“’Christ was the Word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it; And what the Word did make it, That I believe, and take it;’

“which, though it may seem but a slight expression, yet hath in it more solidness than at first sight appears; at least, it served her turn at that time to escape the net, which by a direct answer she could not have done.”—­Baker’s Chronicle, p. 320.

[18] Cardinal Pole and others.

DR DEE, THE ASTROLOGER.

    “Dark was the vaulted room of gramarye
      To which the wizard led the gallant knight,
    Save that before a mirror huge and high
      A hallowed taper shed a glimmering light
    On mystic implements of magic might;
      On cross, and character, and talisman,
    And almagest and altar, nothing bright;
      For fitful was the lustre, pale and wan,
    As watch-light by the bed of some departing man.”

—­Lay of the Last Minstrel.

The character of Dee, our English “Faust,” as he is not inaptly called, has both been misrepresented and misunderstood.  An enthusiast he undoubtedly was, but not the drivelling dotard that some of his biographers imagine.  A man of profound learning, distinguished for attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like Faustus, and the wisest of human kind, had found out how little he knew; had perceived that the great ocean of truth yet lay unexplored before him.  Pursuing his inquiries to the bound and limit, as he thought, of human knowledge, and finding it altogether “vanity,” he had recourse to forbidden practices, to experiments through which the occult and hidden qualities of nature and spirit should be unveiled and subdued to his own will.

Evidently prompted to unhallowed intercourse by pride and ambition, he deluded himself with the vain and wicked hope that the God who spurned his impious requests would vouchsafe to him a new and peculiar revelation.  He would not bow to the plain and humbling tenets already revealed, but sought another “sign,”—­a miraculous testimony to himself alone.  Fancying that he was entrusted with a divine mission, he was given up to strong delusions that he should believe a lie.  He aimed at universal knowledge and exhaustless riches; but he died imbecile and a beggar!

That he was deceived by Kelly, there is no doubt; and that he was sincere, at least in seeking his own promotion and aggrandisement, is equally certain; but we would rescue his character from the ridicule with which it has been invested.  His grasp was greater than his power, and he fell, like heroes and conquerors in all ages, unable to execute, and overwhelmed with the vastness of his own conceptions.