Forecastings of Nostradamus.
By C. A. Ward.
PART III.
(Continued from Vol. V. p. 293.)
“Hunc solem, et stellas et decedentia certis
Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nullâ
Imbuti spectent.”—Hor., I. Epist. vii. 3.
NOSTRADAMUS was of a stature somewhat less than middle-size, rather thick-set, active and vigorous. He had a broad, open forehead, a straight, regular nose, grey eyes, of gentle appearance, but in anger flashing fire; the general expression was severe, but pleasant, so that through all the seriousness one could discern a benevolent disposition; his cheeks were rosy even in extreme age; he had a long thick beard, and his health was excellent, all his senses being alert and well-preserved. His spirits were good, and he comprehended readily whatever he gave his attention to. His judgment was penetrating, and his memory remarkably retentive. He was taciturn by nature, thought much and spoke little, was rather prompt, sudden, and irascible in temper, but very patient when hard work had to be encountered. He slept four or five hours only out of the twenty-four. He practised freedom of speech himself and commended it in others. He was cheerful and facetious in conversation, though in jesting a little given to bitterness. He was attached, so says De Chavigny, to the Roman Church, and held fixedly the Catholic faith; out of its pale there was for him no salvation. Though pursuing a line of thought entirely his own, he had no sympathy with the Lutheran heretics of so-called Freethought. He was given to prayer, fasting, and charity. As far as outward observance was concerned, he might be classed with the highly respectable and decent. Le Pelletier says, “sa fin fut Chrétienne;” but he adds a little further on that his style is very much more like that of the Pagan oracles of Greece and Rome than of the canonical prophets of Hebrew Inspiration. He remarks that the first Century opens with a regular incantation fortified by the most celebrated rites of Paganism, so that some suspicion of his orthodoxy may well be entertained. Certain it is, for he avows as much in the dedicatory epistle to Henry II.—which, by the way, the King never saw—that it was his custom prudently to veil in obscurity of expression whatever was likely to displease his protectors and so to damage his private interest. This is not the way with the heroes of Hebrew prophecy, Isaiah, Elijah, Samuel, but though it is somewhat cowardly, it becomes, when well reckoned up, a sort of sub-assertion of sincerity; for why should a man record the unpleasant things at all if he did not believe in them, and desired only to make himself agreeable? If he believed his own utterances he was consciously a prophet: that he threw a veil over them, shows only that he declined to suffer martyrdom for his convictions. It is quite possible to be a seer, and yet not heroical, but it is the poorest of criticism not to distinguish between such frailty as this and imposture. Want of grandeur does not imply any intention to deceive. Modern Freethought effectually breaks down upon a point like this, it almost invariably classifies the weak spiritualist as an impostor. It reasons somewhat thus: “Astrologers are impostors—Nostradamus was an astrologer. Prophets and divines, owing to the spread of sound knowledge in modern times, are no longer to be reckoned as inspired, but as impostors; Nostradamus was a prophet and therefore an impostor. He arrived in the world a thousand years behind his time, and must lie down now under Scientific and Encyclopædic ridicule. At the close of the nineteenth century is it likely we can allow such claims to be made upon our credulity as the more rational part of the community refused to admit three hundred years ago?” To all this and to all such processes of reasoning, I need merely say that there is a credulity of superstition that has been always esteemed as degrading to human nature; but there is also a superstition of incredulity that is quite as debasing to human nature and even more so, for it springs from the folly of pride and conceit, and not, as the other does, from a misplacement of faith.
By his second wife he left three sons and three daughters. The eldest was Cæsar, to whom he dedicated his first volume of the “Centuries.” Of these he wrote twelve in quatrains, and three of them are left imperfect, the seventh, the eleventh, and twelfth. But he also left some Forecasts written in prose, which Chavigny collected and arranged in twelve books. They are said to comprehend the history of France for about a century after his death—its wars, troubles, and whispered intrigues. The book is not mentioned by Brunet, 1839-45, and I do not find it in the British Museum; but the National Library is rather imperfectly supplied with the literature relating to this remarkable man; no doubt the authorities there look down upon him from the Olympus of Bloomsbury with a scientific disregard, as being a sort of gipsy fortune-teller of the sixteenth century, not worth completing. Do we expect a Messiah from that quarter? Can there any good thing come out of Aix in Provence? “Loco exiguo, obscuro, ignobili, barbaro, impio atque prophano?”
This prose history of a hundred years would be interesting, if only to compare with the rhymed “Centuries,” which have a much vaster range, and are supposed by many to cover all the time from Louis XIV. to the establishment of Antichrist.
Jean de Nostradamus, the brother of Michael, was Procureur to the Parliament of Aix, and wrote a work entitled “Les vies des plus célèbres et anciens poëtes provensaux, qui ont floury du tems des contes de Provence,” Lyon, 1575, a book still sought for, and rather rare. It has been seen above that Cæsar also wrote on the same subject. His work was entitled “Chronique de l’Histoire de Provence:” in this he introduced the lives of the poets, and the book was published in 1614 by his nephew, Cæsar de Nostradamus.
These are almost all the facts of any importance that are recorded in the life of Nostradamus. It now remains to us to give some account of the most remarkable of his forecasts. They may be pronounced obscure, partial, useless, or what not, according to the special views and disposition of mind in each reader. That they are very curious must be admitted by all, and that some of the things foreseen with astounding particularity are inexplicable upon any hypothesis of reasoning, other than that which admits either a direct revelation in every case, or a general anticipatory faculty, forming part of the great scheme of the mental endowment of mankind. Call it divination, second sight, clairvoyance, magnetic affinity, or what you will. Everyone may in this decide, or, if you had rather, guess for himself. I prefer the second supposition, and think that there are certain organisations, somewhat rare and peculiarly wrought, that are endowed by nature with a subtle tact and anticipatory insight denied to the majorities. I further think that such exceptional instances occur more frequently in people of ancient and unmixed race, such as the Celt, the Basque, the Chaldean, Gipsy, and most frequently of all amongst those branches of them that inhabit mountain-ranges. These I imagine to retain the instincts of the birth of man more clearly than the mixed tribes that have busied and even degraded themselves in the social pursuits of money, power, and art, and have burnt down their souls to a kind of materialistic slag in the furnace of what is called civilisation.