And castles taken, yet i’ th’ air?Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk, two years hence, the last eclipse?’
The satirist then devotes himself to a minute exposure of Lilly’s pretensions:
‘He had been long t’wards mathematics,
Optics, philosophy, and statics;
Magic, horoscopy, astrology,
And was old dog at physiology;
But as a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
His own weight brings him down again,
And still he’s in the self-same place
Where at his setting out he was;
So in the circle of the arts
Did he advance his nat’ral parts ...
Whate’er he laboured to appear,
His understanding still was clear;
Yet none a deeper knowledge boasted,
Since old Hodge Bacon and Bob Grosted.’
(Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln (temp. Henry III.), whose learning procured him among the ignorant the reputation of being a conjurer.)
‘He had read Dee’s prefaces before
The Dev’l and Euclid o’er and o’er;
And all th’ intrigues ’twixt him and Kelly,
Lascus, and th’ Emperor, would tell ye;
But with the moon was more familiar
Than e’er was almanack well-willer;
Her secrets understood so clear,
That some believed he had been there;
Knew when she was in fittest mood
For cutting corns or letting blood ...’
Continuing his enumeration of the conjurer’s various and versatile achievements, the poet says he can—
‘Cure warts and corns with application
Of med’cines to th’ imagination;
Fright agues into dogs, and scare
With rhymes the toothache and catarrh;
Chase evil spirits away by dint
Of sickle, horse-shoe, hollow flint;
Spit fire out of a walnut-shell,
Which made the Roman slaves rebel;
And fire a mine in China here
With sympathetic gunpowder.
He knew whats’ever’s to be known,
But much more than he knew would own ...
How many diff’rent specieses
Of maggots breed in rotten cheese;
And which are next of kin to those
Engendered in a chandler’s nose;
Or those not seen, but understood,
That live in vinegar and wood.’
In the course of the long dialogue that takes place between Hudibras and the astrologer, Butler contrives to introduce a clever and trenchant exposure of the follies and absurdities, the impositions and assumptions, of the art of magic. With reference to the pretensions of astrologers, he observes that—
‘There’s but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war,
A thief and justice, fool and knave,
A huffing officer and a slave,
A crafty lawyer and pick-pocket,
A great philosopher and a blockhead,
A formal preacher and a player,
A learn’d physician and man-slayer;
As if men from the stars did suck
Old age, diseases, and ill-luck,
Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice,
Trade, travel, women, claps, and dice;
And draw, with the first air they breathe,
Battle and murder, sudden death.
Are not these fine commodities
To be imported from the skies,
And vended here among the rabble,
For staple goods and warrantable?
Like money by the Druids borrowed
In th’ other world to be restored.’
The character of Lilly is to some extent a problem, and I confess it is not one of easy or direct solution. As I have already hinted, it is always difficult to draw the line between conscious and unconscious imposture—to determine when a man who has imposed upon himself begins to impose upon others. But was Lilly self-deceived? Or was he openly and knowingly a fraud and a cheat? For myself I cannot answer either question in the affirmative. I do not think he was entirely innocent of deception, but I also believe that he was not wholly a rogue. I think he had a lingering confidence in the reality of his horoscopes, his figures, his stellar prophecies; though at the same time he did not scruple to trade on the credulity of his contemporaries by assuming to himself a power and a capacity which he did not possess, and knew that he did not possess. Despite his vocation, he seems to have lived decently, and in good repute. The activity of his enemies failed to bring against him any serious charges, and we know that he enjoyed the support of men of light and leading, who would have stood aloof from a common charlatan or a vulgar knave. He was, it is certain, a very shrewd and quick observer, with a keen eye for the signs of the times, and a wide knowledge of human nature; and his success in his peculiar craft was largely due to this alertness of vision, this practical knowledge, and to the ingenuity and readiness with which he made use of all the resources at his command.
NOTE.—DR. DEE’S MAGIC CRYSTAL.
Horace Walpole gives an amusing account of Kelly’s famous crystal, and of the useful part it played in a burglary committed at his house in Arlington Street in the spring of 1771. At the time, he was taking his ease at his Strawberry Hill villa, near Teddington, when a courier brought him news of what had occurred. Writing
