M. B. She is wilful indeed. I will leave you also.

SAMUEL. I thank you for your good company.

About the same time that Gifford was endeavouring to teach his
countrymen a more excellent way of dealing with the vexed questions of
demonology and witchcraft, a Dutch minister, named Bekker, scandalized
the orthodox by a frank denial of all power whatsoever to the devil,
and, consequently, to the witches and warlocks who were supposed to be
at one and the same time his servants and yet his employers. His
'Monde Enchanté' (originally written in Dutch) consists of four
ponderous volumes, remarkable for prolixity and repetition, as well as
for a certain originality of argument. There was no just ground,
however, as Hallam remarks, for throwing imputations on the author's
religious sincerity. He shared, however, the opprobrium that attaches
to all who deviate in theology from the orthodox path; and it must be
admitted that his Scriptural explanations in the case of the demoniacs
and the like are more ingenious than satisfactory.

* * * * *

A violent trumpet-note on the side of intolerance was blown by King
James I. in 1597 in his famous 'Dæmonologia.' It is written in the
form of a dialogue, and numbers about eighty closely-printed pages.
James, as the reader has seen, had had ample personal experience of
witches and their 'cantrips,' and had 'got up' the subject with a
commendable amount of thoroughness. He divides witches into eight
classes, who severally work their evil designs against mankind; then he
subdivides into white and black witches, of whom the former are the
more dangerous; and again into 'acted' and 'pacted' witches, the former
depending for their power on their supernatural gifts, and the latter
having made a compact with Satan contrary to 'all rules and orders of
nature, art or grace.' Further, the demons have a classification of
their own; some of the higher ranks of the demonarchy looking down
contemptuously enough on those of the inferior grades, who consist of
'the damned souls of departed conjurers.' These 'damned souls'
discharge all kinds of mean and servile offices--bringing fire from
heaven for the convenience of their employers; conveying bodies through
the air; conjuring corn from one field into another; imparting a show
of life to dead bodies; and raising the wind for witches to sell to
their nautical customers--who received pieces of knotted rope, and,
untying the first knot, secured a favourable breeze, for the second a
moderate wind, and for the third a violent gale.

After describing the rites in vogue on the conclusion of a compact
between witch and devil, King James enlarges on other points of
ceremonial, such as the making of various magic circles--sometimes
round, sometimes triangular, sometimes quadrangular; the use of holy
water and crosses in ridicule of the papists; and the offer to the
demons of some living animal. He adds that the great witches' meetings
frequently took place in churches: and he says that the witches mutter
and hurriedly mumble through their conjurations 'like a priest
despatching a hunting masse'; and that if they step out of a circle in
a sudden alarm at the horrible appearance assumed by the demon, he
flies off with them body and soul.

The royal expert proceeds to indicate the means by which you may
detect a witch. 'There are two good helpes that may be used for their
trials; the one is the finding of their marke and the trying the
insensibility thereof. The other is their fleeting on the water: for
as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter
handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood
were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having
appoynted that secret supernaturale signe for triale of that secret
unnaturale crime, so it appears that God hath appoynted (for a
supernaturale signe of the monstrous impietie of witches) that the
water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken off
them the sacred water of Baptism and willingly refused the benefit
thereof: no, not so much as their eies are able to shed teares
(threaten and torture them as you please) while first they repent (God
not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a
crime), albeit the womenkind especially be able other waies to shed
teares at every light occasion when they will, yea altho' it were
dissemblingly like the crocodiles.'

Incidentally, our witch-hunting King offers an explanation of a
peculiarity which, no doubt, our readers have already noted--the great
numerical superiority of witches over warlocks. 'The reason is easie,'
he says; 'for as that sex is frailer than man is, so is it easier to
be intrapped in the grosse snares of the devil,--as was over well
prooved to be true by the serpente deceiving of Eva at the beginning,
which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine [ever since].'

As regards the external appearance of witches, he remarks that they
are not generally melancholic; 'but some are rich and worldly wise,
some are fat and corpulent, and most part are given over unto the
pleasures of the flesh; and further experience daily proves how loth
they are to confess without torture, which witnesseth their
guiltinesse.' He concludes by asking, 'Who is safe?' and replies that
the only safe person is the magistrate, when assiduously employed in
bringing witches to justice. One Reginald Scot, Esq., however,
hop-grower and brewer of Smeeth, in Kent, a persistent disbeliever in
and ridiculer of witchcraft, who had the courage to break lances with
the King and the bench of Bishops in contemporary pamphlets, and is
called by the King an 'Englishman of damnable opiniones,' irreverently
answered this question by saying that the only safe person was the
King himself, as his sex prevented his being taken for a witch, and
the whole kingdom was satisfied that he was no conjurer.

* * * * *

In 1616, John Cotta, a Northampton physician, published a forcibly
written attack on the vulgar delusion, under the title of 'The Trial
of Witchcraft,' which reached a second (and enlarged) edition in 1624.
Cotta was also the author of a fierce blast against quacks--'Discovery
of the Dangers of ignorant Practisers of Physick in England,' 1612;
and of a not less vehement attack on the _aurum potabile_ of the
chemists, entitled, 'Cotta contra Antonium, or An Ant. Anthony,' 1623.

* * * * *

There is a lively work by John Gaul, preacher of the Word at Great
Haughton, in the county of Huntingdon--'Select Cases of Conscience
touching Witches and Witchcraft,' 1646, which is worth looking into.
Gaul was a courageous and persevering opponent of the great
witch-finder, Hopkins.

* * * * *

The unhappy victims of popular prejudice found a strenuous champion
also in Sir Robert Filmer, who, in 1653, published his 'Advertisement
to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a
Difference between an English and Hebrew Witch.' Filmer is best known
to students by his 'Patriarcha,' an apology for the paternal
government of kings, which does violence to all constitutional
principles, but has at least the negative merit of obvious sincerity
on the part of its writer. It is somewhat surprising to find a mind
like Filmer's, fettered as it was by so many prejudices and a slavish
adherence to prescription, openly urging the cause of tolerance and
enlightenment, and vigorously demolishing the sham arguments by which
the believers in witchcraft endeavoured to support their grotesque
theories.

* * * * *

Three years later followed on the same side a certain Thomas Ady,
M.A., who, with considerable vivacity, fulminated against the
witch-mongers and witch-torturers in his tractate, 'A Candle in the
Dark; or, A Treatise concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft:
being Advice to Judges, Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, and Grand
Jurymen, what to do before they pass sentence on such as are arraigned
for their lives as Witches.' The quaintly-worded dedication ran as
follows:

'To the Prince of the Kings of the Earth. It is the manner of men, O
heavenly King, to dedicate their books to some great men, thereby to
have their works protected and countenanced among them; but Thou only
art able by Thy Holy Spirit of Truth, to defend Thy Truth, and to make
it take impression in the heart and understanding of men. Unto Thee
alone do I dedicate this work, entreating Thy Most High Majesty to
grant that, whoever shall open this book, Thy Holy Spirit may so
possess their understanding as that the Spirit of error may depart
from them, and that they may read and try Thy Truth by the touchstone
of Thy Truth, the Holy Scriptures; and finding that Truth, may embrace
it and forsake their darksome inventions of Anti-Christ, that have
deluded and defiled the nations now and in former ages. Enlighten the
world, Thou art the Light of the World, and let darkness be no more in
the world, now or in any future age; but make all people to walk as
children of the light for ever; and destroy Anti-Christ that hath
deceived the nations, and save us the residue by Thyself alone; and
let not Satan any more delude us, for the Truth is thine for ever.'

* * * * *

In 1669 John Wagstaffe published 'The Question of Witchcraft Debated.'
According to Wood, he was the son of John Wagstaffe, a London citizen;
was born in Cheapside; entered as a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford,
towards the end of 1649; took the degrees in Arts, and applied himself
to the study of politics and other learning. 'At length being raised
from an academical life to the inheritance of Hasland by the death of
an uncle, who died without male issue, he spent his life afterwards in
single estate.' He died in 1677. Wood describes him as 'a little
crooked man, and of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the
boys of this University because, as they said, he himself looked like
a little wizard.'

His book is illuminated throughout by the generous sympathies of a
large and liberal mind. His peroration has been described, and not
unjustly, as 'lofty' and 'memorable,' and, when animated by a noble
earnestness, the writer's language rises into positive eloquence. 'I
cannot think,' he says, 'without trembling and horror on the vast
numbers of people that in several ages and several countries have
been sacrificed unto this cold opinion. Thousands, ten thousands, are
upon record to have been slain, and many of them not with simple
deaths, but horrid, exquisite tortures. And yet, how many are there
more who have undergone the same fate, of whom we have no memorial
extant? Since therefore the opinion of witchcraft is a mere stranger
unto Scripture, and wholly alien from true religion; since it is
ridiculous by asserting fables and impossibilities; since it appears,
when duly considered, to be all bloody and full of dangerous
consequence unto the lives and safety of men; I hope that with this my
discourse, opposing an absurd and pernicious error, I cannot at all
disoblige any sober, unbiased person, especially if he be of such
ingenuity as to have freed himself from a slavish subjection unto
those prejudicial opinions which custom and education do with too much
tyranny impose.

'If the doctrine of witchcraft should be carried up to a height, and
the inquisition after it should be entrusted in the hands of
ambitious, covetous, and malicious men, it would prove of far more
fatal consequences unto the lives and safety of mankind than that
ancient heathenish custom of sacrificing men unto idol gods, insomuch
that we stand in need of another Heracles Liberator, who, as the
former freed the world from human sacrifice, should, in like manner,
travel from country to country, and by his all-commanding authority
free it from this evil and base custom of torturing people to confess
themselves witches, and burning them after extorted confessions.
Surely the blood of men ought not to be so cheap, nor so easily to be
shed by those who, under the name of God, do gratify exorbitant
passions and selfish ends; for without question, under this side
heaven, there is nothing so sacred as the life of man, for the
preservation whereof all policies and forms of government, all laws
and magistrates are most especially ordained. Wherefore I presume that
this discourse of mine, attempting to prove the vanity and
impossibility of witchcraft, is so far from any deserved censure and
blame, that it rather deserves commendation and praise, if I can in
the least measure contribute to the saving of the lives of men.'

* * * * *

Meric Casaubon, a man of abundant learning and not less abundant
superstition, attempted a reply to Wagstaffe in his treatise 'Of
Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual' (1670).

* * * * *

At Thornton, in the parish of Caswold, Yorkshire, was born, on the 3rd
of February, 1610, one of the ablest and most successful of the
adversaries of the witch-maniacs, John Webster. It is supposed that he
was educated at Cambridge; but the first event in his career of which
we have any certain knowledge is his admission to holy orders in the
Church of England by Dr. Morton, Bishop of Durham. In 1634 we find him
officiating as curate at Kildwick in Craven, and nine years later as
Master of the Free Grammar School at Clitheroe. He seems afterwards to
have held for a time a military chaplaincy, then to have withdrawn
from the Church of England, and taken refuge in some form of Dissent.
In 1653 his new religious views found expression in his 'Saints'
Guide,' and in 1654, in 'The Judgment Set and the Books Opened,' a
series of sermons which he had originally preached at All Hallows'
Church in Lombard Street. It was in this church the incident occurred
which Wood has recorded: 'On the 12th of October, 1653, William
Erbury, with John Webster, sometime a Cambridge scholar, endeavoured
to knock down learning and the ministry both together in a disputation
that they then had against two ministers in a church in Lombard
Street, London. Erbury then declared that the wisest ministers and the
purest churches were at that time befooled, confounded, and defiled by
reason of learning. Another while he said that the ministry were
monsters, beasts, asses, greedy dogs, false prophets, and that they
are the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. The same person also
spoke out and said that Babylon is the Church in her ministers, and
that the Great Whore is the Church in her worship, etc., so that with
him there was an end of ministers and churches and ordinations
altogether. While these things were babbled to and fro, the multitude,
being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to cry out, and
immediately it came to a meeting or tumult (call it which you please),
wherein the women bore away the bell, but lost some of them their
kerchiefs; and the dispute being hot, there was more danger of pulling
down the church than the ministry.'

In 1654, our iconoclastic enthusiast strongly--but not without good
reason--assailed the educational system then in vogue at Oxford and
Cambridge in his treatise, 'Academiarum Examen,' which created quite a
sensation in 'polite circles,' fluttering the dove-cots of the rulers
of the two Universities. Very curious, however, are its sympathetic
references to the old Hermetic mysteries, Rosicrucianism, and
astrology, to the fanciful abstractions and dreamy speculations of
Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Fludd, and Dr. Dee. One cannot but wonder
that so acute and vigorous an intellect should have allowed itself to
be entangled in the delusions of the occult sciences. But his study of
the works of the old philosophers was, no doubt, the original motive
of the laborious research which resulted in his 'Metallographia; or, A
History of Metals' (1671). In this learned and comprehensive treatise
are declared 'the signs of Ores and Minerals, both before and after
Digging, the causes and manner of their generations, their kinds,
sorts, and differences; with the description of sundry new Metals, or
Semi-Metals, and many other things pertaining to Mineral Knowledge. As
also the handling and showing of their Vegetability, and the
discussion of the most difficult Questions belonging to Mystical
Chymistry, as of the Philosopher's Gold, their Mercury, the Liquor
Alkahest, Aurum potabile, and such like. Gathered forth of the most
approved Authors that have written in Greek, Latin, or High Dutch,
with some Observations and Discoveries of the Author Himself. By John
Webster, Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery. "_Qui principia
naturalia in seipso ignoraverit, hic jam multum remotus est ab arte
nostra, quoniam non habet radiam veram super quam intentionem suam
fundit._" Geber, Sum. Perfect., lib. i., p. 21.'

In 1677, Webster, who had abandoned the cure of souls for that of
bodies, produced the work which entitles him to honourable mention in
these pages. According to the fashion of the day, its title was almost
as long as a table of contents. I transcribe it here _in extenso_:

'_The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft_, Wherein is affirmed that
there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors. And Divers persons
under a passive Delusion of Melancholy and Fancy. But that there is a
Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, Or that he
sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are
turned into Cats or Dogs, raise Tempests or the like, is utterly
denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled the Existence of Angels
and Spirits, the Truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and
Sidereal Spirits, the Force of Charms and Philters; with other
Abstruse Matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic. "_Falsæ
etenim opiniones Hominum præoccupantes, non solum surdos sed ut cæcos
faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quæ aliis perspicua apparent._"
Galen, lib. viii., de Comp. Med. London. Printed by I. M., and are to
be sold by the Booksellers in London, 1677.'

Webster, who was evidently a man of restless and inquiring intellect,
and independent judgment, died on June 18, 1682, and was buried in
St. Margaret's, Clitheroe, where his monument may still be seen. Its
singular inscription must have been devised by some astrological
sympathizer:

Qui hanc figuram intelligunt
Me etiam intellexisse, intelligent.

Here follows a mysterious figure of the sun, with several circles and
much astrological lettering, which it is unnecessary to reproduce. The
inscription continues:

Hic jacet ignotus mundo mersus que tumultus
Invidiæ, semper mens tamen æqua fecit,
Multa tulit veterum ut sciret secreta sophorum
Ac tandem vires noverit ignis aquæ.

Johannes Hyphantes sive Webster.
In villa Spinosa supermontana, in
Parochia silvæ cuculatæ, in agro
Eboracensi, natus 1610, Feb. 3.
Ergastulum animæ deposuit 1682, Junii 18.
Annoq. ætatis suæ 72 currente.
Sicq. peroravit moriens mundo huic valedicens,
Aurea pax vivis, requies æterna sepultis.

In 1728, Andrew Millar, at the sign of The Buchanan's Head, against
St. Clement's Church in the Strand, published 'A System of Magick: or,
A History of the Black Art,' by Daniel Defoe; a book which, though it
by no means justifies its title, is one of more than passing interest,
partly from the renown of its author, and partly from the light it
throws on the popularity of magic among the English middle classes in
the earlier years of the eighteenth century. As it has not been
reprinted for the last fifty years, and is not very generally known,
some glimpses of the stuff it is made of may be acceptable to the
curious reader.[53]

In his preface Defoe lavishes a good deal of contempt on contemporary
pretenders to the character of magician, who by sham magical practices
imposed on a public ignorant, and therefore credulous. Magicians, he
says, in the first ages were wise men; in the middle ages, madmen; in
these latter ages, they are cunning men. In the earliest times they
were honest; in the middle time, rogues; in these last times, fools.
At first they dealt with nature; then with the devil; and now, not
with the devil or with nature either. In the first ages the magicians
were wiser than the people; in the second age wickeder than the
people; and in this later age the people are both worse and wickeder
than the magicians. Like many other generalizations, this one of
Defoe's is more pointed than true; and it is evident that the
so-called magicians could not have flourished had there not been an
ignorant class who readily accepted their pretensions.

Defoe's account of the origin of magic is so vague as to suggest that
he knew very little of the subject he was writing about. 'I have
traced it,' he says, 'as far back as antiquity gives us any clue to
discover it by: it seems to have its beginning in the ignorance and
curiosity of the darkest ages of the world, when miracle and something
wonderful was expected to confirm every advanced notion; and when the
wise men, having racked their invention to the utmost, called in the
devil to their assistance for want of better help; and those that did
not run into Satan's measures, and give themselves up to the infernal,
yet trod so near, and upon the very verge of Hell, that it was hard to
distinguish between the magician and the devil, and thus they have
gone on ever since: so that almost all the dispute between us and the
magicians is that they say they converse with good spirits, and we say
if they deal with any spirits, it is with the devil.'

Here the greatness of his theme stimulates Defoe into poetry, which
differs very little, however, from his prose, so that a brief specimen
will content everybody:

'Hail! dangerous science, falsely called sublime,
Which treads upon the very brink of crime.
Hell's mimic, Satan's mountebank of state,
Deals with more devils than Heaven did e'er create.
The infernal juggling-box, by Heaven designed,
To put the grand parade upon mankind.
The devil's first game which he in Eden played,
When he harangued to Eve in masquerade.'

Dividing his treatise into two parts, our author, in the introduction
to Part I., discusses the meaning of the principal terms in magical
lore; who, and what kind of people, the magicians were; and the
meaning originally given to the words 'magic' and 'magician.' As a
matter of course, he strays back to the old Chaldean days, when a
magician, he says, was simply a mathematician, a man of science, who,
stored with knowledge and learning, was a kind of walking dictionary
to other people, instructing the rest of mankind on subjects of which
they were ignorant; a wise man, in fact, who interpreted omens, ill
signs, tokens, and dreams; understood the signs of the times, the face
of the heavens, and the influences of the superior luminaries there.
When all this wisdom became more common, and the magi had communicated
much of their knowledge to the people at large, their successors,
still aspiring to a position above, and apart from, the rest of the
world, were compelled to push their studies further, to inquire into
nature, to view the aspect of the heavens, to calculate the motions of
the stars, and more particularly to dwell upon their influences in
human affairs--thus creating the science of astrology. But these men
neither had, nor pretended to have, any compact or correspondence with
the devil or with any of his works. They were men of thought, or, if
you please, men of deeper thinking than the ordinary sort; they
studied the sciences, inquired into the works of nature and
providence, studied the meaning and end of things, the causes and
events, and consequently were able to see further into the ordinary
course and causes both of things about them, and things above them,
than other men.

Such were the world's gray forefathers, the magicians of the elder
time, in whom was found 'an excellent spirit of wisdom.' There were
others--not less learned--whose studies took a different direction;
who inquired into the structure and organization of the human body;
who investigated the origin, the progress, and the causes of diseases
and distempers, both in men and women; who sought out the physical or
medicinal virtues of drugs and plants; and as by these means they made
daily discoveries in nature, of which the world, until then, was
ignorant, and by which they performed astonishing cures, they
naturally gained the esteem and reverence of the people.

Sir Walter Raleigh contends that only the word 'magic,' and not the
magical art, is derived from Simon Magus. He adds that Simon's name
was not Magus, a magician, but Gors, a person familiar with evil
spirits; and that he usurped the title of Simon the Magician simply
because it was then a good and honourable title. Defoe avails himself
of Raleigh's authority to sustain his own opinion, that there is a
manifest difference between _magic_, which is wisdom and supernatural
knowledge, and the witchcraft and conjuring which we now understand by
the word.

In his second chapter Defoe classifies the magic of the ancients under
three heads: i. _Natural_, which included the knowledge of the stars,
of the motions of the planetary bodies, and their revolutions and
influences; that is to say, the study of nature, of philosophy, and
astronomy; ii. _Artificial_ or _Rational_, in which was included the
knowledge of all judicial astrology, the casting or calculating
nativities, and the cure of diseases--(1) by particular charms and
figures placed in this or that position; (2) by herbs gathered at this
or that particular crisis of time; (3) by saying such and such words
over the patient; (4) by such and such gestures; (5) by striking the
flesh in such and such a manner, and innumerable such-like pieces of
mimicry, working not upon the disease itself, but upon the imagination
of the patient, and so affecting the cure by the power of nature,
though that nature were set in operation by the weakest and simplest
methods imaginable; and, iii. _Diabolical_, which was wrought by and
with the concurrence of the devil, carried on by a correspondence with
evil spirits--with their help, presence, and personal assistance--and
practised chiefly by their priests. Defoe argues that the ancients at
first were acquainted only with the purer form of magic, and that,
therefore, sorcery and witchcraft were of much later development. The
cause and motive of this development he traces in his third chapter
('Of the Reason and Occasion which brought the ancient honest Magi,
whose original study was philosophy, astronomy, and the works of
nature, to turn sorcerers and wizards, and deal with the Devil, and
how their Conversation began'). Egyptologists will find Defoe's
comments upon Egyptian magic refreshingly simple and unhistorical, and
his identifications of the Pyramids with magical practices is wildly
vague and hypothetical. Of the magic which was really taught and
practised among the ancient people of Egypt, Defoe, of course, knows
nothing. He tells us, however, that the Jews learned it from them. He
goes on to speculate as to the time when that close intercourse began
between the devil and his servants on earth which is the foundation
of the later or diabolical magic, and concludes that his first
visible appearance on this mundane stage was as the enemy of Job.
Thence he is led to inquire, in his fourth chapter, what shapes the
devil assumed on his first appearances to the magicians and others, in
the dawn of the world's history, and whether he is or has been allowed
to assume a human shape or no. And he suggests that his earliest
acquaintance with mankind was made through dreams, and that by this
method he contrived to infuse into men's minds an infinite variety of
corrupt imaginations, wicked desires, and abhorrent conclusions and
resolutions, with some ridiculous, foolish, and absurd things at the
same time.

Defoe then proceeds to tell an Oriental story, which, doubtlessly, is
his own invention:

Ali Albrahazen, a Persian wizard, had, it is said, this kind of
intercourse with the devil. He was a Sabean by birth, and had obtained
a wonderful reputation for his witchcraft, so that he was sent for by
the King of Persia upon extraordinary occasions, such as the
interpretation of a dream, or of an apparition, like that of
Belshazzar's handwriting, or of some meteor or eclipse, and he never
failed to give the King satisfaction. For whether his utterances were
true or false, he couched them always in such ambiguous terms that
something of what he predicted might certainly be deduced from his
words, and so seem to import that he had effectually revealed it,
whether he had really done so or not.

This Ali, wandering alone in the desert, and musing much upon the
appearance of a fiery meteor, which, to the great terror of the
country, had flamed in the heavens every night for nearly a month,
sought to apprehend its significance, and what it should portend to
the world; but, failing to do so, he sat down, weary and disheartened,
in the shade of a spreading palm. Breathing to himself a strong desire
that some spirit from the other world would generously assist him to
arrive at the true meaning of a phenomenon so remarkable, he fell
asleep. And, lo! in his sleep he dreamed a dream, and the dream was
this: that a tall man came to him, a tall man of sage and venerable
aspect, with a pleasing smile upon his countenance; and, addressing
him by his name, told him that he was prepared to answer his
questions, and to explain to him the signification of the great and
terrible fire in the air which was terrifying all Arabia and Persia.

His explanation proved to be of an astronomical character. These fiery
appearances, he said, were collections of vapour exhaled by the
influence of the sun from earth or sea. As to their importance to
human affairs, it was simply this: that sometimes by their propinquity
to the earth, and their power of attraction, or by their dissipation
of aqueous vapours, they occasioned great droughts and insupportable
heats; while, at other times, they distilled heavy and unusual rains,
by condensing, in an extraordinary manner, the vapours they had
absorbed. And he added: 'Go thou and warn thy nation that this fiery
meteor portends an excessive drought and famine; for know that by the
strong exhalation of the vapours of the earth, occasioned by the
meteor's unusual nearness to it, the necessary rains will be withheld,
and to a long drought, as a matter of course, famine and scarcity of
corn succeed. Thus, by judging according to the rules of natural
causes, thou shalt predict what shall certainly come to pass, and
shalt obtain the reputation thou so ardently desirest of being a wise
man and a great magician.'

'This prediction,' said Ali, 'was all very well as regarded Arabia;
but would it apply also to Persia?' 'No,' replied the devil; for Ali's
interlocutor was no less distinguished a personage--fiery meteors from
the same causes sometimes produced contrary events; and he might
repair to the Persian Court, and predict the advent of excessive rains
and floods, which would greatly injure the fruits of the earth, and
occasion want and scarcity. 'Thus, if either of these succeed, as it
is most probable, thou shalt assuredly be received as a sage magician
in one country, if not in the other; also, to both of them thou mayest
suggest, as a probability only, that the consequence may be a plague
or infection among the people, which is ordinarily the effect as well
of excessive wet as of excessive heat. If this happens, thou shalt
gain the reputation thou desirest; and if not, seeing thou didst not
positively foretell it, thou shalt not incur the ignominy of a false
prediction.'

Ali was very grateful for the devil's assistance, and failed not to
ask how, at need, he might again secure it. He was told to come again
to the palm-tree, and to go around it fifteen times, calling him
thrice by his name each time: at the end of the fifteenth
circumambulation he would find himself overtaken by drowsiness;
whereupon he should lie down with his face to the south, and he would
receive a visit from him in vision. The devil further told him the
magic name by which he was to summon him.

The magician's predictions were duly made and duly fulfilled.
Thenceforward he maintained a constant communication with the devil,
who, strange to say, seems not to have exacted anything from him in
return for his valuable, but hazardous, assistance.

Defoe's fifth chapter contains a further account of the devil's
conduct in imitating divine inspirations; describes the difference
between the genuine and the false; and dwells upon signs and wonders,
fictitious as well as real. In chapter the sixth our author treats of
the first practices of magic and witchcraft as a diabolical art, and
explains how it was handed on to the Egyptians and Phoenicians, by
whom it was openly encouraged. He offers some amusing remarks on the
methods adopted by magicians for summoning the devil, who seems to be
at once their servant and master. In parts of India they go up, he
says, to the summit of some particular mountain, where they call him
with a little kettledrum, just as the good old wives in England hive
their bees, except that they beat it on the wrong side. Then they
pronounce certain words which they call 'charms,' and the devil
appears without fail.

It is not easy to discover in history what words were used for charms
in Egypt and Arabia for so many ages. It is certain they differed in
different countries; and it is certain they differed as the magicians
acted together or individually. Nor are we less at a loss to
understand what the devil could mean by suffering such words, or any
words at all, to charm, summon, alarm, or arouse him. The Greeks have
left us, he says, a word which was used by the magicians of antiquity
pretty frequently--that famous trine or triangular word, Abracadabra:

A B R A C A D A B R A
A B R A C A D A B R
A B R A C A D A B
A B R A C A D A
A B R A C A D
A B R A C A
A B R A C
A B R A
A B R
A B
A

'There is abundance of learned puzzle among the ancients to find out
the signification of this word: the subtle position of the letters
gave a kind of reverence to them, because they read it as it were
every way, upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards, and many
will have it still _that the devil put them together_: nay, they begin
at last to think it was old Legion's surname, and whenever he was
called by that name, he used to come very readily; for which reason
the old women in their chimney-corners would be horribly afraid of
saying it often over together, for if they should say it a certain
number of times, they had a notion it would certainly raise the devil.

'They say, on the contrary, that it was invented by one Basilides, a
learned Greek; that it contained the great and awful name of the
Divinity; and that it was used for many years for the opposing the
spells and charms of the Pagans; that is, the diabolical spells and
charms of the pagan magicians.'

In the seventh chapter we read of the practice and progress of magic,
as it is now explained to be a diabolical art; how it spread itself in
the world, and by what degrees it grew up to the height which it has
since attained.

* * * * *

The introduction to the second part of Defoe's work is devoted to an
exposition of the Black Art 'as it really is,' and sets forth 'why
there are several differing practices of it in the several parts of
the world, and what those practices are; as, also, what is contained
in it in general.' He defines it as 'a new general term for all the
branches of that correspondence which mankind has maintained, or does,
or can carry on, between himself and the devil, between this and the
infernal world.' And he enumerates these branches as: _Divining_, or
_Soothsaying_; _Observing of Times_; _Using Enchantment_;
_Witchcraft_; _Charming_, or _Setting of Spells_; _Dealing with
Familiar Spirits_; _Wizardising_, or _Sorcery_; and _Necromancy_.

The first chapter treats of Modern Magic, or the Black Art in its
present practice and perfection.

In the second chapter the scene is changed: as the devil acted at
first with his Black Art without the magicians, so the magicians seem
now to carry it on without the devil. This is written in Defoe's best
style of sober irony. 'The magicians,' he says, 'were formerly the
devil's servants, but now they are his masters, and that to such a
degree, that it is but drawing a circle, casting a few figures,
muttering a little Arabic, and up comes the devil, as readily as the
drawer at a tavern, with a _D'ye call, sir?_ or like a Scotch caude
[caddie?], with _What's your honour's wull, sir?_ Nay, as the learned
in the art say, he must come, he can't help it: then as to tempting,
he is quite out of doors. And I think, as the Old Parliament did by
the bishops, we may e'en vote him useless. In a word, there is no
manner of occasion for him: mankind are as froward as he can wish and
desire of them; nay, some cunning men tell us we sin faster than the
devil can keep pace with us: as witness the late witty and moderately
wicked Lady ...., who blest her stars that the devil never tempted her
to anything; he understood himself better, for she knew well enough
how to sin without him, and that it would be losing his time to talk
to her.'

Defoe furnishes an entertaining account of his conversation with a
countryman, who had been to a magician at Oundle. Whether true or
fictitious, the narrative shows that many of the favourite tricks
performed at spiritualistic _séances_ in our own time were well known
in Defoe's:

COUNTRYMAN. I saw my old gentleman in a great chair, and two
more in chairs at some distance, and three great candles, and
a great sheet of white paper upon the floor between them;
every one of them had a long white wand in their hands, the
lower end of which touched the sheet of paper.

DEFOE. And were the candles upon the ground too?