very of Witchcraft, speaks of the charm of sieve and shears, in the following manner. "Stick a pair of shears in the rind of a sieve, and let two persons set the top of each of their forefingers upon the upper part of the shears, holding it with the sieve up from the ground steadily, and ask Peter and Paul whether A, B, or C, hath stolen the thing lost, and at the nomination of the guilty person, the sieve will turn round."-Another charm, which the same author mentions, to find out a thief, is as follows: "Turn your face to the east, and make a cross upon crystal with olive oil, and under the cross write these two words, Saint Helen. Then a child that is innocent, and a chaste virgin, born in true wedlock, and not base-begotten, of the age of ten years, must take the crystal in her hand, and behind her back, kneeling on thy knees, thou must devoutly and reverently say over this prayer thrice: 'I beseech thee, my Lady St. Helen, mother of King Constantine, which didst find the cross upon which Christ died: by that holy devotion, and invention of the cross, and by the joy which thou conceivedst at the finding thereof, and by the great goodness which thou dost always use, that thou show me in this crystal whatsoever I ask or desire to know, Amen.' And when the child seeth the angel in the crystal, demand what you will, and the angel will make answer thereunto. Memorandum, that this be done just at the sunrising, when the weather is fair and clear."

V. 578.

-but to inform.] At that time there was a severe inquisition against conjurers, witches, &c. V. 581-2. For I assure you for my part,

I only deal by rules of art.] Sidrophel denies that he has any correspondence with the devil or evil spirits, and says, that he can do nothing but by the rules of art. Gassendus, in his Vanity of Judiciary Astrology, observed, "that Heminga, a modern, having proposed thirty eminent nativities, and reducted them to strict examination by the best rules of art, he declared, that the experiments did by no means agree with the rules, sad events befalling such as were born under the most happy and promising positions of heaven; and good befalling such as the heavens frowned upon, and threatened all the ruin and mischief unto that can be imagined; and therefore concluded, that astrologers, when they give judgment of a nativity, are generally the whole heavens wide

of the truth." Cardan himself owned, "that of forty things, scarce ten happened right."

V. 588. I understand your metonymy.] A rhetorical figure, by which one word is put for another, as the matter for the materiate; he died by steel, that is, by a sword.

V. 592-3. That are, indeed, but magic charms,

To raise the devil.] Mottray (see his Travels, vol. ii. p. 334), seems to dispute the possibility of raising the devil; and endeavours to confirm his opinion by a remarkable story of Baron L—, a Danish prisoner of war, who was confined in one of the prisons of Stockholm, for having been convicted of a design of treating with the devil, for a certain sum of money, which at that time he stood in extreme need of; and to this end, instead of ink, he had with his own blood signed a bond, by which he himself and some companions of his (who, for want of money and credit, had signed it in the same manner), firmly and truly made their souls over to the infernal spirit, after their deaths, upon condition that he would pay them down that sum; but neither he, nor any of the rest, could compass their desired end, notwithstanding all the pains they took about it; going by nights under gibbets, and in burying-places, to call him, and desiring him to trust them; but neither body nor spirit (says he) ever came to treat with them: at last one of them finding the devil would not help him, determined to try what he could do for himself; and having robbed and murdered a man, he was taken up, tried, and executed, and in his confession he owned the transaction and intent. And in the Baron L's chamber the bond was found, but torn to pieces, as void, and of none effect.

V. 599-600. Your ancient conjurers were wont

To make her from her sphere dismount.] This power was ascribed to them by the heathen poets. Thus Virgil, in his Bucolics, says:

"Pale Phoebe, drawn by verse, from heaven descends,

And Circe chang'd with charms Ulysses' friends."

The moon was worshipped by the ancient inhabitants of the earth with many superstitious forms and ceremonies. It was supposed that magicians and enchanters, particularly those of Thessaly, had an uncontrollable power over the moon, and that they

could draw her down from heaven at pleasure by the mere force of their incantations. Her eclipses, according to their opinion, proceeded from thence; and, on that account, it was usual to beat drums and cymbals to ease her labours, and to render the power of magic less effectual. The Arcadians believed that they were older than the moon: and among the people of Carrhæ, in Mesopotamia, husbands were said to be subservient to their wives, who considered the moon as a female deity, but those who paid their worship as to a male god, under the name of Lunus, possessed the freedom and authority of masters.

V. 609-10. Your modern Indian magician

Makes but a hole in th' earth to piss in.] The translator of Tonquemeda's Garden of Curiosities, says, "amongst other things which are written in the Maleus Malificarum, you shall find, that the commissioners having apprehended certain sorceresses, willed one of them to show what she could do, assuring her life on condition, that from thenceforward she should offend no more in the like: whereupon going out into the fields, in presence of the commissioners and many others, she made a pit in the ground with her hands, making water therein; which being done, she stirred about the urine with one of her fingers, out of which, by little and little, after she had made certain characters, and mumbled a few words, there rose a vapour, which ascending upward like a smoke, began to thicken of itself in the midst of the region of the air, gathering and making there a black and fearful cloud, which cast out so many thunders and lightnings, that it seemed to be a thing hellish and infernal. The woman remaining all this while still, asked the commissioners at last, where they would have that cloud discharge a large quantity of stones? They pointing to a certain place where it could do no hurt, the cloud of a sudden began to move itself with a great furious blustering of winds, and, in a short space, coming over the place appointed, discharged a great number of stones, like a violent shower, directly within the compass thereof."

V. 617-8. Some by the nose with fumes trepan 'em,

As Dunstan did the devil's grannam.] The first line probably was intended as a sneer on the use of incense in the Roman church: the second is an allusion to a well-known old English

legend. St. Dunstan was made Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 961. His skill in the liberal arts and sciences (qualifications much above the genius of the age he lived in) gained him first the name of a conjurer, and then of a saint. He is revered as such by the Catholics, who keep a holiday in honor of him yearly, on the 19th of May. The monkish writers have filled his life with romantic stories, and among the rest with this, to which our poet alludes. He was (they say) once tempted to lewdness by the devil, under the form of a beautiful woman; but instead of yielding to her temptations, he took the devil by the nose with a pair of red-hot tongs, and led him screaming with pain out of his cell. V. 627-8. Bombastus kept a devil's bird

Shut in the pommel of his sword.] Naudæus, in his History of Magic, observes of this familiar spirit, "that though the alchymists maintain, that it was the secret of the philosopher's stone, yet it were more rational to believe, that if there was any thing in it, it was certainly two or three doses of its laudanum, which he never went without, because he did strange things with it, and used it as a medicine to cure almost all diseases." Paracelsus was one of the most extraordinary characters of the age he lived in; and had such an opinion of his own chemical nostrums, that he boasted he could make men immortal by the philosopher's stone, potable gold, and other arcana; and yet he himself died at the age of forty-seven. He may be considered in some degree as the father of the modern race of empyrics and quacks, who inherit all his boldness and charletanism, without a shadow of his genius or enthusiasm. Dr. Grey has collected the following particulars of him, which appear to be correct. "Paracelsus was called Aurelius, Philippus, Paracelsus, Theophrastus, Bombastus de Hohenheim. He was born at the village of Einfidlen, two German miles from the Helvetic Tigurum, now called Zurich. It is said, that for three years he was a sow-gelder. His father William Hohenheim (a base child of a Master of the Teutonic Order), not only left him a collection of valuable books, but committed him first to the care of Trimethius, Abbot of Spanheim, and afterwards to Sigismund Fuger, of Zurich, famous for his chemical arcana. According to his own account, he visited all the universities of Europe; and at twenty years of age had searched into the

mines of Germany and Russia, until at last he was taken prisoner by the Tartars, and by them sent to Constantinople. In his travels he obtained a collection of the most sovereign remedies for all distempers, from doctors of physic, barbers, old women; conjurers, and chemists; and was afterwards employed as a doctor and surgeon, in armies, camps, and sieges. He signalized himself by a rash inconsiderate use of mercury and opium in the cure of the leprosy, pox, ulcers, and dropsies. The efficacy of mercury was not at that time well understood; and, according to the then opinion, opium being cold in the fourth degree, the use of it, through fear, was very much neglected; insomuch, that by his rashness and boldness in the use of these, he performed many cures which the regular physicians could not do: amongst which, that on Forbenius of Basil was the most remarkable; for, through his interest, he was invited by the magistrates of that place to read public lectures in physic and philosophy; where he soon ordered the works of Galen and Avicenna to be burnt, declaring to his auditors at the same time, that if God would not assist him, he would advise and consult with the devil." This account of Paracelsus is, perhaps, sufficiently full, but it appears to have been drawn with a hand that was indisposed to do justice to the real merits which Paracelsus possessed. He was, it is true, vain, rash, and boasting, but his knowledge of the art of medicine was far superior to that of his contemporaries, and something should be allowed for a man whose enthusiasm leads him to break the trammels of the schools, and in spite of the opposition of prejudice or ignorance, to think and act for himself. Such a man was Paracelsus. There can be no doubt but that he was an enthusiast and an egotist, and often prescribed with great temerity: but if the schools of medicine owe to his boldness a perfect knowledge of those two invaluable articles of the materia medica, opium and mercury, his name deserves to be handed down to posterity with applause, among those of the most illustrious physicians of any age or country.

V. 631-2. Kelly did all his feats upon

The devil's looking-glass, a stone.] Kelly, it has been mentioned in a former note, was assistant to Dr Dee; and indeed it appears from their papers, published by Dr. Merric Casaubon,