1About 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 Alençon, 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.2A 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.”3These ingenious rolls, or maps, are now deposited among the Cottonian manuscripts.4The 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 theCottonianand theAshmoleanCollections, 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.5The 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 scientificBIOT, in “Biog. Universelle,” art.Ayman Jacques. [An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silvermines, 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 thetreasure 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.6Sloane MSS., 3191.7There 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.8This superstition retains all its freshness in the East. A magician at Cairo recently,“Taking in ofSHADOWS 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 greatbibliophile, 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.9In 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 ofhisEdward Kelley.10This 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.11The 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.12Harl. 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. 1588.13This letter, from the Burleigh Papers, is printed by Strype.—Annals, iv. 3.14We have several manuscript letters which passed betweenDeeandStowe. They show all the warmth of their literary intercourse. Dee offers his present aid, and promises his future assistance.15The 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,” byBirch, art.Meric Casaubon—Note B.17This literary anecdote I derive from a manuscript and contemporary note in the printed copy at the British Museum.18This office of “skryer” is ambiguous—no dictionary will assist us. “In the year before he died, 1607, Dee procured one Bartholomew Hickman to serve himin the same manneras 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.19It 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, (PlutarchXVI.,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.
1About 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 Alençon, 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.
2A 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.”
3These ingenious rolls, or maps, are now deposited among the Cottonian manuscripts.
4The 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 theCottonianand theAshmoleanCollections, 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.
5The 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 scientificBIOT, in “Biog. Universelle,” art.Ayman Jacques. [An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silvermines, 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 thetreasure 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.
6Sloane MSS., 3191.
7There 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.
8This superstition retains all its freshness in the East. A magician at Cairo recently,
“Taking in ofSHADOWS 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 greatbibliophile, 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.
9In 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 ofhisEdward Kelley.
10This 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.
11The 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.
12Harl. 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.
13This letter, from the Burleigh Papers, is printed by Strype.—Annals, iv. 3.
14We have several manuscript letters which passed betweenDeeandStowe. They show all the warmth of their literary intercourse. Dee offers his present aid, and promises his future assistance.
15The 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,” byBirch, art.Meric Casaubon—Note B.
17This literary anecdote I derive from a manuscript and contemporary note in the printed copy at the British Museum.
18This office of “skryer” is ambiguous—no dictionary will assist us. “In the year before he died, 1607, Dee procured one Bartholomew Hickman to serve himin the same manneras 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.
19It 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, (PlutarchXVI.,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.
THE ROSACRUSIAN FLUDD.
Theconfraternity of the Rose-cross long attracted public notice. Congenial with the more ancient freemasonry, it was probably designed for a more intellectual order; it was entitled “The Enlightened,” “The Immortal,” and “The Invisible.” Its name has been frequently used to veil mysteries, to disguise secret agents, and to carry on those artful impostures which we know have been practised on infirm credulity by the dealers in thaumaturgical arts, to a very recent period. The modern illuminati, of whom not many years past we heard so much, are conjectured to have branched out of the sublime society of the Rose-cross.
This mystical order sprung up among that mystical people, the Germans, who are to this day debating on its origin, for, like other secret societies, its concealed source eludes the search. It was at the beginning of the seventeenth century that a German divine, John Valentine Andreæ, a scholar of enlarged genius, in his controversial writings amused his readers by certain mysterious allusions to a society for the regeneration of science and religion; in the ambiguity of his language, it remained doubtful whether the society was already instituted, or was to be instituted. Suddenly a new name was noised through Europe, the name of Christian Rosencreutz, the founder three centuries back of a secret society, and a eulogy of the order was dispersed in five different languages.
The name of the founder seemed as mystical as the secret order, the Rose and the Cross.1The rose, with the Germans, which was placed in the centre of their ceiling, was the emblem of domestic confidence, whence we have our phrase “under the rose;” and the cross, theconsecrated symbol of Christianity, described the order’s holy end; such notions might suit a mystical divine.2In the legend, the visionary founder was said to have brought from Palestine all the secrets of nature and of art, the elixir of longevity, and the stone so vainly called philosophical.3
If to some the society had a problematical existence, others were convinced of its reality; learned men became its disciples, its defenders; and one eminent person published its laws and its customs. Michael Maier, the physician of the Emperor Rodolph, who had ennobled him for his services, having become initiated by some adepts, travelled over all Germany seeking every brother, and from their confidential instruction collected their laws and customs. At the same time,Robert Fludd, a learned physician of our own country, distinguished for his science and his mysticism, introduced Rosacrusianism into England; its fervent disciple, he furnished an apology for the mystical brotherhood when it seemed to require one.
The arcane tomes of Fludd often spread, and still with “the Elect” may yet spread, an inebriating banquet of “the occult sciences”—all the reveries of the ancient Cabalists, the abstractions of the lower Platonists, and the fancies of the modern Paracelsians, all that is mysterious and incomprehensible, with the rich condiment of science. There are some eyes which would still pierce into truths muffled in jargon and rhapsody, and dwell on the images of realities in the delirious dreams of the learned.
Two worlds, “The Macrocosm,” or the great visible world of nature, and “the Microcosm,” or the little world of man, form the comprehensive view, designed, to use Fludd’s own terms, as “an Encyclophy, or Epitomeof all arts and sciences.”4This Rosacrusian philosopher seeks for man in nature herself, and watches that creative power in her little mortal miniatures. In his Mosaic philosophy, founded on the first chapter of Genesis, our seer, standing in the midst of Chaos, separates the three principles of the creation: the palpable darkness—the movement of the waters—at length the divine light! The corporeity of angels and devils is distinguished on the principle ofrarum et densum, thin or thick. Angelic beings, through their transparency, reflect the luminous Creator; but, externally formed of the most spiritual part of water or air, by contracting their vaporous subtilty, may “visibly and organically talk with man.” The devils are of a heavy gross air; so Satan, the apostle called “the prince of air;” but in touch they are excessive cold, because the spirit by which they live—as this philosopher proceeds to demonstrate—drawn and contracted into the centre, the circumference of dilated air remains icy cold. From angels and demons, the Rosacrusian would approach even to the Divinity; calculating the infinity by his geometry, he reveals the nature of the Divine Being, as “a pure monad, including in itself all numbers.” A paradoxical expression, lying more in the words than the idea, which called down an anathema on the impiety of our Theosophist, for ascribing “composition unto God.” The occult philosopher warded off this perilous stroke. “If I have said that God is in composition, I mean it not as a part compounding, but as the sole compounder, in the apostolic style, ‘He is over all, and in all.’” He detects the origin of evil in the union of the sexes; the sensual organs of the mother of mankind were first opened by the fruit which blasted the future human race. He broods over the mystery of life—production and corruption—regeneration and resurrection! On the lighter topics of mortal studies he displays ingenious conceptions. The title of one of his treatises is “De Naturæ Simia,” or “The Ape of Nature,”—that is,Art! a single image, but a fertile principle.
Sympathies and antipathies, divine and human, are among the mysteries of our nature. By two universal principles, the boreal, or condensing power of cold, and the austral, or the rarefaction of heat, impulsion and repulsion, our physician explains the active operations in the human frame—notions not wholly fanciful; but, at once medical and magical, this doctrine led him into one of the most extraordinary conceptions of mystical invention, yet which long survived the inventor; so seductive were the first follies of science.
Man exists in the perpetual opposition of sympathies and antipathies; and the Cabalist in the human frame beheld the contests of spirits, benevolent or malign, trooping on the four viewless winds which were to be submitted to his occult potentiality. Nor was the physician unsuccessful, for in the sweetness of his elocution, pleasant fancies and elevated conceptions operated on the charmed faith of his imaginative patients.
The mysterious qualities of the magnet were held by Fludd as nothing less than an angelical effluvia. In his “Mystic Anatomy,” to heal the wounds of a person miraculously, at any distance, he prescribed a Cabalistical, Astrological, and Magnetic Unguent. A drop of blood obtained from the wound mixed with this unguent, and the unguent applied to the identical instrument which inflicted the wound, would, however distant the patient resided, act and heal by the virtue of sympathy. This singular operation was ludicrously named “the weapon-salve.”
Fludd not only produces the attestations of eminent persons, who, in charity we may believe, imagined that they had perfectly succeeded in practising his “mystic anatomy,” but he also alleges for its authority the practice of Paul, who cured diseases by only requiring that the handkerchiefs and aprons of patients should be brought to him. Hardly a single extravagance of the Paracelsian fancy of Fludd but rests on some scriptural authority,—on some fictitious statement,—or some credulous imagination. Fludd, indeed, as our plain Oxford antiquary shrewdly opineth, was “strangely profound in obscure matters.”5A curious tract was published byFludd, toclear himself from the odium of magical dealings, in reply to a fiery parson, one Foster, who took an extraordinary mode of getting his book read, by nailing it at the door of the Rosacrusian at night, that it might be turned over in the morning by the whole parish! This was “A Sponge to Wipe away the Weapon-Salve,” showing, that “to cure by applying the salve to the weapon, is magical and unlawful.” The parson evidently supposed that it did cure! Fludd replied by “The Squeezing of Parson Foster’s Sponge. 1631, 4to.”—“to crush and squeeze his sponge, and make it by force to vomit up again the truth which it hath devoured.” Our sage throughout displays the most tempered disposition, and the most fervent genius; but the nonsense is equally curious.
We smile at thesympathyof “the weapon-salve;” but we must not forget that this occult power was the received philosophy of the days of our Rosacrusian. Who has not heard of “the sympathetic powder” of Sir Kenelm Digby, by which the bloody garter of James Howell was cured, and consequently its pleasant owner, without his own knowledge? or of the “sympathetic needles” of the great author of “Vulgar Errors,” by which, though somewhat perplexed, he concluded that two lovers might correspond invisibly? and, above all others, the warts of the illustrious Verulam, by sympathy with the lard which had rubbed them, wasting away as the lard rotted when nailed on the chamber window? Lord Bacon acquaints us that “It is constantly received and avouched, thatthe anointing of the weapon that maketh the woundwill heal the wound itself.”6Indeed, Lord Bacon himself had discovered as magical a sympathy, for he presented Prince Henry, as “the first fruits of hisphilosophy,a sympathising stone, made of several mixtures, to know the heart of man,” whose “operative gravity, magnetic and magical, would show by the hand that held it whether the heart was warm and affectionate.” The philosophy of that day was infinitely more amusing than our own “exact” sciences!
We may smile at jargon in which we have not been initiated, at whimsical combinations we do not fancy, at analogies where we lose all semblance, and at fables which we know to be nothing more; but we may credit that these mystical terms of the learnedFluddconceal many profound and original views, and many truths not yet patent. It is enough that one of the deepest scholars, our illustriousSelden, highly appreciated the volumes and their author. It is indeed remarkable that Bayle, Niceron, and other literary historians, have not ventured to lay their hands on this ark of theosophical science; too modest to dispute, or too generous to attack: unlike the great adversary of Fludd, Père Mersenne, who denounced the Rosacrusian to Europe as a caco-magician, who had ensured for himself perdition throughout eternity.
Père Mersenne, at Paris, stood at the head of the mathematical class, the early companion, and to his last day the earnest advocate, of Descartes. That great philosopher was secretly disposed not to reject all the reveries of the occult philosophers. It is certain that he had listened with complacency to the universal elixir, which was to preserve human life to an indefinite period; and one of his disciples, when he heard of his death, persisted in not crediting the account. His own vortices displayed the picturesque fancy of a Rosacrusian; and moreover, likewise, he was calumniated as an atheist. Père Mersenne not only defended his friend, but, to clear the French philosopher of any such disposition, he attacked the Rosacrusians themselves. Too vehement in his theological hatreds, he dared to publish too long a nomenclature of the atheists of his times;7and among Machiavel, Cardan, Campanella, and Vanini, appears the name of ourpious Fludd. Mersenne expressed his astonishment that James the First suffered such a man to live and to write.
On this occasion Fludd was more fortunate than Dee. He obtained an interview with his learned sovereign, to clear himself of “the Frier’s scandalous report.” He found his Majesty “regally learned and gracious; excellent and subtile in his inquisitive objections, and instead of a check, I had much grace and honour from him, and I found him my kingly patron all the days of his life.” Mersenne, notwithstanding the odium he cast on the personal character of Fludd, was willing to bribe the Heresiarch, for he offered to unite with him in any work for the correction of science and art, provided Fludd would return to that Catholic creed which his ancestors had professed. “I tell this to my countrymen’s shame,” exclaims Fludd, “who, instead of encouraging me in my labours, as by letters from Polonia, Suevia, Prussia, Germany, Transylvania, France, and Italy, I have had, do pursue me with malice, which when a learned German heard of, it reminded him of the speech of Christ, that ‘no man is a prophet in his own country.’ Without any bragging of my knowledge, be it spoken, I speak this feelingly; but a guiltless conscience bids me be patient.”
The writings of Fludd are all composed in Latin; it is remarkable that the works of an English author, residing in England, should be printed at Frankfort, Oppenheim, and Gouda. This singularity is accounted for by the author himself. Fludd, in one respect, resembled Dee; he could find no English printers who would venture on their publication. When Foster insinuated that his character as a magician was so notorious, that he dared not print at home, Fludd tells his curious story: “I sent my writings beyond the seas, because our home-born printers demanded of me five hundred pounds to print the first volume, and to find the cuts in copper; but beyond the seas it was printed at no cost of mine, and as I could wish; and I had sixteen copies sent me over, with forty pounds in gold, as an unexpected gratuity for it.” It is evident that, throughout Europe, they were infinitely more inquisitive in their occult speculations than we in England; and however this may now seem to ourcredit, certainly our incuriosity was not then a consequence of our superior science, for he whose mighty mind was to give a new and enduring impulse to the study of nature, who was to teach us how to philosophize, and was now drawing us out of this dark forest of the human intellect into the lucid expanse of his creative mind, was himself still fascinated by magical sympathies, surmised why witches eat human flesh, and instructed us in the doctrine of spirits, angelic and demoniac. Bacon would have elucidated the theory of Dee, and the imaginative mysticism of the Rosacrusian.
1Fuller’s amusing explanation of the term Rosa-crusian was written without any knowledge of the supposititious founder. He says—“Sure I am that a Rose is the sweetest of flowers, and a Cross accounted the sacredest of forms and figures, so that much of eminency must he imported in their composition.”—Fuller’s Worthies.2The chemists, in the style of their arcana, explain the term by the mystical union, in their secret operations, of the dew and the light. They derive the dew from the LatinRos, and, in the figure of a cross X, they trace the three letters which compose the wordLux—light. Mosheim is positive in the accuracy of his information. I would not answer for my own, though somewhat more reasonable; it is indeed difficult to ascertain the origin of the name of a society which probably never had an existence.3In the Harleian MSS., from 6481 to 6486, are several Rosacrusian writings, some translated from the Latin by one Peter Smart, and others by a Dr. Rudd, who appears to have been a profound adept.4These are his words in reply to his adversary Foster, the only work which he published in English, in consequence of the attack being in the vernacular idiom. The term here introduced into the language is, perhaps, our most ancient authority for the modern termEncyclopædia, which Chambers curtailed toCyclopædia.5The collected writings ofRobert Fludd, under the latinised name “De Fluctibus,” should form six volumes folio. His “Philosophia Mosaica” has been translated, 1659, fo. He makes Moses a great Rosacrusian. The secret brotherhood must be still willing to give costly prices for their treasure. At the recent sale of Mr. Hibbert, the “Opera” of Fludd obtained twenty pounds! The copy was doubtless “very fine,” but the price was surely cabalistical. Nor are these tomes slightly valued on the Continent.6“Lord Bacon’s Natural History,” Cent. x. 998.—“In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit, though myself asyetam not fully inclined to believe it,” his lordship gives ten notes or points as extraordinary as “the ointment” itself.7This list appeared in some Commentaries on Genesis, but was suppressed in most of the copies; the whole has, however, been recovered by Chauffepié in his Dictionary.
1Fuller’s amusing explanation of the term Rosa-crusian was written without any knowledge of the supposititious founder. He says—“Sure I am that a Rose is the sweetest of flowers, and a Cross accounted the sacredest of forms and figures, so that much of eminency must he imported in their composition.”—Fuller’s Worthies.
2The chemists, in the style of their arcana, explain the term by the mystical union, in their secret operations, of the dew and the light. They derive the dew from the LatinRos, and, in the figure of a cross X, they trace the three letters which compose the wordLux—light. Mosheim is positive in the accuracy of his information. I would not answer for my own, though somewhat more reasonable; it is indeed difficult to ascertain the origin of the name of a society which probably never had an existence.
3In the Harleian MSS., from 6481 to 6486, are several Rosacrusian writings, some translated from the Latin by one Peter Smart, and others by a Dr. Rudd, who appears to have been a profound adept.
4These are his words in reply to his adversary Foster, the only work which he published in English, in consequence of the attack being in the vernacular idiom. The term here introduced into the language is, perhaps, our most ancient authority for the modern termEncyclopædia, which Chambers curtailed toCyclopædia.
5The collected writings ofRobert Fludd, under the latinised name “De Fluctibus,” should form six volumes folio. His “Philosophia Mosaica” has been translated, 1659, fo. He makes Moses a great Rosacrusian. The secret brotherhood must be still willing to give costly prices for their treasure. At the recent sale of Mr. Hibbert, the “Opera” of Fludd obtained twenty pounds! The copy was doubtless “very fine,” but the price was surely cabalistical. Nor are these tomes slightly valued on the Continent.
6“Lord Bacon’s Natural History,” Cent. x. 998.—“In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit, though myself asyetam not fully inclined to believe it,” his lordship gives ten notes or points as extraordinary as “the ointment” itself.
7This list appeared in some Commentaries on Genesis, but was suppressed in most of the copies; the whole has, however, been recovered by Chauffepié in his Dictionary.
BACON.
Inthe age of Elizabeth, the English mind took its first bent; a new-born impulse in the nation everywhere was working out its religion, its legislation, and its literature. In every class of genius there existed nothing to copy; everything that was to be great was to find a beginning. Those maritime adventurers in this reign who sailed to discover new regions, and those heroes whose chivalric spirit was errant in the marshes of Holland, were not more enterprising than the creators of our peaceful literature.
Among these firstInventors—our epicalSpenser, our dramaticShakespeareandJonson, ourHooker, who sounded the depths of the origin of law, and ourRawleigh, who first opened the history of mankind—at length appeared the philosopher who proclaimed a new philosophy, emancipating the human mind by breaking the chains of scholastic antiquity. He was a singular being who is recognised without his name.
Aristotle, in taking possession of all the regions of knowledge, from the first had assumed a universal monarchy, more real than that of his regal pupil, for he had subjugated the minds of generation after generation. Through a long succession of ages, and amid both extinct and new religions, the writings of the mighty Stagyrite, however long known by mutilated and unfaithful versions, were equally studied by the Mahometan Arabian and the Rabbinical Hebrew, and, during the scholastic ages, were even placed by the side, and sometimes above, the Gospel; and the ten categories, which pretended to classify every object of human apprehension, were held as another revelation. Centuries succeeded to centuries, and the learned went on translating, commenting, and interpreting, the sacred obscurity of the autocratical edict of a genius whose lofty omniscience seemed to partake in some degree of divinity itself.
But from this passive obedience to a single encyclopædicmind, a fatal consequence ensued for mankind. The schoolmen had formed, as Lord Bacon has nobly expressed himself, “an unhallowed conjunction of divine with human matters;” theology itself was turned into a system, drawn out of the artificial arrangements of Aristotle; they made their orthodoxy dependent on “the scholastic gibberish;”1and to doubt any doctrine of “the philosopher,” as Aristotle was paramountly called, might be to sin by a syllogism—heretical, if not atheistical. In reality it was to contend, without any possibility of escape, with the ecclesiastical establishment, whose integrity was based on the immoveable conformity of all human opinions. Every university in Europe, whose honours and emoluments arose from their Aristotelian chairs, stood as the sentinels of each intellectual fortress. Speculative philosophy could therefore no further advance; it could not pass that inviolable circle which had circumscribed the universal knowledge of the human race. No one dared to think his own thoughts, to observe his own observations, lest by some fortuitous discovery, in differing from the Aristotelian dialectic, he might lapse from his Christianity. The scholastical sects were still agitating the same topics; for the same barbarous terms supplied, on all occasions, verbal disputations, which even bloody frays could never terminate.
If we imagine that this awful fabric of the Aristotelian or scholastic philosophy was first shaken by the Verulamian, we should be conferring on a single individual a sudden influence which was far more progressive. In a great revolution, whence we date a new era, we are apt to lose sight of those devious paths and those marking incidents which in all human affairs are the prognostics and the preparations; the history of the human mind would be imperfectly revealed, should we not trace the great inventors in their precursors.
Early in the sixteenth century appeared simultaneously a number of extraordinary geniuses. An age of philosophicalinventors seemed to arise; a new generation, who, each in his own way, were emancipating themselves from the dogmas of the ancient dictator. This revolt against the old scholastics broke forth in Italy, in Spain, in France, in Germany, and even reached our shores. These philosophers were the contemporaries of Luther: they had not engaged in his theological reformation, but it is more than probable that they had caught the inspiration of his hardy spirit. We are indeed told that the famous Cornelius Agrippa, though he could not desert the Rome of his patrons, yet saw with satisfaction its great pontiff attacked by Luther; as Erasmus and others equally delighted to satirize all the scholastic monkery.2Luther, too, made common cause with them, in the demolition of that ancient edifice of scholastic superstition which, under the supremacy of Aristotle, barred out every free inquiry.
Of these eminent men, an elegant scholar, Ludovicus Vives, by birth a Spaniard, had been invited to the English court by our Henry the Eighth, to be the preceptor of the Princess Mary. Vives too was the friend of Erasmus; but while that facetious sage only expended his raillery on the scholastic madness, Vives formally attacked the chief, whose final authority he declared had hitherto solely rested on the indolence of the human mind. Ramus, in France, advanced with more impetuous fury; he held a public disputation against the paramount authority of the Stagyrite in philosophy; and in his “Aristotelian Animadversions” he profanely shivered into atoms of absurdity the syllogistic method, and substituted for the logic of Aristotle one of his own, which was long received in all the schools of the reformed, for Ramus was a Huguenot. This innovator was denounced to the magistrate; for, by opposing Aristotle, he had committed open hostility against religion and learning! The erudite Abate Andres, probably an Aristotelian at heart, observes, in noticing the continued persecutions of this bold spirit, that, “to tell the truth, Ramus injured himself far more than the Aristotelian doctrine which he had impugned”3—and true enough, if it were a rival Aristotelian who cast Ramus out of the window, to be massacred by the mob on St.Bartholomew’s day. Two eminent scholars of Italy contested more successfully the doctrines of Aristotle: Patricius collected everything he could to degrade and depreciate that philosopher, and to elevate the more seductive and imaginative Plato. He asserted that Aristotle was the plagiarist of other writers, whose writings he invariably affected to contemn; and he went so far as to suggest to the Pope to prohibit the teaching of the Aristotelian doctrines in the schools; for the doctrines of Plato more harmoniously accorded with the Christian faith. Less learned, but more original than Patricius, the Neapolitan Telesius struck out a new mode of philosophizing. The study of mathematics had indicated to Telesius a severe process in his investigations of nature, and had taught him to reject those conjectural solutions of the phenomena of the material world—subtleties and fictions which had led Aristotle into many errors, and whose universal authority had swayed opinions through successive ages. “Telesius,” says Lord Bacon, “hath renewed the tenet of Parmenides, and is the best of our novelists.”4Lord Bacon considered the Telesian system worthy of his development and his refutation. But, by his physical system, Telesius had broken the spell, and sent forth the naturalist to scrutinize more closely into nature; and possibly this Neapolitan sage may have kindled the first spark in the experimental philosophy of Bacon.
All these were eminent philosophers who had indignantly rejected the eternal babble of the scholastics, and the vain dicta of the peripatetics; and in the same cycle were others more erratic and fantastic. These bold artificers of novel systems of philosophy had not unsuccessfully attacked the dogmas of Aristotle, but to little purpose, while they were substituting their own. The prevalent agitation of the philosophical spirit, now impetuous and disturbed, shot forth mighty impulses in imaginary directions, and created chimeras. Agrippa and Paracelsus, Jordano Bruno, Cardan and Campanella, played their “fantastic tricks,” till the patient genius of the new philosophy arose simultaneously in the Italian Galileo and the founder of the Verulamian method.
Amid the ruins of these systems of philosophies, it was not with their fallen columns that Lord Bacon designed to construct a new philosophy of his own—a system in opposition to other systems. He would hold no controversies: for refutations were useless if the method he invented was a right one. He would not even be the founder of a sect, for he presumed not to establish a philosophy, but to show how we should philosophize. The father of experimental philosophy delivered no “opinions,” but “a work;” patient observation, practical results, or new and enlarged sciences, “not to be found in the space of a single age, but through a succession of generations.” D’Alembert observed, “The Baconian philosophy was too wise to astonish.” His early sagacity had detected the fatal error of all system-makers; each, to give coherence to his hypothesis, had recourse to some occult operation, and sometimes had ventured to give it a name which was nothing more than an abstract notion, and not a reality ascertained to exist in nature. The Platonist had buried his lofty head amid the clouds of theology, beyond the aspirations of man: the Aristotelian, by the syllogistic method of reasoning, had invented a mere instrument of perpetual disputation, without the acquisition of knowledge; and in the law which governed the material world, when Democritus had conceived his atom, and endowed it with a desire or appetency to move with other atoms, or Telesius imagined with cold and heat to find the first beginnings of motion—what had they but contracted nature within the bars of their systems, while she was perpetually escaping from them? The greater philosopher sought to follow nature through her paths, to be “her servant and interpreter;” or, as he has also expressed it, “to subdue nature by yielding to her.”
Lord Bacon was conscious of the slow progress of truth; he has himself appealed to distant ages. So progressive is human reason, that a novel system, at its first announcement, has been resisted as the most dangerous innovation, or rejected as utterly false; yet at a subsequent period the first promulgator who had struck into the right road is censured, not for his temerity, but for his timidity, in not having advanced to its termination, and laying the burden on posterity to demonstrate that which he had only surmisedor assumed. It is left to another generation to shoot their arrow forth a truer aim, far more distantly. Some of the most important results in philosophical inquiries by men who have advanced beyond their own age, have been subjected to this inconvenience; and we now are familiarized to axioms and principles, requiring no further demonstration, which in their original discovery were condemned as dangerous and erroneous; for the most novel principles must be disputed before they can be demonstrated, till time in silence seals its decree with authority.
Some discoveries have required almost a century to be received, while some truths remain still problematical, and, like the ether of Newton, but a mere hypothesis. What is the wisdom of the wise but a state of progression? and the inventor has to encounter even the hostility of his brothers in science; even Lord Bacon himself was the victim of his own idols of the den—those fallacies that originate from the peculiar character of the man; for by undervaluing the science of mathematics, he refused his assent to the Copernican system.
The celebrity of Lord Bacon was often distinct from the Baconian philosophy at home—a circumstance which concerns the history of our vernacular literature. The lofty pretensions of a new way to “The Advancement of Learning,” and the “Novum Organum” of an art of invention, to invent arts, were long a veiled mystery to the English public, who were deterred from its study by the most offuscating translations of the Latin originals. English readers recognised in Lord Bacon, not the interpreter of Nature through all her works, but the interpreter of man to man, of their motives and their actions, in his “Sermones Fideles,” those “Essaies” which “come home to our business and to our bosoms.” Such readers were left to wonder how the historian of “The Winds,” and of “Life and Death”—the gatherer of medical receipts and of masses of natural history, amid all such minute processes of experiments and inductions, groping in tangible matter, as it seemed to ordinary eyes, could in the mere naturalist be the creator of a new philosophy of intellectual energy. The ethical sage who had unfolded the volume of the heart they delightfully comprehended, buthow the mind itself stood connected with the outward phenomena of nature remained long an enigma for the men of the world. Lord Bacon, in his dread to trust the mutability of our language placed by the side of the universal language of the learned which fifteen centuries had fixed sacred from innovation, had concluded that the modern languages will “at one time or another play the bankrupt with books.” The sage who, in his sanguine confidence in futurity, had predicted that “third period of time which will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman learning,” had not, however, contemplated on a national idiom; nor in that noble prospect of time had he anticipated a race of the European learned whose vernacular prose would create words beyond the reach of the languages of antiquity. No work in our native idiom had yet taken a station. The volume of Hooker we know not how he read; but the copiousness of the diction little accorded with the English of the learned Lord Chancellor, who had pressed the compactness of his aphoristic sentences into the brevity of Seneca, but with a weight of thought no Roman, if we except Tacitus, has attained. Rawleigh and Jonson were but contemporaries, unsanctioned by time; nor could he have looked even on them as modellers for him whose own genius was still more prodigally opulent, though not always with the most difficult taste.
Lord Bacon, therefore, decided to compose his “Instauratio Magna” in Latin. Dedicating the Latin version of the “Advancement of Learning” to the Prince, he observed—“It is a work I think will live, and be acitizen of the world, as English books are not.” Lord Bacon saw “bankruptcy in our language,” and houseless wanderers in our books. The commonwealth of letters had yet no existence. Haunted by this desolating notion that there was no perpetuity in English writings, he rested not till his own were translated by himself and his friends, Jonson, and Hobbes, and Herbert; and often enlarging these Latin versions, some of his English compositions remain, in some respect, imperfect, when compared with those subsequent revisions in the Latin translations.
By trusting his genius to a foreign tongue, Lord Bacon has dimmed its lustre; the vitality of his thoughts in their original force, the spontaneity of his mind in all its raciness,all those fortuitous strokes which are the felicities of genius, were lost to him who had condemned himself to the Roman yoke. Professor Playfair always preferred quoting the original English of those passages of the treatise “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” which had first appeared in “The Advancement of Learning.” The felicity of many of those fine or forcible conceptions is emasculated in a foreign and artificial idiom; and the invention of novel terms in an ancient language left it often in a clouded obscurity.
The hand of Lord Bacon had already moulded the language at pleasure, and he might have preceded his friend Hobbes in the lucidity of a philosophical style. The style of Lord Bacon is stamped with the originality of the age, and is as peculiar to him as was that of Shakspeare to the poet. He is not only the wittiest of writers in his remote allusions, but poetical in his fanciful conceptions. His style long served for a model to many succeeding writers. One of the most striking imitations is that curious folio of secret history, and brilliant sententiousness, and witty pedantry, the Life of Archbishop Williams by BishopHacket. It was with declining spirit Lord Bacon composed his “History of Henry the Seventh;” it was an oblation to majesty; the king himself was his critic; and the Solomon, as he terms Henry the Seventh, was that image of peaceful sovereignty which James affected.
He who thought that the language would have failed him, has himself failed to the language, and we have lost an English classic. Since the experimental philosophy arose out of practical discoveries, it should not have been limited to recluse students, but open to the practitioners not yet philosophers, now condemned to study it by translations of a translation. It required two centuries before the writings of Bacon reached the many. Now, a single volume, in the most popular form, places them in the hands of artisans and artists, who are to learn from them to think, to observe, and to invent.
The first modern edition of the collected writings of Lord Bacon was that by Blackbourne, in 1730. It probably awoke the public attention; but English readers eager to possess themselves of the Baconian philosophywere still doomed to their old ignorance, for no one was yet to be found bold enough to risk versions, which in the mere translation often require to be elucidated. This first edition, however, hastened the arduous task of “methodising” the philosophy of Bacon in English, by Dr.Peter Shaw, in 1733, who then suggested that the noble Baconian scheme had not been “sufficiently understood and regarded.” This Dr.Shawwas one of the court physicians, attached to scientific pursuits, which he usefully displayed by popular lectures and writings, on subjects with which the public were then not familiar. Imbued with the genius of Bacon, this diligent student unfortunately had a genius of his own; he fancied that he could reconstruct the works of our great philosopher, by a more perfect arrangement. He separated, or he joined; he classed, and he new-named; and not the least curious of his singularities is that of assigning right principles for his wrong doings. He did not abridge his author; for justly he observes, great works admit of no abridgment; but to shorten their extent, he took the liberty of what he terms “dropping,”—that is, “leaving out.” Of his translations of the Latin originals, of which he experienced all the difficulty, he observes, that “a direct translation would have left the works more obscure than they are,” and therefore he adopted what he terms “an open version.” A precise notion of this mode of free translation, it might be difficult to fix on; it would be too open if it admitted what was not in the original, or if it suffered what was essential to escape. His irremissible sin was that of “modernizing the English” of Lord Bacon. The most racy and picturesque expressions of our elder writers were then to be weakened down to a vapid colloquial style. Willymot had translated Lord Bacon’s “Essays” from the Latin, and thus substituted his own loose incondite sentences, which he deemed “more fashionable language,” for the brilliancy or the energy of Lord Bacon’s native vein. Dr. Shaw’s three goodly quartos, however, long conveyed in some shape to the English public the Baconian philosophy. There is something still seductive in these fair volumes, with their copious index, and a glossary of the philosophical terms invented by Bacon; I loved them in the early days of my studies; andthey have been deemed worthy to be revived in a late edition.
In my youth, the illustrious name of Lord Bacon was more familiar to readers than his works, and they were more frequently reminded of the Lord Chancellor by the immortal verse of Pope, than by that Life of Bacon by Mallet, which may be read without discovering that the subject was the father of modern philosophy, excepting that in the last page, as if accidentally, there occurs a slight mention of the Great Instauration itself! The very choice of Mallet, in 1740, for an editor of Lord Bacon, is a striking evidence how imperfectly the genius of the Instaurator of sciences was comprehended.
The psychological history of Lord Bacon has all that oneness which is the perfection of mind. We see him in his boyhood, studious of the phenomena of nature, meditating on the multiplication of echoes at the brick-conduit, near his father’s house; there he sought to discover the laws of sound; as in his latest days, when on the snowy road an experiment suddenly occurred, “touching the conservation and the induration of bodies,” whether snow could not preserve flesh equally with salt. Alighting from his carriage, with his own hands he assisted the experiment, and was struck by that chilliness which, a few days after, closed in death; yet the dying naturalist, too weak to write the last letter he dictated, expressed his satisfaction that the experiment “answered excellently well.”
But he who, by the cruelty of fortune and mortal infirmity, lived many lives in the span of one short life, ever wrestling with Nature to subdue her, could never subdue himself by himself. He idolized state and magnificence in his own person; the brilliancy of his robes and the blaze of his equipage his imagination seemed to feed on; he loved to be gazed on in the streets, and to be wondered at in the cabinet; but with this feminine weakness, this philosopher was still so philosophic as to scorn the least prudential care of his fortune. So that, while he was enamoured of wealth, he could not bring himself down to the love of money. Participating in the corruptions of the age, he was himself incorruptible; the Lord Chancellor never gave a partial or unjust sentence, and Rushworthhas told us, that not one of his decrees was ever reversed. Such a man was not made to crouch and to fawn, to breathe the infection of a corrupted court, to make himself the scape-goat in the mysterious darkness of court-intrigues; but he was this man of wretchedness! Truly he exclaimed one day, in grasping a volume, For this only am I fitted. The intellectual architect who had modelled his house of Solomon, and should have been for ever the ideal inhabitant of that palace of the mind, was the tenant of an abode of disorder, where every one was master but its owner, a maculated man seeking to shelter himself in dejection and in shade. Whisperers, surmisers, evil eyes and evil tongues, the domestic asp, whose bite sends poison into the veins of him on whom it hangs—those were his familiars, while his abstracted mind was dictating to his chaplain the laws and economy of nature.
Yet there were some better spirits in the mansion of Gorhambury, and even in the obscurity of Gray’s Inn, who have left testimonies of their devotion to the great man long after his death. In the psychological history of Lord Bacon, we must not pass by the psychological monument which the affectionate Sir Thomas Meautys, who, by his desire, lies buried at his feet, raised to his master. The design is as original as it is grand, and is said to have been the invention of Sir Henry Wotton, who, in his long residence abroad, had formed a refined taste for the arts which were yet strangers in England. The simplicity of our ancestors had placed their sculptured figures recumbent on their tombs; the taste of Wotton raised the marble figure to imitate life itself, and to give the mind of the original to its image. The monument of Bacon exhibits the great philosopher seated in profound contemplation in his habitual attitude, for the inscription records for posterity,Sic sedebat.5