receiving the
numerous foreign literati who resorted to him. Of all the promised
preferments, he would have chosen the mastership of St. Cross for its
seclusion. Here is a great man making great demands, but reposing with
dignity on his claims; his wants were urgent, but the penury was not in
his spirit. The commissioners, as they listened to his autobiography,
must often have raised their eyes in wonder, on the venerable and
dignified author before them."

Their report was terse, direct, and wholly favorable, inspiring the
queen to declare that Dee should have the mastership of St. Cross, and
that immediately. But days passed into months, and months into years,
and Elizabeth's "immediately" still belonged to the future. For some
reason she soon lost all interest in the returned Sage of Mortlake.
Again and again he memorialized her, once with a letter vindicating
himself from the accusation of practising sorcery. Her sole reply was to
grant him finally the uncongenial post of warden of Manchester College,
from which he retired after some mortifying experiences with the minor
officials. Nor did he fare better at the hands of Elizabeth's successor.
Steadily he sank lower in the scale of society, until at last he was
forced to sell his books, one by one, to buy bread. And still, for all
his poverty, he pressed constantly forward in his adventurings into the
invisible world. If his friends deserted him, he would at least have the
companionship of "angels." As his hallucinations grew, his youthful
buoyancy returned. He would leave England, would fare across to the
Continent, and there seek out men of a mind like unto his own. Joyfully,
he made ready for the journey; but, even while he packed and planned,
the call came for another and a longer voyage. In the eighty-first year
of his age, 1608, the aged dreamer became in very fact a dweller in the
spirit world.

Of his place in the history of mankind, it is not easy to write with any
degree of finality. There can be no doubt that he was utterly swept off
his feet by the domination of a fixed idea. And it is not possible to
point to any specific contributions which he made to the advancement of
learning, worldly or otherwise. Still, it is equally certain that he
was anything but a negative quantity in an age resplendent for its
positive men. He played his part, however mistakenly, in the
intellectual awakening that has shed such luster on the times of
Elizabeth; and, if only