95. J[ohn] H[utchinson], Moses's Principia (2 vols, London, 1724, 1727), vol. 1, p. 10; vol. 2, p. xxix.
96. J[ohn] H[utchinson], The Covenant in the Cherubim: So the Hebrew Writings Perfect. Alterations by Rabbies Forged (London, 1734), pp. 30–2, 64–5, 219–46, 450–76; William Stukeley, “Memoirs of Sr. Isaac Newton's Life, (1752),” Royal Society Ms. LXIX.a.2., p. 161, f. 72 (accessed at http://ttp.royalsociety.org); [William Warburton], Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, to One of his Friends (2nd ed., London, 1809), pp. 58–9; John C. English, “John Hutchinson's Critique of Newtonian Heterodoxy,” Church History, 68, 3 (1999), pp. 581–97, with information on Hutchinson's followers; David S. Katz, “The Hutchinsonians and Hebraic Fundamentalism in Eighteenth-Century England,” in David S. Katz and Jonathan Israel, eds, Skeptics, Millenarians and Jews (Leiden, 2007), pp. 237–55.
97. Parkinson, ed., Remains of Byrom, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 105, 106; vol. 2, part 2, p. 365.
98. Chetham's Library, A.4.98; Thomas Rodd, ed., A Catalogue of the Library of the Late John Byrom, Esq., M.A., F.R.S. (London, 1848), pp. 41, 66, 168, 176, 181, 244, 245; Parkinson, Remains of Byrom, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 44–5; vol. 1, part 2, p. 348.
99. Rodd, ed., Library of Byrom, pp. 10, 11, 15, 106, 199, 204, 222. Byrom and some friends “talked much about Rosicrucian” at a tavern in 1725; Parkinson, ed., Remains of Byrom, vol. 1, part 1, p. 130.
100. Parkinson, ed., Remains of Byrom, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 51, 83, 181, 188, 194; vol. 1, part 2, pp. 328, 338.
101. Ibid., vol. 1, part 1, p. 109; Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rylands d.9, p. 166. Byrom discussed Masonry with the Cabala Club and with the duke of Richmond, a prominent Brother: Parkinson, Remains of Byrom, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 92, 121.
102. Ibid., vol. 1, part 2, pp. 337, 321–4, 337, 507.
103. Ibid., vol. 1, part 2, p. 452; vol. 2, part 1, p. 113; vol. 2, part 2, p. 363; Francis Okely, ed. and trans., Memoirs of the Life, Death, Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen (Northampton, 1780), pp. 105–6.
104. [Wolf, Freiherr von Metternich], Faith and Reason Compared (London, 1713), p. 42; J[ohn] P[ordage], Theologia Mystica, or, The Mystic Divinity of the Æternal Invisibles (London, 1683), pp. 10–11, 16–86 (illustration on p. 28), 114–15, 118–19. Boehme had referred to “an Eye of Eternity, an Abyssal Eye,” but did not give the image as much attention as Pordage: Jacob Boehme, Signatura Rerum, or The Signature of All Things, trans. J. Ellistone (London, 1651), p. 13.
105. [Metternich], Faith and Reason Compared, p. 221.
106. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.26–8 (Freher transcripts); Ms. Walton I.1.33–4 (“Three Tables,” attested as being in Law's hand by Thomas Langcake in 1781); Ms. Walton I.1.35 (Lee transcripts); B.L., Add. Ms. 5785 (“Three Tables”); Rodd, ed., Library of Byrom, p. 240; Joy Hancock, The Byrom Collection: Renaissance Thought, the Royal Society and the Building of the Globe Theatre (London, 1992); Getty Research Institute (GRI), Manley Palmer Hall Collection, Ms. 43: collection of drawings and diagrams by J.D. Leuchter.
107. William Law, “Some Animadversions upon Dr. Trap's Late Reply,” in An Appeal to All That Doubt, or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, Whether they Be Deists, Arians, Socinians, or Nominal Christians (London, 1742), p. 322.
108. Law, “Some Animadversions upon Dr. Trap's Late Reply,” p. 136.
109. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, Letter Book of Henry Brooke, pp. 160–1, 164–6; Parkinson, Remains of Byrom, vol. 2, part 2, p. 364; Hobhouse, ed., Selected Mystical Writings of Law, pp. 397–422.
110. Parkinson, Remains of Byrom, vol. 2, part 1, p. 275.
111. William Law, The Spirit of Love (London, 1752), pp. 36–7.
112. Parkinson, Remains of Byrom, vol. 2, part 2, p. 538.
113. Parkinson, ed., Remains of Byrom, vol. 1, part 1, p. 233; vol. 2, part 1, p. 235.
114. Law, Way to Divine Knowledge, p. 126.
115. On Jacobites and the Royal Touch, see Paul Kléber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 127–32. For the Nonjuror Thomas Carte, who defended the Royal Touch in print, see Paul Kléber Monod, “Thomas Carte, the Druids and British National Identity,” in Paul Monod, Murrray Pittock and Daniel Szechi, eds, Loyalty and Identity: Jacobites at Home and Abroad (Basingstoke, Hants, 2010), pp. 132–48, as well as Thomas Carte, A General History of England (4 vols, London, 1747–55), vol. 1, pp. 291–2 n. 4.
116. Law, “A Collection of Letters,” Letter XXVII, p. 196.
117. Laurence Dermott, Ahimon Rezon: or, A Help to a Brother; Shewing the Excellency of Secrecy, and the First Cause, or Motive, of the Institution of Free-Masonry (London, 1756), pp. vi, x–xi, xiv, 19–20, 25–34, 43–5.
118. A general overview of the subject is found in James Stevens Curll, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (London, 1991); but for the peculiar myths of architecture that fed into Masonry, see J. Rykwert, The First Moderns (Cambridge, Mass., 1980).
119. Vaughan Hart, Nicholas Hawskmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (New Haven, Conn., 2002), esp. ch. 4; Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. C.136, p. 125; also Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rylands. d.9, p. 218, printed in W.J. Songhurst, ed., Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha: Masonic Reprints, Vol. 10: Minutes of the Grand Lode of Freemasons of England, 1723–1739 (London, 1913), pp. 191–2.
120. Eileen Harris, “Batty Langley: A Tutor to Freemasons (1696–1751),” The Burlington Magazine, 119, 890 (1977), pp. 327–35; Batty Langley, Ancient Masonry, Both in the Theory and Practice (London, 1736), Dedication.
121. John Wood, The Origin of Building: or, The Plagiarism of the Heathens Detected (Bath, 1746), pp. 4–11, 14, 20, quotation on p. 24. For Wood's career, see Tim Mowl and Brian Earnshaw, John Wood: Architect of Obsession (Taunton, 1988).
122. Wood, Origin of Building, pp. 29–30, 91–2.
123. Ibid., pp. 124, 139.
124. Ibid., pp. 169–74, 183–210, 221.
125. John Wood, Choir Gaure, Vulgarly Called Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, Described, Restored, and Explained: in a Letter to the Right Honorable Edward Late Earl of Oxford, and Earl Mortimer (Oxford, 1747), pp. 12, 18, 83–116.
126. Ibid., p. 115.
127. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Eng. Misc. e.127, f. 68v.
128. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Eng. Misc. e.140, ff. 27–32. On Ralph Allen, Warburton and Wood, see Benjamin Boyce, The Benevolent Man: A Life of Ralph Allen of Bath (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).
129. Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989); R. Neale, Bath: A Social History, 1680–1750 (London, 1981).
130. John Wood, An Essay towards a Description of Bath (2nd ed., 2 vols, London and Bath, 1749), vol. 1, pp. 1–6, 8, 83. For Typhon, see Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (Oppenheim, 1618), Emblems XIX, XLIV, where he is identified with Set, the murderer of Osiris.
131. Wood, Description of Bath, vol. 1, pp. 180, 232; vol. 2, p. 440.
132. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 446–53.
133. Money, ed., Chronicles of Cannon, vol. 1, pp. lxxxi, 194; vol. 2, p. 573.
Chapter Seven: The Occult Revival
1. Aside from Joscelyn Goodwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany, N.Y., 1994), scholars have not previously noticed this revival, although a similar phenomenon in France and Germany has commanded attention: see Auguste Viatte, Les Source Occultes du Romantisme (Paris, 1927); Antoine Faivre, Philosophie de la Nature: Physique Sacrée et Théosophie, XVIIIe–XIXe Siècles (Paris, 1996).
2. For the book trade in this period, see John Feather, A History of British Bookselling (London, 1988), chs 7–10; James Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750–1800 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 42–60; John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1997), chs 3–4; Isabel Rivers, ed., Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays (London, 2001).
3. The following catalogues, all published at London in the year stated, contain sections on the occult: Wagstaff's Catalogue for 1769; Wagstaff's Se
cond Catalogue for 1769; Wagstaff's New Collection of Rare Old Books … to Be sold on Monday Next, Nov. 2, 1772; Wagstaff's Summer Catalogue of Rare Books for 1773; Wagstaff's Winter Catalogue of Rare Books for 1773; Wagstaff's Winter Catalogue of Rare Old Books for 1774; Wagstaff's Catalogue for 1776. For Wagstaff, whose premises were in Brick Lane, Spitalfields, see Ian Maxted, “Exeter Working Papers in Book History,” at http://bookhistory.blogspot.com/2007/01/london-1775-1800-w-z.html.
4. Richard Dymott, A Catalogue of Several Thousand Books in Various Languages, Manuscripts … Books in Alchemy, &c. (London, 1770), pp. 124–32; Richard Dymott, A Catalogue for MDCCLXXII, of Several Libraries and Parcels of Books … Including … Alchemy (London, 1772), pp. 58–64. Catalogues that list medical books with occult ones include Samuel Hayes, A Catalogue of Books (London, 1777), items 3328–98; Thomas Egerton, A Catalogue of an Extensive Collection of Books (London, 1796), pp. 260–70; Thomas Egerton, A Catalogue of a General Collection of Books (London, 1798), pp. 254–63.
5. James Lackington, Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington (London, 1791), pp. 19–33 (quotation on p. 30), 205–8, 211. For John Denis's Behmenism, see DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, pp. 209–13, 238–44.
6. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.31; Ms. Walton I.1.43, pp. 209–13, 238–44 (letters of John Denis, senior and junior, to Henry Brooke); B.L., Add. 5789, 5793; John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (6 vols, London, 1812), vol. 3, p. 610; John Denis, Denis's Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Books, for 1787 (London, 1787), pp. 160–78. For the fate of Freher's manuscripts, see Charles A. Muses, Illuminations on Jacob Boehme: The Work of Dionysius Andreas Freher (New York, 1951), ch. 2.
7. I have consulted the following editions of Lackington's Catalogue, all published at London: 1784; 1788 (2nd part); 1789; 1792 (2 vols, with occult listings in both); 1793; Sept. 1793–March 1794 (vol. 2). I have also consulted the following catalogues by Lackington, Allen and Co., entitled A Catalogue of an Extensive Collection of Books, and published at London: 1796–7; 1798–9; 1799–1800; Oct. 1800.
8. A Catalogue of the Very Curious, Extensive, and Valuable Library of Richard Cosway, Esq. R. A. ([London], [1821]), pp. 39–44.
9. GUL, Ferguson Ms. 125.
10. GUL, Ferguson Ms. 253.
11. Sabine sometimes published under the rubric “London and Middlesex Printing Office.” His works include The Universal Fortune-Teller; or, Mrs. Bridget's (Commonly Call'd the Norwood Gipsey) Golden Treasury Explained (London, [1790?]), which contains a version of Nocturnal Revels.
12. Francis Barrett, The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; Being a Complete System of Occult Philosophy (London, 1801); The Times, 13 Aug. 1802, 22 Oct. 1802. The second report was contributed by Barrett himself. He is briefly noticed in ODNB.
13. B.L. call mark c.142.a.17, “Collection of Advertisements of Patent and Proprietary Medicines circa 1790–1810,” no. 55, p. 8. For advertising in this period, see Neil McKendrick, “George Packwood and the Commercialization of Shaving: The Art of Eighteenth-Century Advertising or ‘The Way to Get Money and Be Happy,’” in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Commercial Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1983), pp. 146–94.
14. Plans to establish a real medical school are found in A Complete Collection of the Papers Relating to the Union of the King's and Marischal Colleges of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1787), pp. 18, 117.
15. “Observations on the Virtues and Efficacy of Dr. Sibly's Reanimating Solar Tincture, or Pabulum of Life,” bound in Collection of Advertisements of Patent and Proprietary Medicines, circa 1790–1810, BL., c.142.a.17.
16. The term “bourgeois public sphere” was coined in Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Oxford, 1989). See also James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2001).
17. Roy Porter, Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in Medicine (Stroud, Gloucs, 2003), p. 154.
18. “Collection of Advertisements,” no. 10; [Thomas Clayton], Essay on Quackery (Kingston-upon-Hull, 1805), pp. 14–25.
19. S. Solomon, A Guide to Health: or Advice to Both Sexes (2nd ed., London, 1796), p. 136; “Collection of Advertisements,” nos 57–8; Porter, Quacks, pp. 254–7.
20. A Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches, and Honor (2nd ed., London, 1796), pp. iv, 34–6.
21. Cyprian Blagden, “Thomas Carnan and the Almanac Monopoly,” Studies in Bibliography, 14 (1961), pp. 24–45; RSC, reel 99, box D, files 1–16. See also Ellic Howe, “The Stationers’ Company Almanacks: A Late Eighteenth-Century Printing and Publishing Operation,” in Giles Parker and Bernhard Fabian, eds, Buch und Buchhandlung in Europa im achtzehnten Jahrhundert: The Book and the Book Trade in Eighteenth Century Europe (Hamburg, 1981), pp. 195–209.
22. RSC, reel 85, Disbursements 1777–8; reel 98, box B, file 6.
23. William Hone, The Year Book of Daily Recreation and Information (London, 1832), col. 117; see also Maureen Perkins, Visions of the Future: Almanacs, Time and Cultural Change, 1775–1870 (Oxford, 1996), ch. 3.
24. [Henry Andrews], Vox Stellarum: or, A Loyal Almanack … 1777 (London, 1777), p. 9.
25. RSC, reel 98, box C, file 7/9. For Andrews, see RSC, reel 91, Almanac Statements 1800, as well as ODNB. For Thomas Wright, see [Henry Andrews], Vox Stellarum, or, A Loyal Almanack … 1789 (London, 1789), p. 6; Perkins, Visions of the Future, p. 94; Notes and Queries, 7th series, vol. 3 (1887), pp. 164–5; Hone, Year Book, cols 1368–9.
26. Charles Knight, quoted in Blagden, “Thomas Carnan,” p. 39.
27. RSC, reel 99, box D, file 7/1.
28. RSC, reel 85, Disbursements 1777–8.
29. Matilda, or The Efforts of Virtue, quoted in Markman Ellis, The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel (Cambridge, 1996), p. 5. See also G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992); Paul Goring, The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge, 2005).
30. Margaret Anne Doody, “The Gnostic Clarissa,” in David Blewett, ed., Passion and Virtue: Essays on the Novels of Samuel Richardson (Toronto, 2001), pp. 210–45.
31. Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality; or, The History of Henry, Earl of Moreland (2nd ed., 4 vols, 1767), vol. 1, pp. 81–2; Ellis, Politics of Sensibility, ch. 4.
32. Henry Brooke, The History of Henry Earl of Moreland, [ed. John Wesley] (2 vols, London, 1781), vol. 1, pp. iv–vi; also, Nehemiah Curnock, The Journals of John Wesley (9 vols, 1909–16), vol. 6, p. 30 n. 2.
33. William Duff, An Essay on Original Genius (London, 1767), p. 143.
34. James Macpherson, Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem (London, 1762), p. 68. For the impact of Ossian on Scottish identity, see William Ferguson, The Identity of the Scottish Nation: An Historic Quest (Edinburgh, 1999), ch. 11.
35. [Oliver Goldsmith], The Mystery Revealed; Containing a Series of Transactions and Authentic Testimonials, Respecting the Supposed Cock-Lane Ghost; Which Have hitherto Been Concealed from the Public (London, 1762), pp. 1, 3–4; E.J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 1; Douglas Grant, The Cock Lane Ghost (London, 1965); Sasha Handley, Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 2007), pp. 141–8; ODNB, “Parsons, Elizabeth.”
36. Jonathan Barry, “Public Infidelity and Private Belief? The Discourse of Spirits in Enlightenment Bristol,” in Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt, eds, Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester, 2004), pp. 117–43; Jonathan Barry, “Piety and the Patient: Medicine and Religion in Eighteenth Century Bristol,” in Roy Porter, ed., Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 159–62; Henry Durbin, A Narrative of Some Extraordinary Things That Happened to Mr. Richard Giles's Children, at the Lamb, without L
awford's Gate, Bristol; Supposed to Be the Effect of Witchcraft (Bristol, 1800).
37. Walpole to George Montagu, 29 Jan. 1762, in W.S. Lewis, ed., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence (48 vols, 1937–83), vol. 10, pp. 5–7.
38. Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, ed. E.J. Clery (Oxford, 1996), p. 6.
39. Ibid., p. 10.
40. Barbara A. Murray, Restoration Shakespeare: Viewing the Voice (Cranbury, N.J., 2001), pp. 50–63.
41. Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp, eds, Handel's Operas (2 vols, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2006); Reinhard Strom, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 74, 263–4; David J. Buch, Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theatre (Chicago, 2008), pp. 158–66.
42. “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror; with Sir Bertrand, A Fragment,” in J. and A.L. Aikin, Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose (London, 1773), p. 125.
43. Clery, Rise of Supernatural Fiction, ch. 6. Almost all English women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were unable to sign their names. By 1750, women were about 20 percentage points behind men in literacy; by 1840, this had narrowed to 16 points: David Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 24. Men, however, remained the principal consumers of novels in the English provinces: see Jan S. Fergus, Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2006).
44. On Ann Radcliffe, see Richard Miles, Anne Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress (Manchester, 1995); Rictor Norton, Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe (London, 1999), esp. pp. 67–70; Terry Castle, “The Spectralization of the Other in Mysteries of Udolpho,” in her The Female Thermometer: 18th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Oxford, 1999), pp. 120–39.
45. Quoted in Norton, Mistress of Udolpho, p. 198; see also Clery, Rise of Supernatural Fiction, ch. 7.
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