(Vol. iv., pp. 86. 140.)
Mr. H. C. DE ST. CROIX may be assured that the first edition of the
Prophecies of Nostradamus is not only in the National Library, but in
several others, both in Paris and elsewhere. It is now, however, very
rare, though until lately little valued; for at the Duc de la Vallière's
sale, in 1783, it produced no more than seven livres ten sols,--not
quite seven shillings. De Bure makes no mention of it: nor was it in the
library of M. Gaignat, or various other collectors; so little sought for
was it then. Printed at Lyons "chès Macé Bonhomme, M:D:L:V.," it thus
closes--"Achevé d'imprimer le iiii iour de Mai, M.D.L.V." It is a small
octavo of 46 leaves, as we learn from Brunet, and was republished the
following year at Avignon, still limited to four centuries; nor was a
complete edition, which extended to ten centuries, with two imperfect
ones, published till 1568, at Troyes (en Champagne), in 8vo. Numerous
editions succeeded, in which it is well known that every intervenient
occurrence of moment was sure to be introduced, always preceded by the
date of impression, so as to establish the claim of prophecy. I have
before me that of J. Janson, Amsterdam, 1668, 12mo., which is usually
associated with the Elzevir collection of works, though not proceeding
from the family's press either in Leyden or Amsterdam. Several attempts
at elucidating these pretended prophecies have been made, such as
_Commentaires sur les Centuries de Nostradamus_, par Charigny, 1596,
8vo.; _La Clef de Nostradamus_, 1710, 12mo.; and one so late as 1806, by
Théodore Bouys, 8vo. The distich "Nostra damus," &c. was the playful
composition, according to La Monnoye, of the celebrated Genevan reformer
Théodore de Béze. By others it is attributed to the poet Jodelle: but
the author is still uncertain. Nostradamus, born in Provence, died in
July, 1566, aged sixty-eight. His second son published the Lives of the
Poets of his native province in 1575, 8vo.
Among those impositions on public credulity, one of the most famous is
that referred to by Bacon, in his twenty-fifth Essay, and which he, as
was then the prevalent belief, attributed to the astronomer John Müller,
usually known as Regiomontanus, of the fifteenth century, and so
denominated by Bacon. Its first application was to the irruption of the
French king, Charles VIII., into Naples, in 1488, when the impetuosity
of the invasion was characterised by the epithet, ever since so well
sustained, of "La Furia Francese." Again, in 1588 it was interpreted as
predictive of the Spanish attack on England by the misnomed "Invincible
Armada;" and the English Revolution of 1688 was similarly presumed to
have been foretold by it, which always referred to the special year
_eighty-eight_ of each succeeding century; while the line expressive of
the century was correspondingly adjusted in the text. It was thus made
applicable to the great French Revolution, of which the unmistakeable
elements were laid in 1788, by the royal edict convoking the
States-General for the ensuing year, when it burst forth with dread
explosion. Its prediction, with the sole alteration of the century from
the original lines, was then thus expressed:--
"Post mille expletos a partu Virginis annos,
Et septingentos rursus ab orbe datos
Octogessimus octavus mirabilis annus
Ingruet: is secum tristia fata trahet.
"Si non hoc anno totus malus occidet orbis
Si non in nihilum terra fretumque ruant,
Cuncta tamen mundi sursum ibunt atque deorsum
Imperia; et luctus undique grandis erit."
Though long ascribed to Regiomontanus, whose death preceded its first
appearance, and therefore made its application to posterior events
appear prophetic, the real author, according to the astronomer Delambre,
was a German named Bruschius, of the sixteenth century, who pretended to
have discovered it on a tomb (we may suppose that of Regiomontanus) in
Bohemia, that learned man's country. Many other similar prophecies have
deluded the world, of which the most celebrated were those of the
Englishman Merlin. An early edition, printed in 1528, fetched sixteen
guineas in 1812 at the Roxburgh sale, though preceded by three or four.
It is in French, and at Gaignat's sale, in 1769, brought only thirty-one
livres. It was No. 2239. of the Catalogue.