The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863

"For Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things that thou hast made, for thou didst not appoint or make anything hating it. For He made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon earth.

"For justice is perpetual and immortal.'

"We have looked upon the rainbow, and blessed Him that made it: for it was very beautiful in its brightness.'

"For by the greatness of the Beauty, and of the creature, the Creator of them may be seen so as to be known thereby.'

"It is good to give praise to the Lord: to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning, and thy truth in the night;

"Upon an instrument of ten strings, upon the psaltery, upon the harp with a solemn sound.

"For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works, and in the works of thy hand I shall rejoice.'

'Have mercy upon us for the sake of the Redeemer, whose Perfection crowns the universe, who has not disdained to give Himself to us, and for us: the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. Mercy for ourselves—and for those whom we have left on earth, we beseech Thee!'

Gently smiled the Virgin Mother, whose humble heart had cradled the Everlasting Love! 'All generations shall call her blessed,' for on that tender woman bosom rests that wondrous God-built arch spanning the awful Chaim between the sinful human and the Perfect Infinite! 'For He was born of a Virgin.'

The heart of Anselm throbbed through his garments white and pure; he loved his brothers, and feared that human art would be deemed vain and worthless in heaven. For the saints forget that God himself is the Great Artist!

Then was there silence in heaven, and the brothers knelt before the Throne.

The Father spoke:

'Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise, be thankful unto him, and bless his name: the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath conquered. He will give to him that overcometh to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the Paradise of God.'

The silence that ensued was the bliss of heaven!

As Rubi, the Angel of Beauty, advanced to greet the spirits whom he had left on the confines of chaos, the triumphant song burst from the young choir of angels: 'For they shall not hunger nor thirst any more; neither shall the sun fall on them or any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears from their fives.'

Joy! joy! for the soul of the musician! The heart of the Rose had broken while chanting the last Miserere, and she was again at his side to catch his first Hosanna!

'Angelo—Angelo—parting and death are only seeming!'

To the soul of the poet was given the highest theme, the splendor and love of the Eternal City, and power to join the scribes of heaven. And the painter looked upon the face of the Virgin, the strange lights, the forms of Cherubim and Seraphim, and the twelve gates and the golden streets of that city; 'which needeth not sun or moon to shine in it, for the glory of God hath enlightened it; and the Lamb is the light thereof.'

Who can imagine that region of supernal splendor, 'whose glories eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive'?

The strings of Angelo's heaven harp quivered as though stirred by the breath of God.

Then did he first truly discern the soul of that divine language whose form he had made known on earth.

Then arose 'as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying: Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.'

Loud rang the heaven harps: 'Holy—Holy—Holy! To Him that sitteth on the Throne, and to the Lamb, Benediction, and Honor, and Glory, and Power, forever and ever!'

UNUTTERED

 
                                Said a poet, sighing lowly,
                                As his life ebbed slowly, slowly,
And upon his pallid features shone the sun's last rosy light,
                                Shedding there a radiance tender,
                                Softened from the dazzling splendor
Of the burning clouds of sunset, gleaming in the west so bright,
Glancing redly, ere forever lost within the gloom of night:
 
 
                                'Gold and crimson clouds of even,
                                Kindling the blue vault of heaven,
Ye are types of airy fancies that within my spirit glow!
                                Thou, O Night, so darkly glooming,
                                And those brilliant tints entombing
In thy black and heavy shadows, thou art like this life of woe,
Prisoning all the glorious visions that still beat their wings to go!
 
 
                                'Oh, what brilliancy and glory
                                Had illumed my life's dull story,
Could those thoughts have found expression as within my soul they shone!
                                But though there like jewels gleaming,
                                And with golden splendor streaming,
Cold and dim their lustre faded, tarnished, like the sparkling stone
That, from out the blue waves taken, looks a pebble dull alone.
                                'For within my heart forever
                                Was a never-dying river,
Was a spring of deathless music welling from my deepest soul!
                                And all Nature's deep intonings,
                                Merry songs, and plaintive meanings,
Floated softly through my spirit, swelling where those bright waves stole,
Till the prisoning walls seemed powerless 'gainst that billowy rush and roll.
 
 
                                'Oh, the surging thoughts and fancies;
                                Oh, the wondrous, wild romances
That 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 salvation and damnation, and also concerning the safety and destruction of my father and mother: in the nights I frequently wept and prayed, and mourned, for fear my sins might offend God.' 'In the seventeenth year of my age my mother died.' The next year, 'by reason of my father's poverty, I was enforced to leave school, and so came home to my father's house, where I lived in much penury one year, and taught school one quarter of a year, until God's providence provided better for me. For the last two years of my being at school I was of the highest form of the school, and chiefest of that form. I could then speak Latin as well as English; could make extempore verses upon any theme.' 'If any scholars from remote schools came to dispute, I was ringleader to dispute with them.' 'All and every of those scholars, who were of my form and standing, went to Cambridge, and proved excellent divines; only I, poor William Lilly, was not so happy, fortune then frowning on my father's condition, he not in any capacity to maintain me at the university.'

So this poor scholar, first of his class, bright visions of the university, and of what might lie beyond, all fading into darkness, went down to his father's house in the country, where his acquirements were useless. He says: 'I could not work, drive plough, or endure any country labor; my father oft would say, 'I was good for nothing,' and 'he was willing to be rid of me." A sorrowful time for the poor young fellow, without any outlook toward a better. But at last, one Samuel Smatty, an attorney, living in the neighborhood, took pity on the lad, and gave him a letter to Gilbert Wright, of London, who wanted a youth who could read and write, to attend him. Thereupon Lilly, in a suit of fustian, with this letter in his pocket, and ten shillings, given him by his friends, took leave of his father, who was then in Leicester jail for debt, and set off for London with 'Bradshaw, the carrier.' He 'footed it all along,' and was six days on the way; spending for food two shillings and sixpence, and nothing for lodgings; but he was in good heart, I think, for almost the only joyous expression in his autobiography is this one, relating to this time: 'Hark, how the wagons crack with their rich lading!'

Gilbert Wright, who had been 'servant to the Lady Pawlet in Hertfordshire,' had married a widow with property, and lived afterward 'on his annual rents;' or on his wife's, and 'was of no calling or profession.' This man had real need of a servant who could read and write, for he himself could do neither; but he was, however, 'a man of excellent natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very rationally and to the purpose.' Lilly was kindly received by Master Wright, who found, it seems, employment enough for him. 'My work was to go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad; to make clean his shoes; sweep the street; help to drive bucks when he washed; fetch water in a tub from the Thames—I have helped to carry eighteen tubs of water in one morning;—weed the garden. All manner of drudgery I willingly performed.'

Mrs. Wright, who brought money to her husband, brought also a jealous disposition, and made his life uncomfortable. 'She was about seventy years of age, he sixty-six,' 'yet was never any woman more jealous of a husband than she!' She vexed more than one man, too, and her first husband had temptations to cut his own throat and escape from trouble so; but he, as we shall learn by and by, got some relief otherwise, and lived till death came by better means.

Tally had difficulty in keeping on good terms 'with two such opposite natures' as those of his master and mistress, that he managed it somehow, and says: 'However, as to the things of this world, I had enough, and endured their discontents with much sereneness. My mistress was very curious to know of such as were then called cunning, or wise men, whether she should bury her husband. She frequently visited such persons, and this begot in me a little desire to learn something that way; but wanting money to buy books, I laid aside these notions, and endeavored to please both master and mistress.'

This mistress had a cancer in her left breast, and Lilly had much noisome work to do for her; which he did faithfully and kindly. 'She was so fond of me in the time of her sickness, she would never permit me out of her chamber.' 'When my mistress died (1624) she had under her armhole a small scarlet bag full of many things, which one that was there delivered unto me. There were in this bag several sigils, some of Jupiter in Trine; others of the nature of Venus; some of iron, and one of gold, of pure virgin gold, of the bigness of a thirty-three shilling piece of King James coin. In the circumference on one side was engraven, Vicit Leo de Tribu Judæ Tetragrammation+: within the middle there was engraven a holy lamb. In the other circumference there was Amraphel, and three + + +. In the middle, Sanctus Petrus, Alpha and Omega.'

This sigil the woman got many years before of Dr. Samuel Foreman, a magician or astrologer; the same who 'wrote in a book left behind him,' 'This I made the devil write with his own hand, in Lambeth Fields, 1596, in June or July, as I now remember.' This sigil the woman got from the doctor, who was evidently a foreman among liars, for her first husband, who had been 'followed by a spirit which vocally and articulately provoked him to cut his own throat.' Her husband, wearing this sigil 'till he died, was never more troubled by spirits' of this kind of call; but on the woman herself it seems to have failed of effect, for though she too wore it till she died, she was continually tormented by an authentic spirit of jealousy—a torment to herself and to her husband.

After this mistress had gone, Lilly lived very comfortably, his 'master having a great affection' for him; and also a great confidence in him, it seems; for when the plague (1625) began to rage in London, the master went for safety into Leicestershire, leaving Lilly and a fellow servant to keep the house, in which was much money and plate, belonging to his master and others. Lilly was faithful to his charge in this fearful time, and kept himself cheerful by amusements. 'I bought a bass viol, and got a master to instruct me; the intervals of time I spent in bowling in Lincoln's Inn Fields with Watt, the cobbler, Dick, the blacksmith, and such-like companions.' Nor did he neglect more serious business, but attended divine service at the church of St. Clement Danes, where two ministers died in this time; but the third, Mr. Whitacre, 'escaped not only then, but all contagion following,' though he 'buried all manner of people, whether they died of the plague or not,' and 'was given to drink, so that he seldom could preach more than one quarter of an hour at a time.' This year of plague was indeed a fearful one in London, and Lilly says elsewhere, 'I do well remember this accident, that going in July, 1625, about half an hour after six in the morning, to St. Antholine's church, I met only three persons on the way, from my house over against Strand bridge, till I came there; so few people were there alive and the streets so unfrequented.' 'About fifty thousand people died that year;' but Lilly escaped death, though his 'conversation was daily with the infected.'²

Master Wright did not continue long a widower, but took to himself another wife, and a younger, who was of 'brown ruddy complexion,' and of better disposition than her predecessor in the household. Master Wright was probably a happy man for a time; but only for a short time; for in May, 1627, he died, and the estate, by agreement of the parties in it, was assigned to Lilly for payment of its debts. The trust was not misplaced; the debts were all paid, and the remainder of the estate, except an annuity of twenty pounds, which his master had settled on Lilly, he returned to the executors.

Mistress Wright, the widow, 'who had twice married old men,' had now many suitors; 'old men, whom she declined; some gentlemen of decayed fortunes, whom she liked not, for she was covetous and sparing;' 'however, all her talk was of husbands,' and, in short, William Lilly became the happy man; made happy within four months of the death of the old master. 'During all the time of her life, which was till October, 1633, we lived very lovingly; I frequenting no company at all; my exercises were angling, in which I ever delighted; my companions, two aged men.' 'I frequented lectures, and leaned in judgment to Puritanism; and in October, 1627, I was made free of the Salters' company of London.'

Up to this time, therefore, the history of William Lilly, so far as he has made it known, is briefly this: Born poor, the grandfather and father having wasted the family estates, he was sent by his mother, who intended him from his infancy for a scholar, to the school of Ashby-de-la-Zouch; where, at one time, he was in trouble about his soul and the souls of his parents; and he 'frequently wept, prayed, and mourned, for fear his sins might offend God.' But the mother died, the father got into prison for debt, and poor Lilly, who had made himself the best scholar in the school, could not go up to the university as he had hoped to do, but after a wretched year at his father's house, where he was accounted useless and an encumbrance, he had to become the servant of one who could neither read nor write, doing all kinds of drudgery. Serving faithfully, the much-enduring young man won the love and confidence of the old master and mistress, and at last married the young widow, who was a wholesome-looking woman, of brown ruddy complexion, and had property, which served, among other things, to make Lilly 'free of the Salters' company.' Not a bad history, certainly, if not one of the best: he was a thriving young man, not a complaining one; but one who accepted the conditions under which he was placed, and made the best of them; which is what all young men ought to do.

And now Lilly—being a man of some property and standing, without any profession or regular business, but with an inclination to the occult arts, begot in him probably by the folly of old Mistress Wright—tells us how he 'came to study astrology.' 'It happened on one Sunday, 1632, as myself and a justice of peace's clerk were, before service, discoursing of many things, he chanced to say that such a person was a great scholar; nay, so learned that he could make an almanac, which to me was strange: one speech begot another, till at last he said he could bring me acquainted with one Evans, who lived in Gunpowder alley, who formerly lived in Staffordshire, that was an excellent wise man, and studied the black art. The same week (after) we went to see Mr. Evans. When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was upon his bed—if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he lay.' 'He was the most saturnine man my eyes ever beheld either before I practised (astrology) or since: of middle stature, broad forehead, beetle browed, thick shoulders, flat nosed, full lips, down looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay footed;' 'much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye, or one mischief or another.' A very good description this, save that the shoulders of it are between the brow and nose: not a handsome man, certainly; a kind of white negro, we should say, and not the better for being white: nevertheless men of high rank came to see him, and readers who have made acquaintance with Sir Kenelm Digby will not be astonished to learn that he was one of them. He came with Lord Bothwell, and 'desired Evans to show them a spirit.' But 'after some time of invocation, Evans was taken out of the room, and carried into the fields near Battersea causeway, close to the Thames:' taken by the spirits, because the magician 'had not at the time of invocation made any suffumigation;' for spirits must always be treated gingerly. 'Sir Kenelm Digby and Lord Bothwell went home without any harm;' which was better than they deserved.

Lilly, after many lessons given him by this Evans, was doubtful about the black art, as he might well be; but, he says, 'being now very meanly introduced, I applied myself to study those books I had obtained, many times twelve or fifteen or eighteen hours a day and night: I was curious to discover whether there was any verity in the art or not. Astrology at this time, viz. 1633, was very rare in London; few professing it that understood anything thereof.' Lilly gives us next some account of the astrologers of his time; but the reader need form no further acquaintance of this kind; acquaintance with Lilly, who was the best of them, will be enough for him.

In October of this year, 1633, Lilly's wife died, and left him 'very near to the value of one thousand pounds sterling'—all she had to leave. He continued a widower 'a whole year,' which he, as that phrase implies, held to be a long time in such bereavement—and followed his studies in astrology very diligently. So diligently that he soon had knowledge to impart to others, and he 'taught Sir George Knight astrology, that part which concerns sickness, wherein he so profited that in two or three months he would give a very good discovery of any disease only by his figures.'

With a new wife, which he got the next year (1634), Lilly had £500 portion; but 'she was of the nature of Mars,' which is surely not a good nature in a wife. In that same year he, with some 'other gentlemen,' engaged in an adventure for hidden treasure: they 'played the hazel rod round about the cloyster,' and digged, in the place indicated, six feet deep, till they came to a coffin; but they did not open it, for which they were afterward regretful, thinking that it probably contained the treasure. Suddenly, while they were at this work, a great wind arose, 'so high, so blustering, and loud,' that all were frightened, 'and knew not what to think or do;' all save Lilly, who gave 'directions and commands to dismiss the dæmons,' and then all became quiet again. These doings Lilly did not approve, and says he 'could never again be induced to join in such kind of work.' He engaged, however, in another transaction of still worse character, which seems to have been even more unpleasant to him; for he says: 'After that I became melancholy, very much afflicted with the hypochondriac melancholy, growing lean and spare, and every day worse; so that in the year 1635, my infirmity continuing and my acquaintance increasing, I resolved to live in the country, and in March and April, 1636, I removed my goods unto Hersham (Horsham in Sussex, thirty-six miles from London), where I continued until 1641, no notice being taken who or what I was:' and in this time he burned some of his books, which treated of things he did not approve, and which he disliked to practise; for this man really had a conscience as good as the average, or even better: he was driven into solitude by the reproaches of it—or, perhaps, by the scoldings of a wife who 'was of the nature of Mars.'

Thus far we have followed Lilly's account of himself closely, using often his own words, because they give a more correct idea of the man than could be got from the words of another; but henceforth to the end, we will skip much and be brief. This astrologer did not always rely on his special art to discover things hidden, but used often quite ordinary means; sometimes such as are common to officers of detective police. His confessions of doings in that kind are candid enough, and we must say of his 'History of his Life and Times' that it is, on the whole, a simple, truthful statement of facts; not an apology for a life at all; for he seldom attempts to excuse or justify his actions, but leaves a plain record with the reader for good or evil.

A man, it is sometimes said, is to be judged by the company he keeps, and we will therefore say a few words of this astrologer's friends. Of men like William Pennington, of Muncaster, in Cumberland, 'of good family and estate,' introduced to Lilly by David Ramsay, the king's clockmaker, in 1634, who are otherwise unknown to us, we will say nothing. But the reader surely knows something of Hugh Peters, the Puritan preacher—who could do other things as well as preach: with him Lilly had 'much conference and some private discourses,' and once in the Christmas holidays, a time of leisure, Peters and the Lord Gray of Groby invited him to Somerset House, and requested him to bring two of his almanacs. At another time Peters took Lilly along with him into Westminster Hall 'to hear the king tried.' But the most influential friend, perhaps, was Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, a man well known to readers of English history as very prominent in the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. He was high steward of Oxford, member of the council of state, one of the keepers of the great seal, a man very learned in the law, who made long discourses to Oliver Cromwell on the matter of the kingship, and on other matters. He went to Sweden as Cromwell's ambassador, and was one of the great men of that time, or one of the considerable men. Sir Bulstrode, according to Ashmole, was Lilly's patron; and indeed the great man did befriend him long, and help him out of difficulties. The acquaintance began in this wise: Sir Bulstrode being sick, Mrs. Lisle, 'wife to John Lisle,' afterward one of the keepers of the great seal, came to Lilly, bringing a specimen of the sick man. Whereupon the astrologer, having inspected the specimen, 'set a figure,' and said, 'the sick for that time would recover, but by means of a surfeit would dangerously relapse within one month; which he did, by eating of trouts at Mr. Sands' house in Surrey.' Therefore, as there could no longer be any doubt of Lilly's skill, he, at the time of Sir Bulstrode's second sickness, was called to him daily; and though the family physician said 'there was no hope of recovery,' the astrologer said there was 'no danger of death,' and 'that he would be sufficiently well in five or six weeks; and so he was.' This Mrs. Lisle, who brought the specimen, being apparently one of Lilly's she friends, we will add that she made herself remarkable by saying at the martyrdom of King Charles I, in 1648, that 'her blood leaped within her to see the tyrant fall.' For this, and for other things, the woman was finally beheaded; it being impossible otherwise to stop her tongue; and I have no tear for her.