learned and curious writer has not been the only critic who has proved himself to be the most woful of poetasters, this decision will not account for the mysterious silence of the writer in allowing an elaborate volume, the work of a great portion of a life, to be cast out into the world unnamed and unowned. I find it less difficult to imagine that some stray manuscript, possibly from the relics of SIDNEY, or perhaps the lost one of SPENSER, might have fallen into the hands of some courtly critic, or "the Gentleman Pensioner," who inlaid it with many of his own trivialities: the discrepancy in the ingenuity of the writing, with the genius of the writer in this combination of learning and ineptitude would thus be accounted for; at present it may well provoke our skepticism. 58 THE DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT. A SINGLE Volume sent forth from the privacy of a retired student, by its silent influence may mark an epoch in the history of the human mind among a people. Such a volume was the "Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot," a singular work which may justly claim the honor in this country of opening that glorious career which is dear to humanity and fatal to imposture. Witchcraft and magic, and some similar subjects, through a countless succession of ages, consigned the human intellect to darkness and to chains. In this country these conspiracies against mankind were made venerable by our laws and consecrated by erring piety. They were long the artifices of malignant factions, who found it mutually convenient to destroy each other by the condemnation of crimes which could never be either proved or disproved. The sorcerers and witches under the church of Rome were usually the heretics; and our Henry the Eighth, who was a Protestant Pope, transferred the grasp of power to the civil law, and an act of Parliament of the Reformation made witchcraft felony. Dr. Bulleyn, a celebrated physician and a reformer, who lived through the gloomy reign of Philip and Mary, bitterly laments "that while so many blessed men are burnt, witches should walk at large.' When the act fell into disuse Elizabeth was reminded, by petitions from the laity and by preaching from the clergy, that "witches and sorcerers were wonderfully increasing, and that her Majesty's subjects pined away until death." Witchcraft was again confirmed to be felony. The learned and others were fostering the traditions of the people about spirits, the incubus, and the succubus, the assemblies of witches, and the sabbaths of Satan. Some constructed their theories to explain the inexplicable; and too many, by torture, extorted their presumed facts and delusive confessions. The sage doated-the legal functionaries were only sanguinary executioners; and the merciful, with the kindest intentions, were practising every sort of cruelty, by what was termed trials to save the accused. The history of these dismal follies belongs even to a late period of the civi lization of Christian Europe! An enlightened physician of Germany had raised his voice in defence of the victims who were suffering under the imputation of Sorcery;* not denying the Satanic potency, he maintained that the devil was very well able to execute his own malignant purposes without the aid of such miserable agents. It required a protracted century ere Balthaser Bekker's "World Bewitched" could deprive Satan himself of his personality, indeed of his very existence. But it was a subject to be tenderly touched; superstition was a sacred thing, and too often riveted with theology; and though the learned Wierus had thus guarded his system, to a distant day he encountered the polemical divines. One of his fiercest assailants was a layman, the learned Bodin, he who has composed so admirable a treatise on Government, now deeply plunged into the "Demonomanie des Sorciers." The volume of Wierus, he tells us, "made his hair stand. on end.”—“ Shall we," he cries, credit "a little physician" before all the philosophers of the world, and the laws of God which condemn sorcerers? While Wierus and Bodin had been thus employed, an Englishman, Reginald Scot, in the serene retreat of a studious life, was silently laboring on the de * De Prestigiis Demonum et Incantationibus ac Veneficiis, 1564. velopment of this great moral conquest over the prejudices of Europe. Reginald Scot, who passed his life in the occupation of his studies, seems to have concentrated them on this great subject, for he has left no other work, except an esteemed tract on the cultivation of the hop the vine of his Kentish county. Although he took no degree at college, his erudition was not the less extensive, as appears by his critical knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek. But it was chiefly by his miscellaneous reading, where nothing seems to have escaped his insatiable curiosity on the extraordinary subjects which he ventured to scrutinize with such minute attention, that he was enabled to complete one of the most curious investigations of the age. Anthony Wood, in his peculiar style, tells us that "Scot gave himself up solely to solid reading, and to the perusal of obscure authors that had by the generality of the learned been neglected." This is a curious description of the early state of our vernacular literature, and of those students who, watchful over the spirit of the times, sought a familiar acquaintance with the opinions of their contemporaries. All writers were condemned as "obscure" who stood out of the pale of classical antiquity; and plain Anthony, who rarely dipped into the writings of Greece and Rome, but was an incessant lover of the misellaneous writers of modern date, distinguishes his favorites as "solid reading." In the days of Reginald Scot our scholars never ventured to quote other authority than some ancient; but the poets from Homer to Ovid, the historians from Tacitus to Valerius Maximus, and the essayists from Plutarch to Aulus Gellius, could not always supply arguments and knowledge for an age and on topics which had nothing in common with their own. With more elevated views than Wierus, Scot denied the power of sorcerers, because it attributed to them vine power. an omnipotence which can only be the attribute of diOur philosopher could publish only half the truth. "My question is not, as many fondly suppose, whether there be witches or not, but whether they can do such miraculous works as are imputed unto them." He thus adroitly eludes an argument which the public mind was not yet capable of comprehending. The "Discoverer" had to encounter a fierce host in shaking the predominant creed. The passions of mankind were enlisted against the zealous antagonist of an ancient European prejudice; the vital interests of priestly exorcists were at stake. To doubt of a supernatural agency seemed to some to be casting a suspicion over miracles and mysteries. The most ticklish point was the difficulty of explaining Scriptural phrases, which Reginald Scot denied related to witches, in the ordinary sense attached to these miserable women; the Hebrew term merely designating a female who practised the arts of "a poisoner," or or cheat." The whole scene of the witch of Endor seems to have racked "the Discoverer's invention through several chapters, to unveil the preparatory management of such incantations, by the ventriloquising Pythonissa, and her confederate, some lusty priest. All these Scot presumes to trace in the obscure and interrupted narrative of the Israelitish Macbeth, who, in his despair, hastened by night to listen to his approaching fate, which hardly required the gift of prophecy to predict. 66 Our "discoverer" prepared his readers for a revolution in their opinions. It appears, that in his day, notwithstanding some fairies still lurking in the bycorners of our poets, the whole fairy creed had in fact passed away. He appeals to this native mythology, now utterly exploded, as an evidence of popular infatuation and our philosopher observes, that he cannot VOL. II.-6 |