HOROSCOPE OF EDWARD VI. 139 



could desire no better evidence than there is here of 

 Jerome's good faith and sincerity as an astrologer. 



Of course his faith in the supposed science was not 

 shaken. He entered into details for the purpose of showing 

 that it was unsafe to pronounce upon the term of life in 

 weak nativities, unless all processes, and ingresses, and ex- 

 ternal movements that from month to month and year to 

 year affect the ruling planets had been carefully inquired 

 into. If, he said, in the prognostic which he gave to the 

 king's friends he had not made a distinct reservation on 

 this account, they would have been fairly entitled to 

 complain of him. But to make such a calculation would 

 have cost him, he said, not less than a hundred hours. 



He did not wish to give any opinion at all. He was 

 compelled to write : the courtiers worried him, and strove 

 to implicate him in their plots and jealousies. He felt 

 the danger of predicting if he should by chance have to 

 predict King Edward's death. He remembered having 

 read of two men who predicted death to princes. One, 

 Ascletarion to Domitian; instant death to himself was 

 the reward of his true prophecy ; the other, a priest 

 to the Duke Galeazio Sforza; he also predicted truly, 

 and being cast into prison, was, in the most cruel 

 manner, starved out of the world, after he had pro- 

 longed his life in it for a few days by a wretched ex- 

 pedient. Jerome, had he foreseen it, would, he said, have 



