by Thomas Nashe
Shall I impart unto you a rare secrecy how these great famous conjurors and cunning men ascend by degrees to foretell secrets as they do? First and foremost they are men which have had some little sprinkling of grammar learning in their youth, or at least I will allow them to have been surgeons’ or apothecaries’ prentices; these, I say, having run through their thrift at the elbows, and riotously amongst harlots and make-shifts spent the annuity of halfpenny ale that was left them, fall a-beating their brains how to botch up an easy gainful trade, and set a new nap54 on an old occupation.
Hereupon presently they rake some dunghill for a few dirty boxes and plasters, and of toasted cheese and candles’ ends temper up a few ointments and syrups; which having done, far north or into some such rude simple country they get them and set up.
Scarce one month have they stayed there, but what with their vaunting and prating, and speaking fustian55 instead of Greek, all the shires round about do ring with their fame; and then they begin to get them a library of three or four old rusty manuscript books, which they themselves nor any else can read, and furnish their shops with a thousand quid pro quos, that would choke any horse, besides some waste trinkets in their chambers hung up, which may make the world half in jealousy they can conjure.
They will evermore talk doubtfully, as if there were more in them than they meant to make public, or was appliable to every common man’s capacity; when, God be their rightful judge, they utter all that they know and a great deal more.
To knit up their knaveries in short (which in sooth is the hangman’s office and none’s else), having picked up their crumbs thus prettily well in the country, they draw after a time a little nearer and nearer to London; and at length into London they filch themselves privily – but how? Not in the heart of the City will they presume at first dash to hang out their rat-banners, but in the skirts and outshifts56 steal out a sign over a cobbler’s stall, like aqua vitae sellers, and stocking menders.
Many poor people they win to believe in them, who have not a barrelled herring or a piece of poor-john that looks ill on it, but they will bring the water that he was steeped in unto them in an urinal, and crave their judgement whether he be rotten, or merchant and chapmanable,57 or no. The bruit58 of their cunning thus travelling from ale-house to ale-house at length is transported in the great hilts of one or other country serving-man’s sword to some good tavern or ordinary;59 where it is no sooner alive, but it is greedily snatched up by some dappert Monsieur Diego, who lives by telling of news, and false dice, and it may be hath a pretty insight into the cards also, together with a little skill in his Jacob’s staff60 and his compasses, being able at all times to discover a new passage to Virginia.
This needy gallant, with the qualities aforesaid, straight trudgeth to some nobleman’s to dinner, and there enlargeth the rumour of this new physician, comments upon every glass and vial that he hath, raleth on our Galenists, and calls them dull gardeners and hay-makers in a man’s belly, compares them to dogs, who when they are sick eat grass, and says they are no better than pack or malt-horses, who, if a man should knock out their brains, will not go out of the beaten highway; whereas his horse-leach will leap over the hedge and ditch of a thousand Dioscorides61 and Hippocrates,62 and give a man twenty poisons in one, but he would restore him to perfect health. With this strange tale the nobleman inflamed desires to be acquainted with him; what does me he, but goes immediately and breaks with63 this mountebank, telling him if he will divide his gains with him, he will bring him in custom with such and such states, and he shall be countenanced in the Court as he would desire. The hungry druggier, ambitious after preferment, agrees to anything, and to Court he goes; where, being come to interview, he speaks nothing but broken English like a French doctor, pretending to have forgotten his natural tongue by travel, when he hath never been farther than either the Low Countries or Ireland, enforced thither to fly either for getting a maid with child, or marrying two wives. Sufficeth he set a good face on it, and will swear he can extract a better balsamum out of a chip than the balm of Judea; yea, all receipts and authors you can name he syllogizeth of, and makes a pish at,64 in comparison of them he hath seen and read; whose names if you ask, he claps you in the mouth with half-a-dozen spruce titles, never till he invented them heard of by any Christian. But this is most certain: if he be of any sect, he is a metal-brewing Paracelsian,65 having not passed one or two probatums66 for all diseases. Put case he be called to practise, he excuseth it by great cures he hath in hand; and will not encounter an infirmity but in the declining, that his credit may be more authentical, or else when by some secret intelligence he is throughly instructed of the whole process of his unrecoverable extremity, he comes gravely marching like a judge, and gives peremptory sentence of death; whereby he is accounted a prophet of deep prescience.
But how he comes to be the devil’s secretary, all this long tale unrips not.
In secret be it spoken, he is not so great with the devil as you take it. It may be they are near akin, but yet you have many kindred that will do nothing for one another; no more will the devil for him, except it be to damn him.
This is the Tittle est amen67 of it: that when he waxeth stale, and all his pisspots are cracked and will no longer hold water, he sets up a conjuring school and undertakes to play the bawd to Lady Fortune.
Not a thief or a cut-purse, but a man that he keeps doth associate with, and is of their fraternity; only that his master when anything is stolen may tell who it is that hath it. In petty trifles having gotten some credit, great peers entertain him for one of their privy council, and if they have any dangerous enterprise in hand, they consult with him about success.
All malcontents intending any invasive violence against their Prince and country run headlong to his oracle. Contrary factions enbosom unto him their inwardest complots, whilst he like a crafty jack-a-both-sides, as if he had a spirit still at his elbow, reciprocally embowelleth to the one what the other goes about, receiving no intelligence from any familiar, but their own mouths. I assure you most of our chief noted augurers and soothsayers in England at this day, by no other art but this gain their reputation.
They may very well pick men’s purses, like the unskil-fuller cozening kind of alchemists, with their artificial and ceremonial magic, but no effect shall they achieve thereby, though they would hang themselves. The reason is, the devil of late is grown a puritan and cannot away with68 any ceremonies; he sees all princes have left off their states, and he leaves off his state too and will not be invocated with such solemnity as he was wont.
Private and disguised, he passeth to and fro, and is in a thousand places in an hour.
Fair words cannot any longer beguile him, for not a cue69 of courtesy will he do any man, except it be upon a flat bill of sale, and so he chaffers with wizards and witches every hour.
Now the world is almost at an end, he hath left form and is all for matter; and like an embroiderer or a tailor, he maketh haste of work against a good time, which is the Day of Judgment Therefore, you goodmen exorcisers, his old acquaintance, must pardon him, though (as heretofore) he stay not to dwell upon compliments.
In diebus illis70 when Corineus71 and Gogmagog72 were litde boys, I will not gainsay but he was wont to jest and sport with country people, and play the Goodfellow amongst kitchen-wenches, sitting in an evening by the fireside making of possets, and come a-wooing to them in the likeness of a cooper, or a curmudgeonly purchaser; and sometimes he would dress himself like a barber, and wash and shave all those that lay in such a chamber. Otherwhile, like a stale cutter of Queen-hive,73 he would jusde men in their own houses, pluck them out of bed by the heels, and dance in chains from one chamber to another. Now there is no goodness in him but miserableness and covetousness.
Sooner he will pare his nails cleanly than cause a man to dream of a pot of gold, or a money-bag that is hid in the eaves of a thatched house.
(Here is to be noted, that it is a blessed thing but to dream of gold, though a man
never have it.)
Such a dream is not altogether ridiculous or impertinent, for it keeps flesh and blood from despair. All other are but as dust we raise by our steps, which awhile mounteth aloft and annoyeth our eye-sight, but presently disperseth and vanisheth.
Señor Satan, when he was a young stripling and had not yet gotten perfect audacity to set upon us in the daytime, was a sly politician in dreams; but those days are gone with him, and now that he is thoroughly steeled in his scutchery,74 he plays above-board boldly, and sweeps more stakes than ever he did before.
I have rid a false gallop these three or four pages. Now I care not if I breathe me and walk soberly and demurely half-a-dozen turns, like a grave citizen going about to take the air.
To make a shaft or a bolt75 of this drumbling76 subject of dreams, from whence I have been tossed off and on I know not how, this is my definitive verdict: that one may as well by the smoke that comes out of a kitchen guess what meat is there a-broach, as by paraphrasing on smoky dreams preominate of future events. Thus far notwithstanding I’ll go with them: physicians by dreams may better discern the distemperature of their pale clients, than either by urine or ordure.
He that is inclining to a burning fever shall dream of frays, lightning and thunder, of skirmishing with the devil and a hundred such-like. He that is spiced with the gout or the dropsy frequently dreameth of fetters and manacles and being put on the bilbows, that his legs are turned to marble or adamant, and his feet, like the giants that scaled heaven, kept under with Mount Ossa and Pelion and erstwhile that they are fast locked in quagmires. I have heard aged mumping77 beldams as they sat warming their knees over a coal scratch over the argument very curiously, and they would bid young folks beware on what day they pared their nails, tell what luck everyone should have by the day of the week he was born on; show how many years a man should live by the number of wrinkles on his forehead, and stand descanting not a little of the difference in fortune when they are turned upward and when they are bent downward; ‘him that had a wart on his chin’, they would confidently ascertain he should ‘have no need of any of his kin’; marry, they would likewise distinguish between the standing of the wart on the right side and on the left. When I was a little child, I was a great auditor of theirs, and had all their witchcrafts at my fingers’ ends, as perfect as good-morrow and good-even.
Of the signification of dreams, whole catalogues could I recite of theirs, which here there is no room for; but for a glance to this purpose this I remember they would very soberly affirm, that if one at supper eat birds, he should dream of flying; if fish, of swimming; if venison, of hunting, and so for the rest; as though those birds, fish, and venison being dead and digested did fly, swim and hold their chase in their brains; or the solution of our dreams should be nought else but to express what meats we ate overnight.
From the unequal and repugnant mixture of contrarious meats, I jump with them, many of our mystic cogitations procede; and even as fire maketh iron like itself, so the fiery inflammations of our liver or stomach transform our imaginations to their analogy and likeness.
No humour in general in our bodies overflowing or abounding, but the tips of our thoughts are dipped in his tincture. And as when a man is ready to drown, he takes hold of anything that is next him, so our fluttering thoughts, when we are drowned in deadly sleep, take hold and co-essence themselves with any overboiling humour which sourceth highest in our stomachs.
What heed then is there to be had of dreams that are no more but the confused giddy action of our brains, made drunk with the inundation of humours?
Just such-like impostures as is this art of exposition of dreams are the arts of physiognomy and palmistry, wherein who beareth most palm and praise is the palpablest fool and crepundio.78 lives there any such slow, ice-brained, beef-witted gull, who by the rivelled bark or outward rind of a tree will take upon him to forespeak how long it shall stand, what mischances of worms, caterpillars, boughs breaking, frost bitings, cattle rubbing against, it shall have? As absurd is it, by the external branched seams or furrowed wrinkles in a man’s face or hand, in particular or general to conjecture and foredoom of his fate.
According to every one’s labour or exercise, the palm of his hand is writhen and plaited,79 and every day alters as he alters his employments or pastimes; wherefore well may we collect80 that he which hath a hand so brawned and interlined useth such-and-such toils or recreations; but for the mind or disposition, we can no more look into through it than we can into a looking glass through the wooden case thereof.
So also our faces, which sundry times with surfeits, grief, study or intemperance are most deformedly whelked and crumpled; there is no more to be gathered by their sharp embossed joiner’s antique work or ragged overhangings or pitfalls but that they have been laid up in sloven’s press, and with miscarriage and misgovernment are so fretted and galled.
My own experience is but small, yet thus much I can say by his warrantize that those fatal brands of physiognomy which condemn men for fools and for idiots, and on the other side for treacherous circumventers and false brothers, have in a hundred men I know been verified in the contrary.
So Socrates, the wisest man of Greece, was censured by a wrinkle-wizard81 for the lumpishest blockhead that ever went on two legs; whom though the philosopher in pity vouchsafed with a nice distinction of art and nature to raise and recover, when he was utterly confounded with a hiss and a laughter, yet sure his insolent simplicity might lawfully have sued out his patent of exemption, for he was a forlorn creature, both in discretion and wit-craft.
Will you have the sum of all: some subtle humourist, to feed fantastic heads with innovations and novelties, first invented this trifling childish glose upon dreams and physiognomy; wherein he strove only to boast himself of a pregnant probable conceit beyond philosophy or truth.
Let but any man who is most conversant in the superstition of dreams reckon me one that hath happened just, and I’ll set down a hundred out of histories that have perished to foolery.
To come to late days. Lewis the xj. dreamt that he swam in blood on the top of the Alps, which one Father Robert, a holy hermit of his time, interpreted to be present death in his next wars against Italy, though he lived and prospered in all his enterprises a long while after.
So Charles the Fifth, sailing to the siege of Tunis, dreamt that the City met him on the sea like an Argosy, and overwhelmed his whole navy; when by Cornelius Agrippa, the great conjurer, who went along with him, it was expounded to be the overthrow of that famous expedition. And thereupon Agrippa offered the Emperor, if it pleased him to blow up the City by art magic in the air before his eyes without any farther jeopardy of war or beseiging. The Emperor utterly refused it and said since it was God’s wars against an infidel, he would never borrow aid of the devil.
Some have memorized that Agrippa seeing his counsel in that case rejected, and that the Emperor, notwithstanding his unfortunate presage, was prosperous and successful, within few days after died frantic and desperate.
Alphonso, King of Naples, in like case, before the rumour of the French King’s coming into Italy, had a vision in the night presented unto him of Aeneas’ ghost having Turnus in chase, and Juno Pronuba coming betwixt them, and parting them; whereby he guessed that by marriage their jarring kingdoms should be united. But far otherwise it fell out, for the French King came indeed and he was driven thereby into such a melancholy ecstasy that he thought the very fowls of the air would snatch his crown from him, and no bough or arbour that overshadowed him but enclosed him and took him prisoner, and that not so much but the stones of the street sought to justle him out of his throne.
These examples I allege, to prove there is no certainty in dreams, and that they are but according to our devisings and meditations in the daytime.
I confess the saints and martyrs of the Primitive Church had unfallible dreams fore-running their ends, as Policarpus and other; but those especially proceeded from heaven and not from any vaporous
dreggy parts of our blood or our brains.
For this cause the Turks banish learning from amongst them, because it is every day setting men together by the ears, moving strange contentions and alterations, and making his professors faint-hearted and effeminate. Much more requisite were it that out of our civil Christian commonwealths we severely banish and exterminate those fabulous commentaries on toyish fantasies which fear-benumb and effeminate the hearts of the stoutest, cause a man without any ground to be jealous of his own friends and his kinsfolks, and withdraw him from the search and insight into more excellent things, to stand all his whole life sifting and winnowing dry rubbish chaff, whose best bottom quintescence proves in the end but sandy gravel and cockle.
Molestations and cares enough the ordinary course of our life tithes of his own accord unto us, though we seek not a knot in a bulrush,82 or stuff not our night-pillows with thistles to increase our disturbance.
In our sleep we are aghasted and terrified with the disordered skirmishing and conflicting of our sensitive faculties. Yet with this terror and aghastment cannot we rest ourselves satisfied, but we must pursue and hunt after a further fear in the recordation and too busy examining our pains over-passed.
Dreams in my mind if they have any premonstrances in them, the preparative fear of that they so premonstrate and denounce is far worse than the mischief itself by them denounced and premonstrated.
So there is no long sickness but is worse than death, for death is but a blow and away, whereas sickness is like a Chancery suit, which hangs two or three year ere it can come to a judgment.
Oh, a consumption is worse than a Capias ad Ligatum:83 to nothing can I compare it better than to a reprieve after a man is condemned, or to a boy with his hose about his heels, ready to be whipped, to whom his master stands preaching a long time all law and no gospel ere he proceed to execution. Or rather it is as a man should be roasted to death and melt away by little and little, whiles physicians like cooks stand stuffing him out with herbs and basting him with this oil and that syrup.
