Magick, 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 natʼral parts;
Till falling back still, for retreat,
He fell to juggle, cant, and cheat:
For as those fowls that live in water
Are never wet, he did but smatter:
Whate'er he labour'd to appear,
His understanding still was clear,

210

215

220

v. 209. But, as a dog that turns the spit, &c.] Mr. Prior's imitation of this simile is very beautiful; and I think an improvement

of it.

v. 224. Since old Hodge Bacon, &c.] *Roger Bacon, commonly called Friar Bacon, lived in the reign of our Edward the First, and for some little skill he had in the mathematicks, was by the rabble accounted a conjurer, and had the sottish story of the Brazen Head fathered upon him by the ignorant monks of those days.

Ibid.

Yet none a deeper knowledge boasted,
Since old Hodge Bacon, and Bob Grosted.
Th' Intelligible World he knew,

And all men dream on't, to be true:
That in this world there's not a wart
That has not there a counterpart;
Nor can there on the face of ground
An individual beard be found,
That has not in that foreign nation,
A fellow of the self-same fashion;

225

230

and Bob Grosted.] Bishop Grosted was Bishop of Lincoln, 20 Henry the Third, A. D. 1235. "He was suspected by the clergy to be a conjurer; for which crime (the printed notes observe) he was deprived by Pope Innocent the Fourth, and summoned to appear at Rome." But this is a mistake; for the Pope's antipathy to him was occasioned by his frankly expostulating with him (both personally and by letter) his encroachments upon the English church and monarchy. He was persecuted by Pope Innocent, but it is not certain that he was deprived, though Bale thinks he was: The Pope was inclined to have had his body dug up, but was dissuaded from it: He was a man of great learning, considering the time in which he lived, and wrote books to the number of almost two hundred. (See Bishop Godwin's Catalogue of Bishops, edit. 1615. p. 298, &c. Fabyan's Chronicle, part 2. folio 25.) He suppressed an idle practice in that church, in keeping the Feast of Fools, (which was likewise suppressed in the college of Beverley in the year 1391. See Mr. Anstis's Register of the Garter, vol. 1. p. 309.)— Quapropter vobis mandamus, in virtute obedientiæ firmiter injungentes: quatenus festum stultorum, cum sit vanitate plenum, et voluptatibus spurcum, Deo odibile, et dæmonibus amabile, de cætero in ecclesiá Lincoln. Die venerandæ solennitatis circumcisionis Domini, nullatenus permittatis fieri. Vide Opuscul. Ro. Grossetest, Append. Fascicul. Rer. expetendar, et fugiendar. epist. 32. p. 331. This feast was continued in France till about the year 1444. See an account of it, Mezeray's History of France, translated by Bulteel, p. 293.

v. 225. Th' Intelligible World he knew] See Norris's Ideal World. v. 233. So cut, so colour'd, &c.] Dr. Bulwer observes from Strabo, (Artificial Changeling, scen. 12. p.212.) that "in Cathea the men for

So cut, so colour'd, and so curl'd,
As those are in th' inferior world;
H' had read Dee's Prefaces before

The Dev'l and Euclid o'er and o'er;

235

an ornament dye their beards with many and divers colours, and many for the region bears admirable colours for the tincSee more, p. 213, 214.

of the Indians do it;

ture of their hairs."

v. 235, 236. H' had read Dee's Prefaces before-The Dev'l and Euclid o'er and o'er] Dee was a Welchman, and educated at Oxford, where he commenced doctor, and afterwards travelled into foreign parts, in quest of chymistry, &c. Lilly saith, that he was Queen Elizabeth's intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the Secretaries of State: That he was the most ambitious man living; and was never so well pleased, as when he heard himself stiled most Excellent.

In 1659 was printed in folio, A Relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some Spirits. It begins May 28, 1583, and ends September 7, 1607. It was published by Meric Casaubon, D. D. with a learned preface, in which we have the following account.

Dr. Dee, when young, was sought unto by two Emperors, Charles, and Ferdinand his brother and successor, as he saith in his letter to the Emperor Rodolph. Mr. Camden in 1572 calls him Nobilis Mathematicus. He dedicated his Monas Hieroglyphica to Maximilian, Ferdinand's successor in 1564. In 1595 he wrote an apology for himself to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, (Whitgift) in which he gives a catalogue of his works, in number fifty or fifty-one, unprinted; among which is Apologia pro fratre Rogero Bachone Anglo, in quá docetur nihil illum per dæmoniorum fecisse auxilia: and eight printed ones, three of which are probably alluded to by Mr. Butler, in the word Prefaces; Epistola præfixa ephemeridi Johannis Felde 1557. Epistola ad Commandinum, præfixa libello Machometi de superficierum divisionibus 1570; and his mathematical preface to Euclid 1570. At the end of his apology is a testimonial from the University of Cambridge, dated 14. Cal. April, 1548, whereby it appears, that he was M. A. et quod plurimam sibi et doctrinæ et honestatis laudem comparavit.

Above thirty years after that, his (pretended) commerce with angels began; the account of which was all wrote with his own hand, and communicated by Sir Thomas Cotton: He had a round stone like a chrystal, brought him (as he said) by angels, in which others saw appa

And all th' intrigues 'twixt him and Kelly,
Lescus and th' Emperor, wou'd tell ye:
But with the Moon was more familiar
Than e'er was almanack well-willer;

240

ritions, and from whence they heard voices, which he carefully wrote down from their mouths. He names at least twenty spirits: Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, and Uriel, are known names of good angels; the rest are too fantastical to be mentioned, particularly such as Ash, Il, Po, Va, &c. What kind all these were of, if they were any thing more than fancy, is plain, from a revelation of theirs, April 18, 1587, enjoining community of wives to Dee and Kelly, which injunction they most conscientiously obeyed.

He was so confident as to address himself to Queen Elizabeth and her Council often, and to King James and his, to the Emperor Rodolph, Stephen King of Poland, and several other princes, and to the Spanish Ambassador in Germany. He had thoughts of going to the Pope, had he not been banished Germany, as he thought, at the instance of the Nuncio, who seems to deny it in a letter of his to Dr. Dee, which may be worth reading.

Dee's chief seer was Edward Kelly, from whose reports the shapes and words of the apparitions were wrote.

Alasco Palatine of Poland, Pucci a learned Florentine, and Prince Rosemberg of Germany, the Emperor's Viceroy of Bohemia, were long of the society, and often present at their actions; as was once the King of Poland himself. After Kelly's death in 1587, Arthur Dee was admitted to be a seer, and reported to his father what he saw in the stone, but heard nothing from it. In 1607 one Bartholomew Hickman was operator, and both saw and heard: In that year Dee foretels what was become of stolen goods: There is no account when or how he died. (Mr. S. W.)

In Dee's account of himself (see Johan. Glastoniens. Chronic. 1726. a Tho. Hearne, Appendix, p. 504) he says, he was offered two hundred French crowns yearly, to be one of the French King's mathematicians; that he might have served five Christian Emperors, namely, Charles the Fifth, Ferdinand, Maximilian, Rodolph, and the then Emperor of Muscovy.; each of them offering him a stipend, from five hundred dollars yearly to one thousand, two thousand, three thousand: and that his Russian Majesty offered him two thousand pound sterling, yearly stipend,

Her secrets understood so clear,

That some believ'd he had been there;
Knew when she was in fittest mood,

For cutting corns or letting blood;

with a thousand rubles from his protector, and his diet out of his own kitchen; and he to be in dignity and authority amongst the highest sort of nobility and privy-counsellors. (See more ibid. from p. 490 to 556 inclusive.)

v. 238. Lescus] Albertus Lascus, Lasky, or Alasco, Prince Palatine of Poland, concerned with Dee and Kelly. See Casaubon's Preface, and Dee's Book of Spirits; and Append. Johan. Glastoniens. Chronic. P. 510.

v. 239. But with the Moon was more familiar.] As great a pretender 'tis plain he was, from what has been before observed, as old Foresight, (see Congreve's Love for Love, act 2. sc. 5.) who speaking to Sir Sampson Legend of his great knowledge in this way, says, "I tell you, I have travelled and travelled in the celestial spheres, know the signs and the planets, and their houses: can judge of motions direct and retrograde, of sextiles, quadrates, trines, and oppositions, fiery trigons, and aquatical trigons; know whether life shall be long or short, happy or unhappy; whether diseases are curable or incurable; if journies shall be prosperous, undertakings successful, or goods stolen recovered: I know

v. 240. Than e'er was almanack well-willer] See the term in Cleveland's Character of a London Diurnal, Works 1677. p. 103.

Had the Precisians of those times known, that the Church of Rome had taken the almanack into the number of her saints, they would never have suffered Booker to have been a licenser of almanacks, (as he was, see note on v. 179, 180.) or Lilly their famed astrologer, and almanack well-willer, to have published any thing under that title.

The learned Mr. Henry Wharton (in his preface to his tract, intitled, The Enthusiasm of the Church of Rome demonstrated, in some Observations upon the Life of Ignatius Loyola, London 1688) gives the following account:

"The Church of Rome (saith he) hath taken the Almanack into the number of the Saints, and canonized it under the name of St. Almanachius, solemnizeth its memory on the first day of January, and giveth to it an illustrious character in the Martyrology. This probably proceeded from the mistake of some ignorant monk, about the seventh or eighth age, who finding the word S. Almanacum (Sanctum Almanacum) written in the