JOHN DEE.* THE career of John Dee as revealed by

Miss Fell Smith is a striking example of the versatility of the Elizabethan man of

science. It is as an alchemist and astrologer that Dee is

remembered to-day. But Miss Smith presents him in turn as an authority upon logic, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, history, and navigation. He might well be described as a

social reformer. He was an engineer : for while he was at Cambridge he invented the mechanism for the flying scarab,

in a performance of Aristophanes's Paz. He was even a poet, and addressed a truly Elizabethan petition to the House of Commons in five four-lined stanzas, of which the first is as follows :—

" The Honor due unto you all, And reverence to you each one, I do first yeeld most speciall ;

Grant me this time to heare my mono."

In fact it was not until he was over fifty that Dee began his famous experiments in crystal-gazing., which, moreover,

lasted for only seven years. Yet Miss Smith, in spite of her repeated protests against the popular view of Dee as a mere necromancer, devotes almost half of her volume to an account of these experiments. A greater emphasis upon the

practical side of his life would have made the book more interesting to modern readers.

Dee's reputation for learning gained for him the speaia/ favour of Queen Elizabeth. It was he who decided upon January 14th as a day auspicious for her coronation; and it was be who was able to calm the uproar at Court on the sensational occasion of the discovery in Lincoln's Inn Fields of a wax image of her Majesty pierced through the breast by a pin. But their intercourse was not merely professional.

Dee had a standing invitation to the Royal palace, and the Queen while riding out used frequently to stop at his house in Mortlake and have a glimpse of some marvellous astro- nomical instrument or ancient manuscript. These visits may well have been a cause of uneasiness, for if Elizabeth was kind at heart, she inherited an overpowering egoism. By an unfortunate coincidence, she arrived one day only a few hours after the burial of Dee's first wife. She was not in the least put out, however, but immediately asked to be shown her host's "wonderful convex mirror, admired the distorted image of herself, and finally rode away amused and merry, leaving the philosopher's distress," Miss Fell Smith cheerfully

adds, "assuaged for the moment by such gracious marks of royal interest and favour." In matters of finance the "royal interest" was leas easily obtained ; and Dee spent many years in vainly begging for some permanent post as the reward of his services. He relates in his diary how on one occasion the Queen promised "she wold send me an hundred angells to kepe my Christmas withall. Next day, December 4, the Queen's Majestie called for me at my dore, circa 3f a meridie,

as she passed by." Dee ventured to remind her of the promise, whereupon "she graciously putting down her mask did say with mery chere, 'I thank thee, Dee. There was never promise made but it was broken or kept."

At Elizabeth's Court Dee became acquainted with most of the celebrities of the day, and in his diary such entries as this are frequent—" 1577. Jan. 16. The Earl of Leicester, Mr. Philip Sidney and Mr. Dyer, etc., came to my house.'

But he was especially intimate with the great navigators and sea-captains It was perhaps this fact, or, more probably, the general enthusiasm for the Navy then spreading over England, which led Dee to write the four-volume treatise upon General and Rare Memorials

* John Deo (1627.1608). By Charlotte Pell Smith. With Portrait and Illus- trations. London : A. Constable and Co. [10s. ed. net.]

pertayning to the peifect art of Navigation. In this work be dilates upon the importance to England of her sea power, which must not be used as a weapon of offence, but for the preservation of peace, "for we must keep our own hands and hearts from doing or intending injury to any foreigner on sea or land." He demands also the establishment of a "Petty Navy Royall," whose functions (as distinct from those of the Grand Navy) are obscure. It seems partly designed as a sort of relief works, for "hundreds of lusty handsome men will this way be well occupied and have needful maintenance, which now are idle or want sustenance, or both." Dee's knowledge of seamanship was purely academic, and the value of his criticisms must have seemed doubtful, especially to the men who were upon the point of defeating the Spanish Armada. His small contribution to Army reform shows, however, that he could be practical. Every officer, he says, should bear "an astronomical staffe commodiously framed for carriage and use, and may wonderfully help himself by perspective glasses." But his two most remarkable schemes of reform were connected with very different subjects. The first was a suggestion for establishing a national library, in favour of which he petitioned Queen Mary nearly fif by years before the foundation of the Bodleian. The second was for the adoption in England of the reformed calendar which had lately been accepted in all Roman Catholic countries. But neither of these projects was destined to be carried into effect until two centuries later.

Absorbed in such subjects as these, Dee lived for fifty-three years before he began to feel the attraction of obscurer questions, and to realise, like a more celebrated doctor, that "a sound magician is a demigod." He had made a few experiments in crystal-gazing, but they seem to have been unsuccessful, until there arrived one day at his house in Mortlake the romantic character who was to change the whole course of his life. Edward Kelly was still a young man; but he had already been through many adventures, which included an accusation of " body-snatching " and a conviction of forgery. He offered Dee his services as a medium ; after a short trial the offer was accepted, and by this means Dee was for many years in daily communication with the world of spirits. A discussion of the phenomena at the present day would, owing to the lack of evidence, prove hopelessly sterile. Miss Fell Smith does not attempt one. She contents herself with reproducing in a rather fragmentary way Dee's own account of the "actions." The very method of communicating is obscure. Kelly apparently saw the "angels" in the crystal (thougla they sometimes stepped out into the room) and reported to Dee their appearance and words. Dee himself seems never to have seen or heard them directly. The question, therefore, resolves itself into a discussion of Kelly's psychology. Was he a genuine automatist, or a fraud ? There is some reason to think that in the earlier experiments he was speaking the truth. He appears to have been really alarmed by some of the apparitions, and to have been really bored by some of their speeches. And he gained very little from his relations with Dee : during almost the whole of them he was wandering with him over the Continent of Europe in the most miserable poverty. But in the end Kelly forfeited every vestige of honesty, threw off his connexion with Dee, abandoned the unprofitable business of scrying, and set himself up as a successful alchemist. The rest of his career was meteoric, and reached its climax in his being created a "Baron of the Kingdom of Boemia " and in his subsequent imprisonment and mysterious death in the Castle of Piirglitz. After this episode Dee returned to the quiet of his house in Mortlake.

All through his life, from the moment when he invented his flying beetle for the Cambridge Greek play, Dee was pursued by accusations of conjuring and magic. He was constantly protesting against this " fowle sklander," and his amazing petition to Parliament, which has already been quoted, is upon this very subject. These violent protests seem at first sight a little out of place, for, from his own accounts, it is clear that he believed himself to have witnessed the transmutation of metals, and to have held continual intercourse with spirits. What more could be expected from the most complete magician? But to regard Dee as a magician would involve an entire misunderstanding of his character. Alchemy, in his view, did not necessarily imply anything supernatural. The transmutation of copper into gold was to him a more difficult, but not a more inexplicable,

process than many of the condensings and precipitations with which he was familiar. The magician with his spells raises spirits, and compels them by force to do as he bids them. Dee's relations with the " angels " were very different. They appeared to him only as the result of earnest prayer; what be asked from them was guidance, not obedience. And although they gave him especial help in questions connected with alchemy, they were always ready with advice upon more intimate matters. Dee found in the "angels," as Stainton Moses found in his "spirit guides," a very real, even though a mistaken, part of his religious life. Such an attitude may not perhaps command the sympathies of the modern reader; it is rather by the little events of Dee's domestic life that he will be attracted. These few sentences from a letter to his son's schoolmaster at the beginning of a new term will affect him more than all the invocations to Annael and 11 and Madimi

Worshipfull Sir. I have here returned your scholer unto your jurisdiction, beseeching you to shew your charitable affection

towards him Syr, my wife bath delivered unto him some more apparayle and furniture in a little chest with lock and key, yea, and witk some towales to wype his face on after the morning and other washings of hands and face: willing him to buy him a. stone basen and pott, of a potter, to have always dene and wholsom water in for his use."

The simplicity, which in other circumstances has irritated, can only charm the reader here.