Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/526

 The Library of the Middle Temple. one of the finest poetic tributes ever laid at the feet of womanhood. Mr. Hutchinson has a boy's recollection of his uncle, the poet, as a kind but reserved old gentleman, with blue goggle spectacles, conversing little and mus ing much. He does not disguise his opinion that the world has thought too much of the inspiration which the poet drew from his sister Dorothy, and too little of what he owed to his wife. Words have been well called fossil thought, and is not this even more true of books than of words, the books peculiarly of a library like the Middle Temple, which has been ac cumulating for centuries? There on its shelves are the fossilized strata of extinct forms or phases of thought, once instinct with life and reality. Astrology, for instance. In the Middle Temple Library there are seventy works on this once absorbing subject. One of these is interesting as bearing the signature of Mr. Ashley on the title page, and above it written — what was evidently his favorite motto for it occurs several times : "Nulla gravior estjactura scienti quam tepnporis." Some affect, says the author of this treatise, to despise astrology — "pedibus concnlcare" —but its reasonableness is obvious; thus : the humours of the human body depend on the circumambient air. This is treated as a self-evident proposition. But the circumam bient air depends on the influences flowing from the distribution and conjunction of the stars. Having established the science on this irrefragable basis he goes on to demonstrate its indispensableness not only to doctors and surgeons but to magistrates, jurisconsults and theologians. And to-day all this strange cabalistic and occult learning of the astrologists, with its houses, cusps, planets and con junctions, is represented by what?— Zadkiel's Almanack! Another subject which greatly exercised the minds — or the imaginations — of our an

cestors of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen turies was demonology and witchcraft. How prevalent the superstition was is shown by the large number of works on the subject in the library.1 Indeed, a belief in witchcraft was in those days almost an article of the Christian faith,— to doubt or deny it was next door to atheism. Once given this deeply rooted prepossession that there were witches and that they were in league with the evil one, and trifles light as air, the most trumpery evidence, became, even to men like Sir Matthew Hale and Lord Bacon, confirmation0 strong as proof of Holy Writ. Witness the absurd story told by one of the witnesses in the trial of the witches at Bury St. Ed munds (6 State Trials 647). Here is another sample from one of the old books, pi a sup posed witch arraigned for trial at Rochester by her vicar. "His," — the vicar's— "sonne ( being an ungracious boie ) passed on a daie by hir house, at whom by chance hir little dog barked; which thing the boie taking in evill part drewe his knife and pursued him therewith even to hir dore, whom she re buked with some such words as the boie dis dained, and yet nevertheless would not be persuaded to depart in long time. At the last he returned to his master's house, and within five or six days fell sicke. Then was called to mind the fraie betwixt the dog and the boie, insomuch as the vicar (who thought himself so privileged as he little mistrusted that God would visit his children with sick ness) did so calculate as he found, partly through his own judgment and partly (as he himselfe told me) by relation of other witches, that his said sonne was bewitched. He pro ceeded yet further against her, affirming that always in his parish church when he desired 1 " The Tryall of witchcraft, with the true Discovery thereof, by John Cotta, Doctor of Physicke : dedicated to Sir Edward Coke, C. J." "Dialogul Discourses of Spirits and Divels (1601), By John Deacon and John Walker, Preachers. Villafundus (invocatio.y*