Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/490

474 Jean Bodine quotes St. Augustine to the effect that a certain Præstantius confided to him an adventure of his father's, who, having been drugged by a witch, was transformed into a horse, and had to carry a load of corn ("De Civitate Dei" xviii, 18). Such transformations, says Bodine, are still of daily occurrence, and only a false modesty prevents the victims from achieving the glory of exposing the enchanter.

Witches, it is well known, can change only the body, but not the soul, of a fellow-creature; the corn-carrying contemporary of St. Augustine was doubtless conscious of his degradation, and no horse of proper principles should hesitate, under such circumstances, to gallop away and state his case to the next exorcist. In Northern Germany, metamorphoses of that kind are especially frequent, the object of the wizards being to secure a mount on their way to the Blocksberg, and, though individuals have no jurisdiction in such matters, Monsieur Bodine would advise the anthropohippos to watch his opportunity and disable his rider by a well-aimed kick. Two gamekeepers of the Duke of Brunswick, both men of unimpeachable veracity, once saw a whole cavalcade of Walpurgis-riders, but hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting a hack instead of a hag. In the same duchy a witch in tormentis once revealed a sentence that would horsify a man in a minute, but Monsieur Bodine is happy to state that he has forgotten the formula. To remember such things is highly dangerous. One judge of the Criminal Court of Lorraine had cross-examined so many witches that he at last began to suspect himself, and, having dropped a hint to that effect, was seized and burned with the proper rites.

With the exception of Ibn Chaldir, who passed nine tenths of his long life in a public library, Robert Burton, the vicar of Segrave, was probably the best-read man who ever lived. He had studied philology, philosophy, theology, law, and medicine; he was a first-class mathematician, a zealous astronomer, and "calculator of nativities"; he had read nearly every volume in the Bodleian collection and in the library of Christ-Church College. He was well versed in the philosophical speculations of the mediæval school-men. He had mastered the inductive system of his great contemporary. All this learning did not prevent him from perpetrating the following dicta:

"The air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible devils. . . . Fiery devils are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes, or ignes fatui (which lead men often in flumina aut præcipitia), whom, if travelers wish to keep off, they must pronounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their faces in contact with the ground. . . . Aërial devils are such as keep quarters in the air, cause tempests, thunder and lightning, make it rain stones, wool, frogs, etc. . . . Subterranean devils are as common as the rest, and do as much harm. The last are conversant about the center of the earth, to torture the souls of damned men to the day of judgment; their egress and regress some suppose to be about Etna,