Thus may ye behold
This man is very bold,
And in his learning old
Intendeth for to sit.
I blame him not a whit;
For it would vex his wit,
And clean against his earning
To follow such learning
As now a-days is taught.
DOCTOUR DOUBLE-ALE.
Lord Byron calls the Stars the poetry of heaven, haying perhaps in mind, Ben Jonson's expression concerning bell-ringing. Ronsard calls them the characters of the sky:
—Alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux,
Attaché dans le ciel je contemple les cieux,
En qui Dieu nous escrit, en notes non obscures,
Les sorts et les destins de toutes creatures.
Car luy, en desdaignant (comme font les humains)
D'avoir encre et papier et plume entre les mains,
Par les astres du ciel, qui sont ses caracteres,
Les choses nous predit et bonnes et contraires.
Mais les hommes, chargez de terres et du trespas,
Meprisent tel escrit, et ne le lisent pas.
The great French poet of his age probably did not know that what he thus said was actually believed by the Cabalists. According to them the ancient Hebrews represented the stars, severally and collectively, by the letters of their alphabet; to read the stars, therefore, was more than a metaphorical expression with them. And an astral alphabet for genethliacal purposes was published near the close of the fifteenth century, at Cracow, by Rabbi Kapol Ben Samuel, in a work entitled “The Profundity of Profundities.”
But as this would rest upon an insecure foundation,—for who could be assured that the alphabet had been accurately made out?—it has been argued that the Heavens are repeatedly in the Scriptures called a Book, whence it is to be inferred that they contain legible characters: that the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis ought to be translated, “In the beginning God created the letter, or character of the Heavens;” and that in the nineteenth Psalm we should read “their line,” instead of “their sound has gone forth into all lands,” this referring to their arrangement in the firmament like letters upon a roll of parchment. Jews, Platonists and Fathers of the Church, are shewn to have believed in this celestial writing. And there can be no question but that both the language and the characters must be Hebrew, that being the original speech, and those the original characters, and both divinely communicated to man, not of human invention. But single stars are not to be read as letters, as in the Astral Alphabet. This may be a convenient mode of noting them in astronomical observations; the elements of this celestial science are more recondite in proportion as the science itself is more mysterious. An understanding eye may distinguish that the stars in their groups form Hebrew letters, instead of those imaginary shapes which are called the signs of the Zodiac.
But as the Stars appear to us only as dots of light, much skill and sagacity are required for discovering how they combine into the complex forms of the Hebrew alphabet. The astral scholar reads them as antiquaries have made out inscriptions upon Roman buildings by the marks of the nails, when the letters themselves had been torn away by rapacious hands for the sake of the metal. Indeed it is not unlikely that the Abbé Barthelemi took the hint from the curiously credulous work of his countryman, Gaffarel, who has given examples of this celestial writing from the Rabbis Kapol, Chomer and Abiudan. In these examples the stars are represented by white spots upon the black lines of the Hebrew letter. The Abbé, when he writes upon this subject to Count Caylus, seems not to have known that Peiresc had restored ancient inscriptions by the same means; if, however, he followed the example of Peiresc without chusing to mention his name, that omni-erudite man himself is likely to have seen the books from whence Gaffarel derived his knowledge.
There is yet another difficulty; even the book of Heaven is not stereotyped; its types are continually changing with the motion of the heavenly bodies, and changes of still greater importance are made by the appearance of new stars.
One important rule is to be observed in perusing this great stelliscript. He who desires to learn what good they prefigure, must read them from West to East; but if he would be forewarned of evil, he must read from North to West; in either case beginning with the stars that are most vertical to him. For the first part of this rule, no better reason has been assigned than the conjectural one, that there is a propriety in it, the free and natural motion of the stars being from West to East; but for the latter part a sufficient cause is found in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah: septentrione pandetur malum. “Out of the North evil shall break forth.”
Dionyse Settle was persuaded that Martin Frobisher, being a Yorkshire-man, had, by his voyage in search of a north-west passage, repelled the rehearsal of those opprobrious words; not only he, but many worthy subjects more, as well as the said Dionyse, who was in the voyage himself, being “Yorkshire too.”