in the reign of James the First, than that which pretended to the cure of wounds and diseases; no stronger proof, indeed, can be given of the credulity of that age, than that Bacon was a believer in the sympathetic cure of warts, * and, with James and his court, in the efficacy of Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic powder. To this far-famed medicine, the secret of which King James obtained from Sir Kenelm, it is said by the Knight himself, in his Discourse on Sympathy, that Mr. James Howel, the well-known author of the Letters, was indebted for a cure, when his hand was severely wounded in endeavouring to part two of his friends engaged in a duel. The King, out of regard to Howel, sent him his own surgeon; but a gangrene being apprehended, from the violence of the inflammation, the sufferer was induced to apply to Sir Kenelm, of whose mode of treatment he had heard the most wonderful accounts. ་ "I asked him," relates Digby, "for any thing that had the blood upon it; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was first bound; and as I called for a bason of water, as if I would wash my hands, I took a handfull of powder of vitriol, which I had in my study, and presently disolved it. As soon as the bloody garter was brought me, I put it within the bason, observing in the interim what Mr. Howel did, who stood talking with a gentleman in a corner of my chamber, not regarding at all what I was doing; but he started suddenly as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked him what he ailed? I know not what ailes me; but I finde that I feel no more pain. Methinks that a pleasing kinde of freshnesse, as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before.' I reply'd, Since then that you feel already so good effect of my medicament, I advise you to cast away all your playsters; only keep the wound clean, and in a moderate temper betwixt heat and cold.' This was presently reported to the Duke of Buckingham, and a little after to the king, who were both very curious to know the circumstance of the businesse, which was, that after dinner I took the garter out of the water, and put it to dry before a great fire. It was scarce dry, but Mr. Howel's servant came running that his master felt as much burning as ever he had done, if not more: for the heat was such as if his hand were twixt coles of fire. I answered, although that had happened at present, yet he should find ease in a short time; for I knew the reason of this new accident, and would provide accordingly; for his master should be free from that inflammation, it may be before he could possibly return to him: but in case he found no ease, I wished him to come presently back again; if not, he might forbear coming. Thereupon he went; and at the instant I did put again the garter into the water, thereupon he found his master without any pain at all. To be brief, there was no sense of pain afterward; but within five or six dayes the wounds were cicatrized, and entirely healed." + To this marvellous cure, which may in truth be attributed to the dismission of the plasters, we may add that similar sanative and sympathetic power was conceived to subsist between the wounds and the instrument which inflicted them. Thus anointing the weapon with a salve, or stroking it in a peculiar manner, had an immediate effect on the wounded person. "They can remedie," says Scot, "anie stranger, and him that is absent, with that verie sword wherewith they are wounded. Yea, and that which is beyond all admiration, if they stroke the sworde upwards with their fingers, the partie shall feele no paine: whereas if they drawe their fingers downewards thereupon, the partie wounded shall feele intollerable paine." Independent of the superstitions which we have thus classed under distinct. heads, there remain several to be noticed, not clearly referrible to any part of the above arrangement; but which cannot with propriety be omitted. These may, therefore, be collected under the term miscellaneous, which will be found to include many curious particulars, in no slight degree illustrative of the subject under consideration. In the Tempest, towards the close of the fourth act, the poet represents Pros * Vide Bacon's Natural History, Century x. No. 997, 998. + Digby's Discourse upon the Sympathetic Powder, p. 6. Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 280. pero and Ariel setting on spirits, in the shape of hounds, to hunt Stephano and Trinculo, while, at the same time, a noise of hunters is heard. This species of diabolical or spectral chase was a popular article of belief, and is mentioned or alluded to in many of the numerous books which were written, during this period, on devils and spectres. Lavaterus, treating of the various modes in which spirits act, says, "heereunto belongeth those things which are reported touching the chasing or hunting of Divels, and also of the daunces of dead men, which are of sundrie sortes. I have heard of some which have avouched, that they have seene them;" and in a translation from the French of Peter de Loier's "Treatise of Spectres," published in 1605, a chase of this kind is mentioned under the appellation of "Arthur's Chase," "which many," observes this writer, "believe to be in France, and think that it is a kennel of black dogs, followed by unknown huntsmen, with an exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of some wild beast." Of a chase of this supernatural description, Boccacio, in the fourteenth century, made an admirable use in his terrific tale of Theodore and Honoria; a narrative which has received new charms and additional horrors from the masterly imitation of Dryden; and in our own days the same impressive superstition has been productive of a like effect in the spirited ballad of Burger. The hell-hounds of Shakspeare appear to be sufficiently formidable; for, not merely commissioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, likewise, as goblins, to "grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews Hark, (exclaims Ariel) they roar. Tempest, act iv. sc. 1. The punishments which our poet has assigned to sinners in the infernal regions, are most probably founded on the fictions of the monks, who, not content with the infliction of mere fire as a source of torment, condemn the damned to suffer the alternations of heat and cold; to experience the cravings of extreme hunger and thirst, and to be driven by whirlwinds through the immensity of space. In correspondence with these legendary horrors, are the descriptions attributed to Claudio in Measure for Measure, and to the Ghost in Hamlet ; "Claudio. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; "I am thy father's spirit; Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. I. Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night; Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Hamlet, act i. sc. 5. Imagery somewhat similar to this may be found in the vulgar Latin version of * Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyghit, p. 96. Job xxiv. 19, and in the Inferno and Purgatorio of Dante; † but Shakspeare had sufficient authorities in his own language. An old homily, quoted by Dr. Farmer, speaking of the pains of hell, says "the fyrste is fyre that ever brenneth, and never gyveth lighte; the seconde is passying cold, that yf a greate hylle of fyre were cast therein, it shold torne to yce;" and Chaucer, in his "Assemblie of Foules," describing the situation of souls in hell, declares that "breakers of the lawe, sothe to saine, And lickerous folke, after that they been dede Till many a world be passed."‡ The same doctrine is taught in that once popular and curious old work "The Shepherds's Calendar," which so frequently issued from the presses of Wynkyn De Worde, Pynson, and Julian Notary. Among the torments of the damned, the first enumerated "is fire so hote to rekenne That no manere of thynge may slekenne, That no hete of fire may over come;" and Lazarus, describing the punishment of the Envious, says,-"I have seen in hell a flood frozen as ice, wherein the envious men and women were plunged unto the navel; and then suddenly came over them a right cold and a great wind, that grieved and pained them right sore, and when they would evite and eschew the wonderful blasts of the wind, they plunged into water with great shouts and cries, lamentable to hear;"S and again in the eighteenth chapter of the same work, it is related, as the reward of them that keep the ten commandments of the Devil, that "a great froste in a water rounes And after a bytter wynde comes Whiche gothe through the soules with yre." In the "Songes and Sonnets," also, by Lord Surrey, and others, which were first published in 1557, the pains of hell are depicted as partaking of the like vicissitude: "The soules that lacked grace Which lye in bitter paine, Tormented all with fire, Then cast in frozen pites, To freze there certein howres." ** Hunger and thirst, as forming part of the sufferings of the damned, are alluded to by Chaucer in his Parson's Tale, †† and by Nash in one of his numerous pam "Ad nimium calorem transeat ab aquis nivium." In the paraphrase on Genesis, by Cedmon the Saxon poet, the same imagery may be found. Of this venerable poet and monk, who flourished in the seventh century, Mr. Turner has given us a very interesting account, together with a version of some parts of his paraphrase. One of these is a picture of the infernal regions, in which he says, $ Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 534, 598. Chalmers's English Poets, vol. ii. p. 424. Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, 2d edit. 4to. 1807. vol. ii. p. 309. et seq. Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 330, Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 149.. "The mesere of helle shal be in defaute of mete and drink. For God sayth thus by Moyses, They shal be wasted with honger, &c.” phlets: "Whether," says he, speaking of hell, "it be a place of horror, stench, and darkness, where men see meat, but can get none, and are ever thristy." Heywood in his "Hierarchie of Angels," † and Milton in his "Paradise Lost," have adopted Claudio's description of the infernal abode with regard to the interchange of heat and cold; the picture which the latter has drawn completely fills up the outline of Shakspeare: The Platonic doctrine or superstition relative to the harmony of the spheres, and of the human soul, was a favourite embellishment, both in prose and poetry, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, Milton, have all adopted it as a mode of illustration, and it forms, in the works of our great Dramatist, one of his most splendid and beautiful passages: "How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Sit, Jessica Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins: But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." Merchant of Venice, act iii. sc. 1. The opinion of Plato, as expressed in the tenth book of his "Republic"S and in his "Timæus," represents the music of the spheres as so rapid, sweet, and variously inflected, as to exceed all power in the human ear to measure its proportions, and consequently it is not to be heard of man, while resident in this fleshly mould. The same species of harmony is averred by Hooker** and Shakspeare to reside in the human soul; but, says the latter, "whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close this music in, we cannot hear it:" that is, whilst the soul is immured in the body, it is neither conscious of its own harmony, nor of that existing in the spheres; but no sooner shall it be freed from this incumbrance, and become a pure spirit, than it shall be sensible both to its own concord of sweet sounds, and to that diapason or concentus which is addressed by the nine muses or syrens to the Supreme Being, Of the various superstitions relative to the Moon, which prevailed in the days of Shakspeare, a few are still retained. The most common is that founded on the * Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil, 1595. Paradise Lost, book ii. 1'587, et seq. Folio, 1635. p. 345. § Ex Tao@v de, &c. De Republ. lib. x. p. 520, Ludg. 1590. Vide Todd's Milton, vol. vii. p. 53 ***Such notwithstanding, is the force there of (musical harmony), and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think, that the soul its f by nature is or hath in it harmony "-Fifth Book of Ecclesiastical Polity, published singly in 1597. 44 Torld's Milton, vol. vii. p. 53. idea of a human creature being imprisoned in this beautiful planet. The culprit was generally supposed to be the sinner recorded in Numbers, chap. xv. v. 32., who was found gathering sticks upon the sabbath day; a crime to which Chaucer has added the iniquity of theft; for he describes, this singular inhabitant as "Bearing a bush of thornes on his backe, Which for his theft might clime no ner the heven."* The Italians, however, appropriate this luminary for the residence of Cain, and one of their early poets even speaks of the planet under the term of "Caino e le spine." Shakspeare, with his usual attention to propriety of character, attributes a belief in this superstition to the monster Caliban: "Calib. Hast thou not dropped from heaven? Steph. Out o'the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man in the moon, when time was. Cal. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee; My mistress shewed me thee, thy dog and bush." Tempest, act iii. sc. 1. The influence of the moon over diseases bodily and intellectual; its virtue in all magical rites; its appearances as predictive of evil and good, and its power over the weather and over many of the minor concerns of life, such as the gathering of herbs, the killing of animals for the table, etc. etc. were much more firmly and universally accredited in the sixteenth century than at present; although we must admit, that traces of all these credulities may still be found; and that in medical science, the doctrine of lunar influence still, and to a certain extent perhaps with probability, exists. Shakspeare addresses the moon as the "sovereign mistress of true melancholy;"‡ tells us, that when "she comes more near to the earth than she was wont," she "makes men mad;" S and that, when she is "pale in her anger-rheumatic diseases do abound."** He tells us, also, through the medium of Hecate, that "Upon the corner of the moon There hangs a vaporous drop profound," of power to compel the obedience of infernal spirits; †† and that its eclipses,‡‡ its sanguine colour, SS and its apparent multiplication, are certain prognostics of disaster. To kill hogs, to collect herbs, and to sow seed, when the moon was increasing, was deemed a most essential observance; the bacon was better, the plants more eflective, and the crops more abundant in consequence of this attention. Implicit confidence was also placed in the new moon as a prognosticator of the weather, according to its position, or the curvature of its horns; and it was hailed by blessings and supplications; the women especially, both in England and Scotland, were accustomed to curtesy to the new moon, and on the first night of its appearance the unmarried part of the sex would frequently, sitting astride on a gate or stile, invoke its influence in the following curious terms: "All hail to the Moon, all hail to thee, I prithee good moon declare to me, The credulity of the country was particularly directed at this period, including the close of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, towards the numerous relations of the existence of monsters of various kinds; and Shakspeare, who more than any other poet availed himself of the superstitious follies of his time, hath repeatedly both introduced, and satirized, these objects, • Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 296. col. 1. Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 9. Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii. sc. 2. #Lear, act i. sc. 2., Othello, act v. sc. 2. ***K. John, act iv. sc. 2. + Dante's Inferno, cant. xx. § Othello, act v. sc. 2. Macbeth, act iii. sc. 5. 66 Richard the Second, act ii. sc. 4 |