ught
himself one, and sent three or four leaves stuffed with the names of
devils and with their evocations. At the death of his friend these
leaves fell into the unworthy hands of the prior, who was so frightened
on the first glance at the diabolical nomenclature, that he raised the
country against the abbot, and Trithemius was nearly a lost man! Yet,
after all, this evocation of devils has reached us in his
"Steganographia," and proves to be only one of this ingenious abbot's
polygraphic attempts at _secret writing_; for he had flattered himself
that he had invented a mode of concealing his thoughts from all the
world, while he communicated them to a friend. Roger Bacon promised to
raise thunder and lightning, and disperse clouds by dissolving them into
rain. The first magical process has been obtained by Franklin; and the
other, of far more use to our agriculturists, may perchance be found
lurking in some corner which has been overlooked in the "Opus majus" of
our "Doctor mirabilis." Do we laugh at their magical works of art? Are
we ourselves such indifferent artists? Cornelius Agrippa, before he
wrote his "Vanity of the Arts and Sciences," intended to reduce into a
system and method the secret of communicating with spirits and
demons.[198] On good authority, that of Porphyrius, Psellus, Plotinus,
Jamblichus--and on better, were it necessary to allege it--he was well
assured that the upper regions of the air swarmed with what the Greeks
called _daemones_, just as our lower atmosphere is full of birds, our
waters of fish, and our earth of insects. Yet this occult philosopher,
who knew perfectly eight languages, and married two wives, with whom he
had never exchanged a harsh word in any of them, was everywhere avoided
as having by his side, for his companion, a personage no less than a
demon! This was a great black dog, whom he suffered to stretch himself
out among his magical manuscripts, or lie on his bed, often kissing and
patting him, and feeding him on choice morsels. Yet for this would
Paulus Jovius and all the world have had him put to the ordeal of fire
and fagot! The truth was afterwards boldly asserted by Wierus, his
learned domestic, who believed that his master's dog was really nothing
more than what he appeared! "I believe," says he, "that he was a real
natural dog; he was indeed black, but of a moderate size, and I have
often led him by a string, and called him by the French name Agrippa had
given him, Mons