The True Story vs. Myth of Witchcraft. William Godwin
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Head speaks; and there’s such a thunder and lightning, that I warrant all Oxford is up in arms. Out of your bed, and take a brownbill in your hand; the latter day is come.
Bacon. Miles, I come. (Rises and comes forward.) O, passing warily watched! Bacon will make thee next himself in love. When spake the Head?
Miles. When spake the Head? Did you not say that he should tell strange principles of philosophy? Why, sir, it speaks but two words at a time.
Bacon. Why, villain, hath it spoken oft?
Miles. Oft! ay, marry hath it, thrice; but in all those three times it hath uttered but seven words.
Bacon. As how?
Miles. Marry, sir, the first time he said, ‘Time is,’ as if Fabius Commentator14 should have pronounced a sentence; then he said, ‘Time was;’ and the third time, with thunder and lightning, as in great choler, he said, ‘Time is past.’
Bacon. ’Tis past, indeed. Ah, villain! Time is past;
My life, my fame, my glory, are all past.
Bacon,
The turrets of thy hope are ruined down,
Thy seven years’ study lieth in the dust:
Thy Brazen Head lies broken through a slave
That watched, and would not when the Head did will.
What said the Head first?
Miles. Even, sir, ‘Time is.’
Bacon. Villain, if thou hadst called to Bacon then,
If thou hadst watched, and waked the sleepy friar,
The Brazen Head had uttered aphorisms,
And England had been circled round with brass:
But proud Asmenoth,15 ruler of the North, And Demogorgon,16 master of the Fates, Grudge that a mortal man should work so much. Hell trembled at my deep-commanding spells, Fiends frowned to see a man their over-match; Bacon might boast more than a man might boast; But now the braves17 of Bacon have an end, Europe’s conceit of Bacon hath an end, His seven years’ practice sorteth to ill end: And, villain, sith my glory hath an end, I will appoint thee to some fatal end.18 Villain, avoid! get thee from Bacon’s sight! Vagrant, go, roam and range about the world, And perish as a vagabond on earth!
Miles. Why, then, sir, you forbid me your service?
Bacon. My service, villain, with a fatal curse,
That direful plagues and mischief fall on thee.
Miles. ’Tis no matter, I am against you with the old proverb, ‘The more the fox is cursed, the better he fares.’ God be with you, sir: I’ll take but a book in my hand, a wide-sleeved gown on my back, and a crowned cap19 on my head, and see if I can merit promotion.
Bacon. Some fiend or ghost haunt on thy weary steps,
Until they do transport thee quick to Hell!
For Bacon shall have never any day,
To lose the fame and honour of his Head.
(Exeunt.
Scene XII. passes in King Henry’s Court, and the royal consent is given to Earl Lacy’s marriage with the Fair Maid, which is fixed to take place on the same day as Prince Edward’s marriage to the Princess Elinor. In Scene XIII. we again go back to Bacon’s cell. The friar is bewailing the destruction of his Brazen Head to Friar Bungay, when two young gentlemen, named Lambert and Sealsby, enter, in order to look into the ‘glass prospective,’ and see how their fathers are faring. Unhappily, at this very moment, the elder Lambert and Sealsby, having quarrelled, are engaged ‘in combat hard by Fressingfield,’ and stab each other to the death, whereupon their sons immediately come to blows, with a like fatal result. Bacon, deeply affected, breaks the magic crystal which has been the unwitting cause of so sad a catastrophe, expresses his regret that he ever dabbled in the unholy science, and announces his resolve to spend the remainder of his life ‘in pure devotion.’
At Fressingfield, in Scene XIV., the opportune arrival of Lacy and his friends prevents Margaret from carrying out her intention of retiring to the nunnery at Framlingham, and with obliging readiness she consents to marry the Earl. Scene XV. shifts to Bacon’s cell, where a devil complains that the friar hath raised him from the darkest deep to search about the world for Miles, his man, and torment him in punishment for his neglect of orders.
Miles makes his appearance, and after some comic dialogue, intended to tickle the ears of the groundlings, mounts astride the demon’s back, and goes off to ——! In Scene XVI., and last, we return to the Court, where royalty makes a splendid show, and the two brides—the Princess Elinor and the Countess Margaret—display their rival charms. Of course the redoubtable friar is present, and in his concluding speech leaps over a couple of centuries to make a glowing compliment to Queen Elizabeth, which seems worth quotation:
‘I find by deep prescience of mine art,
Which once I tempered in my secret cell,
That here where Brute did build his Troynovant,20 From forth the royal garden of a King Shall flourish out so rich and fair a bud, Whose brightness shall deface proud Phœbus’ flower, And overshadow Albion with her leaves. Till then Mars shall be master of the field, But then the stormy threats of war shall cease: The horse shall stamp as careless of the pike, Drums shall be turned to timbrels of delight; With wealthy favours Plenty shall enrich The strand that gladded wandering Brute to see, And peace from heaven shall harbour in these leaves That gorgeous beautify this matchless flower: Apollo’s heliotropian21 then shall stoop, And Venus’ hyacinth22 shall vail her top; Juno shall shut her gilliflowers up, And Pallas’ bay shall ’bash her brightest green; Ceres’ carnation, in consort with those, Shall stoop and wonder at Diana’s rose.’23
So much for Greene’s comedy of ‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay’—not, on the whole, a bad piece of work.
Among the earlier English alchemists I may next name, in chronological order, George Ripley, canon of Bridlington, who, in 1471, dedicated to King Edward III. his once celebrated ‘Compound of Alchemy; or, The Twelve Gates leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone.’ These ‘gates,’ each of which he describes in detail, but with little enlightenment to the uninitiated reader, are:—1. Calcination; 2. Solution; 3. Separation; 4. Conjunction; 5. Putrefaction; 6. Congelation; 7. Cibation; 8. Sublimation; 9. Fermentation; 10. Exaltation; 11. Multiplication; and 12. Projection. In his old age Ripley learned wisdom, and frankly acknowledged that he had wasted his life upon an empty pursuit. He requested all men, if they met with any of the five-and-twenty treatises of which he was the author, to consign them to the flames as absolutely vain and worthless.
Yet there is a wild story that he actually discovered the ‘magisterium,’ and was thereby enabled to send a gift of £100,000 to the Knights of St. John, to assist them in their defence of Rhodes against the Turks.
Thomas Norton, of Bristol, was the author of ‘The Ordinall of Alchemy’ (printed in London in 1652). He is said to have been a pupil of Ripley, under whom (at the age of 28) he studied for forty days, and in that short time acquired a thorough knowledge of ‘the perfection of chemistry.’ Ripley, however, refused to instruct so young a man