MORLEY'S CORNELIUS AGRIPPA. * TILE choice of Cornelius Agrippa to complete
Mr. Morley's trio of philosophers and scholars of the sixteenth century was scarcely judicious. In the case of "Palissy the Potter," the resolute de- termination of the man to persist in the pursuit of his discovery through good and evil report, through absolute penury and house hold persecution, gave the unity and interest of a dramatic ac- tion to his career. That unity, too, was sufficiently relieved by the variety of his studies, for Palissy was a natural philosopher and artist as well as a pater • it was enlivened by incidents some- times comic, sometimes touching ; and the last act, though not without a final shadow, was prosperous in the main. Palissy is also entitled to notice as being about the first man who in natural philosophy substituted a sagacious observation of na- ture for the theories and word-spinning of the schools. Jerome Cardan, though far below Palissy in strength of character and original genius, was a scholar who advanced mathematical learn- ing, who went through a variety of fortune, who approached
• Cornelius Agrippa : the Life of Cornelius Agrippa Ton Nettesheim, or and Knight, commonly known as a Magician. By Henry Morley, Author PalY
the Potter," 4.c. 4-c. In two volumes. Published by Chapman and closely to the great ones of his time, and the story of whose life can be distinctly told. Except for his reputed oonnexion with magic, Cornelius. Agrippa had no qualities to give him a more permanent celebrity than Carden ; indeed his acquirements were not so solid, nor his worldly pursuits so successful. The distin- guishing qualities of Agrippa were those of a fluent rhetorician and dexterous compiler, who on some moral subjects could occa- sionally advance beyond his age. We conceive Paracelsus would have been a better choice. He would have been a stronger con- trast to Jerome Carden. His name was equally known with that of Cornelius Agrippa ; and his life as full of adventure. Notwith- standing the quackeries and impositions that disgraced his career, lie was at bottom an original philosopher, among the first if not the very first who disregarded the fables which one system- monger after another repeated from his predecessors, and who ap- plied himself to nature and experiment. His influence might not have been proportioned to the extent of his fame, which is based upon less reputable traits than devotion to science ; but he gave an impetus to the true progress of chemistry in the form of alchemy, which impetus never ceased till alchemy was turned from an occult art. to the wonder-working science it has now be-. come.
Another drawback to the life of Cornelius Agrippa is the little, apparently., that is known about its more' important turning-
nuts Of the different positions he filled, and the troubles and persecutions he underwent, enough can be gathered from his works and correspondence, though the self-glorification of his own epistles must be received with qualification. What we mean is, that his life, as narrated by Mr. 'Morley, looks like a phantasmagoria ; there is a want of cause and connexion • there are chasms that we must get over how we can, and the filling- up of which might not be so creditable to the hero as the bio- grapher would wish.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa was born at Cologne, in 1486, of the noble family of Nettesheim. Before the age of thirty, he was master of six languages and " acquainted" with two more; had taken degrees in law, physic, and divinity, had figured as a courtier, an emperor's secretary, a " filibuster," diplomatist, and soldier; had made speeches, delivered lectures, and written two of his best-known works, the Magic and the Praise of Women besides smaller compositions. Dates and places can be assigned to much of this, but that is about all. Active-minded and inquisitive as Cornelius was, we may suppose that he ac- quired scholastic theology and the living as well as the learned tongues at the university of his native place, besides secretly pursuing the study of magic, all before he was twenty : but there is no proof of the fact, nor any clear account of his youthful days. It is generally admitted that he was secretary to the Emperor Maximilian ; but, as the title and office are now understood, we should doubt it. At all events, he did not hold the office long, for at twenty he is found in Paris—Mr. Morley seems to think on confidential diplomatic business ; the business he actually figured in was a filibustering scheme in a petty way, to recover a castle and district in Catalonia which had revolted from its feudal lord. The whole story is unintelligible as regards diplomatic motives or objects, but the party failed egregiously, and had to run for their lives. One might have supposed that an imperial secretary would have returned to his master ; but Cornelius Agrippa starts off " on his own hook," and in a while settles at Dole, where Maximilian's daughter was residing. Here he got into favour, gave lectures, wrote his panegyric on women to please his patroness, and his work on magic to please himself. His prospects were crushed by the sermons of a monk, who de- tected heresy in Agrippa's Greek and Hebrew ; and the scholar and conjuror yielded to the preacher without a struggle. Agrippa next goes to England—Mr. Morley, after his hero, intimates as a sort of ambassador extraordinary ; he really seems to have been sent on a message. At all events, instead of influencing the con- duct of Henry the Eighth, he appears to have passed the greater portion of his time with Dean Colet, studying the writings of St. Paul. He next turns up in the wars of Italy; and was knighted, he intimates, for deeds of arms. But war was not to Agrippa a profitable avocation, and in the North of Italy it had destroyed all prospect of other modes of living, by destroying the prac- tice of all peaceful arts and studies. After waiting in useless expectation from the Marquis of Itontferrat and the Duke of Sa- voy, he accepted the office of Town Orator and Advocate at Metz. It was a decline from aiding an Emperor by diplomacy, and " assisting " in knightly arms at Marignano ; but it furnished a means of living. Here, too, occurred one of the most creditable and interesting incidents of his career, so far as has been pre- served. He was the means of rescuing from an Inquisitor a poor woman charged with being a witch ; not " upon the merits," as may be supposed, but by showing. the utter illegality of the pro- ceedings, and by ranging town against gown. This brought the mass of the clergy upon him, and he resigned his office, as much probably from restlessness and love of change as from necessity. There Was now another period of uncertainty, patronage-seeking, and strug,gle, ending at last in his accepting the respectable but humble office of physician to the mountain town of Friburg. He was tempted thence by the office of physician to Louise of Savoy, mother to Francis the First : such were the strange mutations of fortune, for learned and restless adventurers, in those days ; though to men of more regular habits the church and universities offered greater means than now unless when exposed to the violence of war or the persecutions of power. It was rather as astrologer than physician that the King's mother wanted him; she saw little of him, and did not pay him. The fact is, he spoke slightingly of astrology, prophesied, in favour of the enemy, and continually wrote letters in which he lucubrated freely about his own grievances and other things, some of which letters reached the eye of Louise. He subsequently went to Ant- werp, where fortune again seemedpromising. He gained the favour of Margaret of Austria, then (1528-'29) Governess of the Netherlands. He was appointed keeper of the archives, historio- grapher to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, got into good practice as a medical man, and refused the offer of physician to Henry the Eighth. But the same fatality or wrongheadedness accompanied him here as elsewhere. He neglected his practice, which wouldhave paid him, for courtly, compositions and compilations, which did not ; he ran into debt ; he offended the Emperor by some remarks in his "Vanity of Sciences and Arts " ; this book, and reports about his Magic, then in the press, enabled the clergy to bring against him a charge of heresy. After struggling with ill- will, poverty, and domestic troubles,—for his third wife grossly miseonducted herself,—he finally (1535) had to flee. Some say he fled from the persecution of the Emperor, which threatened his life ; but very likely it was from his creditors, who had formerly put him in prison, whence Charles had him released. " He had not long crossed the French border before Bing Francis caused him to be seized and thrown in prison for his publication of the correspond- ence that discredited the Queen-mother. His few friends at court had in- fluence enough tobbeing him free. But when free, he was penniless and home- less. He could think only with anguish of the little children he was forced to leave, a divorced wanton their only shadow of a mother, and their father far away, hunted and dying. God only knew, perhaps God only cared, what was the fate of these orphans ; it is enough for us to know that God does care for such as they. Cornelius reached Grenoble, and died there, as his persecutors said with triumph, at a mean place, suffering from sordid want. Yet the same men asserted, that when travelling he had the skill to pay his way with what appeared to be good money, but changed afterwards to bits of horn and shell. The truth is, the sick man was received into the house of a friendly gentleman, M. Vachon, Receiver-General of the province of Dauphine. The house is in the Rue des Clercs, and afterwards belonged to the family of Ferrand. There died Cornelius Agrippa, forty-nine years old. If spirits walk when restless in their graves, his may have done so, for they buried him within a convent of Dominicans. " The people were instructed very shortly afterwards with a minute ac- count of the magician's death, which I will give as it is to be found in the works of a conte_mporary. It was an unlucky coincidence, perhaps, that Agrippa really had a little black dog called Monsieur among his pets. Simon the Magician, Sylvester, Dr. Faustus, Bragandin of Venice, alI had dogs. Cornelius Agrippa had one. He would remain for a whole week to- gether working in his study, having for companion the pet dog, which he suffered to sit on his table or run loose among his papers. Wierus ' Deirio says, denies its having been a devil, as others more truly affirm.' We have accepted one statement of the manner of Agrippa's death ; let us now hear what is more truly affirmed by the grave pnest and learned traveller M. Thevet. At last, having betaken himself to Lyons, very, wretched, and deprived of his faculties, he tried all the means that he could to live ; waving, as dexterously as he could, the end of his stick, and yet gained so little, that he died in a miserable inn, disgraced and abhorred before all the world, which detested him as an accursed and execrable magician, because he always carried about with him as his companion a devil in the figure of a dog, from whose neck, when he felt death approaching, he removed the collar, figured all over with magic characters, and afterwards, being in a half-mad state, he drove it from him with these words—" Go, vile beast, by whom I am brought utterly to perdition." And afterwards this dog, which had been so familiar with him, and been his assiduous companion in his travels, was no more seen ; because, after the command Agrippa gave him, he began to run towards the Seine, where he leaped in, and never came out thence, for which reason it is judged that he was drowned there."
How much of Agrippa's ill-fortune is traceable to himself, and how much to the times in which he lived, it is not easy to deter- mine, and the reader gains little assistance from Mr. Morley, who has marred a questionable subject by treating it in too inflated style. Cornelius Agrippa appears to have been a man of genial spirit among his intimates, but prone to quarrel, - prompt in "speaking his mind," and rather disposed to postpone his inte- rests to his temper, than, as Mr. Morley is ever representing, to sacrifice himself to his convictions of religious and philosophic truth. Something is to be allowed for the violence of the age both in action and opinion, as well as for the caprice of unrestrained greatness when the great alone could bestow patronage: Those, however, who fairly consider the career of Cornelius Agrippa, will see that station and fortune were continually in his grasp, and as continually escap—apparently from neglect of his duties, a meddlesome self-wM, or a restlessness of temperament. He was undoubtedly a man of great readiness, activity, and acquirement, though his acquirements were probably superficial rather than profound. He appears to have had the faculty of drawing what spirit there was out of scholastic pedantry, and presenting it in a lively way. He had also fluency and a certain rhetorical invention ; but, except in his treatise on Marriage, there appears to have been little of substance or truth in his matter. Of his three great works, the Praise of Women and the Vanity of Arts were merely gigantic school exercises, in which the writer tries how much he can say upon given themes, varying his inven- tions by instances from biography or history sacred and profane ; a mode of composition fashionable in his day and not exploded now.' The Magic was a compilation, but a very skilful one ; an equally skilful précis of which is presented by Mr. Morley. In this book Agrippa exhibits the principles of the various systems of occult art, extracting their spirit, and endeavouring to make them as reasonable as possible by basing their laws upon the nature of things. The nature he spoke of and the laws he displayed were of course mostly hypothetical, and often ridi- culous ; but there was an effort, by no means unsuccessful, to give a sort of theoretical consistency and logical truth to the ex-
position. This passage on sympathy, not unlike modern " mesmer- ism" in parts, will convey an idea, though an imperfect idea, of what We mean.
" The passions produce changes in the body., by way of imitation ; as when he who sees another gape gapes also ; and William of Paris knew a man upon whom any purgative draught would take effect at sight. So Cyppus, after he was chosen Ring of Italy, dwelt for a whole night upon the vivid recol- lection and enjoyment of a bull-fight, and in the morning was found horned,
no otherwise than by the vegetative power being stirred up by a vehement imagination elevating eorniferous humours into his head. By this action of the fancy (so great is the rule of the soul over the body) men are stirred to move from place to place, made able to weep at pleasure, to simulate the voices of birds, cattle, dogs, or neighbours ; and Augustine makes mention of some men who would move their ears at their pleasure, and some that would move the crown of their head to their forehead, and could draw it back again when they pleased.
"But the passions, following the fancy when they are most vehement, cannot only change their own body, but can transcend so much as to work also on another body, to produce wonderful impressions on its elements, and remove or communicate disease. So the soul, being strongly elevated, sends forth health or sickness to surrounding objects; and Avicenna believed that with a strong action of the fancy in this manner one might kill a camel. Such is the known action of the parent on the unborn child.. We see how 'a diseased body, as in the ease of plague, will spread disease. The like is true of a diseased mind. And ever of bad something bad, of good something good, is derived from them that are nigh, and, like the smell of musk, adheres for a long time. Therefore it is well to avoid immoral company, to be much near the rich and fortunate when seeking to be wealthy, or with the virtuous when seeking to do well. Now the passions act most powerfully when the influence of the celestials is cooperative with them ; and by conforming our minds strongly to the nature of a star, we can increase their power by at- traction to them of the virtues of that star, as to a fitly-prepared receptacle. And they can act strongly only by help of a strong faith; therefore we must in every work, of whatever sort, if we would prevail in it, hope and believe strongly. Physicians own that a belief in them is more potent for cure than even medicine ; and by a strong belief in their ownpower of curing, they give new strength to their remedies. Therefore, whoever works in magic must have belief strong always, be credulous, and nothing doubting. Dis- trust and doubting dissipate and break the power of the worker's mind, whence it comes that he is frustrated of the desired influence of the su- periors."
The Magic was written early in life, but not published till just before its author's death. Whether he had much faith in the art himself, may be doubted. It was the name of the book which gave Cornelius Agrippa his reputation. His literary fame would soon have passed ; discoveries or even experiments in natural phi- losophy he seems not to have made ; the work on Magic, if read, would have dispossessed its reader of the dark mystery attached to the author's name : but a man of whom such stories as these were circulated by his monkish friends, would be sure of a certain kind of fame in ignorant and superstitious ages. "This happened to Cornelius Agrippa at Louvain. He had a boarder, who was too curious, and Agrippa having once gone somewhere, had given the keys of his museum to the wife whom he afterwards divorced, forbidding her to allow any one to enter. That thoughtless youth did not omit, in season and out of season, to entreat the woman to give him the means of en- tering, until he gained Ms prayer. Having entered the museum, he ,fell upon a book of conjurations—read it. Hark ! there is knocking at the door; he is disturbed, but he goes on with his reading : some one knocks again; and the unmannerly youth answering nothing to this, a daemon enters, asks why is he called? what is it commanded him to do ? Fear stifles the youth's voice, the daemon his mouth, and so he pays the price of his unholy curiosity. In the mean time, the chief magician returns home ; sees the devils dancing over him; uses the accustomed arts; they come when called, explain how the thing happened; he orders the homicide spirit to enter the corpse, and to walk now and then in the market-place, (where other students were accustomed frequently to meet,) at length to quit the body. He walks three or four times, then falls ; the daemon that had stirred the dead limbs taking flight. It was long thought that this youth had been seized with sudden death.; but signs of suffocation first suspicion, afterwards time divulged all."
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