HOW TO MAKE GOLD.
HOW TO MAKE GOLD.
William had heard so much about experiments that it is not surprising he should have been for making some himself. It was well indeed for his family that the speculative mind, which lay covered rather than concealed under the elder Daniel's ruminating manners, and quiet contented course of life, was not quickened by his acquaintance with the schoolmaster into an experimental and dangerous activity, instead of being satisfied with theoretical dreams. For Guy had found a book in that little collection which might have produced more serious consequences to the father than the imitation of Gargantua had done to the son.
This book was the Exposition of Eirenæus Philalethes upon Sir George Ripley's Hermetico-Poetical works. Daniel had formerly set as little value upon it as upon Rabelais. He knew indeed what its purport was, thus much he had gathered from it: but although it professed to contain “the plainest and most excellent discoveries of the most hidden secrets of the Ancient Philosophers that were ever yet published,” it was to him as unintelligible as the mysteries of Pantagruelism. He could make nothing of the work that was to ascend inBusandNubifrom the Moon up to the Sun, though the Expositor had expounded that this was inNubibus;nor of the Lake which was to be boiled with the ashes of Hermes's Tree, night and day without ceasing, till the Heavenly Nature should ascend and the Earthly descend: nor of the Crow's bill, the White Dove, the Sparkling Cherubim, and the Soul of the Green Lion. But he took those cautions simply and honestly as cautions, which were in fact the lures whereby so many infatuated persons had been drawn on to their own undoing. The author had said that his work was not written for the information of the illiterate, and illiterate Daniel knew himself to be. “Our writings,” says the dark Expositor, “shall prove as a curious edged knife; to some they shall carve out dainties, and to others it shall serve only to cut their fingers. Yet we are not to be blamed; for we do seriously profess to any that shall attempt the work, that he attempts the highest piece of Philosophy that is in Nature; and though we write in English, yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will think they understand us well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools in Nature should be wise in our Books, which are testimonies unto Nature?” And again, “make sure of thy true matter, which is no small thing to know; and though we have named it yet we have done it so cunningly, that thou mayest sooner stumble at our Books than at any thou ever didst read in thy life.—Be not deceived either with receipt or discourse; for we verily do not intend to deceive you; but if you will be deceived, be deceived!—Our way which is an easy way, and in which no man may err,—our broad way, ourlinearway, we have vowed never to reveal it but in metaphor. I, being moved with pity, will hint it to you. Take that which is not yet perfect, nor yet wholly imperfect, but in a way to perfection, and out of it make what is most noble and most perfect. This you may conceive to be an easier receipt than to take that which is already perfect and extract out of it what is imperfect and make it perfect, and after out of that perfection to draw aplusquamperfection; and yet this is true, and we have wrought it. But this last discovery which I hinted in few words is it which no man ever did so plainly lay open; nor may any make it more plain upon pain of an anathema.”
All this was heathen Greek to Daniel, except the admonition which it contained. But Guy had meddled with this perilous pseudo-science, and used to talk with him concerning its theory, which Daniel soon comprehended, and which like many other theories wanted nothing but a foundation to rest upon. That every thing had its own seed as well as its own form seemed a reasonable position; and that the fermental virtue, “which is the wonder of the world, and by which water becomes herbs, trees and plants, fruits, flesh, blood, stones, minerals and every thing, works only in kind. Was it not then absurd to allow that the fermentive and multiplicative power existed in almost all other things, and yet deny it to Gold, the most perfect of all sublunary things?”—The secret lay in extracting from Gold its hidden seed.
Ben Jonson has with his wonted ability presented the theory of this delusive art. His knavish Alchemist asks of an unbeliever
I have no cause to say here with Sheik Mohammed Ali Hazin that “taste for poetical and elegant composition has turned the reins of my ink-dropping pen away from the road which lay before it:” For this passage of learned Ben lay directly in the way; and no where, Reader, couldst thou find the theory of the Alchemists more ably epitomized.
“Father,” said the boy Daniel one day, after listening to a conversation upon this subject, “I should like to learn to make gold.”
“And what wouldst thou do, Daniel, if thou couldst make it?” was the reply.
“Why I would build a great house, and fill it with books; and have as much money as the King, and be as great a man as the Squire.”
“Mayhap, Daniel, in that case thou wouldst care for books as little as the Squire, and have as little time for them as the King. Learning is better than house or land. As for money, enough is enough; no man can enjoy more; and the less he can be contented with the wiser and better he is likely to be. What, Daniel, does our good poet tell us in the great verse-book?
No, boy, thou canst never be as rich as the King, nor as great as the Squire; but thou mayest be a Philosopher, and that is being as happy as either.”
“A great deal happier,” said Guy. “The Squire is as far from being the happiest man in the neighbourhood, as he is from being the wisest or the best. And the King, God bless him! has care enough upon his head to bring on early grey hairs.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
“But what does a Philosopher do?” rejoined the boy. “The Squire hunts and shoots and smokes, and drinks punch and goes to Justice-Meetings. And the King goes to fight for us against the French, and governs the Parliament, and makes laws. But I cannot tell what a Philosopher's business is. Do they do any thing else besides making Almanacks and gold?”
“Yes,” said William, “they read the stars.”
“And what do they read there?”
“What neither thou nor I can understand, Daniel,” replied the father, “however nearly it may concern us!”
A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY.
A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY.
That grave reply produced a short pause. It was broken by the boy, who said returning to the subject, “I have been thinking, Father, that it is not a good thing to be a Philosopher.”
“And what, my Son, has led thee to that thought?”
“What I have read at the end of the Dictionary, Father. There was one Philosopher that was pounded in a mortar.”
“That Daniel,” said the Father, “could neither have been the Philosopher's fault nor his choice.”
“But it was because he was a Philosopher, my lad,” said Guy, “that he bore it so bravely, and said, beat on, you can only bruise the shell of Anaxarchus! If he had not been a Philosopher they might have pounded him just the same, but they would never have put him in the Dictionary. Epictetus in like manner bore the torments which his wicked master inflicted upon him, without a groan, only saying, ‘take care, or you will break my leg;’ and when the leg was broken, he looked the wretch in the face and said, ‘I told you you would break it.’”
“But,” said the youngster, “there was one Philosopher who chose to live in a tub; and another who that he might never again see any thing to withdraw his mind from meditation, put out his eyes by looking upon a bright brass basin, such as I cured my warts in.”
“He might have been a wise man,” said William Dove, “but not wondrous wise: for if he had, he would not have used the basin to put his eyes out. He would have jumped into a quickset hedge, and scratched them out, like the Man of our Town; because when he saw his eyes were out, he might then have jumped into another hedge and scratched them in again. The Man of our Town was the greatest philosopher of the two.”
“And there was one,” continued the boy, “who had better have blinded himself at once, for he did nothing else but cry at every thing he saw. Was not this being very foolish?”
“I am sure,” says William, “it was not being merry and wise.”
“There was another who said that hunger was his daily food.”
“He must have kept such a table as Duke Humphrey,” quoth William; “I should not have liked to dine with him.”
“Then there was Crates,” said the persevering boy; “he had a good estate and sold it and threw the money into the sea, saying, ‘away ye paltry cares! I will drown you, that you may not drown me.’”
“I should like to know,” quoth William, “what the overseers said to that chap, when he applied to the parish for support.”
“They sent him off to Bedlam, I suppose,” said the Mother, “it was the fit place for him, poor creature.”
“And when Aristippus set out upon a journey he bade his servants throw away all their money, that they might travel the better. Why they must have begged their way, and it cannot be right to beg if people are not brought to it by misfortune. And there were some who thought there was no God. I am sure they were fools, for the Bible says so.”
“Well Daniel,” said Guy, “thou hast studied the end of the Dictionary to some purpose!”
“And the Bible too, Master Guy!” said Dinah,—her countenance brightening with joy at her son's concluding remark.
“It's the best part of the book,” said the boy, replying to his schoolmaster; “there are more entertaining and surprizing things there than I ever read in any other place, except in my Father's book about Pantagruel.”
Τὸν δ᾿ ἀπαμειβόμενος.
Τὸν δ᾿ ἀπαμειβόμενος.
The elder Daniel had listened to this dialogue in his usual quiet way, smiling sometimes at his brother William's observations. He now stroked his forehead, and looking mildly but seriously at the boy addressed him thus.
“My son, many things appear strange or silly in themselves if they are presented to us simply, without any notice when and where they were done, and upon what occasion. If any strangers for example had seen thee washing thy hands in an empty basin, without knowing the philosophy of the matter, they would have taken thee for an innocent, and thy master and me for little better; or they might have supposed some conjuring was going on. The things which the old Philosophers said and did, would appear, I dare say, as wise to us as they did to the people of their own times, if we knew why and in what circumstances they were done and said.
“Daniel, there are two sorts of men in all ranks and ways of life, the wise and the foolish; and there are a great many degrees between them. That some foolish people have called themselves Philosophers, and some wicked ones, and some who were out of their wits, is just as certain as that persons of all these descriptions are to be found among all conditions of men.
“Philosophy, Daniel, is of two kinds: that which relates to conduct, and that which relates to knowledge. The first teaches us to value all things at their real worth, to be contented with little, modest in prosperity, patient in trouble, equal-minded at all times. It teaches us our duty to our neighbour and ourselves. It is that wisdom of which King Solomon speaks in our rhyme-book. Reach me the volume!” Then turning to the passage in his favourite Du Bartas he read these lines:
“But let us look in the Bible:—aye this is the place.
“For in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtil, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good;
“Kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and going through all understanding, pure and most subtil spirits.
“For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness.
“For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence, flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can no defiled thing fall into her.
“For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.
“And being but one she can do all things; and remaining in herself she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God, and prophets.
“For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom.
“For she is more beautiful than the Sun, and above all the order of Stars: being compared with the light she is found before it.
“For after this cometh night: but vice shall not prevail against wisdom.”
He read this with a solemnity that gave weight to every word. Then closing the book, after a short pause, he proceeded in a lower tone.
“The Philosophers of whom you have read in the Dictionary possessed this wisdom only in part, because they were heathens, and therefore could see no farther than the light of mere reason sufficed to shew the way. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and they had not that to begin with. So the thoughts which ought to have made them humble produced pride, and so far their wisdom proved but folly. The humblest Christian who learns his duty, and performs it as well as he can, is wiser than they. He does nothing to be seen of men; and that was their motive for most of their actions.
“Now for the philosophy which relates to knowledge. Knowledge is a brave thing. I am a plain, ignorant, untaught man, and know my ignorance. But it is a brave thing when we look around us in this wonderful world to understand something of what we see: to know something of the earth on which we move, the air which we breathe, and the elements whereof we are made: to comprehend the motions of the moon and stars, and measure the distances between them, and compute times and seasons: to observe the laws which sustain the universe by keeping all things in their courses: to search into the mysteries of nature, and discover the hidden virtue of plants and stones, and read the signs and tokens which are shown us, and make out the meaning of hidden things, and apply all this to the benefit of our fellow creatures.
“Wisdom and knowledge, Daniel, make the difference between man and man, and that between man and beast is hardly greater.
“These things do not always go together. There may be wisdom without knowledge, and there may be knowledge without wisdom. A man without knowledge, if he walk humbly with his God, and live in charity with his neighbours, may be wise unto salvation. A man without wisdom may not find his knowledge avail him quite so well. But it is he who possesses both that is the true Philosopher. The more he knows, the more he is desirous of knowing; and yet the farther he advances in knowledge the better he understands how little he can attain, and the more deeply he feels that God alone can satisfy the infinite desires of an immortal soul. To understand this is the height and perfection of philosophy.”
Then opening the Bible which lay before him, he read these verses from the Proverbs.
“My son, if thou wilt receive my words,—
“So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding;
“Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
“If thou seekest after her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
“Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
“For the Lord giveth wisdom; out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.
“He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous; He is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.
“He keepeth the paths of judgement and preserveth the way of his Saints.
“Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgement and equity; yea, every good path.
“When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul;
“Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee,
“To deliver thee from the way of the evil.
“Daniel, my son,” after a pause he pursued, “thou art a diligent good lad. God hath given thee a tender and a dutiful heart; keep it so, and it will be a wise one, for thou hast the beginning of wisdom. I wish thee to pursue knowledge, because in pursuing it happiness will be found by the way. If I have said any thing now which is above thy years, it will come to mind in after time, when I am gone perhaps, but when thou mayest profit by it. God bless thee, my child!”
He stretched out his right hand at these words, and laid it gently upon the boy's head. What he said was not forgotten, and throughout life the son never thought of that blessing without feeling that it had taken effect.
ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS.
ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS.
Were it not for that happy facility with which the mind in such cases commonly satisfies itself, my readers would find it not more easy to place themselves in imagination at Ingleton a hundred years ago, than at Thebes or Athens, so strange must it appear to them that a family should have existed in humble but easy circumstances, among whose articles of consumption neither tea nor sugar had a place, who never raised potatoes in their garden nor saw them at their table, and who never wore a cotton garment of any kind.
Equally unlike any thing to which my contemporaries have been accustomed, must it be for them to hear of an Englishman whose talk was of philosophy moral or speculative not of politics; who read books in folio and had never seen a newspaper; nor ever heard of a magazine, review, or literary journal of any kind. Not less strange must it seem to them who if they please may travel by steam at the rate of thirty miles an hour upon the Liverpool and Manchester rail-way, or at ten miles an hour by stage upon any of the more frequented roads, to consider the little intercourse which in those days was carried on between one part of the kingdom and another. During young Daniel's boyhood, and for many years after he had reached the age of manhood, the whole carriage of the northern counties, and indeed of all the remoter parts was performed by pack-horses, the very name of which would long since have been as obsolete as their use, if it had not been preserved by the sign or appellation of some of those inns at which they were accustomed to put up. Rarely indeed were the roads about Ingleton marked by any other wheels than those of its indigenous carts.
That little town however obtained considerable celebrity in those days as being the home and head quarters of Rowland Dixon, the Gesticulator Maximus, or Puppet-show-master-general, of the North; a person not less eminent in his line than Powel whom the Spectator has immortalized.
My readers must not form their notion of Rowland Dixon's company from the ambulatory puppet shows which of late years have added new sights and sounds to the spectacles and cries of London. Far be it from me to depreciate those peripatetic street exhibitions, which you may have before your window at a call, and by which the hearts of so many children are continually delighted: Nay I confess that few things in that great city carry so much comfort to the cockles of my own, as the well-known voice of Punch.
——the same which in my school-boy daysI listened to,——
——the same which in my school-boy daysI listened to,——
as Wordsworth says of the Cuckoo,
It is a voice that seems to be as much in accord with the noise of towns, and the riotry of fairs, as the note of the Cuckoo, with the joyousness of spring fields and the fresh verdure of the vernal woods.
But Rowland Dixon's company of puppets would be pitifully disparaged, if their size, uses or importance were to be estimated by the street performances of the present day.
The Dramatis Personæ of these modern exhibitions never I believe comprehends more than four characters, and these four are generally the same, to wit, Punch, Judy as she who used to be called Joan is now denominated, the Devil and the Doctor, or sometimes the Constable in the Doctor's stead. There is therefore as little variety in the action as in the personages. And their dimensions are such that the whole company and the theatre in which they are exhibited are carried along the streets at quick time and with a light step by the two persons who manage the concern.
But the Rowlandian, Dixonian, or Ingletonian puppets were large as life; and required for their removal a caravan (in the use to which that word is now appropriated),—a vehicle of such magnitude and questionable shape, that if Don Quixote had encountered its like upon the highway, he would have regarded it as the most formidable adventure which had ever been presented to his valour. And they went as far beyond our street-puppets in the sphere of their subjects as they exceeded them in size; for in that spherequicquid agunt homineswas included,—and a great deal more.
In no country and in no stage of society has the drama ever existed in a ruder state than that in which this company presented it. The Drolls of Bartholomew Fair were hardly so far below the legitimate drama, as they were above that of Rowland Dixon; for the Drolls were written compositions: much ribaldry might be, and no doubt was, interpolated as opportunity allowed or invited; but the main dialogue was prepared. Here on the contrary, there was no other preparation than that of frequent practice. The stock pieces were founded upon popular stories or ballads, such as Fair Rosamond, Jane Shore, and Bateman who hanged himself for love; with scriptural subjects for Easter and Whitsun-week, such as the Creation, the Deluge, Susannah and the Elders, and Nebuchadnezzar or the Fall of Pride. These had been handed down from the time of the old mysteries and miracle-plays, having, in the progress of time and change, descended from the monks and clergy to become the property of such managers as Powel and Rowland Dixon. In what manner they were represented when thus
may be imagined from a play-bill of Queen Anne's reign, in which one of them is thus advertised:
“At Crawley's Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived; with the addition of Noah's flood. Also several fountains playing water during the time of the play. The last scene does present Noah and his family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all the fowls of the air seen in a prospect sitting upon trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen the Sun rising in a most glorious manner. Moreover a multitude of Angels will be seen in a double rank, which presents a double prospect, one for the Sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen six Angels, ringing of bells. Likewise machines descend from above double and treble, with Dives rising out of Hell, and Lazarus seen in Abraham's bosom; besides several figures dancing jigs, sarabands and country dances, to the admiration of the spectators; with the merry conceits of Squire Punch, and Sir John Spendall.”
I have not found it any where stated at what time these irreverent representations were discontinued in England, nor whether (which is not unlikely) they were put an end to by the interference of the magistrates. TheAutos Sacramentales, which form the most characteristic department of the Spanish drama, were prohibited at Madrid in 1763, at the instance of the Conde de Teba, then Archbishop of Toledo, chiefly because of the profaneness of the actors, and the indecency of the places in which they were represented: it seems therefore that if they had been performed by clerks, and within consecrated precincts, he would not have objected to them. The religious dramas, though they are not less extraordinary and far more reprehensible, because in many instances nothing can be more pernicious than their direct tendency, were not included in the same prohibition; the same marks of external reverence not being required for Saints and Images as for the great object of Romish Idolatry. These probably will long continue to delight the Spanish people. But facts of the same kind may be met with nearer home. So recently as the year 1816, the Sacrifice of Isaac was represented on the stage at Paris: Samson was the subject of the ballet; the unshorn son of Manoah delighted the spectators by dancing a solo with the gates of Gaza on his back; Dalilah clipt him during the intervals of a jig; and the Philistines surrounded and captured him in a country dance!
That Punch made his appearance in the puppet-show of the Deluge, most persons know; his exclamation of “hazy weather, master Noah,” having been preserved by tradition. In all of these wooden dramas whether sacred or profane, Punch indeed bore a part, and that part is well described in the verses entitledPupæ gesticulantes, which may be found among theSelecta Poemata Anglorum Latina, edited by Mr. Popham.
In one particular only this description is unlike the Punch of the Ingleton Company. He was not anhomuncio, but a full grown personage, who had succeeded with little alteration either of attributes or appearance to the Vice of the old Mysteries, and served like the Clown of our own early stage, and theGraciosoof the Spaniards, to scatter mirth over the serious part of the performance, or turn it into ridicule. The wife was an appendage of later times, when it was not thought good for Punch to be alone; and when as these performances had fallen into lower hands, the quarrels between such a pair afforded a standing subject equally adapted to the capacity of the interlocutor and of his audience.
A tragic part was assigned to Punch in one of Rowland Dixon's pieces, and that one of the most popular, being the celebrated tragedy of Jane Shore. The Beadle in this piece, after proclaiming in obvious and opprobrious rhyme the offence which had drawn upon Mistress Shore this public punishment, prohibited all persons from relieving her on pain of death, and turned her out, according to the common story, to die of hunger in the streets. The only person who ventured to disobey this prohibition was Punch the Baker; and the reader may judge of the dialogue of these pieces by this Baker's words, when he stole behind her, and nudging her furtively while he spake, offered her a loaf, saying, “tak it Jenny, tak it!” for which act so little consonant with his general character, Punch died a martyr to humanity by the hangman's hands.
Dr. Dove used to say he doubted whether Garrick and Mrs. Cibber could have affected him more in middle life, than he had been moved by Punch the Baker and this wooden Jane Shore in his boyhood. For rude as were these performances, (and nothing could possibly be ruder,) the effect on infant minds was prodigious, from the accompanying sense of wonder, an emotion which of all others is at that time of life the most delightful. Here was miracle in any quantity to be seen for two-pence, and be believed in for nothing. No matter how confined the theatre, how coarse and inartificial the scenery, or how miserable the properties; the mind supplied all that was wanting.
“Mr. Guy,” said young Daniel to the schoolmaster, after one of these performances, “I wish Rowland Dixon could perform one of our Latin dialogues!”
“Aye Daniel,” replied the schoolmaster, entering into the boy's feelings; “it would be a grand thing to have the Three Fatal Sisters introduced, and to have them send for Death; and then for Death to summon the Pope and jugulate him; and invite the Emperor and the King to dance; and disarm the soldier, and pass sentence upon the Judge; and stop the Lawyer's tongue; and feel the Physician's pulse; and make the Cook come to be killed; and send the Poet to the shades; and give the Drunkard his last draught. And then to have Rhadamanthus come in and try them all! Methinks Daniel that would beat Jane Shore and Fair Rosamond all to nothing, and would be as good as a sermon to boot.”
“I believe it would indeed!” said the Boy: “and then to see MORSand NATURA; and have DAMNATUScalled up; and the Three Cacodæmons at supper upon the sirloin of a King, and the roasted Doctor of Divinity, and the cruel Schoolmaster's rump! Would not it be nice Mr. Guy?”
“The pity is, Daniel,” replied Guy, “that Rowland Dixon is no Latiner, any more than those who go to see his performances.”
“But could not you put it into English for him, Mr. Guy?”
“I am afraid Daniel, Rowland Dixon would not thank me for my pains. Besides I could never make it sound half so noble in English as in those grand Latin verses, which fill the mouth and the ears, and the mind,—aye and the heart and soul too. No, boy! schools are the proper places for representing such pieces, and if I had but Latiners enough we would have them ourselves. But there are not many houses, my good Daniel, in which learning is held in such esteem as it is at thy father's; if there were, I should have more Latin scholars;—and what is of far more consequence, the world would be wiser and better than it is!”
QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DR. GREEN AND HIS MAN KEMP. POPULAR MEDICINE, HERBARY, THEORY OF SIGNATURES, WILLIAM DOVE, JOHN WESLEY, AND BAXTER.
It was not often that Rowland Dixon exhibited at Ingleton. He took his regular circuits to the fairs in all the surrounding country far and wide; but in the intervals of his vocation, he, who when abroad was the servant of the public, became his own master at home. His puppets were laid up in ordinary, the voice of Punch ceased, and the master of the motions enjoyedotium cum dignitate. When he favoured his friends and neighbours with an exhibition, it wasspeciali gratiâ, and in a way that rather enhanced that dignity than derogated from it.
A performer of a very different kind used in those days to visit Ingleton in his rounds, where his arrival was always expected by some of the community with great anxiety. This was a certain Dr. Green, who having been regularly educated for the profession of medicine, and regularly graduated in it, chose to practice as an itinerant, and take the field with a Merry Andrew for his aid-de-camp. He was of a respectable and wealthy family in the neighbourhood of Doncaster, which neighbourhood on their account he never approached in his professional circuits, though for himself he was far from being ashamed of the character that he had assumed. The course which he had taken had been deliberately chosen, with the twofold object of gratifying his own humour, and making a fortune; and in the remoter as well as in the immediate purpose, he succeeded to his heart's content.
It is not often that so much worldly prudence is found connected with so much eccentricity of character. A French poetess, Madame de Villedieu, taking as a text for some verses the liberal maximque la vertu dépend autant du temperament que des loix, says,
He is indeed a fortunate man who if hemusthave a hobby-horse, which is the same as saying if hewillhave one, keeps it not merely for pleasure, but for use, breaks it in well, has it entirely under command, and gets as much work out of it as he could have done out of a common roadster. Dr. Green did this; he had not taken to this strange course because he was impatient of the restraints of society, but because he fancied that his constitution both of body and of mind required an erratic life; and that, within certain bounds which he prescribed for himself, he might indulge in it, both to his own advantage, and that of the community,—that part of the community at least among whom it would be his lot to labour. Our laws had provided itinerant Courts of Justice for the people. Our church had formerly provided itinerant preachers; and after the Reformation when the Mendicant Orders were abolished by whom this service used to be performed, such preachers have never failed to appear during the prevalence of any religious influenza. Dr. Green thought that itinerant physicians were wanted; and that if practitioners regularly educated and well qualified would condescend to such a course, the poor ignorant people would no longer be cheated by travelling quacks, and sometimes poisoned by them!
One of the most reprehensible arts to which the Reformers resorted in their hatred of popery, was that of adapting vulgar verses to church tunes, and thus associating with ludicrous images, or with something worse, melodies which had formerly been held sacred. It is related of Whitefield that he, making a better use of the same device, fitted hymns to certain popular airs, because, he said, “there was no reason why the Devil should keep all the good tunes to himself.” Green acted upon a similar principle when he took the field as a Physician Errant, with his man Kemp, like another Sancho for his Squire. But the Doctor was no Quixote; and his Merry Andrew had all Sancho's shrewdness, without any alloy of his simpleness.
In those times medical knowledge among the lower practitioners was at the lowest point. Except in large towns the people usually trusted to domestic medicine, which some Lady Bountiful administered from her family receipt book; or to a Village Doctress whose prescriptions were as likely sometimes to be dangerously active, as at others to be ridiculous and inert. But while they held to their garden physic it was seldom that any injury was done either by exhibiting wrong medicines or violent ones.
There was at one time abundant faith in those properties. The holy Shepherdess in Fletcher's fine pastoral drama, which so infinitely surpasses all foreign compositions of that class, thus apostrophises the herbs which she goes out to cull:
So abundantly was the English garden stocked in the age of the Tudors, that Tusser, after enumerating in an Appendix to one of his Chapters two and forty herbs for the kitchen, fourteen others for sallads or sauces, eleven to boil or butter, seventeen as strewing herbs, and forty “herbs branches and flowers for windows and pots,” adds a list of seventeen herbs “to still in summer,” and of five and twenty “necessary herbs to grow in the garden for physic, not rehearsed before;” and after all advises his readers to seek more in the fields. He says,
Elsewhere he observes that
1FLETCHER.
In a comedy of Lord Digby's, written more than a hundred years after Tusser's didactics, one of the scenes is laid in a lady's laboratory, “with a fountain in it, some stills, and many shelves, with pots of porcelain and glasses;” and when the lady wishes to keep her attendant out of the way, she sends her there, saying
And Tusser among “the Points of Housewifery united to the Comfort of Husbandry,” includes good housewifely physic, as inculcated in these rhymes;
Old Gervase Markham in his “Approved Book called the English Housewife, containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a complete woman,” places her skill in physic as one of the most principal; “you shall understand,” he says, “that sith the preservation and care of the family touching their health and soundness of body consisteth most in her diligence, it is meet that she have a physical kind of knowledge, how to administer any wholesome receipts or medicines for the good of their healths, as well to prevent the first occasion of sickness, as to take away the effects and evil of the same, when it hath made seizure upon the body.” And “as it must be confessed that the depths and secrets of this most excellent art of physic, are far beyond the capacity of the most skilful woman,” he relates for the Housewife's use some “approved medecines and old doctrines, gathered together by two excellent and famous physicians, and in a manuscript given to a great worthy Countess of this land.”
The receipts collected in this and other books for domestic practice are some of them so hyper-composite that even Tusser's garden could hardly supply all the indigenous ingredients; others are of the most fantastic kind, and for the most part they were as troublesome in preparation, and many of them as disgusting, as they were futile. That “Sovereign Water” which was invented by Dr. Stephens was composed of almost all known spices, and all savoury and odorous herbs, distilled in claret. With this Dr. Stephens “preserved his own life until such extreme old age that he could neither go nor ride; and he did continue his life, being bed-rid five years, when other physicians did judge he could not live one year; and he confessed a little before his death, that if he were sick at any time, he never used any thing but this water only. And also the Archbishop of Canterbury used it, and found such goodness in it that he lived till he was not able to drink out of a cup, but sucked his drink through a hollow pipe of silver.”
Twenty-nine plants were used in the composition of Dr. Adrian Gilbert's most sovereign Cordial Water, besides hartshorn, figs, raisins, gillyflowers, cowslips, marygolds, blue violets, red rose-buds, ambergris, bezoar-stone, sugar, aniseed, liquorice, and to crown all, “what else you please.” But then it was sovereign against all fevers; and one who in time of plague should take two spoonsfull of it in good beer, or white wine, “he might walk safely from danger, by the leave of God.”—The Water of Life was distilled from nearly as many ingredients, to which were added a fleshy running capon, the loins and legs of an old coney, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of mutton, four young chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve eggs, and a loaf of white bread, all to be distilled in white wine.
For consumption, there were pills in which powder of pearls, of white amber and of coral, were the potential ingredients; there was cockwater, the cock being to be chased and beaten before he was killed, or else plucked alive! and there was a special water procured by distillation, from a peck of garden shell-snails and a quart of earth worms, besides other things; this was prescribed not for consumption alone, but for dropsy and all obstructions. For all faintness, hot agues, heavy fantasies and imaginations, a cordial was prepared in tabulates, which were calledManus Christi:the true receipt required one ounce of prepared pearls to twelve of fine sugar, boiled with rose water, violet water, cinnamon water, “or howsoever one would have them.” But apothecaries seldom used more than a drachm of pearls to a pound of sugar, because men would not go to the cost thereof; and theManus Christi simplexwas made without any pearl at all. For broken bones, bones out of joint, or any grief in the bones or sinews, oil of swallows was pronounced exceeding sovereign, and this was to be procured by pounding twenty live swallows in a mortar with about as many different herbs! A mole, male or female according to the sex of the patient, was to be dried in an oven whole as taken out of the earth, and administered in powder for the falling evil. A grey eel with a white belly was to be closed in an earthen pot, and buried alive in a dunghill, and at the end of a fortnight its oil might be collected to “help hearing.” A mixture of rose leaves and pigeon's dung quilted in a bag, and laid hot upon the parts affected, was thought to help a stitch in the side; and for a quinsey, “give the party to drink,” says Markham, “the herb mouse-ear, steept in ale or beer; and look when you see a swine rub himself, and there upon the same place rub a slick-stone, and then with it slick all the swelling, and it will cure it.”
To make hair grow on a bald part of the head, garden snails were to be plucked out of their houses, and pounded with horse-leaches, bees, wasps and salt, an equal quantity of each; and the baldness was to be anointed with the moisture from this mixture after it had been buried eight days in a hot bed. For the removal and extirpation of superfluous hairs, a depilatory was to be made by drowning in a pint of wine as many green frogs as it would cover, (about twenty was the number,) setting the pot forty days in the sun, and then straining it for use.
A water specially good against gravel or dropsy might be distilled from the dried and pulverized blood of a black buck or he-goat, three or four years old. The animal was to be kept by himself, in the summer time when the sun was in Leo, and dieted for three weeks upon certain herbs given in prescribed order, and to drink nothing but red wine, if you would have the best preparation, though some persons allowed him his fill of water every third day. But there was a water of mans blood which in Queen Elizabeth's days was a new invention, “whereof some princes had very great estimation, and used it for to remain thereby in their force, and, as they thought, to live long.” A strong man was to be chosen, in his flourishing youth, and of twenty-five years, and somewhat choleric by nature. He was to be well dieted for one month with light and healthy meats, and with all kinds of spices, and with good strong wine, and moreover to be kept with mirth; at the month's end veins in both arms were to be opened, and as much blood to be let out as he could “tolerate and abide.” One handful of salt was to be added to six pounds of this blood, and this was to be seven times distilled, pouring the water upon the residuum after every distillation, till the last. This was to be taken three or four times a year, an ounce at a time. One has sight of a theory here; the life was thought to be in the blood, and to be made transferable when thus extracted.
Richard Brathwait, more famous since Mr. Haslewood has identified him with Drunken Barnaby, than as author of “the English Gentleman and the English Gentlewoman, presented to present times for ornaments, and commended to posterity for precedents,” says of this Gentlewoman, “herbals she peruseth, which she seconds with conference; and by degrees so improves her knowledge, as her cautelous care perfits many a dangerous cure.” But herbals were not better guides than the medical books of which specimens have just been set before the reader, except that they did not lead the practitioner so widely and perilously astray. “Had Solomon,” says the author of Adam in Eden, or the Paradise of Plants, “that great proficient in all sublunary experiments, preserved those many volumes that he wrote in this kind, for the instruction of future ages, so great was that spaciousness of mind that God had bestowed on him, that he had immediately under the Deity been the greatest of Doctors for the preservation of mankind: but with the loss of his books so much lamented by the Rabbins and others, the best part of this herbarary art hath since groaned under the defects of many unworthy authors, and still remains under divers clouds and imperfections.” This writer, “the ingeniously learned and excellent Herbarist Mr. William Coles,” professing as near as possible to acquaint all sorts of people with the very pith and marrow of herbarism, arranges his work according to the anatomical application of plants, “appropriating,” says he, “to every part of the body, (from the crown of the head, with which I begin, and proceed till I come to the sole of the foot,) such herbs and plants whose grand uses and virtues do most specifically, and by signature thereunto belong, not only for strengthening the same, but also for curing the evil effects whereunto they are subjected:—the signatures being as it were the books out of which the ancients first learned the virtues of herbs; Nature, or rather the God of Nature, having stamped on divers of them legible characters to discover their uses, though he hath left others without any, that after he had shewed them the way, they, by their labour and industry which renders every thing more acceptable, might find out the rest.” It was an opinion often expressed by a physician of great and deserved celebrity, that in course of time specifics would be discovered for every malady to which the human frame is liable. He never supposed, (though few men have ever been more sanguine in their hopes and expectations,) that life was thus to be indefinitely prolonged, and that it would be man's own fault, or his own choice, if he did not live for ever; but he thought that when we should thus have been taught to subdue those diseases which cut our life short, we should, like the Patriarchs, live out the number of our days, and then fall asleep,—Man being by this physical redemption restored to his original corporeal state.
2FORD.
He had not taken up this notion from any religious feeling; it was connected in him with the pride of philosophy, and he expected that this was one of the blessings which we were to obtain in the progress of knowledge.
Some specific remedies being known to exist, it is indeed reasonable to suppose that others will be found. Old theorists went farther; and in a world which everywhere bears such undeniable evidences of design in every thing, few theories should seem more likely to be favourably received than the one which supposed that every healing plant bears, in some part of its structure, the type or signature of its peculiar virtues: now this could in no other way be so obviously marked, as by a resemblance to that part of the human frame for which its remedial uses were intended. There is a fable indeed which says that he who may be so fortunate as to taste the blood of a certain unknown animal would be enabled thereby to hear the voice of plants and understand their speech; and if he were on a mountain at sunrise, he might hear the herbs which grow there, when freshened with the dews of night they open themselves to the beams of the morning, return thanks to the Creator for the virtues with which he has indued them, each specifying what those virtues were,le quali veramente son tante e tali che beati i pastori che quelle capessero. A botanical writer who flourished a little before the theory of signatures was started complains that herbal medicine had fallen into disuse; he says, “antequam chemia patrum nostrorum memoriâ orbi restitueretur, contenti vivebant ὅι τῶν ἰατρῶν κομψὸι και χαριὲστατοι pharmacis ex vegetabilium regno accersitis parum solliciti de Solis sulphure et oleo, de Lunæ sale et essentiâ, de Saturni saccaro, de Martis tincturâ et croco, de vitriolo Veneris, de Mercurio præcipitato, et Antimonii floribus, de Sulphuris spiritu et Tartari crystallis: nihilominus masculè debellabant morbos, et tutè et jucundè. Nunc sæculi nostri infelicitas est, quod vegetabilibus contemptim habitis, plerique nihil aliud spirant præter metallica ista, et extis parata horribilia secreta.”3The new theory came in timely aid of the Galenists; it connected their practice with a doctrine hardly less mysterious than those of the Paracelsists, but more plausible because it seemed immediately intelligible, and had a natural religious feeling to strengthen and support it.
3Petri Laurembergii Rostochiensis Horticultura—Præloquium, p. 10.
The Author of Adam in Eden refers to Oswald Crollius as “the great discoverer of signatures,” and no doubt has drawn from him, most of his remarks upon this theory of physical correspondence. The resemblance is in some cases very obvious; but in many more the Swedenborgian correspondences are not more fantastic; and where the resemblances exist the inference is purely theoretical.
Walnuts are said to have the perfect signature of the head; the outer husks or green covering represents thepericranium, or outward skin of the skull, whereon the hair groweth,—and therefore salt made of those husks is exceeding good for wounds in the head. The inner woody shell hath the signature of the skull, and the little yellow skin or peel, that of theduraandpia materwhich are the thin scarfs that envelope the brain. The kernel hath “the very figure of the brain, and therefore it is very profitable for the brain and resists poisons.” So too the Piony, being not yet blown, was thought to have “some signature and proportion with the head of man, having sutures and little veins dispersed up and down, like unto those which environ the brain: when the flowers blow they open an outward little skin representing the skull:” the piony therefore besides its other virtues was very available against the falling sickness. Poppy heads with their crowns somewhat represent the head and brain, and therefore decoctions of them were used with good success in several diseases of the head. And Lillies of the Valley, which in Coles's days grew plentifully upon Hampstead-heath, were known by signature to cure the apoplexy; “for as that disease is caused by the dropping of humours into the principal ventricles of the brain, so the flowers of this lilly hanging on the plants as if they were drops, are of wonderful use herein.”
All capillary herbs were of course sovereign in diseases of the hair; and because the purple and yellow spots and stripes upon the flowers of Eyebright very much resemble the appearance of diseased eyes, it was found out by that signature that this herb was very effectual “for curing of the same.” The small Stone-crop hath the signature of the gums, and is therefore good for scurvy. The exquisite Crollius observed that the woody scales of which the cones of the pine tree are composed, resemble the fore teeth; and therefore pine leaves boiled in vinegar make a gargle which relieves the tooth-ache. The Pomegranate has a like virtue for a like reason. Thistles and Holly leaves signify by their prickles that they are excellent for pleurisy and stiches in the side. Saxifrage manifesteth in its growth its power of breaking the stone. It had been found experimentally that all roots, barks and flowers which were yellow, cured the yellow jaundice; and though Kidney beans as yet were only used for food, yet having so perfect a signature, practitioners in physic were exhorted to take it into consideration and try whether there were not in this plant some excellent faculty to cure nephritic diseases. In pursuing this fantastic system examples might be shown of that mischief, which, though it may long remain latent, never fails at some time or other to manifest itself as inherent in all error and falsehood.
When the mistresses of families grounded their practice of physic upon such systems of herbary, or took it from books which contained prescriptions like those before adduced, (few being either more simple or more rational,) Dr. Green might well argue that when he mounted his hobby and rode out seeking adventures as a Physician-Errant, he went forth for the benefit of his fellow creatures. The guidance of such works, or of their own traditional receipts, the people in fact then generally followed. Burton tells us that Paulus Jovius in his description of Britain, and Levinus Lemnius have observed, of this our island, how there was of old no use of physic amongst us, and but little at this day, except he says “it be for a few nice idle citizens, surfeiting courtiers, and stall-fed gentlemen lubbers. The country people use kitchen physic.” There are two instances among the papers of the Berkeley family, of the little confidence which persons of rank placed upon such medical advice and medicinal preparations as could be obtained in the country, and even in the largest of our provincial cities. In the second year of Elizabeth's reign Henry Lord Berkeley “having extremely heated himself by chasing on foot a tame deer in Yate Park, with the violence thereof fell into an immoderate bleeding of the nose, to stay which, by the ill counsel of some about him, he dipt his whole face into a bason of cold water, whereby,” says the family chronicler, “that flush and fulness of his nose which forthwith arose could never be remedied, though for present help he had Physicians in a few days from London, and for better help came thither himself not long after to have the advice of the whole College, and lodged with his mother at her house in Shoe-lane.”—He never afterwards could sing with truth or satisfaction the old song,
A few years later, “Langham an Irish footman of this Lord, upon the sickness of the Lady Catherine, this Lord's wife, carried a letter from Callowdon to old Dr. Fryer, a physician dwelling in Little Britain in London; and returned with a glass bottle in his hand compounded by the doctor for the recovery of her health, a journey of an hundred and forty-eight miles performed by him in less than forty-two hours, notwithstanding his stay of one night at the physician's and apothecary's houses, which no one horse could have so well and safely performed.” No doubt it was for the safer conveyance of the bottle, that a footman was sent on this special errand, for which the historian of that noble family adds, “the lady shall after give him a new suit of cloaths.”
In those days, and long after, they who required remedies were likely to fare ill, under their own treatment, or that of their neighbours; and worse under the travelling quack, who was always an ignorant and impudent impostor, but found that human sufferings and human credulity afforded him a never-failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this: he did not say with the Romish priestpopulus vult decipi, et decipietur!for he had no intention of deceiving them; but he saw that many were to be won by buffoonery, more by what is calledpalaver, and almost all by pretensions. Condescending therefore to the common arts of quackery, he employed his man Kemp to tickle the multitude with coarse wit; but he stored himself with the best drugs that were to be procured, distributed as general remedies such only as could hardly be misapplied and must generally prove serviceable; and brought to particular cases the sound knowledge which he had acquired in the school of Boerhaave, and the skill which he had derived from experience aided by natural sagacity. When it became convenient for him to have a home, he established himself at Penrith, in the County of Cumberland, having married a lady of that place; but he long continued his favourite course of life and accumulated in it a large fortune. He gained it by one maggot, and reduced it by many: nevertheless there remained a handsome inheritance for his children. His son proved as maggotty as the father, ran through a good fortune, and when confined in the King's Bench prison for debt, wrote a book upon the Art of cheap living in London!