NOTES

HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY.

PART II. CANTO III.

THE whole of this Canto is designed to expose the cheats of astrologers, fortune-tellers, conjurers, &c.; and it must be confessed, a more ample field for satire could not have been chosen. Dr. James Young, who wrote a tract in ridicule of these charlatans, entitled Sidrophel Vapulans, informs us, “That, in the pontificate of some such holy father as Gregory VII. a lover of the black art, one of the tribe craved of his holiness a protector or patron saint for astrologers, like as other arts had. The good pontiff, willing to oblige a faculty he loved, gave him the choice of all in St. Peter's. The humble servant of Urania, depending upon the direction of good stars to a good angel, went to the choice hood-winked; and groping among the images, the first he laid hold on was that of the Devil in combat with St. Michael. Had he chosen with his eyes open, he could not have met with a better protector for so diabolical an art." The author of the Turkish Spy, speaking of astrology, says, "It was a custom in Alexandria, formerly, for astrologers to pay a certain tribute, which they called fool's pence, because it was taken from the gains which astrologers made by their own ingenious folly, and credulous dotage of their admirers." Butler, in his prose works, speaking of astrology, says, "An astrologer is one that expounds the planets, and teaches to construe the accidents by the due joining of stars in construction. He talks with them by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by twinkling and squinting upon one another, as well as they themselves. He is a spy upon the stars, and can tell what they are

doing by the company they keep, and the houses they frequent, They have no power to do any thing alone, until so many meet as will form a quorum. He is clerk of the committee to them, and draws up. all their orders, that concern either public or private affairs. He keeps all their accounts for them, and sums them up, not by debtor and creditor only, but in a more compendious way. They do ill to make them have such authority over the earth, which, perhaps, has as much as any of them but the sun, and as much right to sit and vote in their councils as others. But because there are but seven electors of the German empire, they will allow of no more to dispose of the other; and most foolishly and unnaturally depose their own parent of its inheritance, rather than acknowledge a defect in their own rules. These rules are all they have to shew for their title, and yet not one of them can tell, whether those they had them from came honestly by them. Virgil's description of Fame, which reaches from earth to the stars, tam ficti pravique tenax, to carry lies and knavery, will serve astrologers without any sensible variation. He is a fortune-teller, a retailer of destiny, a petty chapman to the planets. He casts nativities as gamesters do false dice, and by slurring and palming sextile, quartile, and trine, like size, quater, and trois, can throw what chance he pleases. He sets a figure as cheats do a main at hazard, and gulls throw away their money at it. He fetches the grounds of his art so far off, as well from reason as the stars, that, like a traveller, he is allowed to lie by authority. And as beggars, that have no money themselves, believe all others to have, and beg of those that have as little as themselves, so the ignorant rabble believe in him, though he has no more reason for what he professes than themselves."

V. 3-4. As lookers on feel most delight,

That least perceive a juggler's sleight.] The pleasure we derive from seeing tricks of cards, or sleights of hand, are great in proportion as we are unacquainted with the principles upon which such deceptions are played.

V. 15-6. Others believe no voice t' an organ

·So sweet as lawyer's in his bar-gown.] A sneer on the propensity to litigation with which some men are infected; but which, like other immoral and unchristian pursuits, commonly brings its own punishment with it. A man of litigious temper

bears a truer resemblance to the abstract principle of evil than is to be found in any other character. Unmerciful and uncharitable, revengeful, niggardly, mean; full of subtilties and devices to ensnare the unwary; a falsifier of his word; a despiser of the sanctity of oaths; a villain who squares his conscience to his cause, and draws up his instructions to his lawyer from the malice of his heart. There is no trick nor fraud which such a man will scruple at to accomplish his designs. Just dealings are his abhorrence. He is constantly on the look-out for some loop-hole or flaw that will afford him an opportunity to cheat, and never so happy as when a victim falls into his clutches.

V. 25. Apply to wizzards, &c.] Wizzards were supposed to be able to foretel future events as well as astrologers.

V. 27. And as those vultures do forebode.] Alluding to the opinion, that vultures repair beforehand to the place where battles will be fought. Zanga, in the Revenge, says,

"As I have been a vulture to thy heart,

So will I be a raven to thine ear,

And true as ever snuff'd the scent of blood,

As ever flapt its heavy wings against

The windows of the sick, and croak'd despair."

V. 29-30. A flam more senseless than the rogu’ry

Of old aruspicy and aug'ry.] Cicero, somewhere in his works, says, he wonders how the aruspicers and augurs could possibly meet without laughing in each others faces. The aruspicers pretended to foretell future events by inspecting the entrails of victims killed in sacrifices; they were also consulted on occasion of portents and prodigies. The augurs foretold future events by the feeding or chattering of birds. There was a college of them at Rome, consisting of nine members. They bore an augural staff or wand, as the ensign of their authority, and their dignity was so much respected, that they were never deposed, nor any substituted in their place, though they should be convicted of the most enormous crimes.

V. 33-4. From flight of birds, or chickens pecking,

Success of great'st attempts would reckon.] The Romans divided augury into five different kinds of divination: 1, augury from the heavens; 2, from birds; 3, from chickens; 4, from

When an augury was

quadrupeds; 5, from portentous events. taken, the augur divided the heavens into four parts, and having sacrificed to the gods, he observed, with great attention, from what part the sign from heaven appeared. If, for instance, there happened a clap of thunder from the left, it was taken as a good omen. If a flock of birds came about a man, it was a favorable presage, but the flight of vultures was unlucky. If, when corn was flung before the sacred chickens, they crowded about it, and eat it greedily, it was looked upon as a favorable omen, but if they refused to eat and drink, it was an unlucky sign.

V. 35-6.

Yet more intelligible

Than those that with the stars do fribble.] Gassendî, in his Vanity of Judiciary Astrology, calls the whole art of astrology a mysterious nothing, a fiction more vain than vanity itself. V. 45-6. With various thoughts began to bustle,

And with his inward man to jostle.] New scruples begin to spring up in the Knight's brain. It is correspondent with his character to be perpetually troubled with cases of conscience; and accordingly the poet has drawn him so from the beginning to the end of the poem.

V. 57. This was the penn’worth of his thought.] This is an allusion to the vulgar saying, applied to one in a studious mood, “I'll give you a penny for your thoughts."

V. 61. Or taken tardy with dilemma.] Dilemma, in logic, is an argument consisting of two or more propositions, which divides the whole into all its parts or members, by a disjunctive proposition, and then infers something concerning each part which is finally referred to concerning the whole. Instances of this kind are frequent, as, "In this life we must either obey our vicious inclinations, or resist them; to obey them will bring sorrow and sin; to resist them is laborious and painful: therefore we cannot be perfectly free from sorrow and pain in this life." A dilemma becomes faulty or ineffectual three ways: 1, When the members of the division are not well opposed, or not fully enumerated; 2, When what is asserted concerning each part is not just, then the minor is not true; 3, When it may be retorted with equal force upon him who utters it.-There was a famous ancient instance of this case, wherein a dilemma was retorted. Euathlus promised