122 



NA TURE 



[December 2, 1909 



great sea-captains of his time — Gilbert, Davis, 

 Frobisher, Hawkins, Cavendish, and others of the 

 remarliable band that created the sea-power of 

 England. Dee had settled at Mortlake, where he 

 was frequently visited by the Queen. Elizabeth had 

 ever an eye for a comely man, and Dee was remark- 

 ably handsome, tall, stately, and of a dignified mien. 

 The picture which Miss Fell Smith draws of his home 

 life there, with his second wife — "his paynful Jane," 

 as he calls her, the staunchest, truest friend he ever 

 had — with the great Queen, either when "taking the 

 ayre " or when on her way from Hampton Court or 

 Isleworth to her palace at Greenwich, cantering up to 

 his garden gate in order to get sight and speech of 

 her courtly philosopher, is a charming piece of word- 

 painting. But these were not altogether halcyon days 

 for Dee. Elizabeth was gracious, even profuse in 

 promise, but she was a very niggard in performance, 

 and her astrologer was occasionally hard put to for 

 the means of living. 



Edward Kelley — alias Talbot — clipper, coiner, forger, 

 and thief, now appears upon the scene, and the aspect 

 •of things becomes very grim. This man was Dee's 

 evil genius. Their connection is one of the most 

 astonishing and perplexing circumstances of his his- 

 tory. How Kelley could have acquired such complets 

 ascendancy over his patron is almost inexplicable. 

 Kelley was a first-class ne'er-do-well, a lover of loose 

 •company and of strong waters, and a consummate 

 liar. He professed to be a clairvoyant, a skryer, or 

 crystal-gazer, and Dee's passion for occultism was 

 such that no tale of mystery or message from the 

 spirit world was too gross or outrageous for him to 

 swallow, as his own records of their stances demon- 

 strate. Dee was an operative alchemist of no mean 

 reputation, and the supposition is that Kelley sought 

 to worm himself into Dee's confidence in order to gain 

 information concerning the manufacture of the philo- 

 sopher's stone, about which Dee never professed any 

 knowledge. It is impossible here to go into any 

 detail of the extraordinary partnership into which the 

 pair entered, or to tell how they were induced, mainly 

 at the instigation of a Polish adventurer, to wander, 

 with their wives and Dee's children, on to the Con- 

 tinent, through Holland, North Germany, Poland, and 

 eventually to Prague, where Kelley took service under 

 Rudolph II., the " Hermes of Germany." 



The story of that morose, half-witted, loose-living 

 fanatic, who secluded himself for years in his gloomy 

 palace at Prague, occupying himself with astrology, 

 thaumaturgy, alchemy, necromancy, and every other 

 form of aberration of which the human mind was 

 then capable, is one of the most striking chapters 

 in the book. Here Kelley was in a congenial 

 atmosphere ; he became wealthy — how is not very 

 clear — flourished, in fact, like the bay tree, and was 

 ennobled, only to fall more rapidly than he rose. He 

 had previously shaken off Dee ; he had no further use 

 for him. The poverty-stricken, disillusioned man, 

 after six years' wandering over Europe, now set his 

 face once more towards Mortlake, only to find that, in 

 his absence, his precious library of 4000 volumes had 

 been rifled, and his instruments and apparatus broken 

 by his neighbours. Well might he exclaim : — 

 NO. 2092, VOL. 82] 



" Have I so long, so dearly, so farre, so carefully, 

 so painfully, so dangerously, fought and travailed for 

 the learning of wisedome and atteyning of vertue, and 

 in the end am I become worse than when I began? 

 Call you this to be learned? Call you this to be a 

 philosopher and a lover of wisdome? " 



Could anything be more dramatic? The peaceful 

 home on the banks of the Thames, into whose 

 "silver" stream Dee's children occasionally tumbled 

 without risk of being poisoned by the filth of Brent- 

 ford ; the surprise visits of the Queen ; the advent of 

 Kelley, and with him all the ghastly, skrying, crystal- 

 gazing business — just as it is done to-day in Bond 

 Street — communings with Annael, Anachor, Anilos, 

 Uriel the Spirit of Light, Bobogel, Michael with his 

 fiery sword, Gabriel, Raphael, II, Ave, and the rest. 

 Then comes Madimi, the first of the female angels 

 who appeared to the pair, sometimes as "a pretty girl 

 of seven or nine years attired in a gown of Sey, 

 changeable green and red, with a train," and at other 

 times as "a wench in white," and who had learned 

 Greek, Arabic, and Syrian on purpose to be useful. 

 Next enters the Mcphisto of the story — Laski, the 

 Polish adventurer, introduced by an angel named 

 Jubanladec — who enjoined him to " live better and 

 see himself inwardly." At his solicitation the pair 

 decide to go with him to Poland. Then comes the 

 journey across Holland, and along the devious peat- 

 coloured waterways of East Friesland and out to sea 

 by the islands up to Embden, and so to Oldenburg, 

 Bremen, and Lubeck. Thence to Cracow, and event- 

 ually to Prague, ^vhere we have the mad Emperor, 

 and all the diabolical doings in chicanery and fraud 

 which bring the cropped-eared Kelley to his end. 

 Lastly, we have the return of Dee — a ruined man, 

 cheated by those he trusted, shunned by his acquaint- 

 ance, scorned by his enemies — to the wrecked house at 

 Mortlake he called home. 



What a phantasmal tragedy it all seems ! And yet 

 it is sober history, capable of being verified in detail, 

 as Miss Fell Smith demonstrates in her vivid, 

 scholarly, and deeply interesting narrative. 



T. E. Thorpe. 



THE PRECIOUS METALS. 

 The Precious Metals, comprising Gold, Silver, and 

 Platinum. By Dr. T. Kirke Rose. Pp. xvi + 295. 

 (London : .\. Constable and Co., Ltd., 1909.) Price 

 6s. net. 



DR. ROSE, as is well known, is the author of the 

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 for the most part left out, yet nothing of importance 

 as introductory to the study of these metals is 

 omitted. 



The author states in the preface that his aim "has 

 been to provide an introduction to the study of the 

 precious metals and an elementary book of reference 

 for those who do not wish to pursue the subject 

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