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Page 14
'But upon my darkened vision
Comes a gleam of light Elysian;
And a seraph voice breathes softly--'Answered yet shall be that prayer!
For the spirit crushed and broken
By those burning words unspoken,
Soon shall hear them swelling, floating far upon the heavenly air,
And its deepest inmost visions shall have perfect utterance there!''
WILLIAM LILLY, ASTROLOGER.
A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,
That deals in destiny's dark counsels,
And sage opinions of the moon sells,
To whom all people, far and near,
On deep importances repair.
* * * * *
Do not our great reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news?
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken yet i' the air?
Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk two years hence--the great eclipse?
A total overthrow given the king
In Cornwall, horse and foot, next spring?'
Thus much, and more, wrote Butler in his 'Hudibras' of William Lilly,
who was famous in London during that eventful period of English history
from the time of Charles I, onward through the Commonwealth and the
Protectorate, to the Restoration: a time of civil commotions and wars,
when political parties and religious sects, striving for mastery, or
struggling for existence, made the lives and estates of men insecure,
and their outlook in many respects a troubled one. Lifelong connections
of families and neighbors were then rudely severed, and doubt, distrust,
and discontent filled all minds, or most. Of this widespread commotion
London was the active centre; and there a judgment of God, called the
plague, had, in the year 1625, desolated whole streets. The timid,
time-serving, faithless, a wavering host, peered anxiously into the
future, eager to know what might be hidden there, so that they could
shape their course accordingly for safety or for profit. Finding their
own short vision inadequate, they turned for aid to the professional
prophets of that troublous time--magicians who could call forth spirits
and make them speak, or astrologers who could read the stars, and show
how the great Disposer of events could be forestalled. These discoverers
of the hidden, disclosers of the future, though branded now as
impostors, were not therefore worse than their dupes; for in all ages
the two classes, deceivers and deceived, are essentially alike;
positives and negatives of the same thing. 'Men are not deceived; they
deceive themselves.' Witness a great American nation, in these latter
days, electing its ablest man to its highest place, and choosing between
a Fremont and a Buchanan! But let us turn quickly to the seventeenth
century again, and leave the nineteenth to its day of judgment.
Among the many astrologers dwelling in London at the time of which we
treat, William Lilly was the most famous; and his life being of great
interest to himself, he wrote an account of it for the instruction of
mankind--or for some other purpose; and we will now get from it what we
conveniently can.[1]
'I was born,' says this renowned astrologer, 'in the county of
Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called
Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle
Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one
part belongs under Lockington, in which stands my father's house (over
against the steeple), in which I was born' on the first day of May,
1602. After this rather too minute account of his birthplace, Lilly
tells us of his ancestors, substantial yeomen for many generations, who
'had much free land and many houses in the town;' but all the family
estates were 'sold by my grandfather and father, so that now our family
depends wholly on a college lease.' 'Of my infancy I can speak but
little; only I do remember that in the fourth year of my age I had the
measles.' 'My mother intended I should be a scholar from my infancy,
seeing my father's backslidings in the world, and no hopes by husbandry
to recruit a decayed estate.' Therefore, after some schooling at or near
home, the boy, when eleven years old, was sent to Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Leicester, to the school of Mr. John Brinsley, who 'was very severe in
his life and conversation, and did breed up many scholars for the
universities; in religion he was a strict Puritan.' 'In the fourteenth
year of my age, about Michaelmas, I got a surfeit, and thereupon a
fever, by eating beechnuts.' 'In the sixteenth year of my age I was
exceedingly troubled in my dreams concerning my salvation and damnation,
and also concerning the safety and destruction of my father and mother:
in the nights I frequently wept and prayed, and mourned, for fear my
sins might offend God.' 'In the seventeenth year of my age my mother
died.' The next year, 'by reason of my father's poverty, I was enforced
to leave school, and so came home to my father's house, where I lived in
much penury one year, and taught school one quarter of a year, until
God's providence provided better for me. For the last two years of my
being at school I was of the highest form of the school, and chiefest of
that form. I could then speak Latin as well as English; could make
extempore verses upon any theme.' 'If any scholars from remote schools
came to dispute, I was ringleader to dispute with them.' 'All and every
of those scholars, who were of my form and standing, went to Cambridge,
and proved excellent divines; only I, poor William Lilly, was not so
happy, fortune then frowning on my father's condition, he not in any
capacity to maintain me at the university.'
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