NATURE 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1909. 



/OHAT DEE. 

 John Dee (1527-1608). By Charlotte Fell Smith. 

 Pp. xvi + 342. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 

 1909.) Price 10s. 6d. net. 



IN the personal history of learning there is prob- 

 ably no more interesting or more perplexing 

 figure than the subject of this book. The story of 

 John Dee reads more like a romance by Sue or a feuil- 

 leton by the elder Dumas than as a sober, veracious 

 narrative of an actual human career. The achievements 

 of the man, his learning, the range of his knowledge, 

 his aberrations, his vicissitudes of good and evil 

 fortune — mainly evil — taken together, make up a tale 

 which has hardly a parallel in biographical literature, 

 certainly not in the biography of science. 



There is a time-honoured adage that a man is to 

 be judged by the company he keeps. John Dee cer- 

 tainly mixed in very questionable company during 

 one period of his extraordinary career, and his 

 memory has greatly suffered from that circumstance. 

 Although he enjoyed the patronage, and to some 

 extent the protection, of the great — mainh' from 

 motives of self-interest — his contemporaries for the 

 most part looked askance at his performances, and 

 his life in consequence became a continuous and 

 prolonged struggle with prejudice, misrepresentation, 

 and slander. 



Miss Fell Smith may be congratulated unreservedly 

 on her work. Even in this age, w-hich has wit- 

 nessed many attempts to reverse the adverse judgment 

 of a man's fellows, it needed some courage to try to 

 rehabilitate John Dee in the good opinion of posterity. 

 But, by treating her subject in the spirit of science, 

 that is, by patiently investigating the facts, carefully 

 sifting and weighing the evidence, and skilfully 

 unravelling the tangled web of truth and fiction which 

 has hitherto enveloped his history, his latest biographer 

 has for the first time succeeded in laying bare his true 

 character, and in revealing the hidden springs and 

 motives of his actions. In the record she has put 

 together, Miss Fell Smith has elaborated her testi- 

 mony and presented the case for the panel, as the 

 Scotch say, with no ordinary literary ability, and the 

 dispassionate reader must admit that she has suc- 

 ceeded in clearing the old philosopher's memory from 

 the charges of deceit, dissimulation, and knavery 

 which lay heavy on it. 



In reality, John Dee was a man born out of due 

 season. His age was not ready for him. In the 

 times of the Tudors there was no place in the body 

 politic for the professed man of science, unless he 

 practised his science covertly as a physician or a 

 priest. Even then its pursuit was attended with a 

 considerable measure of personal peril. John Dee, 

 it is true, dabbled in medicine, as he dabbled in most 

 things that had any connection with the science of 

 his period, and he was thereby of occasional service to 

 his suffering fellows. For a time, too, his only means 

 of subsistence came from a couple of wretchedly 

 endowed country livings to which he was presented. 

 NO. 2092, VOL. 82] 



But he was never recognised as a practising 

 physician, or as a professed priest. His life'ssvork was 

 the pursuit of truth merely for the sake of elucidating 

 it, an occupation unintelligible to his age. Appar- 

 ently every aspect or form of truth was of equal 

 importance to him; but, naturally enough, the direc- 

 tion in which he searched was influenced by his 

 environment and the circumstances of his time. It 

 was inevitable that such a man should sooner or later 

 come into conflict with his age — a hard, unrelenting, 

 pitiless age ; and it was equally inevitable that he 

 should be worsted in the fight. The spectacle of a 

 strong man struggling with adversity is, we are told, 

 a sight loved by the gods. We cannot help think- 

 ing that it is the spectacle of a sorely tried albeit 

 misguided man, bent and well-nigh broken by the 

 storms of fate, that has touched and quickened the 

 womanly sympathy of the author of this book. Its 

 compilation has evidently been a labour of love, or of 

 the pity which is akin to it. Every page bears testi- 

 mony to the patient care and trained skill with which 

 the author has searched all available records and 

 followed every clue which might serve to unravel the 

 mystery of her hero's life. 



John Dee was born in London in 1527. His father, 

 Rowland Dee, was a gentleman server in the court 

 of Henry VIII. The boy was sent to the Chantry 

 School at Chelmsford, and thereafter, at the age of 

 fifteen, to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he 

 graduated in 1546, and was made a fellow of Trinity 

 at its foundation by Henry VIII. Two years later, 

 after taking his iM.A. degree, he entered the University 

 of Louvain, and thence passed on to Paris, where he 

 gave lectures at the university on Euclid.' Returning 

 to England, he produced one or two astronomical 

 works, and a book on the cause of the tides, pre- 

 sumably for the use of Edward VI. On the accession 

 of Mary he got into trouble, and was thrown into 

 prison on a charge of magic, and eventually of 

 treason, and stood his trial by the Star Chamber. 

 Nothing could be proved against him, and he was 

 liberated, only to be handed over to the tender mercies 

 of Bishop Bonner. He escaped even this ordeal, and 

 subsequently presented Mary with a project for the 

 establishm,ent of a great national hbrary in which to 

 preserve " the treasure of all antiquity," the priceless 

 collections of ancient literature which had been scat- 

 tered by the dissolution of the monasteries and 

 leligious houses. Nothing came of the suggestion at 

 the time. A couple of centuries had to elapse before 

 the British Museum was founded, and it was only in 

 the opening years of Queen Victoria's reign that 

 keepers of the public records were appointed and the 

 Historical Manuscripts Commission was brought into 

 existence. 



Easier times came to Dee with the advent of Eliza- 

 beth. He was already well known to her. She had 

 corresponded with him when confined to Woodstock. 

 His position as a mathematician had been estab- 

 lished, and the name of the editor of Billingsley's 

 " Euclid " was known throughout the learned world. 

 The friend of Mercator — "my Gerard," as he calls 

 him— he was esteemed, too, as a geographer skilled in 

 cartographv, and was constantly consulted by the 



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