[1] About the same time, in 1574, Ruggeiri, a Florentine, was
condemned to the galleys for having conspired against the French
monarch in favour of the Duke of Alencon, his brother. The act of
treason consisted in making an image of wax, the perfect likeness of
Charles the Ninth, which had a heart pricked with pins. This was the
exact peril into which our English queen had been cast--probably by
some Romanist who fancied himself, or herself, to be an adept.
[2] A catalogue of Dr. Dee's library, in his own handwriting, may be
found in Harl. MSS. 1879. Four thousand volumes, "abounding with a
curious harvest of books illustrative of the occult art," but also
containing the ancient classics. He expended on his collections the
considerable sum of "thirty hundred pounds," as he tells us, for at
that day they counted by "hundreds."
[3] These ingenious rolls, or maps, are now deposited among the
Cottonian manuscripts.
[4] The curious catalogue of both is found in the "Biog. Britannica."
Dee would have printed more of his writings, but he found the
printers too often adverse to his hopes, as "few men's studies were
in such matters employed." One of his manuscripts was so voluminous,
containing an account of his "Inventions," being "greater than the
English Bible," that it appeared "so dreadful to the printers," that
our philosopher postponed its publication to "a sufficient
opportunity," which never occurred.
These unfinished writings are scattered in the COTTONIAN and the
ASHMOLEAN Collections, for their learned founders anxiously recovered
them.
The naval project appears in a singular volume, entitled "General and
Rare Memorials pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation, 1577,
folio." The author printed only one hundred copies, which he
distributed among confidential friends, patriotically refusing a
considerable offer for a copy by a foreign Power. This volume is said
to be one of the scarcest books in the English language. A copy at
the British Museum contains notes in the handwriting of Dee himself,
fraught with his usual sorrows; his representation of his affairs is
not luminous, and seems written with a dulled spirit--querulous and
involved.
[5] The mystery of the divining rod is as ancient as the days of
Cicero. The German miners introduced its practice among our Cornish
miners. Childrey, in his "Britannia Baconiana, or the Natural
Rarities of England, Scotland, and Wales," 1661, cautiously
describes, as a disciple of Bacon should, its effects on mines of
lead in Somersetshire. Boyle and the Royal Society were perplexed by
the evidence. We have accounts from some, unimpeachable for
integrity, of the agitation of the divining rod as authentic and
incomprehensible as any recorded of animal magnetism. A few years
ago, a learned writer in the "Quarterly Review" surprised us by
reviving the phenomenon, in the history of it, as performed by a lady
of distinction, in the present day, searching for a spring of water.
Many frauds have succeeded by this pretended rod of divination. The
reader may consult Le Brun's "Histoire Critique des Pratiques
Superstitieuses" for "La Baguette;" but, above all, a philosophical
article by the scientific BIOT, in "Biog. Universelle," art. _Ayman
Jacques_. [An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silver
mines, and a picture of its form, may be seen in Dr. Brown's "Travels
in Germany," 4to, 1677, p. 136.]
The divining rod consists simply of a hazel bough forked: the bearer
firmly grasps the two pointed ends, holding it before him; it must
bend, or become agitated, when it indicates the spot which conceals a
spring of water, or buried metal. In the hands of a susceptible agent
tremulous nerves, in the solemn operation, would be likely to
communicate their irritability to the hazel bough. But who has
enjoyed the magic of the _treasure trove_? The divining-rod,
described as the Mosaical rod, furnishes an incident in "The
Antiquary" of Sir Walter Scott, which was probably borrowed from an
amusing incident in the Life of Lilly the astrologer; where we
discover that David Ramsay, his majesty's clockmaker, having heard of
a great treasure in the Cloyster of Westminster Abbey, came at
midnight, accompanied by one of the elect, with the Mosaical
rods--"on the west side of the Cloyster the hazle rods turned over
another." David Ramsay had brought a great sack to hold the treasure,
when suddenly all the demons issued out of their beds in a storm,
that--"we verily believed the west end of the church would have
fallen." The torches were suddenly extinguished, the rods would not
move, and they returned home faster than they came.
[6] Sloane MSS., 3191.
[7] There can be no doubt of the reality of all these magical
apparatus, for we actually possess them. The magical mirror, having
lost its theurgic enchantment, finally was placed among the
curiosities of the late Earl of Oxford. Lysons describes it as a
round piece of volcanic glass finely polished--some one calls it
Kennel coal. The hieroglyphical cakes of wax were deposited at the
British Museum, probably at the time the precious manuscripts of
Dee's conferences with "the Spirits" were so carefully lodged in the
Cottonian Collections.
[8] This superstition retains all its freshness in the East. A
magician at Cairo recently,
"Taking in of SHADOWS WITH A GLASS"--(_The Alchemist of Jonson_),
has, I believe, been recorded by a noble lord; having startled the
lookers-on with one shadow, painfully recognised, and another of a
great _bibliophile_, who, seen in the glass, walking in a garden with
his hands full of books, was supposed to be the worthy Archdeacon
Wrangham. I must however add, that the same magician showed himself
very dull to a dear friend of mine; and that his "speculator," a boy
called, apparently accidentally, from the street, only displayed his
gift in nonsensical mendacity.
[9] In the golden days of animal magnetism, more than forty years
ago, I heard many tales, and visited many scenes, where there must
have been much imposture practised, more credulity contagious, and
much which I never could comprehend. In the magnetic sleep, where the
body seemed extinct--and in the luminous crisis, where the soul was
wakeful in all its invisible operations--the inspired communicant,
undisturbed by the sly contrivances of the unbeliever, seemed
transported when and where they listed. A Mr. Baldwin, in 1795 our
consul at Alexandria, in search of what he called the Divinity of
Truth, imagined he had found it in this new and mystical science.
Always seeking for fitting subjects, a cunning Arab long served his
purpose on ordinary matters, but it was his fortune to fall on an
Italian wanderer far more susceptible of the magnetic influence. For
three years, in his own abode, he has chronicled down "The Sittings,"
as he calls them, where, in the magnetic sleep, the communicant
poured forth in verse and prose mysteries and revelations. On his
return to England, Mr. Baldwin printed, by Bulmer, in an unpublished
quarto, these "Sittings," in the native language of the inspired; as
the subject was an improvisatore, it probably cost him little to
charm Mr. Baldwin in "celestial colloquy sublime" with answers to
most unanswerable inquiries; and descriptions of ecstatic scenes
which made the pen tremble with wonder and delight in the hands of
the infatuated scribe. Baldwin, with the faith of Dee, wrote down the
revelations of _his_ Edward Kelley.
[10] This volume is Dee's "Monas Hieroglyphica, Mathematice,
Cabalistice, et Anagogice Explicata," 1564; a book which Elizabeth
lamented she could not comprehend. It is reprinted in the "Theatrum
Chymicum Britannicum" of that lover of the occult sciences, ELIAS
ASHMOLE.
[11] The often-repeated tales of this vanished alchemy may startle
the incredulous; but the dupes and the knaves have been so numerous
that we cannot distinguish between them. Sir Humphry Davy assured me
that making gold might be no impossible thing, though, publicly
divulged, a very useless discovery. Metals seem to be composite
bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing, and it may be reserved
for the future researchers in science to trace, and perhaps to
imitate, some of these curious operations. Dr. Girtanner of Gottingen
predicted, not many years ago, that "In the nineteenth century the
transmutation of metals would be generally practised;" a set of
kitchen utensils in gold, he assures us, would save us from the
deathly oxides of copper, &c.
[12] Harl. MSS., 6986 (26)--A letter from Dr. Dee to the Queen,
congratulating her on the defeat of the Armada. He declares that he
is ready with Kelley, and their families, to return home. Dated Nov.
1588.
[13] This letter, from the Burleigh Papers, is printed by
Strype.--_Annals_, iv. 3.
[14] We have several manuscript letters which passed between DEE and
STOWE. They show all the warmth of their literary intercourse. Dee
offers his present aid, and promises his future assistance.
[15] The curious may find a copious narrative of the recovery of
these manuscripts, written by Ashmole himself, printed in Ayscough's
Catalogue of MSS., p. 371, where also he is referred to the
autographs of Dee, in the British Museum.
[16] "General Dictionary," by BIRCH, art. _Meric Casaubon_--Note B.
[17] This literary anecdote I derive from a manuscript and
contemporary note in the printed copy at the British Museum.
[18] This office of "skryer" is ambiguous--no dictionary will assist
us. "In the year before he died, 1607, Dee procured one Bartholomew
Hickman to serve him _in the same manner_ as Kelley had
done."--_Biog. Brit>._, v. 43. In what manner? Did Hickman pretend to
descry the "actions of the spirits" in the show-stone, or only to
drudge on the powder of projection? Forty years have elapsed since I
turned over the interminable "Diary," and now my eyes are dim and my
courage gone. I suspect, however, that that magical herb--eye-bright,
however administered, will fail to penetrate through the darkness
which surrounds the chaotic mass of manuscript.
[19] It requires a late posterity to correct the gross prejudices of
contemporaries; it was not the least of the honours which Dee enjoyed
to have been closely united with the studies of the "atheist" Allen,
"the father of all learning and virtuous industry, infinitely beloved
and admired by the court and the university." The ardent eulogy of
Wood is earnest.--_Athen. Oxon._, ii. 541.
[20] "As it is asserted that the six books of Mysteries transcribed
from the papers of Dr. John Dee, by Elias Ashmole, Esqre., preserved
in the Sloane Library, (Plutarch XVI., G,) are a collection of papers
relative to State Transactions between Elizabeth, her Ministers, and
different Foreign Powers, in which Dr. Dee was employed sometimes as
an official agent openly, and at other times as a Spy, I purpose to
make an extract from the whole work, and endeavour, if possible, to
get a key to open the Mysteries. A. C."--_Cat. of Adam Clarke's MSS._