The House of Doctor Dee

THE LIBRARY

THE GREAT WORLD is unrolled before me, and on my desk ride the blue dolphins that love young children and the sound of musical instruments; here are the serpents, coloured in green and grey, that live six hundred years and whose heads are changed into the shape of dogs or men at will; here are sea-dragons also, marked in red, that breathe fire into the water and so cause the oceans to boil; among them glide the gryphons, the whales, and all the tribes of lesser fish that sport upon the surface of the deep. Neptune with his trident rides high upon the horses of the sea, while by quicksands and whirlpools sit the mermaids with mirrors in their hands. Everything on earth has its fellow within the sea, yet upon the face of this other world I also view the galleons, the cross-sailed merchant ships, the square-rigged barques, and the fishing-vessels. Who could observe such things and not wish to travel with them? For this is a map of the entire world I have before me, theatrum orbis terrarum, upon which have been placed the cities, the mountains, the woods, the rivers and a vast number even of the towns which make up this lower world.

At the northern gate there stands Terra Septemtronalis Incognita where, it is said, dwell a tribe which hold the fire-stones in their mouths; in the southern extremity is conjectured to be another land of desolation. Yet not all is unknown: much has been discovered by means of good geometry and the voyages of recent years, so that the world is now marked out far beyond the confines of Bohemia or Tartary. Our navigators and cosmographers have traced the outlines of Atlantis, or the New World, where have been found the crocodile that lives for a thousand years and the quail that has the falling sickness: certain provinces or domains there we have named Norumbega, Nova Francia and Mocosa, in which latter part of the world has been found the horse that weeps and sighs like a man. There also is the agopithecus, the ape-like goat whose voice is very like a man's but not articulate, sounding as if one did speak hastily with indignation or sorrow.

Africa is underneath my hand, and within it Barbarie where live the lions that couple backwards and the panthers that have the odour of the sweetest spices. In Numidia, not so far distant, live men with the tails and heads of dogs, as well as the infamous yena that inhabit the tombs of the dead and eat only corpses. In Libya dwells the monoceros that feasts upon poison, and can make itself into male or female as it wishes; there are people here called Astomii, who live very long and neither eat nor drink but feed upon air and the smell of fruits. In Selenetide there are women who lay eggs and hatch them, from which come children fifty times greater than those which are generally born, and the far-off Land of the Negroes is inhabited by the basilisk that kills at a look, the hydrus of two heads, and the salamander of perfect coldness: I have not the reports close to hand, otherwise I would give them to you in this place. O bright theatre of the world, in which I might lose myself! Here I stand by a table in my library room while I fly in the air like the great artificer, Icarus, and find myself suddenly aloft in the yellow land of Samotra and on a wonderful path to Monacabo, Capasiasa, Taprobana, Bacornara and Birae. Then can I see the men whose bodies shine at night, and the phoenix tree which blooms for an hundred years and imparts an odour more perfumed than musk or civet or ambergris. On this far-off shore I view the wonders of the world beneath the stars, and see before me the creature that is born twice, crying out upon the top of a mountain and saying, 'I am the white of the black, and the red of the white, and the yellow of the sun, I tell truth and lie not'… at which I started and awakened, for I was in a dream of my own devising.

Yet in truth I care not if I sleep a little more, and there are times such as this when all my learning seems to be a dream in which my wits are only half awakened. Last night I drank too much wine with those flibber-jibber knaves, so this morning I am dumpish and drowsy and dazed. See, I am even entranced away from my proper studies and talk idly over this mappa mundi here before me — but yet, as I look down upon the banks and rocks, the countertides and whirlpools, all marked by the delicate engraver, I am reminded of another journey. It was one I made through all manner of weather, and through all the variety of ways and passages upon the earth.

It was after my time with Ferdinand Griffen that I set out upon this pilgrimage. Having understood all that he could teach me, and growing tired for the moment of scales and hour-glasses, I decided to visit the true scholars and practitioners of learning beyond our shores. I had one great mark at which to aim in the course of my travels, since I had a desire to see the birthplace of that master of wisdom, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast, known by the name of Paracelsus. He was born anno 1493 in the little town of Maria-Einsiedeln, not above two hours on foot from Zurich, and to reach that high country situated within the Alps I was forced to toil in dangerous damps and cold, in fear of violence by men or destruction by wild beasts, in lodgings of small ease and less comfort, almost bereaving life in order to come upon one of the fountains or sources of my life. But though it was a very painful and dangerous winter journey, it was made when I was young enough to scorn danger: I was drawn towards the lodestone of my art, Master Paracelsus, and no storm or hurricane (as I thought) would have the power to delay me.

I set forth in the dead of night and by wherry went to Greenwich, where I waited until there came a great tilt-boat to take me on to Gravesend. I took ship there, some miles distant from London, and carried aboard with me my own provisions for the journey, including biscuit, bread, beer, oil and vinegar; in my wallet I also had a good store of parchment, quill and ink (together with black powder to make more), so that I might keep a record of my travels into foreign lands. From there we sailed into the main, but on the third day of our sailing the merchant fleet of twelve vessels — our ship being one among them — was dispersed by a fog and tempest. I had with me my own pocket dial and compass of variation, willingly bequeathed to me by Mr Griffen, and I feared nothing. So I spoke readily enough with the captain of my vessel about the sea compass and the meridian compass, the astrolabe and the cross-staff, but when I discoursed with him upon eccentricity and parallax, he told me in a few words that he was master of ebbs or floods and not of instruments. This perplexed and dismayed me, thinking that only knowledge would lead us out of the tempest, but he clapped me upon the back and laughed.

'All is well, my star-shooter,' he said. 'I know my courses and my soundings, my landings and my marks, better than I know the lines upon my own hand.'

'But, good captain, surely you and your pilot know the elements of hydrography and astronomy?'

'In my head I have marked all the rocks and races. What more is there to say? Look, let me draw our path for you —'

With his finger upon an old deal table he mapped out our course, and I looked at him amazed. 'But what of the steadying and the midnighting of the stars? We are lost in this tempest, and only by expert conjecture will you find your way.'

He laughed again at my eagerness. 'Will the fixed stars or the planets lead me out from the countertides and whirlpools? I think not. Can you gaze at the sun and predict for me tempests or spouts? No, no, John Dee, you may lead a merry dance among the points of your arithmetic and geometry; but let me steer by my own light.'

I left him soon after, just as the tempest eased and the fog lifted, and I believe he still laughed after me. But who has the last laugh? You may plot a course by experience, but only knowledge brings you to a true and fitting destination. The eye may take you, sweet captain, across this little stretch of sea; but the astrolabe you condemn will impart to you the motions of the celestial orbs. It is not enough to move easily through the world: it is necessary to view it in the sun of understanding. Tell me. Is that not so?

On the fourth day at sea we came upon an island called the Holy-land (vulgarly Heiligland) and, not daring to enter the River Elve before the next morning, we struck our sails and suffered the ship to be tossed to and fro by the waves all that night — which mariners call lying at hull but which I call lying in foulness. Then on the next day we entered the river and landed at Stode, from which place we departed in a wagon, crossed the river, and travelled through many thick woods of oak to Hamburg. So began my entire winter's journey over land: by coach across marsh and sandy plains, by wagon through mountains and woods, on foot in hail and fog, by horse past lakes and groves, all the while taking my path by way of Hamburg and Leipzig, Witterburg and Dresden. I had made my way to Witterburg, quite contrary to all rules of progress and good travel, because it had been reported to me that some very curious and rare maps of the hitherto unknown world were lodged in the muniment room of the great cathedral church there. How could I not change my course, and reach out for the lands lost in the mist and darkness of our own ignorance?

Witterburg is a town filled with scholars, but I had with me a letter of introduction to the great astronomer Hegelius, a native of that place, and after we had dined together on fish and flesh he consented to accompany me to the cathedral, where his name was a key to unlock all the treasures contained therein. I might view the maps of the unknown world with ease enough, he continued, but did I not know that there was another mysterious region closer to hand? (We conversed in Latin, which I choose to translate here even though it may reach the eyes and ears of the vulgar.) He went on to tell me that the famous conjuror, Dr Faustus, lived in Witterburg about the year 1500; at my earnest entreaty, he very readily agreed to show me the house in which he had dwelt. We rose from the table after grace and, after some talk on the principles of magic, went on our way through the stinking streets of the town: yet it was a poor errand, since the old house of Faustus was no more than a fusty tenement with no relics of his art.

Hegelius, observing my downcast looks, then asked me if I would like to enter a wood adjoining the town, where it was said that Dr Faustus practised his magic art and where he died — or was rather fetched by the Devil as the sum of all his labours. Yes, I replied, yes. I had a sickness upon me from the conditions of the winter, but I was still so young that no circumstance could check me. We walked out beyond the gate of the town, where there were various heads carved out of stone, much like the bloody heads of malefactors on London Bridge, and pretty soon we came upon the boundary of the wood. I was well wrapped inside a fur coat, and with a cap upon my head lined with cats' skins after the Muscovy fashion, yet it was so cold within the domain of Faustus that I could not bring myself to speak. It was three of the clock in the afternoon, but already so dark beneath the canopy of trees that I could scarcely find the path. All the while Hegelius walked before me until he came up to the withered and blackened base of a tree, some six feet in diameter. 'Here it was,' he said, 'that Faustus stood and was taken away.' I jumped upon the remnant of this very ancient tree, and all at once the raw cold left my bones. At that same moment, also, the sickness departed from me. I do not know if the Devil had preserved some relic of his fire here, but I was exceedingly healthy and joyful when I followed Hegelius back through the gate of the town. There seemed to be some force beyond the world directing my steps, and now I wished to know everything. I wished to understand everything. Hegelius took me on to the cathedral where we looked with wonder upon certain ancient maps, but it seemed to me that I had already found a greater world within that ancient ruined tree. I say no more in this place.

And so, much enlivened and refreshed by my cure in the wood of Faustus, I travelled onwards. Following Witterburg and Dresden I came to the wooden pillar that divides the territory of the Saxon elector from the kingdom of Bohemia, and then, across sandy and stony hills, through valleys filled with snow and many stark woods, I came by coach into Prague; from Prague I travelled on to Nuremberg, being six days' journey, partly through plain, partly through rocky mountains, until we reached that city, which was seated in a barren sandy ground overcovered by frost and ice and falling snow. It was marvellous hard weather yet I was still one of the nomads, every day changing my dwelling in town and village, and living upon stinking beer, brown bread and no clean straw. I had little money upon me at this time, for Englishmen give to their younger sons less than in foreign parts they give to their bastards — but this is by the by.

From Nuremberg I travelled on to Augsburg and, having hired a horse from the city carrier there, I went into the west parts of Germany and so into the Low Countries. Passing through Lindow by the lake called Acronius, I crossed by boat to Costnetz upon the confines of Germany and Switzerland and then on to Schaffhausen. The swiftness of the Rhine made the miles seem short, but lord, what a journey was that! It almost marked the end of my quest. I hold water in no fear, knowing it to be so necessary an element in this sublunary world, but in our setting forth upon the boat it inclined so much on the other side that it was half full of the river; we sat wet to the knees, and the water still came beating in more and more. But there was worse. There was a great fall of the waters over a rock some fifty cubits downwards, passing with huge noise and ending all in foam, and I had a panic fear that we would be drawn that way and lost within the mighty turbulence. Yet I remembered Faustus, and prayed out loud to my own good genius or daemon; at that instant the boatman took off his ragged apparel and, with the rope of the vessel in his hands, swam towards the landing stairs while dragging the boat behind him. I took up the oar and, with the assistance of another traveller, we helped steer our vessel towards the land while ever being in danger of sinking: I believed myself close to dying then, but the knowledge of it seemed only to increase my strength. But at last we came upon the shore, and were tumbled out upon the dry land. What a restoration that was; I felt like a giant who had somehow survived the Flood. I put up my hands to pray, but all the time I had a vision of myself in the wood with a light shining about me; I tried to murmur the words of thanksgiving after danger, but I was as dumb as if I was lost in some great amazing. Then a dog barked and I recovered myself. It was time to move on, for I could not abide loitering: my true destination was only a little way before me.

For a while I was compelled to take my journey on foot, with more sighs than paces, and came in five hours with much pain to the little city of Eglisaw. I did nothing there but cry out for my bed, and dined in the old fashion with the cloth spread upon it. Next morning by twilight I began my journey once more, having the gates opened early for a little reward to the guardian, and in six hours' space (for the miles of Switzerland are so long that they reckon the journey on horse or foot by the hours and not by the miles) I traversed woods and hills and enclosed pastures before I caught sight at last of Maria-Einsiedeln within a long valley. A sudden short and vehement storm of rain delayed my progress for a little, but I wrapped my cloak around me and pressed my wallet against my chest to withstand the wind until I slowly descended to the very walls of the town where the great master, Paracelsus, first heard the harmonies of the heavens.

It lay on the northern side of Lake Tigerinus, being a cleanswept town where the buildings for the most part were of timber and clay; the streets were narrow enough, but within the walls there was a castle very strong and new ruinated. I soon found myself lodgings at the Sign of the Hand and enquired of the servant there, a pert young woman well tucked up in a red kirtle and a white garment like an Irish mantle, where I might find that house of Paracelsus which I so earnestly sought. She answered me easily enough in her native tongue, and at once I went out again into the freezing air. Since this was no mighty city I turned down two lanes and then came suddenly upon a little bridge crossing a stream which she had mentioned to me; and there, just beyond it, I saw a house-wall with the painted head of the magus. It was skilfully done, and showed him as ever without any beard. Above his image were daubed some of his words in Latin, which I translate thus: 'That which is above is also that which is below, and hence proceed wonders.' I looked up then at the ancient carved windows of this house, in the firm knowledge that one of them illuminated the infant figure of Paracelsus when first he looked upon the beauty of the sun and stood gazing at the dancing of the stars.

A door opened and a very ancient man came forward across the threshold, beckoning me to come in, come in. He spoke to me brokenly in the French tongue, thinking me a traveller from that country, and I replied in the same. 'Do you wish to see his clothes?' he asked me. 'We keep them here.' I assented to this and he led me through a passage, all the while wiping the rheum from his eyes and nose; then we ascended a worm-eaten stairway while he spoke his French into the air above me. 'The townsmen yearly keep a festival in his memory,' he went on, 'and on that day we show this apparel he was accustomed to wear.' I could not tell how they came by it, since Paracelsus left his native land at the age of ten in order to dispute with the German scholars, but I kept my peace. He led me into a chamber where there was placed a very large chest or casket. 'Our relics,' he said, opening it with much ceremony. 'It is reported that they have cured the sick with their very touch.' He held out towards me a hat and gown, which with due reverence I took in my hand for a moment. Then, much pleased at my modest demeanour, he conducted me around the chamber and showed to me an ink-pot, quill and pen-knife; furthermore he showed me some books, which were not so ancient neither, and a ring which (he said) was taken from the hand of Paracelsus after his death. He was about to show me more, but I had seen enough, and though straitened in means I found a silver coin for him. 'You should know,' he murmured as he led me once more towards the door, 'that we still have our spirits in Einsiedeln.'

'Spirits, sir?'

'Like those which the good master saw. We have many vaults and caves around us, and the men that work there with burning lamps are troubled by these — these —'

'But do you not recall what Paracelsus has taught us? That the spirits are all within us? That what exists in heaven and earth exists also within the human frame?'

He did not understand what I meant by this, so I wished him good day and came out into the narrow street. I was returning by way of the little bridge when a desperate cry made me look down at the bank of the stream: and there, sitting upon a boulder in an expanse of mud, was a young woman dressed in all the colours of the maypole, while her face and hands were as white as milk.

'What ails you,' I shouted in what I took to be her own tongue, 'to cry so?'

'I care not,' she replied. 'I am content. Have with you.' At that she cried and laughed in turn, but in so strange a manner that my own limbs began to shake. Then all at once her whole body seemed to be pulled to and fro with convulsive motions, so that she slid from the boulder on to the bank of the stream; her belly was lifted up and then depressed, while there was a great distortion of her hands and arms. All the time, too, she made many strange faces and mouths, sometimes holding her mouth open or awry with her eyes staring up at me. I was about to hurry on when she called out 'Du! Du!', which I knew to be an angelic name. Her voice at this time was loud and fearful, proceeding from the throat like a hoarse dog that barks, and when I looked down upon her I saw that she cast forth from her opened mouth an abundance of froth or foam. The noise and sound of her voice was expressed by the word 'chek, chek' or 'kek, kek' and then again by 'twish, twish' like the hissing of a violent squib. After a moment came forth another sound comparable to the loathsome noise that a cat makes when trying to cast her gorge, and indeed this young woman now vehemently strained to vomit.

'In nomine Deo — ' I began, wonderfully alarmed in case some devil possessed her.

'What? Is it you? Are you here?' She sent out these loud cries, as her body sank down upon the mud. Then her mouth being shut, and her lips closed, there came a voice through her nostrils that sounded very like 'Burn him. Burn him.' At that I moved as if to walk away when she cried out to me, 'Some news this day will make you very merry.' Then there was a silence and, when I turned, I observed her sitting upon the bank, weeping bitterly and in her extremity wringing her hands.

So I returned to my lodgings, weary and sad, having obtained nothing of what I sought and having found that which I did not seek. It was now about midday, and the sunbeams were glancing across my face as I lay upon my bed; but then I seemed to see a shadow passing by, and I sat up in a sudden sweat. At that moment I heard the words that my mother was dead. I rose and wrote the day and hour, with all the circumstances, upon a piece of paper which I kept about me all through my hard and perilous journey back to England. And yes, as it was written so would it be: on my return I heard the news of my mother's death, which had occurred on the same hour and day as I had witnessed the vision. She had expired after daily shaking with continual fever (thus in strange sort imitating the movements of the demoniac by the house of Paracelsus), but I was so elevated by my travels and by my increased thirst for learning that I cared not a fig for her. Had not Paracelsus himself left his own family to find wisdom elsewhere, and who was I to be bound down by such ties? I had a world of my own to conquer, and had no room at all for those who traced their inheritance only by blood.

So I gathered my books about me once more and took up lodgings in Carpenter's Yard, not far from Christopher Alley and to the south of Little Britain, near the covered sewer. Here the booksellers and printers kept their shops, and though there were stalls with such common stuff for mad-headed knaves as Sir Guy of Warwick or The Budget of Demands, I found many other books, printed pamphlets and discourses in diverse arts which furnished me with strange and profitable matter. I could have stayed and read here for ever, but within a few months I had hot words with the keeper of my lodgings. She was no more than an ale-wife but she dressed as if she were in the very eye of fashion, and such was her sauciness that once she came rashly upon me in my chamber without so much as knocking at my door. I was intent upon my studies, and since she could not perceive perfectly what I was doing she broke in with a speech concerning some trifle, while all the time glancing upon my papers.

'What is this,' she asked me, 'that you are drawing with your pen? It looks like some witchcraft.'

'I know nothing of such things, Mistress Agglintino.'

'Oh? Is that so? Well, in my opinion —'

'What do I care for your rash opinions?'

'Not a fart?' She laughed too loudly.

'Less than a fart. Less than nothing.' Even as I spoke my anger grew higher than before. 'And how dare you burst in upon me?'

'I am not afraid of you,' she replied, fingering the lace upon her russet petticoat as I rose from my desk. 'I am afraid of no man. No man whatsoever.'

'There is little enough to be afraid of, mistress. But I will not have my papers overlooked, or my work become a mockery. I will not.'

'Work?' she said. 'Now that I have looked closer, I see that these are nothing but student scribblings.'

At that I flew into a desperate rage, and all at once gave notice to quit. On the following day I moved into a tenement at the corner of Billiter Lane and Fenchurch Street; it had been lately rebuilt and was known as the New Rents, but there were old damps and agues steaming from it which sent me away soon enough.

So now you find me once again in my own world, far removed from the blue expanse of Tartary and the red domains of Germania or Italia. Theatrum orbis terrarum has been taken away, bound up within its press and locked in a chest, and now before you I have unrolled another, with its own ebbs and floods, its marks and dangers — the great globe of London, that is, which I have circumnavigated through all these years. From Billiter Lane I moved once more back to the west and found lodgings for myself in Sea-cole Lane near the glass-house on Saffron Hill, which was very serviceable to my exercises in perspective. Yet I need no glass or compass to remember my way through that lane where I once lived! It runs down into Fleet Lane but not before it turns into another called Wind-again Lane, which is so named because it stops at the Fleet Brook and there is no way over. So back again and, in imagination, join me as we tread a few paces northward to Holborn Bridge and Snow Hill where there stands the conduit. Then, stepping southward, retrace the ditches of Fleet Lane by the very wall of the prison and then go on to Fleet Bridge and the City Wall. Go on, go on! All is now as it was then, and will always be, for the city is so compacted of virtues and humours that it can neither decay nor die. Look, it is all around you.

For the past twenty years or more I have walked among the draymen and the car-men, the merchants and the idle people, the rakehells and the porters; I know the cassocks and the ruffs, the caps and the periwigs; I know the hospitals for the poor and the fair churches for the rich. I know the wards of Portsoken and Downegate, where there are many murders; of Langborne and Billingsgate, where those commonly known as jarkmen and courtesy-men are to be found; of Candlewick Street and Walbroke, which are notorious for suicides; of Vintry and Cordwainer, where there are crimes not to be mentioned. I know Ratcliffe, Limehouse, Whitechapel, St Katherine, Stretford, Hogston, Sordycke and all those sad regions beyond the walls. It was in Thames Street I met a female, in Tower Street that I courted her, and in St Dunstan that I married her. In Crutched Friars I buried my still-born children, two male and one female, and beyond the postern gate in the Minories I laid my brothers in the earth.

Yet within this city of death I hear again the cries for Cherries ripe, apples fine, for Fine Seville oranges and Ripe hartychokes, for scarves and rushes and kindling wood. I know where to find a pair of gloves or a pair of spectacles, a painter's easel or a barber's comb, a trumpet or a close-stool. I know such places of common assembly as the ordinaries and the gaming-houses, the cockpits and the bowling alleys. I know the haberdashers of London Bridge and the goldsmiths of West Cheap, the grocers of Bucklersbury and the drapers of Watling Street, the hosiers of Cordwainer Street and the shoemakers of London Wall, the skinners of Walbroke and the ironmongers of Old Jewry. Wherewithall there rises such a noise of tumbrils and carts, such a thundering of coaches and chariots, with hammers beating in one place and tubs being hooped in another, with men and women and children in such shoals, that I might be in the belly of the monster Leviathan. Yet it was here, even here, that I conducted my studies philosophical and experimental; among the clamour, and almost in the very midst of the stinking crowd, I searched within the bright glass of nature and found the exhalations of the spiritus mundi.

I am now removed to a house in Clerkenwell with my wife and household, and have been these last fifteen years (my father, being feeble and frail to the last degree, is lodged within a charity). It is in a place of healthfulness, close by Clerkenwell Green and to the side of Turnmill Street where the clerks' well is still to be found; my garden at the back slopes downward to the Fleet and to the north are the fields of Hockley where the archers shoot at their targets. But it is an ancient, rambling pile, and would require another Minos to trace its regions, with its bedchambers and byrooms and passages and parlours and other rooms severally partitioned. Here I sit in my library, on the upper storey, with my papers scattered around me. For this is the room in which all my labours and pains have been bestowed to win glory for my native country, and where I have pored over diverse manuscripts and pamphlets and other printed matter. Close beside this chamber, across the upper landing, is my laboratory with all the necessary vessels, some of earth, some of metal, some of glass, and some of mixed stuff; here are my retorts and receivers for the purposes of pyrotechnia, so that the walls and ceiling are now heavily smoked by my fiery studies. I have a little partition wall here also, beyond which is my storehouse replenished with chemical stuff and such curiosities as may advance my art, viz. one great bladder with about four pounds' weight of a very sweet substance like a brownish gum. Here, too, are bags containing certain powders together with leaden caskets holding glasses of liquid for the greater service and profit of my studies. There is also a transparent tube here, to be mightily covered by earth and dung. Of which nothing more may be revealed at this time.

Yet there are few things in this house, few things in this kingdom, that can compare with my library. Here are my globes of Gerardus Mercator's best making — though with my own hand I have set down upon them certain reformations both geographical and celestial, such as the places and motions of several comets that I have observed. Here also is my hour-glass to measure the time of my studies justly, and the universal astrolabe new minted by Thomas Hill in Cheapside. But my true glory lies within my books: printed or anciently written, bound or unbound, there are near four thousand of them. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, some in our native tongue, and yet all found by me, yes, found and gathered even when I was ready to die by false accusation of magic in Queen Mary's reign. Some of these hardly gotten monuments were taken in a manner out of the dunghill, since they were found by me in the corner of despoiled churches or monasteries where they were close to ruin from rotting away. Some came from a great case or frame of boxes which I took up from the decayed library of an ancient house (still lying desolate and waste at this very hour, beyond Pinner): each had their peculiar titles noted on the forepart of the boxes with chalk only, yet at the sight of them my heart leapt up. I knew them to contain hundreds of very rare evidences, which now I keep here in stalls and presses or locked within great barred chests. For their exact copying, and for my own writings, I need a plentiful supply of pens and inks; so here, at my left hand, are quills of all sorts. When the ink runs down the hollow trunk of my pen, then on this writing-table, with all my notes scattered about me, I begin to chronicle marvels.

But I need not tell you that there are also marvels within my books — among them wonderful and rare works by Zoroaster, Orpheus, and Hermes Trismegistus, as well as the sheets of old ephemerides. This room has become a very university or academy for scholars of diverse sorts, and there are such writings here as are above price, viz. Reuchlin his De verbo mirifico and De arte cabalistica, Brunschwick's Book of Distillation, The New Pearl of Great Worth set forth by Petrus Bonus of Pola but newly edited by Janus Lacinius, Cornelius Agrippa his renowned De occultia philosophia, De incantationibus by Pomponazzi, the Corpus Hermeticum collected by Turnebus as well as Clavicula Solomonis and The Sun of Perfection, which are both very useful and pleasant to read. Nor can I forget that most precious jewel of other men's labours which I have yet recovered, Trithemius his Steganographia. Neither will I omit the wonderful and divine sciences which are published forth by Paracelsus himself, or the connections therewithal to be traced through De harmonia mundi of Francesco Giorgi, De institutione musicae of Boethius, and Paciolus his De divina proportione. These are not to be found for money at any market or in any stationer's shop, since in truth they are works for secret study.

Among these bound volumes lie fair copies of my own writings which, for the everlasting memory of men, are marked with my London seal of Hermes. I have not spent these many years in composing riddles or merry tales, but have rather thought continually of the generations yet to come. And just as the levels of the cosmos are to be known as elemental, intellectual and celestial, so have I placed my own works in varying degrees of art: from those which are suited to the best understanding of mechanics, such as The Elements of Geometry and Mathematical Preface (here I include General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation, together with sundry volumes in horology, perspective, geometry and other arts), to those which are framed for the comprehension of the wise, such as my Propodeumata Aphoristica, leading ever upwards to those most excellent and valuable studies which I keep here beside me and are known only as Liber Mysteriorum. The scope of my enterprise is so great that, as to this time, it has never to my knowledge by any been achieved; that is why I must keep my papers in closed chests within my study, away from the eyes or tongues of vulgar sophisters. It is hard in these our dreary days to win any due or common credit for work in rare arts: so, since I can in no way rely upon the testimony of my countrymen, I join myself here with my ancestors and place my own work beside theirs. When I consider the rash, lewd, fond and most untrue fables conceived of me and my philosophical studies, I find my refuge from bleating tongues here in my library where all the ages lie silently before me. It is my quietus est, my pass-port (as they say) to freedom. Where is liberty to be found but in the memory and the contemplation of the past?

Of course not all is known or can be known, and even of our own kingdom much is lost, yet I have by me here Historia Regum Britanniae, together with various manuscripts concerning the past of Britain collected by Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth. I once had a book — I do not know what has become of it because it was taken from me when I was clapped up in the Tower as a conjuror, but I can see it now before me. It was a short, thick old volume with two clasps, printed anno 1517, and it gave some account of the ancient places long buried within this island and now so many lost cities under ground. That wonderful book was stolen, as I say, but the loss is as nothing compared with the general destruction and burning and spoiling of so many notable libraries in the reign of King Henry; the whole stock and store of our past was close to utter extinction, and our antique learning was used to serve the jakes, or scour candlesticks, or rub boots. What I have kept and preserved here are the notable jewels which I have found scattered across the land, so that in this library lies something of the treasure of Britain's antiquity, the everlasting seeds of its continual excellence, the remnants of a once incredible store of the passing excellent work of our forefathers. To Britain's shore once came the giants and, afterwards, those who escaped from the deluge of Atlantis. Their great truths must never be forsaken.

That is why, in order to become a very excellent scholar and a learned man, it is necessary to find the path towards learning through books; otherwise it were as well to be a sophister, a quack or an empiric rather than a philosopher. There are those who say that learning effeminates a man, dims his sight, weakens his brain and engenders a thousand diseases; Aristotle himself tells us, 'Nulla est magna scientia absque mixtura dementiae', which is as much as to say, 'There is no excellent knowledge without mixture of madness'. But I deny even Aristotle in this, since he who has learning holds the flower of the sun, the perfect ruby, the elixir, the magisterium. It is the true stone, the home of the glorified spirit, the virtue of the soul of the world.

Books do not perish like humankind. Of course we commonly see them broken in the haberdasher's shop when only a few months before they lay bound on the stationer's stall; these are not true works, but mere trash and newfangleness for the vulgar. There are thousands of such gewgaws and toys which people have in their chambers, or which they keep upon their shelves, believing that they are precious things, when they are the mere passing follies of the passing time and of no more value than papers gathered up from some dunghill or raked by chance out of the kennel. True books are filled with the power of the understanding which is the inheritance of the ages: you may take up a book in time, but you read it in eternity. Look upon this text here, Ars Notoria, perfected from the Greek by Master Matthew — note how every word signifies the quiddity of the substance, and how every sentence signifies its form. What learning this is (even in a latter and doting age of the world) when every line may reveal how the secret and unknown forms of things are knit up in their originals! Yet this is not for those with mere cabbalistical brains, who see nothing but mysteries and read nothing except to fall upon some revelation; out of one root comes the wild olive as well as the sweet, and these men do nothing more than gape and whisper 'Micma' or 'Fisis' or 'Gohulim' without understanding the meaning of the sacred names.

But I have found the source of all that wisdom. I drink at the true fountain because here I have around me the inheritance of our island. Just as I may contemplate the portrait of Paracelsus upon my wall, and send his image through these pages so that it may be seen as a glimmering light by those who turn their eyes this way — so can I distil the very essence of the books around me and impart it to the world. These volumes will be a continual silent presence not only for me, but for the posterity of many ages. It is vulgarly said and believed that there are spirits who live in private houses and who inhabit old walls or stairs of wood; yet if there is a spirit in this library, it is the spirit of past ages. There are some who mock and condemn me for living within the past, but they are far off the mark; like the navigator who charts his course by the aid of the glistening fixed stars, those who understand past ages do then master the present. Like changeable silk which turned to the sun has many colours, and turned back from the light has none, so does the present day contain all the hues and shades of times long gone which are visible only to one who looks upon them correctly. So I sit here at the great table in the middle of my library room, retired from the multitude and haunts of the world; with my books I am preserved in safety from all follies and assaults, and thus I become more truly myself. I am at peace.

Yet I am not so foolish as to ignore the teaching of the great masters, Pico della Mirandola and Hermes Trismegistus among them, when they assert the following: that to be myself is to be the world, to look into myself is to look into the world, to know myself is to know the world. The human form is more powerful than the sun because it contains the sun, more beautiful than the heavens because it contains the heavens, and he who sees it truly is richer than any king, for he has the entire art and understanding of the earth. No, not my poor mortal body, not this poor shambling thing of fifty years' growth, but the true spiritual body with which I am endowed: it is this which thirsts for learning and rises into glory when I sit among my books.

*

I went into my garden to take some air after the sweet mustiness of my library, and had just walked down towards the edge of the Fleet where herbs grow when I heard noises much like those of a man talking in his sleep. They came from a little enclosure of baked brick framed like the walls of a house, and when I stepped in front of the open side of it I leapt back at the sight of a man in a threadbare black coat unbuttoned and open before his breast. He wore a filthy foul cloth on his head, being cut for the purpose with a narrow place to put out his face. He raised his head and for a moment looked at me, without his eyes blinking.

'Oh master,' he cried, 'I was resting myself by the riverside here. You seem a gentleman of good worship, so pity me.' I said nothing, but with my foot touched the felt hat that he had left upon the ground, moving it towards him. 'I have the grievous and painful disease called the falling sickness,' he continued. 'I fell down on my backside, and here I have lain all the night.'

'You have no disease,' I replied, 'that could not be cured at the whipping pillar.'

'Oh dear God, sir, I feel as if I were born there since I am used so badly by all. My name is Philip Jennings, and I have had the falling sickness eight years. I can get no remedy for the same, since I have it by kind. My father had it before me.' He interested me a little more now; I had once read a very learned work upon the nature of diseases which we inherit. 'Give me a penny for God's sake, sir, to keep me a true man.'

'Surely you are not brought to so low a sail,' I replied, stepping back at the stench of him, 'that you cannot steer your way to a charitable church door?'

'Oh, I know all the churches. I know St Stephen in Coleman Street, St Martin's at Ludgate, St Leonard's in Foster Lane, but all turn me away with no more than a flea in my ear.'

'And no doubt they made threats to burn you through the ear also? Is that not their way?'

'Well you know, sir, these priests have heads higher than their hats. The greatest clerks are not the wisest men.'

I did not assent to this. 'You are not a foolish man,' I said, 'despite your apparel. How have you lived in this sad world?'

'I go solitary walking, with no man to comfort me, but only a dog.' There was indeed a bundle of skin and bones nestling close up to him, which stirred now that he touched it. 'We eat what we can. It is forbidden to kill kites and ravens in this city because they devour the filthiness of the streets, so they are our companions.'

I felt a little pity for him then. 'I can give you some rye brown bread —'

'Better porridge than no repast, as they say. Better an old bone than an empty plate.'

'You give great words,' I replied, laughing. 'There may also be a hot pie for you and your dog.'

'Then I will leave you afterwards. I will bing Romeville.'

'What was that?'

'It is the canting speech, sir. I said that I will leave London.'

These strange words interested me. 'Cant me some more, good canter.'

'I couched a hogshead in a skipper this darkmans.'

'Which signifies?'

'I lay me down to sleep in this shed last night. Now big me a waste to the highpad, the ruffmans is by.'

'And that?' These words were like some ancient tongue of the country, unknown to me.

'It is as much as to say, well, let me go past to the highway. The woods are at hand.'

'I do not understand these words, or the reasoning for them. Tell me something of their age, and of their origin.'

'I cannot say how old they are, or from where they came, but my father taught them to me, and his father did likewise, stretching far back. I give you a demonstration. Look upon this.' He pointed to his nose. 'A smelling cheat.' And then to his mouth. 'A gan.' And then to his eyes. 'Glaziers.' Then he lifted up his hands. 'Fambles.'

'Wait,' I said, 'wait till I fetch food for you.' I hurried back into the kitchen, where the servant-girl was already preparing the meal, and demanded from her plentiful bread and meat. I piled this upon a plate, but I also brought into the garden a piece of chalk and slate so that I might write down the words he spoke.

'Peck,' he said, holding up a lump of the meat I gave him. 'Pannam,' thus signifying the bread. 'Bene for my bufe. Good for my dog.' They both fell upon their food now, but when they had eaten heartily he wiped his mouth upon his filthy sleeve and continued. 'The lightmans is the day and darkmans is the night. Solomon is an altar and patrico a priest, while autem is canting for church.' All these I wrote down as he spoke. 'Glimmer is fire. It was bitter cold last night, sir, and I wished to put my prat in ken or libbege with new duds.'

'Which is to say?'

'I wished to put my buttocks in a house or bed with new clothes upon me.' He raised himself now a little, and patted his dog. 'I will not filch your bung,' said he, 'because you have fed us both. But do you have some lour? Can you translate this for me?'

'Money?'

'Which is so! Money! I need money!'

I went back into the house, and found some pennies left in the chimney corner; on returning to him I gave them with a right good will, for had he not opened to me a new language and thus a new world? 'There's for you,' I said. 'And what is the name of your dog?'

'Dickins, sir. He is very much like the Devil.'

He left me soon after, but not before I walked with him to the bank of the Fleet. 'There is a theory,' I said, 'that parallels, because they maintain diverse lines, can never join. Do you think it is true?'

'I understand none of that, sir. But I do know that you should not place a patch of fustian in a damask coat. I am not of your kind, and I must leave you.' At that he paused; taking some papers of close writing from the pocket of his ancient coat, he presented them to me with a smile. 'I have been wonderful troublesome to you, sir, and am without doubt much misliked —'

'No, no. It is not so.'

'But read these words I leave with you.' He said no more but went on his way with his dog, going by the side of the river and singing the old hanging tune, 'Fortune my foe, why dost thou frown on me?' I watched him until he was quite out of sight, and then with a sigh turned back to the house and went up again into my library.

*

Shall I tell you of my dreams? In my first dream I had a vision and show of many books, newly printed and of very strange argument; among them was one great volume, thick and in large quarto, which had on its first page my house as its title in great letters. In my second dream I was walking between Aldgate and the posterns on Tower Hill when a great tempest of mighty wind followed me, at which I said out loud to several great personages around me, 'I must ride to Clerkenwell; someone is writing upon a theme concerning me and my books.' In my third dream I knew that I was dead, and after my bowels were taken out I talked with diverse people of a future time. In my fourth dream I dreamed that my wife, Mistress Katherine Dee, had an abortion; I helped to find the dead birth within, one hour after I had caused her to be given myrrh in warmed wine, and the dead thing was a volume with a black cover which stuck to my fingers. In my fifth dream I found myself within an excellent little library room, which seemed in times past to have been the chamber of some student skilful in the holy stone; a name was in various places noted in letters of gold and silver, 'Petrus Baccalaureus Londoniensis', and among other manifold things written very fairly in this study were hieroglyphical notes on the houses, streets and churches of our city. Certain verses were inscribed over the door, viz.

Immortale Decus par gloriaque illi debentur

Cujus ab ingenio est discolor hic paries.

I look down at myself, and find myself with letters and words all upon me, and I know that I have been turned into a book…

There was a cry somewhere and I awoke. I must have poured out my eyes in this place, for I had closed them in a state between slumbering and waking without thinking to steal a nap. But I returned to myself in a moment. It was eleven before noon, and I had been called to dinner by Mrs Dee. I was hungry for my meat and was brisk in coming down the stairs into the hall where, to my delight, the table was already covered. I had long since dismissed any sullen drabs out of the kitchen, and now I have only good and clean servants to aid my wife. She sat opposite to me at the long table, and bowed her head meekly enough as I prayed for grace. Then I began to carve the veal and with great silence and gravity we began to eat our boiled meats, our conies, our pies and our tarts. There are but two courses with us for, as I have told Katherine Dee, too much bread and meat induce melancholy; hares are thought particularly to cause it, so they are banished from our table. Melancholy is cold and dry, and so melancholy men must refrain from fried meat or meat which has too much salt; they must also eat boiled meat rather than roasted. For the same reasons I abstain from the drinking of hot wines and, to preserve myself from distempered heaviness, I abjure cow milk, almond milk and the yolks of eggs. Katherine Dee knows the disposition of her husband and has full keeping of the foodstuffs: I give her money for the month and, having been trained by me in the secret virtues and seeds of all foods, she goes to the market with her maid and buys only good butter, cheese, capons, hogs and bacon.

'Did you see the maypole set up in Cow Lane?' she asked me as I drank my white wine opposite to her.

'I came back another way.' I had already determined to keep silent concerning the canting outcast in the garden, because I knew that it would disturb her.

'It is for the wedding. Did you know? The daughter of Grosseteste, the merchant, is to be married today.'

'So what of it?'

My wife was well tucked up in a russet petticoat, with a bare hem and no fringe, as I like her to be dressed with plainness; yet she had a red lace apron upon her, and she plucked at it with her hand as she spoke to me. 'Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. Some say she is fair, but I have always found her ill dressed. Who would have guessed it with the money in that quarter? No doubt many a man will envy her husband.' She continued plucking at her apron. 'And the maypole is very sumptuous, Doctor Dee. I have seen nothing like. Shall we go to see it? If you will?'

'Wife, can we go to the dinner which is set before us? Will you always be chattering and never quiet?'

'As it will please you, sir.' She was silent for a while as we set upon our meat. 'Husband,' she said soon afterwards, 'I pray you pull a piece of that capon. You eat nothing. You have not yet even tasted of these cabbages.'

I put my finger into the bowl and licked it. 'I cannot taste of them. They are so much peppered and salted.' I saw that I had put her in an ill humour, and it pleased me to provoke her a little. 'And what meat is this? It is the cut I love best, but it is marred. As Londoners say, God sends us the meat and the Devil cooks it.' I had scored a notable hit. 'It is stuffed with garlic to hide the rottenness: if I touch it now, I will smell for three days after. You learn nothing. It is a great shame.'

'If it pleases you to speak so, Doctor Dee, then I can say nothing. But I have tried to do everything to the best.'

'Well, well, there has been talk enough. Now eat. You may talk after dinner.'

It is an excellent room to sit in for meat, having great oaken chests and chairs curiously carved in the old style; the walls are hung with painted cloths where several histories, as well as herbs and beasts, are stained. Here are the sorrows of Job, the opening of the seventh seal, and the building of Jerusalem, all of these a perpetual allegory by which we train our souls even as we eat upon our joint-stools. There is a fine chair in one corner, trimmed with crimson velvet and embroidered with gold, yet it is seldom used except for high company. When I was a boy we lay upon straw pallets with a log beneath as a bolster but now we lay our heads upon pillows, and we dine off pewter where once clay was fine enough. We have Turkey work, brass, soft linen, cupboards garnished with plate, and the chambers of our houses are so decorated with inlaid tables and carefully worked glass that they dazzle the eye on first entering. Well, well, the world turns; but there must also be a light within us to reflect the meaning of such changes.

I had been eating and thinking all the while, when my wife suddenly checked me with a laugh. 'What, sir, you love mustard so? It will make you a red nose and crimson face, without the help of any wine. But lord, how you drink it!'

I stared at her for a moment, yet I could not break her look of defiance. 'If the wine is bad, mistress, then naturally it inflames the passion.'

'The fault is not in the wine but in him who drinks it.' I said nothing, and I believe she repented. 'I will bring you cake-bread then, sir, which will draw the liquor like a sponge.'

When dinner was almost at an end, and these last dishes had been removed from the table, I washed my fingers in the bowl and then called for my book.

'What book?' said Katherine Dee pertly enough.

'Where I read yesterday after dinner. Did you not see it? Are you purblind?'

'Oh, do you mean your book of old fables which you enjoy by the fireside?'

'Not fables, madam. The acts of the ancient kings of England.'

'I put it away,' she replied. 'Away from the fumes of the meat you find so bad.'

She had a sharp tongue upon her still. 'Go to, gossip. Fetch me the book.' She did not budge from her seat. 'Have I not power to command in my own house?'

'As you will.'

'Well said. Then bring me my book.'

With a laugh she rose and went over to a chest, whereupon she opened it and with a flourish presented me with Gesta Regum Britanniae; then she sat down beside me on a close-stool to watch me read. But I was not to be granted peace. 'Oh,' she said after a few moments. 'A message came. Your father is still ill with fits of the ague.'

'It is an evil sickness,' I replied as I continued with my reading.

A few more moments passed. 'So tell me, husband. Shall we visit the maypole? It is good to walk after meat.'

'Enough!' I put down my book and, going into the passage, called for a chamber-pot to relieve myself. I retired into the little room next to the hall and, having pissed mightily, I intended to throw it forth at the window (for it had begun to rain) when I caught the savour of my urine in my nostrils; it had a high odour to it, like that of fresh cinnamon, and put me in mind at once of the wine I had taken the night before. But there was more virtue in it now, having been dissolved within me and then congealed again; it had become a humid exhalation from which the volatile substance had been removed and, if all moisture were finally to leave it, then at last it would become a stone. If it were to become a dry or powdery substance, in form a mineral, could it be used to fructify the land — as the urine of man is said to do — and in its sublime state generate a thousandfold? There was something here worthy of closer study, and so I took my pot up to my laboratory where I determined upon some further experiments of sublimation and fixation.

I am not some poor alchemist, new set up, with scarcely enough money to buy beechen coals for my furnace; over these years I have found or purchased all my instruments and substances, so that I have no need to rake some dunghill for a few dirty specimens. But neither have I anything to do with the cthonic magic of the past which secreted itself in caves and woods: those were times of witches and hags, dwarfs and satyrs, conjurors and changelings, invoking the incubus, the spoor, the hell-wain, Boneless and other such bugs of the night and the mist. Into what blind and gross errors in old time we were led, thinking every merry word a very witchcraft and every old wife's tale a truth, viz. that the touch of an ashen bough causes giddiness in a viper's head, and that a bat lightly struck with the leaf of an elm tree loses his remembrance. But these are trifling matters of which I do not complain. Indeed there was a certain truth to them if they had, as they say, been viewed in the light — light being the bright path of life, by which the virtues of the sun and stars are generated within the world.

But if I am no moth-eaten alchemist, neither am I some newfangled astronomer who feigns eccentrics and epicycles and suchlike in order to save the phenomena, when he knows full well that there are no such engines within the orbs. Each of them follows the newest way, which is not ever the nearest way: some going over the stile when the gate is open, and others keeping the beaten path when they may cross better by the fields. They are like eager wolves that bark at the moon when they cannot reach it — even though, if they did but know it, the very same moon, and stars, and all the firmament, lie within their own selves.

Shall we then look upon the heavens as a wolf, or an ox, or an ass does? No, it cannot be. Yet to find or receive some inkling, glimpse or beam of what are the radical truths, it is necessary to unite astronomy with astrology, yes, even with alchemy which is known as astronomia inferior; by so doing we may in the method of Pythagoras restore the ternary of these arts to unity or One. Such is the infinite desire of knowledge and, as I have proved for myself, such is the incredible power of man's search and capacity: it is the learning of that which lives for ever and not of that which passes through time. No doubt these studies are dispraised by those who understand them not, but there must come an age when all true lovers of wisdom turn their hands and bend their minds to these doctrines.

Here is the eternal connection. In our astronomy we view the seven planets in their eternal order, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury and the moon, while in our experiments we proceed through the seven alchemical doors, calcination, fixation, solution, distillation, sublimation, separation and projection. Then in astrology we compound the two, by scrutinizing the secret influences of the planets and the stars while at the same time loosening the chains of each element in this elemental world. The stars do live and, through the spiritus mundi, influence us; there is sympathy or disharmony between all living things, and to gain mastery over this point is to exercise control over the entire world. There is nothing done in the lower world which is not controlled by the powers above, nothing moved or changed in the sublunary sphere except with the aid of the incorruptible heavens whose emblems and messengers are the planets and stars. Thus when the moon lies between the twenty-eighth degree of Taurus and the eleventh of Gemini, then is the time to search for the hidden seeds of life. I have demonstrated before this time that when Saturn and the moon are three score degrees of the zodiac apart, then it is good to gather those seeds and bury them deep within the warm earth. The natural beams of the lighted stars are to be found at work equally in both spheres, in things visible and invisible, at all times and in every horizon assigned. So may these beams be distilled and, like the morning dew, refresh and excite new life.

What is above also lies below; what is below is also above. And here we approach upon our knees another great secret: the sun, gold, and the heart of man are analogous. If I control the light and the heart's passions, then I can begin to discover or refine the material substance of gold. If I wish to make that metal, therefore, I must make my own self pure and become (as it were) an agent of the light which dwells in all things. Yet if I can create the most precious and sacred substance from the mere dross of the world, then in similar manner I must proclaim how within the mortal world of decay and within our own selves there is that which is constant, unchangeable and incorruptible.

I have done so many rare and precious experiments upon this truth that I cannot reckon up all of them now. So many strange speculations and incredible practices have been made manifest to me that to speak of the objects created from smoke or vapour, of the secret balances of sulphur and mercury, of the consummation of the chrysolite and beryl, would be a task fit only for the great Hermes Trismegistus himself. I will say only this. While mortal sense rules within us, so gross is our comprehension and dull our sight that it is necessary to curb our outward faculties and look towards the inward world; therewithall you will see yourself as a being made of light. The true man is astral man, containing within him not the star-demon (as some commentators say) but the material of divinity itself. If in the event you do not therefore make yourself equal to God, you cannot know God — like is intelligible only to like. Man was once, and will again, be God. And so I say once more: at death material and corruptible things will become invisible and, just as the dross of the world can in the chemical wedding be turned to gold, so can we return to light. Yet there is a greater mystery than all; for what if it were possible, before death ever came, to assume that light and mingle with the godhead? Why, then I might arise, climb, ascend and mount up to behold in the glass of Creation the form of forms, the exemplar number of all things numerable. Then I might foresee great particular events long before their coming, or view the passages of antiquity as if standing there in bodily shape from everlasting to everlasting. But more than this is there, and still more: why, I might use that light to quicken life itself within my own hands. I have beside me a glass vessel prepared and waiting for my little man, but of this no more can be said or written. Oh comfortable allurement, oh ravishing persuasion, to deal with a science whose subject is so ancient, so pure, so excellent, so surmounting all creatures in their distinct parts, properties, natures and virtues, so implicate with order and absolute number!

Enough. I will use no tedious discourses or colour of rhetoric which, though they are deemed courtly by the lowly sort, are by no means necessary. The purest emerald shines brightest when it has no oil. It has grown twilight gloomy, and a few moments ago there was a clap of thunder with some lightning. I take up the pages which the canting beggar gave to me in the garden, but can see only a certain kind of curious writing in the English tongue. There are the words 'house' and 'father', all closely inscribed, but in the gathering darkness I can read nothing more. So I light my candle and watch its fire. As the darkness is lifted the wax is consumed: the substance does not die, but is transformed into flame. This is the final lesson. By means of that fire the material form of the candle before me rises into its spiritual being. It has become a light and a shining within this poor shambling room, my library.