admiration, now was hourly mortified by the petty malice of the
obscure fellows of his college. After several years of contention, he
resigned a college which no occult arts he possessed could govern.
His royal patroness was no more. The light and splendour of the Court
had sunk beneath the horizon; and in the chill evening of his life the
visionary looked up to those who were not susceptible of his innocent
sorcery. Still retaining his lofty pretensions, he addressed the King,
and afterwards the parliament. He implored to be freed from vulgar
calumnies, and to be brought to trial, that a judicial sentence might
clear him of all those foul suspicions which had clouded over his days
for more than half a century. It is to be regretted that this trial did
not take place; the accusations and the defence would have supplied no
incurious chapter in the history of the human mind. A necromancer, and a
favourite with Elizabeth, was not likely to be tolerated in the Court of
James the First. Cecil, who when young had been taught by his father to
admire the erudition of the reformer of the Gregorian calendar, was not
the same person in the Court of James the First as in that of Elizabeth;
he resigned the sage to his solitude, and, with the policy of the
statesman, only reasonably enough observed, that "Dee would shortly go
mad!"
Misfortune could neither break nor change the ambitious spirit of the
deserted philosopher. He still dreamed in a spiritual world which he
never saw nor heard, and hopefully went on working his stills, deprived
of the powder of projection. He sold his books for a meal; and if the
gossiper Aubrey may be trusted, in such daily distress he may have
practised on the simplicity of his humble neighbours, by sometimes
recovering a stolen basket of linen, though it seems he refused the more
solemn conjuration of casting a figure for a stray horse! It is only in
this degradation of sordid misery that he is shown to us in the
_Alchemist_ of Jonson. Weary, as he aptly expresses himself, of "sailing
against the wind's eye," in 1608, in the eighty-first year of his age,
he resolved to abandon his native land. There was still another and a
better world for the pilgrim of science; and it was during the
preparations to rejoin his Continental friends in Germany that death
closed all future sorrows.
It was half a century after the decease of Dr. Dee, that the learned
Meric Casaubon amazed the world by publishing the large folio containing
"A True and Faithful Relation of what passed many Years between Dr. JOHN
DEE and SOME SPIRITS," 1659, from a copy in the Cottonian Library. Yet
is this huge volume but a torso; the mighty fragments, however, were
recovered from the mischances of a kitchen fire, by Elias Ashmole, a
virtuoso in alchemy and astrology, who toiled and trembled over the
mystical and almost the interminable quires. Such is the fate of books!
the world will for ever want the glorious fragments of Tacitus and Livy,
but they have Dee passingly entire.[15]
MERIC CASAUBON was the learned son of a more learned father, but his
erudition much exceeded his judgment. He had written a treatise against
the delusions of "Enthusiasm," from whence the author derived but little
benefit; for he demonstrated the existence of witches. Yet Meric
Casaubon, meek and honest, was solicited by Cromwell to become his
historiographer; but from principle he declined the profit and the
honour; during the Oliverian rule, he became an hypochondriac, and has
prefixed an hypochondriacal preface to this unparalleled volume. His
faith is obsequious, and he confirms the verity of these conferences
with "spirits," by showing that others before Dee had enjoyed such
visitations. The fascination of a conference with "spirits" must have
entered into the creed even of higher philosophers; for we are startled
by discovering that the great Leibnitz observed on this preface, that
"it deserves to be translated, _as well as the work itself_!"[16]
When this book of marvels was first published, the world was overcome by
the revelations. Those saintly personages, whose combined wisdom then
assisted the councils of England, Owen, Goodwin, Nye, and others of that
sort, held a solemn consistory for the suppression of the book. They
entertained a violent suspicion that the whole of this incomprehensible
jargon was a covert design by some of the Church of England party, by a
mockery of their own style, to expose the whole sainthood, who pretended
so greatly to inspiration. But the bomb exploded at once, and spread in
all directions; and ere they could fit and unfit their textual debates,
the book had been eagerly bought, and placed far beyond the reach of
suppression.[17]
The "True Relation of what passed many Years between Dr. DEE and SOME
SPIRITS," long excited curiosity which no one presumed to satisfy.
During no less a period than five-and-twenty years was Dee recording
what he terms his "Actions with Spirits," for all was written by his own
hand. It would be an extravagant inference to conclude that a person of
blameless character and grave habits would persevere through a good
portion of his life in the profitless design of leaving a monument of
posthumous folly solely to mystify posterity. Some fools of learning,
indeed, have busied themselves in forging antiquities to bewilder some
of their successors, but these malicious labours were the freaks of idle
hours, not the devotion of a life. Even the imposture of Kelley will not
wholly account for the credulity of Dee; for many years after their
separation, and to his last days, Dee sought for and at length found
another "Skryer."[18] Are we to resolve these "Actions with Spirits" by
the visions of another sage, a person eminent for his science, and a
Rosicrucian of our own times,--that illustrious Emanuel Swedenborg, who,
in his reveries, communed with spirits and angels? It would thus be a
great psychological phenomenon which remains unsolved.
No one has noticed that a secret communication, uninterrupted through
the protracted reign of Elizabeth, existed between the Queen and the
philosopher. The deep interest her Majesty took in his welfare is
strikingly revealed to us. Dee, in his frequent troubles, had constantly
recourse to the Queen, and she was ever prompt at his call. The personal
attentions of the Queen often gratified his master-passion--often she
sent kind messages by her ladies and her courtiers--often was he
received at Greenwich, Richmond, and at Windsor; and he was singularly
honoured by her Majesty's visits at his house in Mortlake. The Queen
would sometimes appear waiting before his garden, when he would approach
to kiss her hand and solve some difficult inquiry she had prepared for
him. On one of these occasions Dee exhibited to her Majesty a concave
mirror; a glass which had provoked too much awful discussion, but which
would charm the Queen while this Sir David Brewster of his age
condescended to explain the optical illusions. When Dee, in his travels,
was detained by sickness in Lorraine, her Majesty despatched two of her
own physicians to attend on this valued patient. The Queen incessantly
made golden promises of preferment; many eminent appointments were fixed
on. He had, too, a patron in Leicester, the favourite of Elizabeth, for
in that terrible state-libel of "Leicester's Commonwealth," among the
instruments of that earl's dark agencies we discover "Dee and Allen, two
atheists, for figuring and conjuring," that is, for astrological
diagrams and magical invocations![19] As, notwithstanding the profusion
of the Queen's designs for his promotion, he received but little, and
that little late, the sincerity of the royal patron has been arraigned.
Mysterious as the philosopher's cabbalistic jargon with which he
sometimes entertained her, her Majesty seems to have remunerated empty
phrases by providing notional places; but Elizabeth may not have
deserved this hard censure; she unfailingly supplied her money-gifts, a
certain evidence of her sincerity! The truth seems to be that royal
promises may be frustrated by intervening competitors and ministerial
expedients. At the Court, the evil genius of Dee stood ever by his side,
saluting the philosopher with no friendly voice, as "the arch-conjuror
of the whole kingdom!" The philosopher struggled with the unconquerable
prejudices of the age.
If we imagine that Elizabeth only looked on Dee as the great alchemist
who was to replenish her coffers, or the mystic who propounded the world
of spirits, this would not account for the Queen permitting Dee to
remain on the Continent during six years. Had such been the Queen's
hopes, she would have hermetically sealed the philosopher in his house
at Mortlake, where in her rides to Richmond she might conveniently have
watched the progress of gold-making and listened to the theurgic
revelations. Never would she have left this wanderer from court to
court, with the chance of conveying to other princes such inappreciable
results of the occult sciences.
What then was the cause of this intimate intercourse of the Queen with
Dr. Dee; and what the occasion of that mysterious journey of fifteen
hundred miles in the winter season to consult physicians on her
Majesty's health, of which he had reminded the Queen by her
commissioners, but which they could not have comprehended? Did these
mysterious physicians reside in one particular locality; and in the vast
intervening distance were there no skilful physicians equally able for
consultation?
A casual hint dropped by Lilly, the famous astrologer, will unveil the
mysterious life of Dee during his six years' residence abroad. Lilly
tells us that "for many years, in search of the profounder studies, he
travelled into foreign parts; _to be serious_, he was Queen Elizabeth's
intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the secretaries
of state." Lilly, who is correct in his statements except on the
fabulous narratives of his professional art, must have written from some
fact known to him; and it harmonizes with an ingenious theory to explain
the unintelligible diary of Dee, suggested by Dr. ROBERT HOOKE, the
eminent mathematician.
HOOKE, himself a great inventor in science, entertained a very high
notion of the scientific character of Dee, and of his curiosity and
dexterity in the philosophical arts--optics, perspective, and mechanics.
Deeply versed in chemistry, mathematics, and the prevalent study of
astrology, like another Roger Bacon (or rather a Baptista Porta),
delighting in the marvellous of philosophical experiments, he was sent
abroad to amuse foreign princes, while he was really engaged by
Elizabeth in state affairs. Hooke, by turning over the awful tome, and
comparing several circumstances with the history of his own life, was
led to conclude that "all which relates to the spirits, their names,
speeches, shows, noises, clothing, actions, &c., were all
_cryptography_; feigned relations, concealing true ones of a very
different nature." It was to prevent any accident, lest his papers
should fall into hostile hands, that he preferred they should appear as
the effusions of a visionary, rather than the secret history of a real
spy. When the spirits are described as using inarticulate words,
unpronounceable according to the letters in which they are written, he
conjectured that this gibberish would be understood by that book of
Enoch which Dee prized so highly, and which Hooke considered to contain
the cypher. Hooke, however, has not deciphered any of these inarticulate
words; but as the book of Enoch seems still to exist, this Apocalypse
may yet receive its commentator, a task which it appears Dr. Adam Clarke
once himself contemplated.[20]
There is one fatal objection to this ingenious theory of cryptography;
this astounding diary opens long before Dee went abroad, and was
continued long after his return, when it does not appear that he was
employed in affairs of state.