the wondrous, wild romancesThat from morn till dewy twilight murmured through my haunted brain!
Thoughts as sweet as summer roses,
And with music's dreamiest closes,
Dying faintly into silence, from the full and ringing strain
That through all my spirit sounded with a rapture half of pain.
'How I longed those words to utter
That within my heart would flutter,
Beating wild against their prison, as its walls they'd burst in twain:
But it broke not, throbbing only,
Aching in a silence lonely,
Till my very life was flooded with a wild, delicious pain;
Kindled with a blaze illuming all the chambers of my brain!
'And to me death had been glorious,
If those burning words, victorious,
Had at last surged o'er their prison, bearing my departing soul!
Gladly were my heart's blood given,
If those bonds I might have riven;
If, with every crimson lifedrop that from out my full heart stole,
I might hear that swelling chorus upward in its glory roll.
'Sad and low my heart is beating!
Each pulsation still repeating
'All in vain those eager longings, all in vain that burning prayer.
See the breezes, 'mid the bowers,
Sigh above the fragrant flowers,
And from out those drooping roses, their heart-folded sweetness bear—
But no heaven-sent wind shall whisper thy soul-breathings to the air.'
'But upon my darkened vision
Comes a gleam of light Elysian;
And a seraph voice breathes softly—'Answered yet shall be that prayer!
For the spirit crushed and broken
By those burning words unspoken,
Soon shall hear them swelling, floating far upon the heavenly air,
And its deepest inmost visions shall have perfect utterance there!''
WILLIAM LILLY, ASTROLOGER
'A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,
That deals in destiny's dark counsels,
And sage opinions of the moon sells,
To whom all people, far and near,
On deep importances repair.
Do not our great reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news?
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken yet i' the air?
Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk two years hence—the great eclipse?
A total overthrow given the king
In Cornwall, horse and foot, next spring?'
Thus much, and more, wrote Butler in his 'Hudibras' of William Lilly, who was famous in London during that eventful period of English history from the time of Charles I, onward through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, to the Restoration: a time of civil commotions and wars, when political parties and religious sects, striving for mastery, or struggling for existence, made the lives and estates of men insecure, and their outlook in many respects a troubled one. Lifelong connections of families and neighbors were then rudely severed, and doubt, distrust, and discontent filled all minds, or most. Of this widespread commotion London was the active centre; and there a judgment of God, called the plague, had, in the year 1625, desolated whole streets. The timid, time-serving, faithless, a wavering host, peered anxiously into the future, eager to know what might be hidden there, so that they could shape their course accordingly for safety or for profit. Finding their own short vision inadequate, they turned for aid to the professional prophets of that troublous time—magicians who could call forth spirits and make them speak, or astrologers who could read the stars, and show how the great Disposer of events could be forestalled. These discoverers of the hidden, disclosers of the future, though branded now as impostors, were not therefore worse than their dupes; for in all ages the two classes, deceivers and deceived, are essentially alike; positives and negatives of the same thing. 'Men are not deceived; they deceive themselves.' Witness a great American nation, in these latter days, electing its ablest man to its highest place, and choosing between a Fremont and a Buchanan! But let us turn quickly to the seventeenth century again, and leave the nineteenth to its day of judgment.
Among the many astrologers dwelling in London at the time of which we treat, William Lilly was the most famous; and his life being of great interest to himself, he wrote an account of it for the instruction of mankind—or for some other purpose; and we will now get from it what we conveniently can.1
'I was born,' says this renowned astrologer, 'in the county of Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one part belongs under Lockington, in which stands my father's house (over against the steeple), in which I was born' on the first day of May, 1602. After this rather too minute account of his birthplace, Lilly tells us of his ancestors, substantial yeomen for many generations, who 'had much free land and many houses in the town;' but all the family estates were 'sold by my grandfather and father, so that now our family depends wholly on a college lease.' 'Of my infancy I can speak but little; only I do remember that in the fourth year of my age I had the measles.' 'My mother intended I should be a scholar from my infancy, seeing my father's backslidings in the world, and no hopes by husbandry to recruit a decayed estate.' Therefore, after some schooling at or near home, the boy, when eleven years old, was sent to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicester, to the school of Mr. John Brinsley, who 'was very severe in his life and conversation, and did breed up many scholars for the universities; in religion he was a strict Puritan.' 'In the fourteenth year of my age, about Michaelmas, I got a surfeit, and thereupon a fever, by eating beechnuts.' 'In the sixteenth year of my age I was exceedingly troubled in my dreams concerning my
The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Elias Ashmole, Esquire, and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves; containing first, William Lilly's History of his Life and Times, with Notes by Mr Ashmole; secondly, Lilly's Life and Death of Charles I; and lastly, the Life of Elias Ashmole, Esq., by way of Diary, etc. London, 1774.
