remains but his History of Metals, and Displaying of Witchcraft—­so little do an author’s latest works afford a clue to the character of his earliest.  From 1654 to 1671, when he published his History of Metals, little is known of Webster’s course of life.  He appears to have retired into the country and devoted himself to medical practice and study, and to have taken up his residence in or near Clitheroe.  He complains, that in the year 1658 all his books and papers were taken from him, an abstraction which, so far as his manuscripts are concerned, posterity is not called upon to lament, if they all resembled his Judgment Set and Books Opened.  But his capacious and acute understanding was gradually unfolding new resources, supplying the defects, and overcoming the disadvantages of his imperfect education and desultory and irregular studies, while his matured and enlightened judgment had abandoned and discarded the fanatical pravities and erroneous tenets, which his ardent enthusiasm had too hastily imbibed.  When he again became a candidate for the honours of authorship, it was evident that he knew well how to apply those quarries of learning into which, during his long recess, he had been digging so indefatigably, to furnish materials for solid and durable structures, rising in honourable and gratifying contrast to the fabrics which had preceded them.  In 1671 came forth his “Metallographia, or History of Metals,"[28] in which all that recondite learning and extensive observation could bring together, on a subject which experiment had scarcely yet placed upon a rational basis, is collected.  He styles himself on the Title page, “Practitioner in Physic and Chirurgery.”  In 1677, he published his great work.  Its Title is “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, 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 Sydereal Spirits, the force of Charms and Philters; with other abstruse matters.  By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic.  Falsae etenim opiniones Hominum praeoccupantes, non solum surdos, sed et caecos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quae aliis perspicua apparent.  Galen, lib. 8. de Comp.  Med.  London, Printed by J.M. and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London. 1677,” (fol.) In this memorable book he exhausts the subject, as far as it is possible to do so, by powerful ridicule, cogent arguments, and the most various and well applied learning, leaving to Hutchinson, and others who have since followed in his track, little further necessary than to reproduce his facts and reasonings in a more