The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863. Various
and low my heart is beating!
Each pulsation still repeating
'All in vain those eager longings, all in vain that burning prayer.
See the breezes, 'mid the bowers,
Sigh above the fragrant flowers,
And from out those drooping roses, their heart-folded sweetness bear—
But no heaven-sent wind shall whisper thy soul-breathings to the air.'
'But upon my darkened vision
Comes a gleam of light Elysian;
And a seraph voice breathes softly—'Answered yet shall be that prayer!
For the spirit crushed and broken
By those burning words unspoken,
Soon shall hear them swelling, floating far upon the heavenly air,
And its deepest inmost visions shall have perfect utterance there!''
WILLIAM LILLY, ASTROLOGER
'A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,
That deals in destiny's dark counsels,
And sage opinions of the moon sells,
To whom all people, far and near,
On deep importances repair.
Do not our great reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news?
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken yet i' the air?
Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk two years hence—the great eclipse?
A total overthrow given the king
In Cornwall, horse and foot, next spring?'
Thus much, and more, wrote Butler in his 'Hudibras' of William Lilly, who was famous in London during that eventful period of English history from the time of Charles I, onward through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, to the Restoration: a time of civil commotions and wars, when political parties and religious sects, striving for mastery, or struggling for existence, made the lives and estates of men insecure, and their outlook in many respects a troubled one. Lifelong connections of families and neighbors were then rudely severed, and doubt, distrust, and discontent filled all minds, or most. Of this widespread commotion London was the active centre; and there a judgment of God, called the plague, had, in the year 1625, desolated whole streets. The timid, time-serving, faithless, a wavering host, peered anxiously into the future, eager to know what might be hidden there, so that they could shape their course accordingly for safety or for profit. Finding their own short vision inadequate, they turned for aid to the professional prophets of that troublous time—magicians who could call forth spirits and make them speak, or astrologers who could read the stars, and show how the great Disposer of events could be forestalled. These discoverers of the hidden, disclosers of the future, though branded now as impostors, were not therefore worse than their dupes; for in all ages the two classes, deceivers and deceived, are essentially alike; positives and negatives of the same thing. 'Men are not deceived; they deceive themselves.' Witness a great American nation, in these latter days, electing its ablest man to its highest place, and choosing between a Fremont and a Buchanan! But let us turn quickly to the seventeenth century again, and leave the nineteenth to its day of judgment.
Among the many astrologers dwelling in London at the time of which we treat, William Lilly was the most famous; and his life being of great interest to himself, he wrote an account of it for the instruction of mankind—or for some other purpose; and we will now get from it what we conveniently can.1
'I was born,' says this renowned astrologer, 'in the county of Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one part belongs under Lockington, in which stands my father's house (over against the steeple), in which I was born' on the first day of May, 1602. After this rather too minute account of his birthplace, Lilly tells us of his ancestors, substantial yeomen for many generations, who 'had much free land and many houses in the town;' but all the family estates were 'sold by my grandfather and father, so that now our family depends wholly on a college lease.' 'Of my infancy I can speak but little; only I do remember that in the fourth year of my age I had the measles.' 'My mother intended I should be a scholar from my infancy, seeing my father's backslidings in the world, and no hopes by husbandry to recruit a decayed estate.' Therefore, after some schooling at or near home, the boy, when eleven years old, was sent to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicester, to the school of Mr. John Brinsley, who 'was very severe in his life and conversation, and did breed up many scholars for the universities; in religion he was a strict Puritan.' 'In the fourteenth year of my age, about Michaelmas, I got a surfeit, and thereupon a fever, by eating beechnuts.' 'In the sixteenth year of my age I was exceedingly troubled in my dreams concerning my salvation and damnation, and also concerning the safety and destruction of my father and mother: in the nights I frequently wept and prayed, and mourned, for fear my sins might offend God.' 'In the seventeenth year of my age my mother died.' The next year, 'by reason of my father's poverty, I was enforced to leave school, and so came home to my father's house, where I lived in much penury one year, and taught school one quarter of a year, until God's providence provided better for me. For the last two years of my being at school I was of the highest form of the school, and chiefest of that form. I could then speak Latin as well as English; could make extempore verses upon any theme.' 'If any scholars from remote schools came to dispute, I was ringleader to dispute with them.' 'All and every of those scholars, who were of my form and standing, went to Cambridge, and proved excellent divines; only I, poor William Lilly, was not so happy, fortune then frowning on my father's condition, he not in any capacity to maintain me at the university.'
So this poor scholar, first of his class, bright visions of the university, and of what might lie beyond, all fading into darkness, went down to his father's house in the country, where his acquirements were useless. He says: 'I could not work, drive plough, or endure any country labor; my father oft would say, 'I was good for nothing,' and 'he was willing to be rid of me." A sorrowful time for the poor young fellow, without any outlook toward a better. But at last, one Samuel Smatty, an attorney, living in the neighborhood, took pity on the lad, and gave him a letter to Gilbert Wright, of London, who wanted a youth who could read and write, to attend him. Thereupon Lilly, in a suit of fustian, with this letter in his pocket, and ten shillings, given him by his friends, took leave of his father, who was then in Leicester jail for debt, and set off for London with 'Bradshaw, the carrier.' He 'footed it all along,' and was six days on the way; spending for food two shillings and sixpence, and nothing for lodgings; but he was in good heart, I think, for almost the only joyous expression in his autobiography is this one, relating to this time: 'Hark, how the wagons crack with their rich lading!'
Gilbert Wright, who had been 'servant to the Lady Pawlet in Hertfordshire,' had married a widow with property, and lived afterward 'on his annual rents;' or on his wife's, and 'was of no calling or profession.' This man had real need of a servant who could read and write, for he himself could do neither; but he was, however, 'a man of excellent natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very rationally and to the purpose.' Lilly was kindly received by Master Wright, who found, it seems, employment enough for him. 'My work was to go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad;
The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Elias Ashmole, Esquire, and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves; containing first, William Lilly's History of his Life and Times, with Notes by Mr Ashmole; secondly, Lilly's Life and Death of Charles I; and lastly, the Life of Elias Ashmole, Esq., by way of Diary, etc. London, 1774.