He Anthroposophus,* and Floud,†
And Jacob Behmen, understood;
Knew many an amulet and charm,
That would do neither good nor harm;
In Rosicrucian lore as learned,§
As he that Verè adeptus|| earned:
He understood the speech of birds
As well as they themselves do words;¶
Could tell what subtlest parrots mean,
That speak and think contràry clean;
What member 'tis of whom they talk,

When they cry, 'Rope,' and 'Walk, knave, walk.'**

collected edition of his works, he suppressed the treatise De Occultá Philosophia.

* A nickname given to Dr. Vaughan, rector of St. Bridge's, in Bedfordshire, in consequence of an absurd book he wrote on the condition of man after death, entitled Anthroposophia Theomagica.

† Robert Floud, or Fludd, son of Sir Thomas Floud, Treasurer of War to Queen Elizabeth. He followed the profession of medicine, and took up with great earnestness the doctrines of the Rosicrucians, which he defended in a tract.

‡ Of Jacob Behmen little is known, except that he is believed to have been a cobbler, and that he wrote some religious treatises in a mystical jargon, which rendered them utterly unintelligible.

§ The Rosicrucians were a sect of hermetical philosophers. According to some accounts, they derived their name from ros, dew, and crux, a cross. Both were elements in their system; dew was esteemed the most powerful solvent of the precious metals, and the cross enclosed the letters that formed lux, light, called in the esoteric language of the sect the menstruum of the red dragon—that is, the light which, properly modified, produces gold. It is also said that the Rosicrucians derived their name from a German, Christian Rosencruz. with whom they originated. They were likewise known as the Illuminati, the Immortales, the Invisible Brothers.

|| The title assumed by the alchemists, who were supposed to have discovered the philosopher's stone.

It was a very old notion, as far back as the age of Democritus, that birds have a language of their own, which many persons pretended to understand.

** Dr. Grey conjectures that the persons indicated under these phrases were Judge Tomlinson and Colonel Hewson. On one occasion, when Tomlinson was swearing-in the sheriffs, he drew their attention specially to that part of their functions which related to malefactors, adding that he had a kinsman in the city, a rope-maker, whom he commended to their patronage, as they were sure to require his services within the year. The application of Walk, knave, walk' to

*

He'd extract numbers out of matter,
And keep them in a glass, like water,
Of sovereign power to make men wise;
For, dropped in blear thick-sighted eyes,
They'd make them see in darkest night,
Like owls, though purblind in the light.
By help of these, as he professed,
He had First Matter seen undressed:
He took her naked, all alone,
Before one rag of form was on.†
The Chaos, too, he had descried,
And seen quite through, or else he lied;
Not that of pasteboard, which men shew
For groats, at fair of Barthol'mew,‡

Colonel Hewson, seems to be determined by a satirical tract written on him by Edmund Gayton, entitled, Walk, knaves, walk; a Discourse intended to have been spoken at Court, &c.

* The Pythagoreans and Platonists, who reduced the laws of generation to a system of arithmetical progression and division, are here alluded to. The speculative and experimental science of the contemporary age is reflected throughout the poem in numerous similar passages. The most absurd theories of the ancients were revived, and novelties even still more extravagant were broached. The institution of the Royal Society, whatever benefit may have subsequently flowed from its establishment, helped considerably at first to encourage these visionary theories, which Butler treated with unsparing ridicule. Dr. Johnson observes that it is hard to conceive for what reason Butler and others heaped such acrimonious satire on the labours of the Royal Society, since the philosophers professed not to advance doctrines, but to produce facts; and the most zealous enemy of innovation must admit the gradual progress of experience, however he may oppose hypothetical temerity.' This statement is not accurate. An investigation into the early proceedings of the Royal Society will discover that its members by no means limited themselves to the production of facts, but that they frequently advanced doctrines, sometimes with, and sometimes without, data. Nor in the production of facts did they attend to that condition which can alone render facts valuable as a basis for scientific observation-the collection of data on a sufficiently comprehensive scale to justify general inferences.

+ Qu'en sa gloire il a vu la matière première.
REGNIER.-Sat. x.

+ Puppet-shows were amongst the most popular amusements of Bartholomew fair; and here Chaos, Creation, the Deluge, and other passages of sacred history were represented with pasteboard scenery. Ben Jonson, in his play of Bartholomew Fair, enumerates some of the

But its great grandsire, first o' th' name,
Whence that and Reformation came,
Both cousin-germans, and right able
T' inveigle and draw in the rabble:
But Reformation was, some say,
O' th' younger house to puppet-play.*
He could foretel whats'ever was,
By consequence, to come to pass:
As death of great men, alterations,
Diseases, battles, inundations:
All this without th' eclipse of th' sun,
Or dreadful comet, he hath done
By inward light, a way as good,
And easy to be understood:†

But with more lucky hit than those
That use to make the stars depose,

Like Knights o' th' Post, and falsely charge
Upon themselves what others forge; +

'motions,' as the pantomime on these occasions was called, which were enacted in the booths, exhibiting a curious mixture of sacred and profane subjects-such as Jerusalem, Nineveh, and the city of Norwich, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the gunpowder plot. The admission, it appears, to the best of these establishments was as much as eighteen or twenty pence; to others as low as fourpence. The fair lasted fourteen days, during which time the regular theatres were closed. But these entertainments led to such excesses that early in the last century the fair was reduced to its original limit of three days, and from that time it gradually declined.

* That is, observes Bishop Warburton, that the sectaries, who claimed the only right to the name of reformed, took the notion of their inspiration, and of their passiveness under the influence of the Holy Spirit, from the puppets which, incapable of any original action themselves, were moved by a superior hand.

†The preachers frequently foretold events in their addresses to the people, but, instead of drawing their prophecies from the stars, like the astrologers, who are satirized in the succeeding lines, they pretended to derive their knowledge of the future from divine inspiration.

The Knights of the Post were persons who haunted the purlieus of the courts, ready to be hired for a bribe to swear to any falsehoods that might be required of them, and even to confess themselves guilty of the crimes of others upon an adequate consideration. Their calling was of course held in great contempt, and the most scornful term that could be applied to any person was to call him a Knight of the Post. In the old ballad of Ragged, and torne, and true, the honest poor man

As if they were consenting to

'em

All mischiefs in the world men do:
Or, like the devil, did tempt and sway
To rogueries, and then betray 'em.
They'll search a planet's house, to know
Who broke and robbed a house below;
Examine Venus, and the Moon,
Who stole a thimble or a spoon ;*
And though they nothing will confess,
Yet by their very looks can guess,
And tell what guilty aspect bodes,
Who stole, and who received the goods:
They'll question Mars, and, by his look,
Detect who 'twas that nimmed † a cloak;
Make Mercury confess, and 'peach
Those thieves which he himself did teach.‡
They'll find, i̇' th' physiognomies
O' th' planets, all men's destinies;
Like him that took the doctor's bill,
And swallowed it instead o' th' pill,§

declares that to whatever extremities he may be driven, he will never become a Knight of the Post :

I scorn to live by the shift,

or by any sinister dealing; I'll flatter no man for a gift,

nor will I get money by stealing;

I'll be no Knight of the Post,

to sell my soul for a bribe,

Though all my fortunes be crossed,
yet I scorn the cheater's tribe.

They acquired the name of Knights of the Post from the circumstance of being always found waiting at the posts which the sheriffs set up outside their doors for painting proclamations upon.

* Alluding to the old notion that the moon was the repository of all things that were lost or stolen.

+ Stole. The meaning is embodied in the character of Corporal Nym.

+ Mercury was the patron of thieves, as Mars, in the judicial astrology, was considered the patron of pirates.

The story is told by Henry Stephens in his Defence of Herodotus. A physician wrote a prescription for a countryman, desiring him to take it. The man followed the instruction literally, and swallowed the prescription.

Cast the nativity o' th' question,
And from positions to be guessed on,
As sure as if they knew the moment
Of native's birth, tell what will come on't.*
They'll feel the pulses of the stars,
To find out agues, coughs, catarrhs;
And tell what crisis does divine
The rot in sheep, or mange in swine;
In men, what gives or cures the itch,
What makes them cuckolds, poor, or rich;
What gains, or loses, hangs, or saves,

What makes men great, what fools, or knaves;
But not what wise, for only 'f those
The stars, they say, cannot dispose,†
No more than can the astrologians:
There they say right, and like true Trojans.
This Ralpho knew, and therefore took
The other course, of which we spoke.‡

Thus was th' accomplished Squire endued
With gifts and knowledge per'lous shrewd.
Never did trusty squire with knight,

Or knight with squire, e'er jump more right. §
Their arms and equipage did fit,

As well as virtues, parts, and wit:
Their valours, too, were of a rate,
And out they sallied at the gate.

Few miles on horseback had they jogged
But Fortune unto them turned dogged;

* In casting the nativity of a child, it was necessary to know the exact time of its birth; but, in the absence of accurate information on that point, the astrologer cast it by the 'physiognomy' of the heavens at the moment the question was asked.

+ Deceive; i. e., the astrologer can no more deceive a wise man, than can the stars. What makes the obscurity, says Bishop Warburton, is the use of the word dispose in two senses-influence, as it regards the stars, and deceive, as it relates to the astrologers.

That is, the religious imposture-intimating that even wise men, who could not be deceived by the frauds of astrology, were sometimes ensnared by spiritual pretences.

§ The precedent of Cervantes is here closely followed.