CANTO III.]
HUDIBRAS.
237
Others with characters and words
Catch 'em, as men in nets do birds;[1] 620
And some with symbols, signs, and tricks,
Engrav'd in planetary nicks,[2]
With their own influences will fetch 'em
Down from their orbs, arrest, and catch 'em;
Make 'em depose, and answer to 625
All questions, ere they let them go.
Bombastus kept a devil's bird
Shut in the pummel of his sword,[3]
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks. 630
Kelly did all his feats upon
The Devil's looking-glass, a stone,[4]
Where, playing with him at bo-peep,
He solv'd all problems ne'er so deep.
- ↑ By repetition of magical sounds and words, properly called enchantments. See Chaucer's Third Book of Fame.
- ↑ By signs and figures described according to astrological symmetry: that is, certain conjunctions or oppositions with the planets and aspects of the stars.
- ↑ Bombastus was the family name of Paracelsus, of whom see note at page 224. Butler's note on this passage in the edition of 1674, is as follows: "Paracelsus is said to have kept a small devil prisoner in the pummel of his sword; which was the reason, perhaps, why he was so valiant in his drink. However, it was to better purpose than Hannibal carried poison in his to dispatch himself, if he should happen to be surprised in any great extremity; for the sword would have done the feat alone much better and more soldier-like. And it was below the honour of so great a commander to go out of the world like a rat."
- ↑ Dr Dee had a stone, which he called his angelical stone, asserting that it was brought to him by the angels Raphael and Gabriel, with whom he pretended to be familiar. He told the emperor "that the angels of God had brought to him a stone of such value, that no earthly kingdom is of sufficient worthiness to be compared to the virtue or dignity thereof." It was large, round, and very transparent; and persons who were qualified for the sight of it, were to perceive various shapes and figures, either represented in it as in a looking-glass, or standing upon it as on a pedestal. This stone is now in the Department of Antiquities, British Museum. See Zadkiel's Almanac for 1851, for an account of one of these crystal balls, which formerly belonged to Lady Blessington, and for the visions which were seen in it (?) in 1850. It is said that Dee's Angelical Stone, which was in the
up a red-hot pair of tongs, and catching hold of the Devil by the nose, made him howl in such a terrible manner, as to be heard all over the neighbourhood.
