at the College of Rheims, Paris, to very large audiences with 

 great e*clat. 



Returning to Mortlake, Dee applied himself zealously to 

 science, organizing in his home an astronomical observatory, 

 and a chemical laboratory; collecting a great variety of 

 philosophical apparatus as \vell as a museum of curiosities 

 in natural history; and forming a library of rare manuscripts 

 and bound volumes relating to his pursuits. He made a name 

 by an erudite preface to Sir Henry Billingsley's translation 

 of Euclid, and proposed a plan for reforming the Gregorian 

 Calendar, which later scholars have commended; thereby be- 

 coming so eminent in pure mathematics as to be called 

 "Nobilis Mathematicus." 



"He had been long t' wards mathematics, 

 Optics, philosophy, and statics, 

 Magick, horoscopy, astrology, 

 And was an old dog at physiology." 



Unfortunately for his reputation with posterity this man 

 of undoubted intellectual ability allowed his imagination to 

 dominate his scientific knowledge, and he adopted the base- 

 less superstitions of the day. He applied his astronomical 

 learning to the fallacies of astrological divination ; he worked 

 with furnaces, alembics and chemicals in hopes of discovering 

 the Universal Solvent and the Philosophers' Stone; his phi- 

 losophy was imbued with the mysteries of the kabbala, with 

 theosophy and with the iniquities of black magic; even his 

 religion was contaminated by the doctrines of spiritualism 

 and the practice of theurgy. When not absorbed in writing 

 mathematical treatises in his library, or working with sextant 

 and astrolabe in his observatory, or blowing the coals under 

 cucurbits in his athanor, Dee was busy making amulets and 

 talismans, and receiving clients of every station in life from 

 peasantry to royalty, who flocked to him to learn their 



