[14] Hume was bitterly attacked in the “Biographia Britannica” by a Dr. Philip Nicoll, one of the writers calling himself one of the proprietors, for his account of the conduct of Rawleigh—art. “Ralegh,” note (cc). The spirit of nationality was rife in 1760, when we find that a cruel apology is inflicted on Hume as “a foreigner! for this writer may be allowed the privilege of that plea, as being born and bred, and constantly living among a people, and under a constitution, of a very different nature, genius, and temper from the English!” I cannot believe that Hume, to remove the odium of Rawleigh’s death from the Scottish monarch, purposely depreciated the hero; but probably looking hastily into the account of Guiana, stuffed with the monstrous tales of a lying Spaniard, and considering the whole to be a gross artifice of the great navigator for an interested purpose, he gave way to his impressions.
[15] The Dean of Westminster was astonished at Rawleigh’s cheerfulness on the day of his execution, who “made no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey.” The divine was fearful that this contempt of death might arise from “a senselessness of his own state,” but the hero satisfied the dean that he died “very Christianly.” Yet the gossip of Aubrey tells, that “his cousin Whitney said, and I think it is printed, that he spake not one word of Christ, but of the great and incomprehensible God with much zeal and adoration, so that he concluded he was an a-Christ, not an a-theist.” In this manner great men were then judged whenever they “ventured at discourse which was unpleasant to the churchmen,” as this confused recorder of curious matters has sent down to us. This indicates that Socinian principles were appearing.
THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR. DEE.
At the dawn of philosophy its dreams were not yet dispersed, and philosophers were often in peril of being as imaginative as poets. The arid abstractions of the schoolmen were succeeded by the fanciful visions of the occult philosophers; and both were but preludes to the experimental philosophy of Bacon and Newton, and the metaphysics of Locke. The first illegitimate progeny of science were deemed occult and even magical; while astronomy was bewildered with astrology, chemistry was running into alchemy, and natural philosophy wantoned in the grotesque chimeras of magical phantoms, the philosophers themselves pursued science in a suspicious secresy, and were often imagined to know much more than the human faculties can acquire. These anagogical children of reverie, straying beyond “the visible diurnal sphere,” elevated above humanity, found no boundary which they did not pass beyond—no profundity which they did not fathom—no altitude on which they did not rest. The credulity of enthusiasts was kept alive by the devices of artful deceivers, and illusion closed in imposture.
Shakspeare, in the person of Prospero, has exhibited the prevalent notions of the judicial astrologer combined with the adept, whose white magic, as distinguished from the black or demon magic, holds an intercourse with purer spirits. Such a sage was
| —————transported, And rapt in secret studies; |
that is, in the occult sciences; and he had
Volumes that he prized more than his dukedom.