Witch, Warlock, and Magician

The Brazen Head (speaks). Time is.

Miles. Time is! Why, Master Brazen-Head, you have such a capital nose, and answer you with syllables, ‘Time is’? Is this my master’s cunning, to spend seven years’ study about ‘Time is’? Well, sir, it may be we shall have some better orations of it anon: well, I’ll watch you as narrowly as ever you were watched, and I’ll play with you as the nightingale with the glow-worm; I’ll set a prick against my breast.12 Now rest there, Miles. Lord have mercy upon me, I have almost killed myself. (A great noise.) Up, Miles; list how they rumble.

The Brazen Head (loquitur). Time was.

Miles. Well, Friar Bacon, you have spent your seven years’ study well, that can make your Head speak but two words at once, ‘Time was.’ Yea, marry, time was when my master was a wise man; but that was before he began to make the Brazen Head. You shall lie while you ache, an your head speak no better. Well, I will watch, and walk up and down, and be a peripatetian13 and a philosopher of Aristotle’s stamp. (A great noise.) What, a fresh noise? Take thy pistols in hand, Miles. (A lightning flashes forth, and a Hand appears that breaks down the Head with a hammer.) Master, master, up! Hell’s broken loose! Your Head speaks; and there’s such a thunder and lightning, that I warrant all Oxford is up in arms. Out of your bed, and take a brownbill in your hand; the latter day is come.

Bacon. Miles, I come. (Rises and comes forward.)

O, passing warily watched!

Bacon will make thee next himself in love.

When spake the Head?

Miles. When spake the Head? Did you not say that he should tell strange principles of philosophy? Why, sir, it speaks but two words at a time.

Bacon. Why, villain, hath it spoken oft?

Miles. Oft! ay, marry hath it, thrice; but in all those three times it hath uttered but seven words.

Bacon. As how?

Miles. Marry, sir, the first time he said, ‘Time is,’ as if Fabius Commentator14 should have pronounced a sentence; then he said, ‘Time was;’ and the third time, with thunder and lightning, as in great choler, he said, ‘Time is past.’

Bacon. ’Tis past, indeed. Ah, villain! Time is past;

My life, my fame, my glory, are all past.

Bacon,

The turrets of thy hope are ruined down,

Thy seven years’ study lieth in the dust:

Thy Brazen Head lies broken through a slave

That watched, and would not when the Head did will.

What said the Head first?

Miles. Even, sir, ‘Time is.’

Bacon. Villain, if thou hadst called to Bacon then,

If thou hadst watched, and waked the sleepy friar,

The Brazen Head had uttered aphorisms,

And England had been circled round with brass:

But proud Asmenoth,15 ruler of the North,

And Demogorgon,16 master of the Fates,

Grudge that a mortal man should work so much.

Hell trembled at my deep-commanding spells,

Fiends frowned to see a man their over-match;

Bacon might boast more than a man might boast;

But now the braves17 of Bacon have an end,

Europe’s conceit of Bacon hath an end,

His seven years’ practice sorteth to ill end:

And, villain, sith my glory hath an end,

I will appoint thee to some fatal end.18

Villain, avoid! get thee from Bacon’s sight!

Vagrant, go, roam and range about the world,

And perish as a vagabond on earth!

Miles. Why, then, sir, you forbid me your service?

Bacon. My service, villain, with a fatal curse,

That direful plagues and mischief fall on thee.

Miles. ’Tis no matter, I am against you with the old proverb, ‘The more the fox is cursed, the better he fares.’ God be with you, sir: I’ll take but a book in my hand, a wide-sleeved gown on my back, and a crowned cap19 on my head, and see if I can merit promotion.

Bacon. Some fiend or ghost haunt on thy weary steps,

Until they do transport thee quick to Hell!

For Bacon shall have never any day,

To lose the fame and honour of his Head.

[Exeunt.

Scene XII. passes in King Henry’s Court, and the royal consent is given to Earl Lacy’s marriage with the Fair Maid, which is fixed to take place on the same day as Prince Edward’s marriage to the Princess Elinor. In Scene XIII. we again go back to Bacon’s cell. The friar is bewailing the destruction of his Brazen Head to Friar Bungay, when two young gentlemen, named Lambert and Sealsby, enter, in order to look into the ‘glass prospective,’ and see how their fathers are faring. Unhappily, at this very moment, the elder Lambert and Sealsby, having quarrelled, are engaged ‘in combat hard by Fressingfield,’ and stab each other to the death, whereupon their sons immediately come to blows, with a like fatal result. Bacon, deeply affected, breaks the magic crystal which has been the unwitting cause of so sad a catastrophe, expresses his regret that he ever dabbled in the unholy science, and announces his resolve to spend the remainder of his life ‘in pure devotion.’

At Fressingfield, in Scene XIV., the opportune arrival of Lacy and his friends prevents Margaret from carrying out her intention of retiring to the nunnery at Framlingham, and with obliging readiness she consents to marry the Earl. Scene XV. shifts to Bacon’s cell, where a devil complains that the friar hath raised him from the darkest deep to search about the world for Miles, his man, and torment him in punishment for his neglect of orders.

Miles makes his appearance, and after some comic dialogue, intended to tickle the ears of the groundlings, mounts astride the demon’s back, and goes off to – ! In Scene XVI., and last, we return to the Court, where royalty makes a splendid show, and the two brides – the Princess Elinor and the Countess Margaret – display their rival charms. Of course the redoubtable friar is present, and in his concluding speech leaps over a couple of centuries to make a glowing compliment to Queen Elizabeth, which seems worth quotation:

‘I find by deep prescience of mine art,Which once I tempered in my secret cell,That here where Brute did build his Troynovant,20From forth the royal garden of a KingShall flourish out so rich and fair a bud,Whose brightness shall deface proud Phœbus’ flower,And overshadow Albion with her leaves.Till then Mars shall be master of the field,But then the stormy threats of war shall cease:The horse shall stamp as careless of the pike,Drums shall be turned to timbrels of delight;With wealthy favours Plenty shall enrichThe strand that gladded wandering Brute to see,And peace from heaven shall harbour in these leavesThat gorgeous beautify this matchless flower:Apollo’s heliotropian21 then shall stoop,And Venus’ hyacinth22 shall vail her top;Juno shall shut her gilliflowers up,And Pallas’ bay shall ’bash her brightest green;Ceres’ carnation, in consort with those,Shall stoop and wonder at Diana’s rose.’23

So much for Greene’s comedy of ‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay’ – not, on the whole, a bad piece of work.

Among the earlier English alchemists I may next name, in chronological order, George Ripley, canon of Bridlington, who, in 1471, dedicated to King Edward III. his once celebrated ‘Compound of Alchemy; or, The Twelve Gates leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone.’ These ‘gates,’ each of which he describes in detail, but with little enlightenment to the uninitiated reader, are: – 1. Calcination; 2. Solution; 3. Separation; 4. Conjunction; 5. Putrefaction; 6. Congelation; 7. Cibation; 8. Sublimation; 9. Fermentation; 10. Exaltation; 11. Multiplication; and 12. Projection. In his old age Ripley learned wisdom, and frankly acknowledged that he had wasted his life upon an empty pursuit. He requested all men, if they met with any of the five-and-twenty treatises of which he was the author, to consign them to the flames as absolutely vain and worthless.

Yet there is a wild story that he actually discovered the ‘magisterium,’ and was thereby enabled to send a gift of £100,000 to the Knights of St. John, to assist them in their defence of Rhodes against the Turks.

Thomas Norton, of Bristol, was the author of ‘The Ordinall of Alchemy’ (printed in London in 1652). He is said to have been a pupil of Ripley, under whom (at the age of 28) he studied for forty days, and in that short time acquired a thorough knowledge of ‘the perfection of chemistry.’ Ripley, however, refused to instruct so young a man in the master-secret of the great science, and the process from ‘the white’ to ‘the red powder,’ so that Norton was compelled to rely on his own skill and industry. Twice in his labours a sad disappointment overtook him. On one occasion he had almost completed the tincture, when the servant whom he employed to look after the furnace decamped with it, supposing that it was fit for use. On another it was stolen by the wife of William Canning, Mayor of Bristol, who immediately sprang into immense wealth, and as some amends, I suppose, for his ill-gotten gains, built the beautiful steeple of the church of St. Mary, Redcliffe – the church afterwards connected with the sad story of Chatterton. As for Norton, he seems to have lived in poverty and died in poverty (1477).

The ‘Ordinall of Alchemy’ is a tedious panegyric of the science, interspersed with a good deal of the vague talk about white and red stones and the philosophical magnesia in which ‘the adepts’ delighted.

To Norton we owe our scanty knowledge of Thomas Dalton, who flourished about the middle of the fifteenth century. He had the reputation of being a devout Churchman until he was accused by a certain Debois of possessing the powder of projection. Debois roundly asserted that Norton had made him a thousand pounds of gold (lucky man!) in less than twelve hours. Whereupon Dalton simply said, ‘Sir, you are forsworn.’ His explanation was that he had received the powder from a canon of Lichfield, on undertaking not to use it until after the canon’s death; and that since he had been so troubled by his possession of it, that he had secretly destroyed it. One Thomas Herbert, a squire of King Edward, waylaid the unfortunate man, and shut him up in the castle of Gloucester, putting heavy pressure upon him to make the coveted tincture. But this Dalton would not and could not do; and after a captivity of four years, Herbert ordered him to be brought out and executed in his presence. He obeyed the harsh summons with great delight, exclaiming, ‘Blessed art Thou, Lord Jesus! I have been too long absent from Thee. The science Thou gavest me I have kept without ever abusing it; I have found no one fit to be my heir; wherefore, sweet Lord, I will restore Thy gift to Thee again.’

‘Then, after some devout prayer, with a smiling countenance he desired the executioner to proceed. Tears gushed from the eyes of Herbert when he beheld him so willing to die, and saw that no ingenuity could wrest his secret from him. He gave orders for his release. His imprisonment and threatened execution were contrived without the King’s knowledge to intimidate him into compliance. The iniquitous devices having failed, Herbert did not dare to take away his life. Dalton rose from the block with a heavy countenance, and returned to his abbey, much grieved at the further prolongation of his earthly sojourn. Herbert died shortly after this atrocious act of tyranny, and Debois also came to an untimely end. His father, Sir John Debois, was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury, May 4, 1471; and two days after, as recorded in Stow’s “Annales,” he himself (James Debois) was taken, with several others of the Lancastrian party, from a church where they had fled for sanctuary, and was beheaded on the spot.’

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I

The ancient magic included various kinds of divination, of which the principal may here be catalogued:

Aeromancy, or divination from the air. If the wind blew from the east, it signified good fortune (which is certainly not the general opinion!); from the west, evil; from the south, calamity; from the north, disclosure of what was secret; from all quarters simultaneously (!), hail and rain.

Axinomancy, practised by the Greeks, more particularly for the purpose of discovering criminals. An axe poised upon a stake, or an agate on a red-hot axe, was supposed by its movement to indicate the offender. Or the names of suspected persons were called out, and the movement of the axe at a particular name was understood to certify guilt.

Belomancy, in use among the Arabs, was practised by means of arrows, which were shot off, with written labels attached to them; and the inscription on the arrow first picked up was accepted as prophetic.

Bibliomancy, divining by means of the Bible, survived to a comparatively recent period. The passage which first caught the eye, on a Bible being opened haphazard, was supposed to indicate the future. This was identical with the Sortes Virgilianæ, the only difference being that in the latter, Virgil took the place of the Bible. Everybody knows in connection with the Sortes the story of Charles I. and Lord Falkland.

Botanomancy, divining by means of plants and flowers, can hardly be said to be extinct even now. In Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ Gretchen seeks to discover whether Faust returns her affection by plucking, one after another, the petals of a star-flower (sternblume, perhaps the china-aster), while she utters the alternate refrains, ‘He loves me!’ ‘He loves me not!’ as she plucks the last petal, exclaiming rapturously, ‘He loves me!’ According to Theocritus, the Greeks used the poppy-flower for this purpose.

Capnomancy, divination by smoke, the ancients practised in two ways: they threw seeds of jasmine or poppy in the fire, watching the motion and density of the smoke they emitted, or they observed the sacrificial smoke. If the smoke was thin, and shot up in a straight line, it was a good omen.

Cheiromancy (or Palmistry), divination by the hand, was worked up into an elaborate system by Paracelsus, Cardan, and others. It has long been practised by the gipsies, by itinerant fortune-tellers, and other cheats; and recently an attempt has been made to give it a fashionable character.

Coscinomancy was practised by means of a sieve and a pair of shears or forceps. The forceps or shears were used to suspend a sieve, which moved (like the axe in axinomancy) when the name of a guilty person was mentioned.

Crystallomancy, divining by means of a crystal globe, mirror, or beryl. Of this science of prediction, Dr. Dee was the great English professor; but the reader will doubtless remember the story of the Earl of Surrey and his fair ‘Geraldine.’

Geomancy, divination by casting pebbles on the ground.

Hydromancy, divination by water, in which the diviner showed the figure of an absent person. ‘In this you conjure the spirits into water; there they are constrained to show themselves, as Marcus Varro testifieth, when he writeth how he had seen a boy in the water, who announced to him in a hundred and fifty verses the end of the Mithridatic war.’

Oneiromancy, divination by dreams, is still credited by old women of both sexes. Absurdly baseless as it is, it found believers in the old time among men of culture and intellectual force. Archbishop Laud attached so much importance to his dreams that he frequently recorded them in his diary; and even Lord Bacon seems to have thought that a prophetic meaning was occasionally concealed in them.

Onychomancy, or Onymancy, divination by means of the nails of an unpolluted boy.

Pyromancy, divination by fire. ‘The wife of Cicero is said, when, after performing sacrifice, she saw a flame suddenly leap forth from the ashes, to have prophesied the consulship to her husband for the same year.’ Others resorted to the blaze of a torch of pitch, which was painted with certain colours. It was a good omen if the flame ran into a point; bad when it divided. A thin-tongued flame announced glory; if it went out, it signified danger; if it hissed, misfortune.

Rabdomancy, divination by the rod or wand, is mentioned by Ezekiel. The use of a hazel-rod to trace the existence of water or of a seam of coal seems a survival of this practice. But enough of these follies:

‘Necro-, pyro-, geo-, hydro-, cheiro-, coscinomancy,With other vain and superstitious sciences.’Tomkis, ‘Albumazar,’ ii. 3.

CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF DR. JOHN DEE

The world must always feel curious to know the exact moment when its great men first drew the breath of life; and it is satisfactory, therefore, to be able to state, on the weighty authority of Dr. Thomas Smith, that Dr. John Dee, the famous magician and ‘philosopher,’ was born at forty minutes past four o’clock on the morning of July 13, 1527. According to the picturesque practice of latter-day biographers, here I ought to describe a glorious summer sunrise, the golden light spreading over hill and pasture, the bland warm air stealing into the chamber where lay the mother and her infant; but I forbear, as, for all I know, this particular July morning may have been cloudy, cold, and wet; besides, John, the son of Rowland Dee, was born in London. From like want of information I refrain from comments on Master Dee’s early bringing-up and education. But it is reported that he gave proof of so exceptional a capacity, and of such a love of letters, that, at the early age of fifteen, he was sent to the University of Cambridge, to study the classics and the old scholastic philosophy. There, for three years, he was so vehemently bent, he says, on the acquisition of learning, that he spent eighteen hours a day on his books, reserving two only for his meals and recreation, and four for sleep – an unhealthy division of time, which probably over-stimulated his cerebral system and predisposed him to delusions and caprices of the imagination. Having taken his degree of B.A., he crossed the seas in 1547 ‘to speak and confer’ with certain learned men, chiefly mathematicians, such as Gemma Frisius, Gerardus Mercator, Gaspar a Morica, and Antonius Gogara; of whom the only one now remembered is Mercator, as the inventor of a method of laying down hydrographical charts, in which the parallels and meridians intersect each other at right angles. After spending some months in the Low Countries he returned home, bringing with him ‘the first astronomer’s staff of brass that was made of Gemma Frisius’ devising, the two great globes of Gerardus Mercator’s making, and the astronomer’s ring of brass (as Gemma Frisius had newly framed it).’

Returning to the classic shades of Granta, he began to record his observations of ‘the heavenly influences in this elemental portion of the world;’ and I suppose it was in recognition of his scientific scholarship that Henry VIII. appointed him to a fellowship at Trinity College, and Greek under-reader. In the latter capacity he superintended, in 1548, the performance of the Ἐιρηνη of Aristophanes, introducing among ‘the effects’ an artificial scarabæus, which ascended, with a man and his wallet of provisions on its back, to Jupiter’s palace. This ingenious bit of mechanism delighted the spectators, but, after the manner of the time, was ascribed to Dee’s occultism, and he found it convenient to retire to the Continent (1548), residing for awhile at Louvain, and devoting himself to hermetic researches, and afterwards at Paris (1580), where he delivered scientific lectures to large and distinguished audiences. ‘My auditory in Rhemes Colledge,’ he says, ‘was so great, and the most part older than my selfe, that the mathematicall schooles could not hold them; for many were faine, without the schooles, at the windowes, to be auditors and spectators, as they best could help themselves thereto. I did also dictate upon every proposition, beside the first exposition. And by the first foure principall definitions representing to the eyes (which by imagination onely are exactly to be conceived), a greater wonder arose among the beholders, than of my Aristophanes Scarabæus mounting up to the top of Trinity-hall in Cambridge.’

The accomplishments of this brilliant scientific mountebank being noised abroad over all Europe, the wonderful story reached the remote Court of the Muscovite, who offered him, if he would take up his residence at Moscow, a stipend of £2,000 per annum, his diet also to be allowed to him free out of ‘the Emperor’s own kitchen, and his place to be ranked amongst the highest sort of the nobility there, and of his privy councillors.’ Was ever scholar so tempted before or since? In those times, the Russian Court seems to have held savants and scholars in as much esteem as nowadays it holds prima-donnas and ballerines. Dee also received advantageous proposals from four successive Emperors of Germany (Charles V., Ferdinand, Maximilian II., and Rudolph II.), but the Muscovite’s outbade them all. A residence in the heart of Russia had no attraction, however, for the Oxford scholar, who, in 1551, returned to England with a halo of fame playing round his head (to speak figuratively, as Dee himself loved to do), which recommended him to the celebrated Greek professor at Cambridge, Sir John Cheke. Cheke introduced him to Mr. Secretary Cecil, as well as to Edward VI., who bestowed upon him a pension of 100 crowns per annum (speedily exchanged, in 1553, for the Rectory of Upton-upon-Severn). At first he met with favour from Queen Mary; but the close correspondence he maintained with the Princess Elizabeth, who appreciated his multifarious scholarship, exposed him to suspicion, and he was accused of practising against the Queen’s life by divers enchantments. Arrested and imprisoned (at Hampton Court), he was subjected to rigorous examinations, and as no charge of treason could be proved against him, was remitted to Bishop Bonner as a possible heretic. But his enemies failed again in their malicious intent, and in 1555 he received his liberty. Imprisonment and suffering had not quenched his activity of temper, and almost immediately upon his release he solicited the Queen’s assent to a plan for the restoration and preservation of certain precious manuscripts of classical antiquity. He solicited in vain.

When Elizabeth came to the throne, Dee, as a proficient in the occult arts, was consulted by Dudley (afterwards Earl of Leicester) as to the most suitable and auspicious day for her coronation. She testified to her own belief in his skill by employing him, when her image in wax had been discovered in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to counteract the evil charm. But he owed her favour, we may assume, much more to his learning, which was really extensive, than to his supposed magical powers. He tells us that, shortly before her coronation, she summoned him to Whitehall, remarking to his patrons, Dudley and the Earl of Pembroke, ‘Where my brother hath given him a crown, I will give him a noble.’ She was certainly more liberal to Dee than to many of her servants who were much more deserving. In December, 1564, she granted him the reversion of the Deanery of Gloucester. Not long afterwards his friends recommended him for the Provostship of Eton College. ‘Favourable answers’ were returned, but he never received the Provostship. He obtained permission, however, to hold for ten years the two rectories of Upton and Long Ledenham. Later in her reign (July, 1583), when two great nobles invited themselves to dine with him, he was compelled to decline the honour on account of his poverty. The Queen, on being apprised of this incident, sent him a present of forty angels of gold. We shall come upon other proofs of her generosity.

Dee was travelling on the Continent in 1571, and on his way through Lorraine was seized with a dangerous sickness; whereupon the Queen not only sent ‘carefully and with great speed’ two of her physicians, but also the honourable Lord Sidney ‘in a manner to tend on him,’ and ‘to discern how his health bettered, and to comfort him from her Majesty with divers very pithy speeches and gracious, and also with divers rarities to eat, to increase his health and strength.’ Philosophers and men of letters, when they are ailing, meet with no such pleasant attentions nowadays! But the list of Elizabeth’s bounties is not yet ended. The much-travelling scholar, who saw almost as much of cities and men and manners as Odysseus himself, had wandered into the farthest parts of the kingdom of Bohemia; and that no evil might come to him, or his companion, or their families, she sent them her most princely and royal letters of safe-conduct. After his return home, a little before Christmas, 1589, hearing that he was unable to keep house as liberally as became his position and repute, she promised to assist him with the gift of a hundred pounds, and once or twice repeated the promise on his coming into her presence. Fifty pounds he did receive, with which to keep his Christmas merrily, but what became of the other moiety he was never able to discover. A malignant influence frequently interposed, it would seem, between the Queen’s benevolence in intention and her charity in action; and the unfortunate doctor was sometimes tantalized with promises of good things which failed to be realized. On the whole, however, I do not think he had much to complain of; and the reproach of parsimony so often levelled at great Gloriana would certainly not apply to her treatment of Dr. Dee.