Curiosities of Literature Volume Iii Part 26

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon And all his issue for ever, Have a knock of a king, And incurable the wound.

[183] Ep. ad Att. Lib. x. Ep. 4.

[184] Ep. ad Att. Lib. vi. Ep. 6.

[185] This remarkable confession I find in Menage's "Observations sur la Langue Francoise," Part II. p. 110.

[186] [Greek: Okeia gar xunesei, kai oute promathon es auten ouden, out epimathon ton te parachrema di elachistes boules kratistos gnomon, kai ton mellonton epipleiston tou genesomenou aristos eikastes].--Thucydides, lib. i.

[187] Arist. Rhet. lib. vii. c. 5.

[188] This work was printed in London as a _first_ volume, but remained unpublished. This singularly curious production was suppressed, but reprinted at Paris. It has suffered the most cruel mutilations. I read with surprise and instruction the single copy which I was a.s.sured was the only one saved from the havoc of the entire edition. The writer was the celebrated Chateaubriand.

[189] "Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions." By S.T. Coleridge, Esq. 1807. Vol. i.

p. 214.

[190] _Public spirit_, and _public spirits_, were about the year 1700 household words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, but it might now puzzle us to find synonyms, or even to explain the very terms themselves.

[191] This extraordinary pa.s.sage is at the close of the third book of _Emile_, to which I must refer the reader. It is curious, however, to observe, that in 1760 Rousseau poured forth the following awful predictions, which were considered quite absurd:--"Vous vous fiez a l'ordre actuel de la societe, sans songer que cet ordre est sujet a des _revolutions inevitables_--le grand devient pet.i.t, le riche devient pauvre, le monarque devient sujet--_nous approchons l'etat de crise et du siecle des revolutions_. Que fera donc dans la ba.s.sesse ce satrape que vous n'aurez eleve que pour la grandeur? Que fera dans la pauvrete, ce publicain qui ne scait vivre que d'or? Que fera, depourvu de tout, ce fastueux imbecille qui ne sait point user de lui-meme?" &c. &c.

[192] This prediction of the end of the world is one of the most popular hallucinations, warmly received by many whenever it is promulgated. It had the most marked effect when the cycle of a thousand years after the birth of Christ was approaching completion; and the world was a.s.sured that was the limit of its present state.

Numerous acts of piety were performed. Churches were built, religious houses founded, and asceticism became the order of the day, until the dreaded year was completed without the accompaniment of the supernatural horrors so generally feared; the world soon relapsed into forgetfulness, and went on as before. Very many prophecies have since been promulgated; and in defiance of such repeated failures are still occasionally indulged in by persons from whom better things might be expected. Richard Brothers, in the last century, and more than one reverend gentleman in the present one, have been bold enough to fix an exact time for the event: but it has pa.s.sed as quietly as the thousandth anniversary noted above.

[193] One of the most effective prophecies against London, and which frightened for the time a very large number of its inhabitants, was that given out in the spring of 1750, after a slight shock of an earthquake was felt in London, and it was prophesied that another should occur which would destroy the town and all its inhabitants.

All the roads were thronged with persons flying to the country a day or two before the threatened event; and they were all unmercifully ridiculed when the day pa.s.sed over quietly. Walpole in one of his amusing letters speaks of a party who went "to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back--I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbis.h.!.+" Jokers who were out late amused themselves by bawling in the watchmen's voice, "Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake!" A pamphlet purporting to be "a full and true account" of this earthquake which never happened, was "printed for Tim Tremor, in Fleet-street, 1750," and made the vehicle for much personal satire. Thus it is stated that the "Commissioners of Westminster-bridge have ordered this calamity to be entered in their books, as a glorious excuse for the next sinking pier;" and that the town received some comfort upon hearing that "the Inns of Court were all sunk, and several orders were given that no one should a.s.sist in bringing any one lawyer above ground."

[194] An eye-witness of the great fire of London has noted the difficulty of obtaining effective a.s.sistance in endeavouring to stay its progress, owing to the superst.i.tion which seized many persons, because a prophecy of Mother s.h.i.+pton's was quoted to show that London was doomed to hopeless and entire destruction.

[195] "A Dark Lantherne, offering a dim Discovery, intermixed with Remembrances, Predictions, &c. 1652."

[196] Hooker wrote this about 1560, and he wrote before the _Siecle des Revolutions_ had begun, even among ourselves! He penetrated into this important principle merely by the force of his own meditation.

_At this moment_, after more practical experience in political revolutions, a very intelligent French writer, in a pamphlet, ent.i.tled "M. da Villele," says, "Experience proclaims a great truth--namely, that revolutions themselves cannot succeed, except when they are favoured by a portion of the GOVERNMENT." He ill.u.s.trates the axiom by the different revolutions which have occurred in his nation within these thirty years. It is the same truth, traced to its source by another road.

DREAMS AT THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY.

Modern philosophy, theoretical or experimental, only amuses while the action of discovery is suspended or advances; the interest ceases with the inquirer when the catastrophe is ascertained, as in the romance whose _denouement_ turns on a mysterious incident, which, once unfolded, all future agitation ceases. But in the true infancy of science, philosophers were as imaginative a race as poets: marvels and portents, undemonstrable and undefinable, with occult fancies, perpetually beginning and never ending, were delightful as the s.h.i.+fting cantos of Ariosto. Then science entranced the eye by its thaumaturgy; when they looked through an optic tube, they believed they were looking into futurity; or, starting at some shadow darkening the gla.s.sy globe, beheld the absent person; while the mechanical inventions of art were toys and tricks, with sometimes an automaton, which frightened them with life.

The earlier votaries of modern philosophy only witnessed, as Gaffarel calls his collection, "Unheard-of Curiosities." This state of the marvellous, of which we are now for ever deprived, prevailed among the philosophers and the _virtuosi_ in Europe, and with ourselves, long after the establishment of the Royal Society. Philosophy then depended mainly on authority--a single one, however, was sufficient: so that when this had been repeated by fifty others, they had the authority of fifty honest men--whoever the first man might have been! They were then a blissful race of children, rambling here and there in a golden age of innocence and ignorance, where at every step each gifted discoverer whispered to the few, some half-concealed secret of nature, or played with some toy of art; some invention which with great difficulty performed what, without it, might have been done with great ease. The cabinets of the lovers of mechanical arts formed enchanted apartments, where the admirers feared to stir or look about them; while the philosophers themselves half imagined they were the very thaumaturgi, for which the world gave them too much credit, at least for their quiet!

Would we run after the shadows in this gleaming land of moons.h.i.+ne, or sport with these children in the fresh morning of science, ere Aurora had scarcely peeped on the hills, we must enter into their feelings, view with their eyes, and believe all they confide to us; and out of these bundles of dreams sometimes pick out one or two for our own dreaming. They are the fairy tales and the Arabian Nights'

entertainments of science. But if the reader is stubbornly mathematical and logical, he will only be holding up a great torch against the muslin curtain, upon which the fantastic shadows playing upon it must vanish at the instant. It is an amus.e.m.e.nt which can only take place by carefully keeping himself in the dark.[197]

What a subject, were I to enter on it, would be the narratives of magical writers! These precious volumes have been so constantly wasted by the profane, that now a book of real magic requires some to find it, as well as a great magician to use it. Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great, as he is erroneously styled--for this sage only derived this enviable epithet from his surname _De Groot_, as did Hugo Grotius--this sage, in his "Admirable Secrets," delivers his opinion that these books of magic should be most preciously preserved; for, he prophetically added, the time is arriving when they would be understood! It seems they were not intelligible in the thirteenth century; but if Albertus has not miscalculated, in the present day they may be! Magical terms with talismanic figures may yet conceal many a secret; gunpowder came down to us in a sort of anagram, and the kaleidoscope, with all its interminable multiplications of forms, lay at hand for two centuries in Baptista Porta's "Natural Magic." The abbot Trithemius, in a confidential letter, happened to call himself a magician, perhaps at the moment he thought himself one, and sent three or four leaves stuffed with the names of devils and with their evocations. At the death of his friend these leaves fell into the unworthy hands of the prior, who was so frightened on the first glance at the diabolical nomenclature, that he raised the country against the abbot, and Trithemius was nearly a lost man! Yet, after all, this evocation of devils has reached us in his "Steganographia," and proves to be only one of this ingenious abbot's polygraphic attempts at _secret writing_; for he had flattered himself that he had invented a mode of concealing his thoughts from all the world, while he communicated them to a friend. Roger Bacon promised to raise thunder and lightning, and disperse clouds by dissolving them into rain. The first magical process has been obtained by Franklin; and the other, of far more use to our agriculturists, may perchance be found lurking in some corner which has been overlooked in the "Opus majus" of our "Doctor mirabilis." Do we laugh at their magical works of art? Are we ourselves such indifferent artists? Cornelius Agrippa, before he wrote his "Vanity of the Arts and Sciences," intended to reduce into a system and method the secret of communicating with spirits and demons.[198] On good authority, that of Porphyrius, Psellus, Plotinus, Jamblichus--and on better, were it necessary to allege it--he was well a.s.sured that the upper regions of the air swarmed with what the Greeks called _daemones_, just as our lower atmosphere is full of birds, our waters of fish, and our earth of insects. Yet this occult philosopher, who knew perfectly eight languages, and married two wives, with whom he had never exchanged a harsh word in any of them, was everywhere avoided as having by his side, for his companion, a personage no less than a demon! This was a great black dog, whom he suffered to stretch himself out among his magical ma.n.u.scripts, or lie on his bed, often kissing and patting him, and feeding him on choice morsels. Yet for this would Paulus Jovius and all the world have had him put to the ordeal of fire and f.a.got! The truth was afterwards boldly a.s.serted by Wierus, his learned domestic, who believed that his master's dog was really nothing more than what he appeared! "I believe," says he, "that he was a real natural dog; he was indeed black, but of a moderate size, and I have often led him by a string, and called him by the French name Agrippa had given him, Monsieur! and he had a female who was called Mademoiselle! I wonder how authors of such great character should write so absurdly on his vanis.h.i.+ng at his death, n.o.body knows how!" But as it is probable that Monsieur and Mademoiselle must have generated some puppy demons, Wierus ought to have been more circ.u.mstantial.

Albertus Magnus, for thirty years, had never ceased working at a man of bra.s.s, and had cast together the qualities of his materials under certain constellations, which threw such a spirit into his man of bra.s.s, that it was reported his growth was visible; his feet, legs, thighs, shoulders, neck, and head, expanded, and made the city of Cologne uneasy at possessing one citizen too mighty for them all. This man of bra.s.s, when he reached his maturity, was so loquacious, that Albert's master, the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas, one day, tired of his babble, and declaring it was a devil, or devilish, with his staff knocked the head off; and, what was extraordinary, this brazen man, like any human being thus effectually silenced, "word never spake more." This incident is equally historical and authentic; though whether heads of bra.s.s can speak, and even prophesy, was indeed a subject of profound inquiry even at a later period.[199] Naude, who never questioned their vocal powers, and yet was puzzled concerning the nature of this new species of animal, has no doubt most judiciously stated the question, Whether these speaking brazen heads had a sensitive and reasoning nature, or whether demons spoke in them? But bra.s.s has not the faculty of providing its own nourishment, as we see in plants, and therefore they were not sensitive; and as for the act of reasoning, these brazen heads presumed to know nothing but the future: with the past and the present they seemed totally unacquainted, so that their memory and their observation were very limited; and as for the future, that is always doubtful and obscure--even to heads of bra.s.s! This learned man then infers that "These brazen heads could have no reasoning faculties, for nothing altered their nature; they said what they had to say, which no one could contradict; and having said their say, you might have broken the head for anything more that you could have got out of it. Had they had any life in them, would they not have moved as well as spoken? Life itself is but motion, but they had no lungs, no spleen; and, in fact, though they spoke, they had no tongue. Was a devil in them? I think not.

Yet why should men have taken all this trouble to make, not a man, but a trumpet?"

Our profound philosopher was right not to agitate the question whether these brazen heads had ever spoken. Why should not a man of bra.s.s speak, since a doll can whisper, a statue play chess,[200] and bra.s.s ducks have performed the whole process of digestion?[201] Another magical invention has been ridiculed with equal reason. A magician was annoyed, as philosophers still are, by pa.s.sengers in the street; and he, particularly so, by having horses led to drink under his window. He made a magical horse of wood, according to one of the books of Hermes, which perfectly answered its purpose, by frightening away the horses, or rather the grooms! the wooden horse, no doubt, gave some palpable kick.

The same magical story might have been told of Dr. Franklin, who finding that under his window the pa.s.sengers had discovered a spot which they made too convenient for themselves, he charged it with his newly-discovered electrical fire. After a few remarkable incidents had occurred, which at a former period would have lodged the great discoverer of electricity in the Inquisition, the modern magician succeeded just as well as the ancient, who had the advantage of conning over the books of Hermes. Instead of ridiculing these works of magic, let us rather become magicians ourselves!

The works of the ancient alchemists have afforded numberless discoveries to modern chemists: nor is even their grand operation despaired of. If they have of late not been so renowned, this has arisen from a want of what Ashmole calls "apertness;" a qualification early inculcated among these illuminated sages. We find authentic accounts of some who have lived three centuries, with tolerable complexions, possessed of nothing but a crucible and a bellows! but they were so unnecessarily mysterious, that whenever such a person was discovered, he was sure in an instant to disappear, and was never afterwards heard of.

In the "Liber Patris Sapientiae" this selfish cautiousness is all along impressed on the student for the accomplishment of the great mystery. In the commentary on this precious work of the alchemist Norton, who counsels,

Be thou in a place secret, by thyself alone, That no man see or hear what thou shalt say or done.

Trust not thy friend too much wheresoe'er thou go, For he thou trustest best, sometyme may be thy foe;

Ashmole observes, that "Norton gives exceeding good advice to the student in this science where he bids him be secret in the carrying on of his studies and operations, and not to let any one know of his undertakings but his good angel and himself:" and such a close and retired breast had Norton's master, who,

When men disputed _of colours of the rose_, He would not speak, but kept himself full close!

We regret that by each leaving all his knowledge to "his good angel and himself," it has happened that "the good angels" have kept it all to themselves!

It cannot, however, be denied, that if they could not always extract gold out of lead, they sometimes succeeded in was.h.i.+ng away the pimples on ladies' faces, notwithstanding that Sir Kenelm Digby poisoned his most beautiful lady, because, as Sancho would have said, he was one of those who would "have his bread whiter than the finest wheaten." Van Helmont, who could not succeed in discovering the true elixir of life, however hit on the spirit of hartshorn, which for a good while he considered was the wonderful elixir itself, restoring to life persons who seemed to have lost it. And though this delightful enthusiast could not raise a ghost, yet he thought he had; for he raised something aerial from spa-water, which mistaking for a ghost, he gave it that very name; a name which we still retain in _gas_, from the German _geist_, or ghost! Paracelsus carried the tiny spirits about him in the hilt of his great sword! Having first discovered the qualities of laudanum, this ill.u.s.trious quack made use of it as an universal remedy, and distributed it in the form of pills, which he carried in the basket-hilt of his sword; the operations he performed were as rapid as they seemed magical.

Doubtless we have lost some inconceivable secrets by some unexpected occurrences, which the secret itself it would seem ought to have prevented taking place. When a philosopher had discovered the art of prolonging life to an indefinite period, it is most provoking to find that he should have allowed himself to die at an early age! We have a very authentic history from Sir Kenelm Digby himself, that when he went in disguise to visit Descartes at his retirement at Egmond, lamenting the brevity of life, which hindered philosophers getting on in their studies, the French philosopher a.s.sured him that "he had considered that matter; to render a man immortal was what he could not promise, but that he was very sure it was possible to lengthen out his life to the period of the patriarchs." And when his death was announced to the world, the Abbe Picot, an ardent disciple, for a long time would not believe it possible; and at length insisted, that if it had occurred, it must have been owing to some mistake of the philosopher's.

The late Holcroft, Loutherbourg, and Cosway, imagined that they should escape the vulgar era of scriptural life by reorganizing their old bones, and moistening their dry marrow; their new principles of vitality were supposed by them to be found in the powers of the mind; this seemed more reasonable, but proved to be as little efficacious as those other philosophers, who imagine they have detected the hidden principle of life in the eels frisking in vinegar, and allude to "the bookbinder who creates the book-worm!"

Paracelsus has revealed to us one of the grandest secrets of nature.

When the world began to dispute on the very existence of the elementary folk, it was then that he boldly offered to give birth to a fairy, and has sent down to posterity the recipe. He describes the impurity which is to be trans.m.u.ted into such purity, the gross elements of a delicate fairy, which, fixed in a phial, placed in fuming dung, will in due time settle into a full-grown fairy, bursting through its vitreous prison--on the vivifying principle by which the ancient Egyptians hatched their eggs in ovens. I recollect, at Dr. Farmer's sale, the leaf which preserved this recipe for making a fairy, forcibly folded down by the learned commentator; from which we must infer the credit he gave to the experiment. There was a greatness of mind in Paracelsus, who, having furnished a recipe to make a fairy, had the delicacy to refrain from its formation. Even Baptista Porta, one of the most enlightened philosophers, does not deny the possibility of engendering creatures which, "at their full growth, shall not exceed the size of a mouse;" but he adds, "they are only pretty little dogs to play with." Were these akin to the fairies of Paracelsus?[202]

They were well convinced of the existence of such elemental beings; frequent accidents in mines showed the potency of the metallic spirits, which so tormented the workmen in some of the German mines by blindness, giddiness, and sudden sickness, that they have been obliged to abandon mines well known to be rich in silver. A metallic spirit at one sweep annihilated twelve miners, who were all found dead together. The fact was unquestionable; and the safety-lamp was undiscovered.

Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that exquisite _Palingenesis_, as it has been termed from the Greek, or a regeneration: or rather the apparitions of animals and plants. Schott, Kircher, Gaffarel, Borelli, Digby, and the whole of that admirable school, discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the force of heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in nature; all is but a continuation, or a revival. The semina of resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood of man; the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, though smaller and paler than if they had been planted; unsubstantial and unodoriferous, they are not roses which grow on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions; and, like apparitions, they are seen but for a moment! The process of the _Palingenesis_, this picture of immortality, is described. These philosophers having burnt a flower, by calcination disengaged the salts from its ashes, and deposited them in a gla.s.s phial; a chemical mixture acted on it, till in the fermentation they a.s.sumed a bluish and a spectral hue. This dust, thus excited by heat, shoots upwards into its primitive forms; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined place, we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its ashes. The heat pa.s.ses away, the magical scene declines, till the whole matter again precipitates itself into the chaos at the bottom. This vegetable phoenix lies thus concealed in its cold ashes till the presence of heat produces this resurrection--in its absence it returns to its death. Thus the dead naturally revive; and a corpse may give out its shadowy re-animation when not too deeply buried in the earth. Bodies corrupted in their graves have risen, particularly the murdered; for murderers are apt to bury their victims in a slight and hasty manner. Their salts, exhaled in vapour by means of their fermentation, have arranged themselves on the surface of the earth, and formed those phantoms, which at night have often terrified the pa.s.sing spectator, as authentic history witnesses.

They have opened the graves of the phantom, and discovered the bleeding corpse beneath; hence it is astonis.h.i.+ng how many ghosts may be seen at night, after a recent battle, standing over their corpses! On the same principle, my old philosopher Gaffarel conjectures on the raining of frogs; but these frogs, we must conceive, can only be the ghosts of frogs; and Gaffarel himself has modestly opened this fact by a "peradventure." A more satisfactory origin of ghosts modern philosophy has not afforded.

And who does not believe in the existence of ghosts? for, as Dr. More forcibly says--"That there should be so universal a _fame_ and _fear_ of that which never was, nor is, nor can be ever in the world, is to me the greatest miracle of all. If there had not been, at some time or other, true miracles, it had not been so easy to impose on the people by false.

The alchemist would never go about to sophisticate metals to pa.s.s them off for true gold and silver, unless that such a thing was acknowledged as true gold and silver in the world."

The pharmacopoeia of those times combined more of morals with medicine than our own. They discovered that the agate rendered a man eloquent and even witty; a laurel leaf placed on the centre of the skull fortified the memory; the brains of fowls and birds of swift wing wonderfully helped the imagination. All such specifics have now disappeared, and have greatly reduced the chances of an invalid recovering that which perhaps he never possessed. Lentils and rape-seed were a certain cure for the small-pox, and very obviously--their grains resembling the spots of this disease. They discovered that those who lived on "fair" plants became fair, those on fruitful ones were never barren: on the principle that Hercules acquired his mighty strength by feeding on the marrow of lions. But their talismans, provided they were genuine, seem to have been wonderfully operative; and had we the same confidence, and melted down the guineas we give physicians, engraving on them talismanic figures, I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. Naude, indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Naples.

Naude positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naude should have gone this length, giving the lie to so many authentic authors; and Naude's paradox is indeed as strange as his denial; he suspects the thing is not true because it is so generally told! "It leads one to suspect," says he, "as animals are said to have been driven away from so many places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from any one place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper his indignant feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox on its maker:--"As if, because of the great number of battles that Hannibal is reported to have fought with the Romans, we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether he fought any one with them." The reader must be aware that the strength of the argument lies entirely with the firm believer in talismans.

Gaffarel, indeed, who pa.s.sed his days in collecting "Curiosites inoues," is a most authentic historian of unparalleled events, even in his own times! Such as that heavy rain in Poitou, which showered down "pet.i.tes bestioles," little creatures like bishops with their mitres, and monks with their capuchins over their heads; it is true, afterwards they all turned into b.u.t.terflies!

The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were the baby-houses of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members of "The Society of Arts," instead of flying in the air, collecting "a wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes;" or catching the disjointed syllables of an old doting astrologer. But these early dilettanti had not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the aforesaid "Society of Arts" as they received from what Cornelius Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls "things vain and superfluous, invented to no other end but for pomp and idle pleasure." Baptista Porta was more skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his day. Having founded the Academy _degli Oziosi_, he held an inferior a.s.sociation in his own house, called _di Secreti_, where none was admitted but those elect who had communicated some _secret_; for, in the early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably a fine genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and, what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and secrets are harmless, provided they are not believed: but his Holiness finding Porta's were, warned him that magical sciences were great hindrances to the study of the Bible, and paid him the compliment to forbid his prophesying. Porta's genius was now limited to astonish, and sometimes to terrify, the more ingenious part of _I Secreti_. On entering his cabinet, some phantom of an attendant was sure to be hovering in the air, moving as he who entered moved; or he observed in some mirror that his face was twisted on the wrong side of his shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he clapped his hand on it; or pa.s.sing through a darkened apartment a magical landscape burst on him, with human beings in motion, the boughs of trees bending, and the very clouds pa.s.sing over the sun; or sometimes banquets, battles, and hunting-parties were in the same apartment. "All these spectacles my friends have witnessed!" exclaims the self-delighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he had used, they were mortified with wonder; for he drank wine, and they only water! or on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would freeze his guests with cold air in the room; or, on a sudden, let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat tied on his back; shrill was the sound, and awful was the concussion; so that it required strong nerves, in an age of apparitions and devils, to meet this great philosopher when in his best humour. Albertus Magnus entertained the Earl of Holland, as that earl pa.s.sed through Cologne, in a severe winter, with a warm summer scene, luxuriant in fruits and flowers. The fact is related by Trithemius--and this magical scene connected with his vocal head, and his books _De Secretis Mulierum_, and _De Mirabilibus_, confirmed the accusations they raised against the great Albert for being a magician. His apologist, Theophilus Raynaud, is driven so hard to defend Albertus, that he at once a.s.serts the winter changed to summer and the speaking head to be two infamous flams! He will not believe these authenticated facts, although he credits a miracle which proves the sanct.i.ty of Albertus,--after three centuries, the body of Albert the Great remained as sweet as ever!

"Whether such enchauntments," as old Mandeville cautiously observeth, two centuries preceding the days of Porta, were "by craft or by nygromancye, I wot nere." But that they were not unknown to Chaucer, appears in his "Frankelein's Tale," where, minutely describing them, he communicates the same pleasure he must himself have received from the ocular illusions of "the Tregetoure," or "Jogelour." Chaucer ascribes the miracle to a "naturall magique!" in which, however, it was as unsettled whether the "Prince of Darkness" was a party concerned.

For I am siker that there be sciences By which men maken divers apparences Swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play.

For oft at festes have I wel herd say That tregetoures, within an halle large, Have made come in a water and a barge, And in the halle rowen up and doun.

Sometime hath semed come a grim leoun, And sometime floures spring as in a mede, Sometime a vine and grapes white and rede, Sometime a castel al of lime and ston, And whan hem liketh voideth it anon: Thus semeth it to every mannes sight.

Bishop Wilkins's museum was visited by Evelyn, who describes the sort of curiosities which occupied and amused the children of science. "Here, too, there was a hollow statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by a long concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at a good distance:" a circ.u.mstance which, perhaps, they were not then aware revealed the whole mystery of the ancient oracles, which they attributed to demons rather than to tubes, pulleys, and wheels. The learned Charles Patin, in his scientific travels, records, among other valuable productions of art, a cherry-stone, on which were engraven about a dozen and a half of portraits! Even the greatest of human geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal patronage, created a lion which ran before the French monarch, dropping _fleurs de lis_ from its s.h.a.ggy breast. And another philosopher who had a spinnet which played and stopped at command, might have made a revolution in the arts and sciences, had the half-stifled child that was concealed in it not been forced, unluckily, to crawl into daylight, and thus it was proved that a philosopher might be an impostor!

The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first inst.i.tution of the Royal Society, were of the most amusing cla.s.s. The famous Sir Samuel Moreland had turned his house into an enchanted palace. Everything was full of devices, which showed art and mechanism in perfection: his coach carried a travelling kitchen; for it had a fire-place and grate, with which he could make a soup, broil cutlets, and roast an egg; and he dressed his meat by clock-work. Another of these virtuosi, who is described as "a gentleman of superior order, and whose house was a knickknackatory,"

valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in "sowing salads in the morning, to be cut for dinner." The house of Winstanley, who afterwards raised the first Eddystone lighthouse, must have been the wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying in your way, up started a ghost before you; or if you sat down in a certain chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in.