ward
and assuming, whose knowledge was imposition, whose responses were, like
the oracles of yore, grounded on the desire of deceit, and who, if
sometimes they were elevated into rank and fortune, were more frequently
found classed with rogues and vagabonds. This was the more apt to be the
case that a sufficient stock of impudence, and some knowledge by rote of
the terms of art, were all the store of information necessary for
establishing a conjurer. The natural consequence of the degraded
character of the professors was the degradation of the art itself.
Lilly, who wrote the history of his own life and times, notices in that
curious volume the most distinguished persons of his day, who made
pretensions to astrology, and almost without exception describes them as
profligate, worthless, sharking cheats, abandoned to vice, and imposing,
by the grossest frauds, upon the silly fools who consulted them. From
what we learn of his own history, Lilly himself, a low-born ignorant
man, with some gloomy shades of fanaticism in his temperament, was
sufficiently fitted to dupe others, and perhaps cheated himself merely
by perusing, at an advanced period of life, some of the astrological
tracts devised by men of less cunning, though perhaps more pretence to
science, than he himself might boast. Yet the public still continue to
swallow these gross impositions, though coming from such unworthy
authority. The astrologers embraced different sides of the Civil War,
and the king on one side, with the Parliamentary leaders on the other,
were both equally curious to know, and eager to believe, what Lilly,
Wharton, or Gadbury had discovered from the heavens touching the fortune
of the strife. Lilly was a prudent person, contriving with some address
to shift the sails of his prophetic bark so as to suit the current of
the time, and the gale of fortune. No person could better discover from
various omens the course of Charles's misfortunes, so soon as they had
come to pass. In the time of the Commonwealth he foresaw the perpetual
destruction of the monarchy, and in 1660 this did not prevent his
foreseeing the restoration of Charles II. He maintained some credit even
among the better classes, for Aubrey and Ashmole both called themselves
his friends, being persons extremely credulous, doubtless, respecting
the mystic arts. Once a year, too, the astrologers had a public dinner
or feast, where the knaves were patronised by the company of such fools