1827.] [ 623 ] 



AGRIPPA AND HIS DOG. 



THERE are many men of the present day, who write as well, and as 

 much, as Cornelius Agrippa did in the sixteenth century ; who manage 

 their affairs as badly, and plunge into as many scrapes and perplexities; 

 who many three times, and get disgusted with matrimony at the third 

 trial ; and, finally, who keep a dog nay, even a black dog and yet are 

 thought no conjurors. But it was the fate of Agrippa, notwithstanding 

 the almost daily indications he gave of a want of even common, not to talk 

 of supernatural, foresight and the continual failure of his plans, and dis- 

 appointment of his wishes to be pursued and hooted at, both by the clergy 

 and laity, the learned as well as the ignorant, as a magician of the most 

 dangerous character. The hatred of the monks was first manifested after 

 his lectures at Dole, in 1509, the subject of which was Reichli De Verbo 

 Mirifico. After this, in place of endeavouring to allay the tempest that 

 was raised against him, he had the imprudence to meddle with the matri- 

 monial affairs of St. Anne, and to prove that, in place of three husbands 

 and three children: the quantum of connubial comforts generally allowed 

 her that exemplary female had had but one husband and one child. He 

 then, doubtless from a fellow-feeling, took up the cause of a woman 

 accused of witchcraft, whose principles the Dominicans (who were at that 

 time the principal directors of the Inquisition) were desirous of putting to 

 the test of fire in an auto-da-fe ; and concluded the chapter of his clerical 

 offences by disappointing the holy fathers in that pious and most Christian 

 intention. His political crimes were not of a much lighter dye ; and, in 

 particular, his refusal to inform the Emperor Constantine's mother what 

 turn affairs would take, by means of his astrological science, had well nigh 

 ruined him in toto. His knowledge of alchymy, too, which one might 

 suppose would have been a fortune to any man, only served to endanger 

 his liberty ; for the princes of that period would have thought it neither sin 

 nor shame to lay hold of a transmuter of metals, if they could, and force 

 him to spend his life in making gold for their own behoof. His principal 

 literary accusers are Paul Jovius, Thevet, and Martin Del Rio ; but many 

 other authors even go out of their way to have a fling at him. " He dark- 

 ened Burgundy." says Thevet, " in such a manner, with the smoke and 

 mist of his black art, that if he had not fled for it, it is to be feared they 

 would have enlightened him with fire nearer than he desired." And Del 

 Rio tells us plainly, that when he travelled, although the money he paid 

 to his hosts appeared like good and lawful coin, yet, in a few days after his 

 departure, it became pieces of horn, shells, and other worthless substances. 

 These, however, it will be observed by the judicious reader, are mere assertions 

 they may be true, or they may not ; but the strongest cause of suspicion 

 the most material witness against Agrippa, and whose testimony it will 

 be the object of this essay to narrate was a black dog. This black dog, it 

 was affirmed, was a familiar spirit, incarnated, by his magical power, in 

 the canine form, and compelled to follow and assist him in all his opera- 

 tions. It is needless to dilate on the important parts performed by dogs 

 and, more especially, black dogs in supernatural history ; to repeat, for 

 instance, the well known fact, that De Melac, lieutenant-general of the 

 French armies, was constantly victorious when his dog was with him, and 

 as constantly beaten when he had left him behind ; or the thousand other 

 stories to the same effect. It will be more to the purpose, if I point out 

 here a very remarkable coincidence, which I have discovered between the 



