many years, in search of the profounder studies, he travelled into foreign parts; to be serious, he was queen Elizabeth's intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the secretaries of state." Lilly, who is correct in his statements except in the fabulous narratives of his professional art, must have written from some fact known to him; and it harmonizes with an ingenious theory to explain the unintelligible diary of Dee, suggested by Dr. Robert Hooke, the eminent mathematician.

Hooke, himself a great inventor in science, entertained a very high notion of the scientific character of Dee, and of his curiosity and dexterity in the philosophical arts-optics, perspective, and mechanics. Deeply versed in chymistry, mathematics, and the prevalent study of astrology, like another Roger Bacon (or rather a Baptista Porta), delighting in the marvellous of philosophical experiments, he was sent abroad to amuse foreign princes, while he was really engaged by Elizabeth in state affairs. Hooke, by turning over the awful tome, and comparing several circumstances with the history of his own life, was led to conclude that "all which relates to the spirits, their names, speeches, shows, noises, clothing, actions, &c., were all cryptography; feigned relations, concealing true ones of a very different nature. It was to prevent any accident, lest his papers should fall into hostile hands, that he preferred they should appear as the effusions of a visionary, rather than the secret history of a real spy. When the spirits are described as using inarticulate words, unpronounceable according to the letters in which they are written, he conjectured that this gibberish would be understood by that book of Enoch which Dee prized so highly, and which Hooke considered to contain the cipher. Hooke, however, has not deciphered any of these inarticulate words; but as the book of Enoch seems still to exist, this Apocalypse may yet receive

its commentator, a task which it appears Dr. Adam Clarke once himself contemplated.*

There is one fatal objection to this ingenious theory of cryptography; this astonishing diary opens long before Dee went abroad, and was continued long after his return, when it does not appear that he was employed in affairs of state.

* "As it is asserted that the six books of Mysteries transcribed from the papers of Dr. John Dee, by Elias Ashmole, Esq., preserved in the Sloane Library (Plutarch xvI., G) are a collection of papers relative to State Transactions between Elizabeth, her ministers, and different foreign Powers, in which Dr. Dee was employed sometimes as an official agent openly, and at other times as a spy, I purpose to make an extract from the whole work, and endeavor, if possible, to get a key to open the Mysteries. A. C."- Cat. of Adam Clarke's MSS.

324

THE ROSACRUSIAN FLUDD.

THE Confraternity of the Rose-cross long attracted public notice. Congenial with the more ancient freemasonry, it was probably designed for a more intellectual order; it was entitled "The Enlightened," "The Immortal," and "The Invisible." Its name has been

frequently used to veil mysteries, to disguise secret agents, and to carry on those artful impostures which we know have been practised on infirm credulity by the dealers in thaumaturgical arts, to a very recent period. The modern illuminati, of whom not many years past we heard so much, are conjectured to have branched out of the sublime society of the Rose-cross.

This mystical order sprung up among that mystical people, the Germans, who are to this day debating on its origin, for, like other secret societies, its concealed source eludes the search. It was at the beginning of the seventeenth century that a German divine, John Valentine Andreæ, a scholar of enlarged genius, in his controversial writings amused his readers by certain mysterious allusions to a society for the regeneration of science and religion; in the ambiguity of his language, it remained doubtful whether the society was already instituted, or was to be instituted. Suddenly a new name was noised through Europe, the name of Christian Rosencreutz, the founder three centuries back of a secret society, and a eulogy of the order was dispersed in five different languages.

The name of the founder seemed as mystical as the secret order, the Rose and the Cross.* The Rose, with

* Fuller's amusing explanation of the term Rosa-crusian was written without any knowledge of the supposititious founder. He says:

"Sure

I am that a rose is the sweetest of flowers, and a cross accounted the

the Germans, which was placed in the centre of their ceiling, was the emblem of domestic confidence, whence we have our phrase "under the rose ;" and the cross, the conescrated symbol of Christianity, described the order's holy end; such notions might suit a mystical divine. In the legend the visionary founder was said. to have brought from Palestine all the secrets of nature and of art, the elixir of longevity, and the stone so vainly called philosophical.†

*

If to some the society had a problematical existence, others were convinced of its reality; learned men became its disciples, its defenders; and one eminent person published its laws and its customs. Michael Maier, the physician of the emperor Rodolph, who had ennobled him for his services, having become initiated by some adepts, travelled over all Germany seeking every brother, and from their confidential instruction collected their laws and customs. At the same time, Robert Fludd, a learned physician of our own country, distinguished for his science and his mysticism, introduced Rosacrusianism into England; its fervent disciple, he furnished an apology for the mystical brotherhood when it seemed to require one.

The arcane tomes of Fludd often spread, and still with "the elect" may yet spread, an inebriating banquet of "the occult sciences". - all the reveries of the ancient

-

sacredest of forms and figures, so that much of eminency must be imported in their composition."-Fuller's Worthies.

*The chymists, in the style of their arcana, explain the term by the mystical union, in their secret operations, of the dew and the light They derive the dew from the Latin Ros, and, in the figure of a cross X they trace the three letters which compose the word Lux-light. Mosheim is positive in the accuracy of his information. I would not answer for my own, though somewhat more reasonable; it is indeed difficult to ascertain the origin of the name of a society which probably never had an existence.

† In the Harleian MSS., from 6481 to 6486, are several Rosacrusian writings, some translated from the Latin by one Peter Smart, and others by a Dr. Rudd, who appears to have been a profound adept.

VOL. II.-28

cabalists, the abstractions of the lower Platonists, and the fancies of the modern Paracelsians, all that is misterious and incomprehensible, with the rich condiment of science. There are some eyes which would still pierce into truths muffled in jargon and rhapsody, and dwell on the images of realities in the delirious dreams of the learned.

Two worlds, "the Macrocosm," or the great visible world of nature, and "the Microcosm," or the little world of man, from the comprehensive view, designed, to use Fludd's own terms as an encyclophy, or epitome of all arts and sciences."* This Rosacrusian philosopher seeks for man in nature herself, and watches that creative power in her little mortal miniatures. In his Mosaic philosophy, founded on the first chapter of Genesis, our seer, standing in the midst of chaos, separates the three principles of the creation the palpable darkness the movement of the waters at length the divine light! The corporeity of angels and devils is distinguished on the principle of rarum et densum, thin or thick. Angelic beings, through their transparency, reflect the luminous Creator; but, externally formed of the most spiritual part of water or air, by contracting their vaporous subtility, may "visibly and organically talk with man." The devils are of a heavy gross air; so Satan, the apostle called, "the prince of air;" but in touch they are excessive cold, because the spirit by which they live as this philosopher proceeds to demonstrate

drawn and contracted into the centre, the circumference of dilated air remains icy cold. From angels and demons, the Rosacrusian would approach even to the Divinity; calculating the infinite by his geometry, he

These are his words in reply to his adversary Foster, the only work which he published in English, in consequence of the attack being in the vernacular idiom. The term here introduced into the language is, perhaps, our most ancient authority for the modern term Encyclopædia, which Chambers curtailed to Cyclopædia.