As good a one undoubtedly might have been found;
I trust there were within this realm
Five hundred as good as he,1
though there goes more to the making of a Peter Hopkins than of an Earl Percy. But I very much doubt, (and this is one of the cases in which doubt scarcely differs a shade from disbelief)—whether there could any where have been found another person whose peculiarities would have accorded so curiously with young Daniel's natural bent, and previous education. Hopkins had associated much with Guy, in the early part of their lives; (it was indeed through this connection that the lad was placed at Doncaster); and like Guy he had tampered with the mystical sciences. He knew the theories, and views, and hopes—
which set the Chymist on
To search that secret-natured stone,
Which the philosophers have told,
When found, turns all things into gold;
But being hunted and not caught,
Oh! sad reverse! turns gold to nought.2
1 CHEVY CHACE.
2 ARBUTHNOT.
This knowledge he had acquired, like his old friend, for its own sake,—for the pure love of speculation and curious enquiry,—not with the slightest intention of ever pursuing it for the desire of riches. He liked it, because it was mysterious; and he could listen with a half-believing mind to the legends (as they may be called) of those Adepts who from time to time have been heard of, living as erratic a life as the Wandering Jew; but with this difference, that they are under no curse, and that they may forego their immortality, if they do not choose to renew the lease of it, by taking a dose of the elixir in due time.
He could cast a nativity with as much exactness, according to the rules of art, as William Lilly, or Henry Coley, that Merlinus Anglicus Junior, upon whom Lilly's mantle descended; or the Vicar of Thornton in Buckinghamshire, William Bredon, a profound Divine, and “absolutely the most polite person for nativities in that age;” who being Sir Christopher Heydon's chaplain, had a hand in composing that Knight's Defence of Judicial Astrology; but withal was so given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco, he would cut the bell ropes, and smoke them.
Peter Hopkins could erect a scheme either according to the method of Julius Firmicus, or of Aben-Ezra, or of Campanus, Alcabitius, or Porphyrius, “for so many ways are there of building these houses in the air;” and in that other called the Rational Way, which in a great degree superseded the rest, and which Johannes Muller, the great Regiomontanus, gave to the world in his Tables of Directions drawn up at the Archbishop of Strigonia's request. He could talk of the fiery and the earthly Trigons, the aerial and the watery; and of that property of a triangle—(now no longer regarded at Cambridge) whereby Sol and Jupiter, Luna and Venus, Saturn and Mercury, respectively become joint Trigonocrators, leaving Mars to rule over the watery Trigon alone. He knew the Twelve Houses as familiarly as he knew his own; the Horoscope, which is the House of Life, or more awfully to unlearned ears Domus Vitæ; the House of Gain and the House of Fortune;—for Gain and Fortune no more keep house together in heaven, than either of them do with Wisdom and Virtue, and Happiness on earth; the Hypogeum, or House of Patrimony, which is at the lowest part of heaven, the Imum Cœli, though it be in many respects a good house to be born in here below; the Houses of Children, of Sickness, of Marriage and of Death; the House of Religion; the House of Honours, which being the Mesouranema, is also called the Heart of Heaven; the Agathodemon, or House of Friends, and the Cacodemon, or House of Bondage. All these he knew, and their Consignificators, and their Chronocrators or Alfridarii, who give to these Consignificators a septennial dominion in succession.
He could ascertain the length of the planetary hour at any given time and place, anachronism being no where of greater consequence,—for if a degree be mistaken in the scheme, there is a year's error in the prognostication, and so in proportion for any inaccuracy more or less. Sir Christopher Heydon, the last great champion of this occult science, boasted of possessing a watch so exact in its movements, that it would give him with unerring precision not the minute only, but the very scruple of time. That erudite professor knew—