PETER HOPKINS. REASONS FOR SUPPOSING THAT HE WAS AS GOOD A
PRACTITIONER AS ANY IN ENGLAND; THOUGH NOT THE BEST. THE FITTEST
MASTER FOR DANIEL DOVE. HIS SKILL IN ASTROLOGY.
_Que sea Medico mas grave
Quien mas aforismos sabe,
Bien puede ser.
Mas que no sea mas experto
El que mas huviere muerto,
No puede ser._
GONGORA.
Of all the persons with whom Daniel Dove associated at Doncaster, the
one who produced the most effect upon his mind was his master and
benefactor, Peter Hopkins. The influence indeed which he exercised,
insensibly as it were, upon his character, was little less than that
whereby he directed and fixed the course of his fortune in life. A
better professional teacher in his station could no where have been
found; for there was not a more skilful practitioner in the Three
Ridings, consequently not in England; consequently not in Christendom,
and by a farther consequence not in the world. Fuller says of
Yorkshire that “one may call, and justify it to be the best shire in
England; and that not by the help of the general katachresis of _good_
for _great_, (as a _good_ blow, a _good_ piece, &c.) but in the proper
acceptation thereof. If in Tully's Orations, all being excellent, that
is adjudged _optima quæ longissima_, the best which is the longest;
then by the same proportion, this Shire, partaking in goodness alike
with others, must be allowed the best.” Yorkshire therefore being the
best county in England, as being the largest, of necessity it must
have as good practitioners in medicine, as are to be found in any
other county; and there being no better practitioner than Peter
Hopkins there, it would have been in vain to seek for a better
elsewhere.
As good a one undoubtedly might have been found;
I trust there were within this realm
Five hundred as good as he,[1]
though there goes more to the making of a Peter Hopkins than of an
Earl Percy. But I very much doubt, (and this is one of the cases in
which doubt scarcely differs a shade from disbelief)—whether there
could any where have been found another person whose peculiarities
would have accorded so curiously with young Daniel's natural bent, and
previous education. Hopkins had associated much with Guy, in the early
part of their lives; (it was indeed through this connection that the
lad was placed at Doncaster); and like Guy he had tampered with the
mystical sciences. He knew the theories, and views, and hopes—
which set the Chymist on
To search that secret-natured stone,
Which the philosophers have told,
When found, turns all things into gold;
But being hunted and not caught,
Oh! sad reverse! turns gold to nought.[2]
[Footnote 1: CHEVY CHACE.]
[Footnote 2: ARBUTHNOT.]
This knowledge he had acquired, like his old friend, for its own
sake,—for the pure love of speculation and curious enquiry,—not with
the slightest intention of ever pursuing it for the desire of riches.
He liked it, because it was mysterious; and he could listen with a
half-believing mind to the legends (as they may be called) of those
Adepts who from time to time have been heard of, living as erratic a
life as the Wandering Jew; but with this difference, that they are
under no curse, and that they may forego their immortality, if they do
not choose to renew the lease of it, by taking a dose of the elixir in
due time.
He could cast a nativity with as much exactness, according to the
rules of art, as William Lilly, or Henry Coley, that Merlinus Anglicus
Junior, upon whom Lilly's mantle descended; or the Vicar of Thornton
in Buckinghamshire, William Bredon, a profound Divine, and “absolutely
the most polite person for nativities in that age;” who being Sir
Christopher Heydon's chaplain, had a hand in composing that Knight's
Defence of Judicial Astrology; but withal was so given over to tobacco
and drink, that when he had no tobacco, he would cut the bell ropes,
and smoke them.
Peter Hopkins could erect a scheme either according to the method of
Julius Firmicus, or of Aben-Ezra, or of Campanus, Alcabitius, or
Porphyrius, “for so many ways are there of building these houses in
the air;” and in that other called the Rational Way, which in a great
degree superseded the rest, and which Johannes Muller, the great
Regiomontanus, gave to the world in his Tables of Directions drawn up
at the Archbishop of Strigonia's request. He could talk of the fiery
and the earthly Trigons, the aerial and the watery; and of that
property of a triangle—(now no longer regarded at Cambridge) whereby
Sol and Jupiter, Luna and Venus, Saturn and Mercury, respectively
become joint Trigonocrators, leaving Mars to rule over the watery
Trigon alone. He knew the Twelve Houses as familiarly as he knew his
own; the Horoscope, which is the House of Life, or more awfully to
unlearned ears _Domus Vitæ_; the House of Gain and the House of
Fortune;—for Gain and Fortune no more keep house together in heaven,
than either of them do with Wisdom and Virtue, and Happiness on earth;
the Hypogeum, or House of Patrimony, which is at the lowest part of
heaven, the _Imum Cœli_, though it be in many respects a good house to
be born in here below; the Houses of Children, of Sickness, of
Marriage and of Death; the House of Religion; the House of Honours,
which being the Mesouranema, is also called the Heart of Heaven; the
Agathodemon, or House of Friends, and the Cacodemon, or House of
Bondage. All these he knew, and their Consignificators, and their
Chronocrators or Alfridarii, who give to these Consignificators a
septennial dominion in succession.
He could ascertain the length of the planetary hour at any given time
and place, anachronism being no where of greater consequence,—for if a
degree be mistaken in the scheme, there is a year's error in the
prognostication, and so in proportion for any inaccuracy more or less.
Sir Christopher Heydon, the last great champion of this occult
science, boasted of possessing a watch so exact in its movements, that
it would give him with unerring precision not the minute only, but the
very scruple of time. That erudite professor knew—
_In quas Fortunæ leges quæque hora valeret;
Quantaque quam parvi facerent discrimina motus._[3]
[Footnote 3: MANILIUS.]
Peter Hopkins could have explained to a student in this art, how its
astronomical part might be performed upon the celestial globe “with
speed, ease, delight, and demonstration.” He could have expatiated
upon conjunctions and oppositions; have descanted upon the four
Cardinal Houses; signs fixed, moveable, or common; signs human and
signs bestial; semi-sextiles, sextiles, quintiles, quartiles,
trediciles, trines, biquintiles and quincunxes; the ascension of the
planets, and their declination; their dignities essential and
accidental; their exaltation and retrogradation; till the hearer by
understanding a little of the baseless theory, here and there, could
have persuaded himself that he comprehended all the rest. And if it
had been necessary to exact implicit and profound belief, by
mysterious and horrisonant terms, he could have amazed the listener
with the Lords of Decanats, the Five Fortitudes, and the Head and Tail
of the Dragon; and have astounded him by ringing changes upon Almugea,
Cazimi, Hylech, Aphetes, Anacretes and Alcochodon.
“So far,” says Fabian Withers, “are they distant from the true
knowledge of physic which are ignorant of astrology, that they ought
not rightly to be called physicians, but deceivers:—for it hath been
many times experimented and proved, that that which many physicians
could not cure or remedy with their greatest and strongest medicines,
the astronomer hath brought to pass with one simple herb, by observing
the moving of the signs.—There be certain evil times and years of a
man's life, which are at every seven years' end. Wherefore if thou
wilt prolong thy days, as often as thou comest to every seventh or
ninth year (if thou givest any credit to Marsilius Ficinus, or
Firmicus), diligently consult with an astronomer, from whence and by
what means any peril or danger may happen, or come unto thee; then
either go unto a physician, or use discretion and temperance, and by
that means thou mayest defer and prolong thy natural life through the
rules of astronomy, and the help of the physician. Neither be ashamed
to enquire of the physician what is thy natural diet, and of the
astronomer what star doth most support and favour thy life, and to see
in what aspect he is with the moon.”
That once eminent student in the mathematics and the celestial
sciences, Henry Coley, who, as Merlin junior continued Lily's Almanac,
and published also his own yearly _Nuncius Sydereus_, or Starry
Messenger,—the said Coley, whose portrait in a flowing wig and
embroidered band, most unlike to Merlin, has made his Ephemeris in
request among the Graingerites,—he tells us it is from considering the
nature of the planets, together with their daily configurations, and
the mixture of their rays or beams of light and heat, that astrologers
deduce their judgement of what may _probably_, not _positively_
happen: for Nature, he observes, works very abstrusely; and one person
may be able to make a better discovery than another, whence arise
diversities of opinion too often about the same thing. The physician
knows that the same portion of either single or compound simples will
not work upon all patients alike; so neither can the like portion and
power of qualities stir up, or work always the same; but may sometimes
receive either _intention_ or _remission_ according to the disposed
aptness of the subject, the elements or elementary bodies not always
admitting of their powers alike, or when they be overswayed by more
potent and prevalent operations. For universal and particular causes
do many times differ so as the one hinders the operation of the other;
and Nature may sometimes be so abstrusely shut up, that what we see
not may overpower and work beyond what we see.
Thus were these professors of a pseudo-science always provided with an
excuse, however grossly their predictions might be contradicted by the
event. It is a beautiful specimen of the ambiguity of the art that the
same aspect threatened a hump-back, or the loss of an eye; and that
the same horoscope which prognosticated a crown and sceptre, was held
to be equally accomplished if the child were born to a fool's-cap, a
bauble, and a suit of motley. “The right worshipful, and of singular
learning in all sciences, Sir Thomas Smith, the flower in his time of
the University of Cambridge,” and to whom, more than to any other
individual, both Universities are beholden; for when Parliament, in
its blind zeal for ultra-reformation, had placed the Colleges, as well
as the Religious Houses, at the King's disposal, he, through Queen
Katharine Par, prevailed upon Henry to preserve them, instead of
dividing them also among the great court cormorants; and he it was who
reserved for them the third part of their rents in corn, making that a
law which had always been his practice when he was Provost of
Eton:—This Sir Thomas used, as his grateful pupil Richard Eden has
recorded, to call astrology _ingeniosissimam artem mentiendi_,—the
most ingenious art of lying.
Ben Jonson's servant and pupil[4] has given some good comic examples
of the way in which those who honestly endeavoured to read the stars
might be deceived,—though when the stars condescended “to palter in a
double sense” it was seldom in so good a humour.
One told a gentleman
His son should be a man-killer, and be hang'd for't;
Who after proved a great and rich physician,
And with great fame, in the University
Hang'd up in picture for a grave example!
——Another schemist
Found that a squint-eyed boy should prove a notable
Pick-purse, and afterwards a most strong thief;
When he grew up to be a cunning lawyer,
And at last died a Judge!
[Footnote 4: BROOME.]