Volume 3 Part 8 (1/2)
PRESENT STATE OF ALCHYMY.
We have now finished the list of the persons who have most distinguished themselves in this foolish and unprofitable pursuit. Among them are men of all ranks, characters, and conditions; the truthseeking, but erring philosopher; the ambitious prince and the needy n.o.ble, who have believed in it; as well as the designing charlatan, who has not believed in it, but has merely made the pretension to it the means of cheating his fellows, and living upon their credulity. One or more of all these cla.s.ses will be found in the foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion, humiliating as it was to human intellect, was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves: if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may, perhaps, get half way towards it, and pick up some sc.r.a.ps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious brother of alchymy. Many valuable discoveries have been made in that search for the impossible, which might otherwise have been hidden for centuries yet to come. Roger Bacon, in searching for the philosopher's stone, discovered gunpowder, a still more extraordinary substance. Van Helmont, in the same pursuit, discovered the properties of gas; Geber made discoveries in chemistry which were equally important; and Paracelsus, amidst his perpetual visions of the trans.m.u.tation of metals, found that mercury was a remedy for one of the most odious and excruciating of all the diseases that afflict humanity.
In our day, no mention is made in Europe of any new devotees of the science. The belief in witchcraft, which is scarcely more absurd, still lingers in the popular mind: but none are so credulous as to believe that any elixir could make man live for centuries, or turn all our iron and pewter into gold. Alchymy, in Europe, may be said to be wholly exploded; but in the East it still flourishes in as great repute as ever. Recent travellers make constant mention of it, especially in China, Hindostan, Persia, Tartary, Egypt, and Arabia.
BOOK II.--FORTUNE TELLING.
And men still grope t' antic.i.p.ate The cabinet designs of Fate; Apply to wizards to foresee What shall and what shall never be.
Hudibras, part iii. canto 3.
In accordance with the plan laid down in the introduction to this volume, we proceed to the consideration of the follies into which men have been led by their eager desire to pierce the thick darkness of futurity. G.o.d himself, for his own wise purposes, has more than once undrawn the impenetrable veil which shrouds those awful secrets; and, for purposes just as wise, he has decreed that, except in these instances, ignorance shall be our lot for ever. It is happy for man that he does not know what the morrow is to bring forth; but, unaware of this great blessing, he has, in all ages of the world, presumptuously endeavoured to trace the events of unborn centuries, and antic.i.p.ate the march of time. He has reduced this presumption into a study. He has divided it into sciences and systems without number, employing his whole life in the vain pursuit. Upon no subject has it been so easy to deceive the world as upon this. In every breast the curiosity exists in a greater or less degree, and can only be conquered by a long course of self-examination, and a firm reliance that the future would not be hidden from our sight, if it were right that we should be acquainted with it.
An undue opinion of our own importance in the scale of creation is at the bottom of all our unwarrantable notions in this respect. How flattering to the pride of man to think that the stars in their courses watch over him, and typify, by their movements and aspects, the joys or the sorrows that await him! He, less in proportion to the universe than the all but invisible insects that feed in myriads on a summer's leaf, are to this great globe itself, fondly imagines that eternal worlds were chiefly created to prognosticate his fate. How we should pity the arrogance of the worm that crawls at our feet, if we knew that it also desired to know the secrets of futurity, and imagined that meteors shot athwart the sky to warn it that a tom-t.i.t was hovering near to gobble it up; that storms and earthquakes, the revolutions of empires, or the fall of mighty monarchs, only happened to, predict its birth, its progress, and its decay! Not a whit less presuming has man shown himself; not a whit less arrogant are the sciences, so called, of astrology, augury, necromancy, geomancy, palmistry, and divination of every kind.
Leaving out of view the oracles of pagan antiquity and religious predictions in general, and confining ourselves solely to the persons who, in modern times, have made themselves most conspicuous in foretelling the future, we shall find that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the golden age of these impostors. Many of them have been already mentioned in their character of alchymists. The union of the two pretensions is not at all surprising. It was to be expected that those who a.s.sumed a power so preposterous as that of prolonging the life of man for several centuries, should pretend, at the same time, to foretell the events which were to mark that preternatural span of existence. The world would as readily believe that they had discovered all secrets, as that they had only discovered one. The most celebrated astrologers of Europe, three centuries ago, were alchymists. Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dr.
Dee, and the Rosicrucians, all laid as much stress upon their knowledge of the days to come, as upon their pretended possession of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. In their time, ideas of the wonderful, the diabolical, and the supernatural, were rifer than ever they were before. The devil or the stars were universally believed to meddle constantly in the affairs of men; and both were to be consulted with proper ceremonies. Those who were of a melancholy and gloomy temperament betook themselves to necromancy and sorcery; those more cheerful and aspiring, devoted themselves to astrology. The latter science was encouraged by all the monarchs and governments of that age.
In England, from the time of Elizabeth to that of William and Mary, judicial astrology was in high repute. During that period flourished Drs. Dee, Lamb, and Forman; with Lilly, Booker, Gadbury, Evans, and scores of nameless impostors in every considerable town and village in the country, who made it their business to cast nativities, aid in the recovery of stolen goods, prognosticate happy or unhappy marriages, predict whether journeys would be prosperous, and note lucky moments for the commencement of any enterprise, from the setting up of a cobler's shop to the marching of an army. Men who, to use the words of Butler, did
”Deal in Destiny's dark counsel, And sage opinion of the moon sell; To whom all people far and near On deep importance did repair, When bra.s.s and pewter pots did stray, And linen slunk out of the way.”
In Lilly's Memoirs of his Life and Times, there are many notices of the inferior quacks who then abounded, and upon whom he pretended to look down with supreme contempt; not because they were astrologers, but because they debased that n.o.ble art by taking fees for the recovery of stolen property. From Butler's Hudibras and its curious notes, we may learn what immense numbers of these fellows lived upon the credulity of mankind in that age of witchcraft and diablerie. Even in our day how great is the reputation enjoyed by the almanac-makers, who a.s.sume the name of Francis Moore. But in the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, the most learned, the most n.o.ble, and the most conspicuous characters did not hesitate to consult astrologers in the most open manner. Lilly, whom Butler has immortalized under the name of Sydrophel, relates, that he proposed to write a work called ”An Introduction to Astrology,” in which he would satisfy the whole kingdom of the lawfulness of that art. Many of the soldiers were for it, he says, and many of the Independent party, and abundance of worthy men in the House of Commons, his a.s.sured friends, and able to take his part against the Presbyterians, who would have silenced his predictions if they could.
He afterwards carried his plan into execution, and when his book was published, went with another astrologer named Booker to the headquarters of the parliamentary army at Windsor, where they were welcomed and feasted in the garden where General Fairfax lodged. They were afterwards introduced to the general, who received them very kindly, and made allusion to some of their predictions. He hoped their art was lawful and agreeable to G.o.d's word; but he did not understand it himself. He did not doubt, however, that the two astrologers feared G.o.d, and therefore he had a good opinion of them. Lilly a.s.sured him that the art of astrology was quite consonant to the Scriptures; and confidently predicted from his knowledge of the stars, that the parliamentary army would overthrow all its enemies. In Oliver's Protectorate, this quack informs us that he wrote freely enough. He became an Independent, and all the soldiery were his friends. When he went to Scotland, he saw a soldier standing in front of the army, with a book of prophecies in his hand, exclaiming to the several companies as they pa.s.sed by him, ”Lo!
hear what Lilly saith: you are in this month promised victory! Fight it out, brave boys! and then read that month's prediction!”
After the great fire of London, which Lilly said he had foretold, he was sent for by the committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the causes of the calamity. In his ”Monarchy or no Monarchy,”
published in 1651, he had inserted an hieroglyphical plate, representing on one side persons in winding sheets digging graves; and on the other a large city in flames. After the great fire some sapient member of the legislature bethought him of Lilly's book, and having mentioned it in the house, it was agreed that the astrologer should be summoned. Lilly attended accordingly, when Sir Robert Brooke told him the reason of his summons, and called upon him to declare what he knew. This was a rare opportunity for the vain-glorious Lilly to vaunt his abilities; and he began a long speech in praise of himself and his pretended science. He said, that after the execution of Charles I, he was extremely desirous to know what might from that time forth happen to the parliament and to the nation in general. He, therefore, consulted the stars and satisfied himself. The result of his judgment he put into emblems and hieroglyphics, without any commentary, so that the true meaning might be concealed from the vulgar, and made manifest only to the wise; imitating in this the example of many wise philosophers who had done the like.
”Did you foresee the year of the fire?” said a member. ”No!” quoth Lilly, ”nor was I desirous: of that I made no scrutiny.” After some further parley the house found they could make nothing of the astrologer, and dismissed him with great civility.
One specimen of the explanation of a prophecy given by Lilly, and related by him with much complacency, will be sufficient to show the sort of trash by which he imposed upon the million. ”In the year 1588,”
says he, ”there was a prophecy printed in Greek characters, exactly deciphering the long troubles of the English nation from 1641 to 1660;”
and it ended thus:--”And after him shall come a dreadful dead man, and with him a royal G, of the best blood in the world, and he shall have the crown, and shall set England on the right way, and put out all heresies.” The following is the explanation of this oracular absurdity:--
”Monkery being extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the Lord General's name being Monk, is the dead man. The royal G. or C, [it is gamma in the Greek, intending C. in the Latin, being the third letter in the Alphabet] is Charles II, who for his extraction may be said to be of the best blood of the world.”
In France and Germany astrologers met even more encouragement than they received in England. In very early ages, Charlemagne and his successors fulminated their wrath against them in common with sorcerers. Louis XI, that most superst.i.tious of men, entertained great numbers of them at his court; and Catherine de Medicis, that most superst.i.tious of women, hardly ever took any affair of importance without consulting them. She chiefly favoured her own countrymen; and during the time she governed France, the land was overrun by Italian conjurors, necromancers, and fortune-tellers of every kind. But the chief astrologer of that day, beyond all doubt, was the celebrated Nostradamus, physician to her husband, King Henry II. He was born in 1503, at the town of St. Remi, in Provence, where his father was a notary. He did not acquire much fame till he was past his fiftieth year, when his famous ”Centuries,”
a collection of verses, written in obscure and almost unintelligible language, began to excite attention. They were so much spoken of in 1556, that Henry II. resolved to attach so skilful a man to his service, and appointed him his physician. In a biographical notice of him prefixed to the edition of his ”Vraies Centuries,” published at Amsterdam in 1668, we are informed that he often discoursed with his royal master on the secrets of futurity, and received many great presents as his reward, besides his usual allowance for medical attendance. After the death of Henry, he retired to his native place, where Charles IX. paid him a visit in 1564, and was so impressed with veneration for his wondrous knowledge of the things that were to be, not in France only, but in the whole world for hundreds of years to come, that he made him a counsellor of state, and his own physician, besides treating him in other matters with a royal liberality. ”In fine,”
continues his biographer, ”I should be too prolix were I to tell all the honours conferred upon him, and all the great n.o.bles and learned men that arrived at his house, from the very ends of the earth, to see and converse with him as if he had been an oracle. Many strangers, in fact, came to France for no other purpose than to consult him.”
The prophecies of Nostradamus consist of upwards of a thousand stanzas, each of four lines, and are to the full as obscure as the oracles of They take so great a lat.i.tude, both as to time and s.p.a.ce, that they are almost sure to be fulfilled somewhere or other in the course of a few centuries; A little ingenuity like that evinced by Lilly, in his explanation about General Monk and the dreadful dead man, might easily make events to fit some of them.
Let us try. In his second century, prediction 66, he says,--'
”From great dangers the captive is escaped. A little time, great fortune changed. In the palace the people are caught. By good augury the city is besieged.”
”What is this,” a believer might exclaim, ”but the escape of Napoleon from Elba--his changed fortune, and the occupation of Paris by the allied armies?”--Let us try again. In his third century, prediction 98, he says,-- ”Two royal brothers will make fierce war on each other; So mortal shall be the strife between them, That each one shall occupy a fort against the other; For their reign and life shall be the quarrel.”
Some Lillius Redivivus would find no difficulty in this prediction.
To use a vulgar phrase, it is as clear as a pikestaff. Had not the astrologer in view Don Miguel and Don Pedro when he penned this stanza, so much less obscure and oracular than the rest?
He is to this day extremely popular in France and the Walloon country of Belgium, where old farmer-wives consult him with great confidence and a.s.siduity.