Amenities of Literature Part 56

[4] The 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 the COTTONIAN and the ASHMOLEAN Collections, for their learned founders anxiously recovered them.

The naval project appears in a singular volume, ent.i.tled "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.

[5] The 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 Superst.i.tieuses" for "La Baguette;" but, above all, a philosophical article by the scientific BIOT, in "Biog. Universelle," art. _Ayman Jacques_. [An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silver mines, 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 the _treasure 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.

[6] Sloane MSS., 3191.

[7] There 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 gla.s.s 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 ma.n.u.scripts of Dee's conferences with "the Spirits" were so carefully lodged in the Cottonian Collections.

[8] This superst.i.tion retains all its freshness in the East. A magician at Cairo recently,

"Taking in of SHADOWS WITH A GLa.s.s"--(_The Alchemist of Jonson_), has, I believe, been recorded by a n.o.ble lord; having startled the lookers-on with one shadow, painfully recognised, and another of a great _bibliophile_, who, seen in the gla.s.s, 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.

[9] In 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 of _his_ Edward Kelley.

[10] This 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 Chymic.u.m Britannic.u.m" of that lover of the occult sciences, ELIAS ASHMOLE.

[11] The 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 a.s.sured 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 trans.m.u.tation of metals would be generally practised;" a set of kitchen utensils in gold, he a.s.sures us, would save us from the deathly oxides of copper, &c.

[12] Harl. 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.

[13] This letter, from the Burleigh Papers, is printed by Strype.--_Annals_, iv. 3.

[14] We have several ma.n.u.script letters which pa.s.sed between DEE and STOWE. They show all the warmth of their literary intercourse. Dee offers his present aid, and promises his future a.s.sistance.

[15] The curious may find a copious narrative of the recovery of these ma.n.u.scripts, 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," by BIRCH, art. _Meric Casaubon_--Note B.

[17] This literary anecdote I derive from a ma.n.u.script and contemporary note in the printed copy at the British Museum.

[18] This office of "skryer" is ambiguous--no dictionary will a.s.sist us. "In the year before he died, 1607, Dee procured one Bartholomew Hickman to serve him _in the same manner_ as 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 ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script.

[19] It 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 a.s.serted that the six books of Mysteries transcribed from the papers of Dr. John Dee, by Elias Ashmole, Esqre., preserved in the Sloane Library, (Plutarch XVI., 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.

The confraternity 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 ent.i.tled "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 Andreae, 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 inst.i.tuted, or was to be inst.i.tuted. 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.[1] The 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, the consecrated symbol of Christianity, described the order's holy end; such notions might suit a mystical divine.[2] In 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 enn.o.bled 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 m.u.f.fled 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 Epitome of all arts and sciences."[4] This 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 of _rarum 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 circ.u.mference 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 G.o.d." The occult philosopher warded off this perilous stroke. "If I have said that G.o.d 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 s.e.xes; 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 t.i.tle of one of his treatises is "De Naturae 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 ap.r.o.ns 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 fict.i.tious statement,--or some credulous imagination. Fludd, indeed, as our plain Oxford antiquary shrewdly opineth, was "strangely profound in obscure matters."[5] A curious tract was published by FLUDD, to clear 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 the _sympathy_ of "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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ill.u.s.trious 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, that _the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound_ will heal the wound itself."[6] Indeed, Lord Bacon himself had discovered as magical a sympathy, for he presented Prince Henry, as "the first fruits of his philosophy, _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 a.n.a.logies 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 learned FLUDD conceal many profound and original views, and many truths not yet patent. It is enough that one of the deepest scholars, our ill.u.s.trious SELDEN, 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, Pere Mersenne, who denounced the Rosacrusian to Europe as a caco-magician, who had ensured for himself perdition throughout eternity.

Pere Mersenne, at Paris, stood at the head of the mathematical cla.s.s, 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. Pere 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;[7] and among Machiavel, Cardan, Campanella, and Vanini, appears the name of our pious 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 our credit, 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Fuller's amusing explanation of the term Rosa-crusian was written without any knowledge of the supposit.i.tious 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._

[2] The 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 Latin _Ros_, and, in the figure of a cross X, they trace the three letters which compose the word _Lux_--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.

[3] In 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.