THE
HISTORY
OF THE
LIFE
AND
ADVENTURES
OF
Mr. Duncan Campbell,

A
Gentleman, who, tho' Deaf and Dumb, writes down any Stranger's name at first Sight; with their future Contingencies of Fortune.

Now Living
In Exeter Court over-against the Savoy in the Strand.

Gentem quidem nullam video neque tam humanam atque doctam; nequtam immanem tamque barbaram, quæ non significari futura et a quie busdam intelligi prædicique posse censeat.
Cicero de Divinatione, lib. x.

LONDON:

Printed for E. Curll: And sold by W. Mears and T. Jauncy, without Temple Bar, W. Meadows in Cornhill, A. Bettesworth in Pater-Noster-Row. W. Lewis in Covent Garden and W. Graves in St. James's Street. M.DCC.XX. (Price 5s.)

[THE INTRODUCTION.]
[CHAPTER I.]
[CHAPTER II.]
[CHAPTER III.]
[CHAPTER IV.]
[CHAPTER V.]
[CHAPTER VI.]
[CHAPTER VII.]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
[APPENDIX.]
[VERSES]

TO THE
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
OF
GREAT BRITAIN.

I am not unacquainted, that, ever since this book was first promised by way of advertisement to the world, it was greedily coveted by a great many persons of airy tempers, for the same reason that it has been condemned by those of a more formal class, who thought it was calculated partly to introduce a great many new and diverting curiosities in the way of superstition, and partly to divulge the secret intrigues and amours of one part of the sex, to give the other part room to make favourite scandal the subject of their discourse; and so to make one half of the fair species very merry, over the blushes and the mortifications of the other half. But when they come to read the following sheets, they will find their expectations disappointed, but I hope I may say too, very agreeably disappointed. They will find a much more elegant entertainment than they expected. Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances of polluting scandal, the good old gentleman who wrote the Adventures of my Life, has made it his business to treat them with a great variety of entertaining passages, which always terminate in morals that tend to the edification of all readers, of whatsoever sex, age, or profession. Instead of seducing young, innocent, unwary minds into the vicious delight which is too often taken in reading the gay and bewitching chimeras of the cabalists, and in perusing the enticing fables of new-invented tricks of superstition, my ancient friend, the writer, strikes at the very root of these superstitions, and shows them how they may be satisfied in their several curiosities, by having recourse to me, who by the talent of the second-sight, which he so beautifully represents, how nature is so kind frequently to implant in the minds of men born in the same climate with myself, can tell you those things naturally, which when you try to learn yourselves, you either run the hazard of being imposed upon in your pockets by cheats, gipsies, and common fortune-tellers, or else of being imposed upon in a still worse way, in your most lasting welfare, by having recourse to conjurors or enchanters that deal in black arts, and involve all their consulters in one general partnership of their execrable guilt; or, lastly, of imposing worst of all upon your own selves, by getting into an itch of practising and trying the little tricks of female superstition, which are often more officiously handed down by the tradition of credulous nurses and old women, from one generation to another, than the first principles of Christian doctrine, which it is their duty to instil early into little children. But I hope when this book comes to be pretty generally read among you ladies, as by your generous and numerous subscriptions I have good reason to expect, that it will afford a perfect remedy and a thorough cure to that distemper, which first took its rise from too great a growth of curiosity, and too large a stock of credulity nursed prejudicially up with you in your more tender and infant years.

Whatever young maid hereafter has an innocent but longing desire to know who shall be her husband, and what time she shall be married, will, I hope, when she has read the following sheets of a man that can set her right in the knowledge of those points, purely by possessing the gift of the second sight, sooner have recourse innocently to such a man than use unlawful means to acquire it, such as running to conjurors to have his figure shown in their enchanted glasses, or using any of those traditional superstitions, by which they may dream of their husbands, or cause visionary shapes of them to appear on such and such festival nights of the year; all which practices are not ordinarily wicked and impious, but downright diabolical. I hope that the next 29th of June, which is St. John Baptist's day, I shall not see the several pasture fields adjacent to this metropolis, especially that behind Montague House, thronged, as they were the last year, with well dressed young ladies crawling busily up and down upon their knees, as if they were a parcel of weeders, when all the business is to hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, that they may dream who should be their husbands. In order to shame them out of this silly but guilty practice, I do intend to have some spies out on that day, that shall discover who they are, and what they have been about; and I here give notice to the public, that this ill-acted comedy, if it be acted at all this year, must begin according to the rule of their superstition, on that day precisely at the hour of twelve. And so much for the pretty weeders. But as you, ladies, have had several magical traditions delivered to you, which, if you put in exercise and practice, will be greatly prejudicial to your honour and your virtue, let me interpose my counsels, which will conduct you innocuously to the same end, which some ladies have laboured to arrive at by these impieties. Give me leave first to tell you, that though what you aim at may be arrived to by these means, yet these means make that a miserable fortune which would have been a good one; because, in order to know human things beforehand, you use preternatural mediums, which destroy the goodness of the courses, which nature herself was taking for you, and annexes to them diabolical influences, which commonly carry along with them fatalities in this world as well as the next. You will, therefore, give me your pardon likewise, ladies, if I relate some other of these practices, which bare relation of itself, after what I have said before, seems to me sufficient to explode them.

Another of the nurse's prescriptions is this: upon a St. Agnes's night, the 21st day of January, take a row of pins and pull out every one, one after another, saying a Pater Noster, or Our Father, sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of her you shall marry. Ben Johnson, in one of his masks, makes some mention of this:

And on Sweet Agnes' night Please you with the promis'd sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers.

Now what can be more infinitely profane than to use the prayer our Lord instituted in such a way?

There is another prescription, which is as follows: You must lie in another county, and knit the left garter about the right-legged stocking, let the other garter and stocking alone, and as you rehearse these following verses, at every comma, knit a knot:—

This knot I knit, To know the thing I know not yet, That I may see The man that shall my husband be; How he goes, and what he wears, And what he does all days and years.

Accordingly in your dream you will see him: if a musician, with a lute or other instrument; if a scholar, with a book, &c. Now I appeal to you, ladies, what a ridiculous prescription is this? But yet as slight a thing as it is, it may be of great importance if it be brought about, because then it must be construed to be done by preternatural means, and then those words are nothing less than an application to the devil.

Mr. Aubrey, of the Royal Society, says, a gentlewoman, that he knew, confessed in his hearing that she used this method, and dreamt of her husband whom she had never seen. About two or three years after, as she was one Sunday at church, up pops a young Oxonian in the pulpit; she cries out presently to her sister, this is the very face of the man I saw in my dream. Sir William Somes's lady did the like.

Another way is to charm the moon thus, as the old nurses give out, at the first appearance of the moon, after New-year's-day, some say any other new moon is as good, go out in the evening, and stand over the spars of a gate or stile, looking on the moon (here remark that in Yorkshire they kneel on a ground-fast stone) and say,

All hail to the moon, all hail to thee, I prithee, good moon, reveal to me This night who my husband shall be.

You must presently after go to bed. The aforesaid Mr. Aubrey knew two gentlewomen that did thus when they were young maids, and they had dreams of those that married them.

But a great many of the wittiest part of your sex laugh at these common superstitions; but then they are apt to run into worse: they give themselves up to the reading of the cabalistical systems of sylphs, and gnomes, and mandrakes, which are very wicked and delusive imaginations.

I would not have you imagine, ladies, that I impute these things as infirmities and frailties peculiar to your sex. No; men, and great men too, and scholars, and even statesmen, and princes themselves, have been tainted with superstitions, and where they infect the minds of such great personages, they make the deeper impression, according to the stronger and more manly ideas they have of them. Their greater degree of strength in the intellect only subjects them to greater weaknesses; such was even the great Paracelsus, the wonder and miracle of learning in the age wherein he lived, and such were all his followers, scholars, statesmen, divines, and princes, that are talismanists.

These talismans that Paracelsus pretends to owe to the excogitation and invention of honest art, seem to me to be of a very diabolical nature, and to owe their rise to being dedicated by the author to the heathen gods. Thus the cabalists pretending to a vast penetration into arts and sciences, though all their thoughts are chimeras and extravagancies, unless they be helped by preternatural means, say they have found out the several methods appropriated to the several planets. They have appropriated gold to the sun on the Sunday, silver to the moon on the Monday, iron to Mars on the Tuesday, quicksilver to Mercury on the Wednesday, tin to Jupiter on the Thursday, copper or brass to Venus on the Friday, and lead to Saturn on the Saturday. The methods they take in forming these talismans are too long to dwell upon here. But the properties which they pretend belong to them are, that the first talisman or seal of the sun will make a man beloved by all princes and potentates, and cause him to abound with all the riches his heart can wish. The second preserves travellers from danger, and is favourable to merchants, tradesmen, and workmen. The third carries destruction to any place where it is put: and it is said that a certain great minister of state ordered one of these to be carried into England in the times of the revolution of government caused by Oliver Cromwell. The fourth they pretend cures fevers and other diseases; and if it be put under the bolster, it makes the proprietor have true dreams, in which he sees all he desires to know. The fifth, according to them, renders a man lucky and fortunate in all his businesses and undertakings. It dissipates melancholy, drives away all importunate cares, and banishes panic fears from the mind. The sixth, by being put into the liquor which any one drinks, reconciles mortal enemies, makes them intimate friends: it gains the love of all women, and renders the proprietor very dexterous in the art of music. The seventh makes women be easily brought to bed without pain; and if a horseman carries it in his left boot, himself and his horse become invulnerable.

This, Paracelsus and his learned followers say, is owing to the influence of the stars; but I cannot help arguing these acts of diabolical impiety. But as these arts are rarely known among the middling part of mankind, I shall neither open their mysteries, nor inveigh against them any farther.

The persons who are most to be avoided are your ordinary fortune-telling women and men about this town, whose houses ought to be avoided as a plague or a pestilence, either because they are cheats and impostors, or because they deal with black arts, none of them that I know having any pretensions to the gift of a second-sight. Among many, a few of the most notorious that I can call to mind now, are as follow. The first and chiefest of these mischievous fortune-tellers is a woman that does not live far from the Old Bailey. And truly the justice hall in that place is the properest place for her to appear at, where, if she was tried for pretending to give charms written upon paper with odd scrawls, which she calls figures, she would be probably convicted, and very justly condemned, and doomed to have her last journey from the Old Bailey to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. The other is a fellow that lives in Moorfields, in which place those who go to consult him ought to live all their lifetimes, at the famous palaces of the senseless men: he is the successor of the famous Dr. Trotter, whose widow he married; and from being a tailor and patching men's garments, he now cuts flourishes with his shears upon parchment, considers the heavens as a garment, and from the spangles thereupon he calculates nativities, and sets up for a very profound astrologer. The third is an ignorant fellow that caws out strange predictions in Crow-alley, of whose croaking noise I shall here take no notice, he having been sufficiently mauled in the most ingenious Spectators. These and such counterfeits as these, I would desire all gentlemen and ladies to avoid. The only two really learned men that I ever knew in the art of astrology, were my good friends Dr. Williams and Mr. Gadbury; and I thought it necessary to pay this esteem to their names, let the world judge of them what it will. I will here say no more, nor hinder you any longer, gentlemen and ladies, from the diversion which my good old friend, who is now departed this life, has prepared for you in his book, which a young gentleman of my acquaintance revised, and only subscribe myself,

Yours, &c.,
Duncan Campbell.

THE
HISTORY OF THE LIFE
AND SURPRISING ADVENTURES
OF
MR. DUNCAN CAMPBELL.

THE INTRODUCTION.

Of all the writings delivered in an historical manner to the world, none certainly were ever held in greater esteem than those which give us the lives of distinguished private men at full length; and, as I may say, to the life. Such curious fragments of biography are the rarities which great men seek after with eager industry, and when found, prize them as the chief jewels and ornaments that enrich their libraries, and deservedly; for they are the beauties of the greatest men's lives handed down by way of example or instruction to posterity, and commonly handed down likewise by the greatest men. Since, therefore, persons distinguished for merit in one kind or other are the constant subjects of such discourses, and the most elegant writers of each age have been usually the only authors who choose upon such subjects to employ their pens, and since persons of the highest rank and dignity, and genii of the most refined and delicate relish, are frequently curious enough to be the readers of them, and to esteem them the most valuable pieces in a whole collection of learned works; it is a wonder to me that when any man's life has something in it peculiarly great and remarkable in its kind, it should not move some more skilful writer than myself to give the public a taste of it, because it must be at least vastly entertaining, if it be not, which is next to impossible, immensely instructive and profitable withal.

If ever the life of any man under the sun was remarkable, this Mr. Duncan Campbell's, which I am going to treat upon, is so to a very eminent degree.

It affords such variety of incidents, and is accompanied with such diversity of circumstances, that it includes within it what must yield entire satisfaction to the most learned, and admiration to persons of a moderate understanding. The prince and the peasant will have their several ends of worthy delight in reading it; and Mr. Campbell's life is of that extent, that it concerns and collects, as I may say, within itself, every station of life in the universe. Besides, there is a demand in almost every page that relates any new act of his, for the finest and closest disquisitions that learning can make upon human nature, to account how those acts could be done by him. For he daily practised, and still practises, those things naturally, which puts art to the rack to find out how nature can so operate in him; and his fleshly body, by these operations, is a living practical system, or body of new philosophy, which exceeds even all those that have hitherto been compounded by the labour and art of many ages.

If one that had speculated deep into abstruse matters, and made it his study not only to know how to assign natural reasons for some strange new acts that looked like miracles by being peculiar to the individual genius of some particular admired man, but carrying his inquiry to a much greater height, had speculated likewise what might possibly be achieved by human genius in the full perfection of nature, and had laid it down as a thesis by strong arguments, that such things might be compassed by a human genius, if in its true degree of perfection, as are the hourly operations of the person's life I am writing, he would have been counted a wild romantic enthusiast, instead of a natural philosopher. Some of the wisest would be infidels to so new and so refined a scheme of thinking, and demand experiment, or cry it was all against reason, and would not allow the least tittle to be true without it. Yet the man that had found out so great a mystery as to tell us what might be done by human genius, as it is here actually done, would have been a great man within himself; but wanting further experimental proof, could lay no claim to the belief of others, or consequently to their esteem. But how great, then, is the man who makes it constantly his practice actually to do what would not otherwise have been thought to be of such a nature as might ever be acquired by mortal capacity, though in its full complement of all possible perfection? He is not only great within himself, he is great to the world: his experiments force our belief, and the amazing singularity of those experiments provokes both our wonder and esteem.

If any learned man should have advanced this proposition, that mere human art could give to the deaf man what should be equal to his hearing, and to the dumb man an equivalent for his want of speech, so that he could converse as freely almost as other hearing or talking persons; that he might, though born deaf, be by art taught how to read, write, and understand any language, as well as students that have their hearing, would not the world, and many even of the learned part of it, say that nothing could be more extravagantly wild, more mad and frantic? The learned Dr. Wallis, geometry professor of Oxford, did first of all lay down this proposition, and was counted by many to have overshot the point of learning, and to have been the author of a whimsical thesis. And I should not have wondered if, after a man's having asserted this might be done, before it was actually done, some blind devout people in those days, had accused him of heresy, and of attributing to men a power of working miracles. The notion of the antipodes was by the most learned men of the age in which St. Augustin lived, and by the great St. Austin himself, treated in no milder a manner: yet if the ability of teaching the deaf and the dumb a language proved a truth in experience afterwards, ought not those to turn their contempt into admiration, ought not those very people to vote him into the Royal Society for laying down the proposition, who, before it proved true, in fact, would have been very forward to have sent him to Bedlam? The first instance of this accomplishment in a dumb person was proved before King Charles II. by this same Dr. Wallis, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the most ingenious of that society.

But, notwithstanding this, should I come afterwards and say, that there is now living a deaf and dumb man, and born so, who could by dint of his own genius teach all others deaf and dumb to read, write, and converse with the talking and hearing part of mankind, some would, I warrant, very religiously conclude, that I was about to introduce some strange new miracle-monger and impostor into the world, with a design of setting up some new sect of anti-christianism, as formidable as that of Brachmans. Should I proceed still further, and say, that this same person, so deaf and dumb, might be able also to show a presaging power, or kind of prophetical genius, (if I may be allowed to use the expression,) by telling any strange persons he never saw before in his life, their names in writing, and by telling them the past actions of their lives, and predicting to them determined truths of future contingencies, notwithstanding what divines say, that "in futuris contingeatibus non datur determinata veritas," would not they conclude that I was going to usher in a new Mahomet? Since, therefore, there does exist such a man in London, who actually is deaf and dumb, and was born so, who does write and read, and converse as well as anybody, who teaches others deaf and dumb to write, and read and converse with anybody, who likewise can, by a presaging gift, set down in writing the name of any stranger at first sight, tell him his past actions, and predict his future occurrences in fortune, and since he has practised this talent as a profession with great success for a long series of years upon innumerable persons in every state and vocation in life, from the peeress to the waiting-woman, and from the lady mayoress to the milliner and sempstress, will it not be wonderfully entertaining to give the world a perfect history of this so singular a man's life? And while we are relating the pleasant adventures with such prodigious variety, can anything be more agreeably instructive in a new way than to intersperse the reasons, and account for the manner how nature, having a mind to be remarkable, performs by him acts so mysterious.

I have premised this introduction, compounded of the merry and the serious, with the hopes of engaging many curious people of all sorts to be my readers, even from the airy nice peruser of novels and romances, neatly bound and finely gilt, to the grave philosopher, that is daily thumbing over the musty and tattered pieces of more solid antiquity. I have all the wonders to tell that such a merry kind of a prophet has told, to entertain the fancies of the first gay tribe, by which means I may entice them into some solid knowledge and judgment of human nature; and I have several solid disquisitions of learning to make, accounting for the manner of these mysterious operations, never touched upon before in due form and order by the hands of the ancient or modern sages, that I may bribe the judgment of this last grave class, so far as to endure the intermixing entertainment with their severer studies.

CHAPTER I.

MR. CAMPBELL'S DESCENT, FAMILY, BIRTH, ETC.

Of the goodness and antiquity of the name and family of this gentleman, nobody can ever make any question. He is a Campbell, lineally descended from the house of Argyll, and bears a distant relation to the present duke of that name in Scotland, and who is now constituted a duke of England, by the style and title of Duke of Greenwich.

It happens frequently that the birth of extraordinary persons is so long disputed by different people, each claiming him for their own, that the real place where he first took breath grows at last dubious. And thus it fares with the person who is the subject of the following sheets; as, therefore, it is my proposal to have a strict regard to historical faith, so I am obliged to tell the reader that I can with no certainty give an account of him till after he was three years old; from which age I knew him, even to this day; I will answer for the truths which I impart to the public during that time, and as for his birth and the circumstances of it, and how the first three years of his life passed, I can only deliver them the same account I have received from others, and leave them to their own judgments whether it ought to be deemed real or fabulous.

The father of our Mr. Duncan Campbell, as these relate the story, was from his infancy of a very curious, inquisitive nature, and of an enterprising genius, and if he heard of anything surprising to be seen, the difficulty in practice was enough to recommend to him the attempting to get a sight of it at any rate or any hazard. It is certain, that during some civil broils and troubles in Scotland, the grandfather of our Mr. Campbell was driven with his wife and family, by the fate of war, into the isle of Shetland, where he lived many years; and during his residence there, Mr. Archibald Campbell, the father of our Duncan Campbell, was born.

Shetland lies north-east from Orkney, between sixty and sixty-one degrees of latitude. The largest isle of Shetland, by the natives called the Mainland, is sixty miles in length from south-west to the north-east, and from sixteen, to one mile, in breadth.

The people who live in the smaller isles have abundance of eggs and fowl, which contributes to maintain their families during the summer.

The ordinary folks are mostly very nimble and active in climbing the rocks in quest of those eggs and fowl. This exercise is far more diverting than hunting and hawking among us, and would certainly for the pleasure of it, be followed by people of greater distinction, was it not attended with very great dangers, sufficient to turn sport into sorrow, and which have often proved fatal to those who too eagerly pursue their game. Mr. Archibald Campbell, however, delighted extremely in this way of fowling, and used to condescend to mix with the common people for company, because none of the youths of his rank and condition were venturesome enough to go along with him.

The most remarkable experiment of this sort, is at the isle called the Noss of Brassah: the Noss standing at sixteen fathoms distance from the side of the opposite main: the higher and lower rocks have two stakes fastened in each of them, and to these there are ropes tied; upon the ropes there is an engine hung which they call a cradle, and in this a man makes his way over from the greater to the smaller rocks, where he makes a considerable purchase of eggs and fowl; but his return being by an ascent, makes it the more dangerous, though those on the great rock have a rope tied to the cradle, by which they draw it and the man safe over for the most part. Over this rock Mr. Archibald Campbell and five others were in that manner let down by cradles and ropes; but before they could be all drawn back again, it grew dark, and their associates not daring to be benighted, were forced to withdraw, and Mr. Campbell was the unfortunate person left behind, having wandered too far, and not minded how the day declined, being intent on his game. He passed that night, you may easily guess, without much sleep, and with great anxiety of heart. The night, too, as he lay in the open air, was, to add to his misfortunes, as boisterous and tempestuous as his own mind; but in the end the tempest proved very happy for him. The reader is to understand that the Hamburghers, Bremeners, and Hollanders, carry on a great fish trade there. Accordingly, a Holland vessel, that was just coming in the sound of Brassah, was by this tempest driven into a creek of the rock, which nature had made into a harbour, and they were providentially saved from the bottom of the sea by a rock, from which, humanly speaking, they could expect nothing but destruction, and being sent to the bottom of that sea. As never could a man be taken hold of with so sudden and surprising a disaster, so nobody could meet with a more sudden and surprising relief than Mr. Campbell found when he saw a ship so near. He made to the vessel, and begged the Hollanders to take him in; they asked him what he would give them, or, said the barbarous sailors, we will even leave you where you are; he told them his disaster, but they asked money, and nothing else would move them: as he knew them a self-interested people, he bethought himself, that if he should tell them of the plenty of fowls and eggs they would get there, he might not only be taken in a passenger, but made a partner in the money arising from the stock; it succeeded accordingly: when he proposed it, the whole crew were all at work, and, in four hours, pretty well stored the vessel, and then, returning on board, set sail for Holland. They offered Mr. Campbell to put him in at his own island; but having a mind to see Holland, and being a partner, to learn their way of merchandize, which he thought he might turn to his countrymen's advantage, he told them he would go the voyage out with them, and see the country of those who were his deliverers; a necessary way of speech, when one has a design to sooth barbarians, who, but for interest, would have left him unredeemed, and, for aught they knew, a perpetual sole inhabitant of a dreadful rock, encompassed round with precipices, some three hundred fathoms high. Not so the islanders, who are wrongly called a savage set of mortals; no, they came in quest of him after so bitter a night, not doubting to find him, but fearing to find him in a lamentable condition; they hunted and ransacked every little hole and corner in the rock, but all in vain. In one place they saw a great slaughter of fowls, enough to serve forty families for a week; and then they guessed, though they had not the ill fortune to meet the eagles frequently noted to hover about those isles, that they might have devoured part of him on some precipice of the rock, and dropped the remnant into the sea. Night came upon them, and they were afraid of falling into the same disaster they went to relieve Mr. Campbell from. They returned each to their proper basket, and were drawn up safe by their respective friends, who were amazed that one basket was drawn up empty which was let down for Mr. Campbell, and that there was not the least intelligence to be had concerning him, but the suppositious story of his having been devoured by eagles. The story was told at home; and with the lamentation of the whole family, and all his friends, he was looked upon to be murdered or dead.

Return we now to Mr. Archibald Campbell, still alive, and on board the Holland vessel; secure, as he thought within himself that, from the delivery he lately had by the gift of Providence, he was not intended to be liable to any more misfortunes and dangers of life, in the compass of so small a voyage. But his lot was placed otherwise in the book of fate, than he too fondly imagined: his time of happiness was dated some pages lower down, and more rubs and difficulties were to be encountered with, before his stars intended to lead him to the port of felicity. Just as he arrived within sight of Amsterdam, a terrible storm arose, and, in danger of their lives, for many hours, they weathered out the tempest; and a calm promising fair afresh, they made to the coast of Zealand; but a new hurricane prevented the ship from coming there also; and after having lost their masts and rigging, they were driven into Lapland. There they went ashore in order to careen and repair their ship, and take in provisions; while the ship was repairing by the Dutch, our islander made merry with the inhabitants, being the most inclined to their superstitious customs; he there became acquainted with a very beautiful woman, who fell in love with him, and after a very short space of time he married her. About the time when the ship departed, his wife, who was very rich, was big with child of a son, namely, Mr. Duncan Campbell. He wrote a letter by the master of the vessel to his parents in Shetland, concerning the various adventures he had met with, which was delivered the June following, about the time of fishing, to his parents, and several persons had copies thereof, and, for aught I know, some retain them to this very day; sure I am that many remember the particulars of this, surprising affair, who are now living in that island.

The letter being very remarkable and singular in all its circumstances, I shall present it to the reader word for word, as it was given into my hands, together with some others which he wrote afterwards, in all which I am assured by very credible persons, and undoubted authorities, there are not the least alterations, but what the version of it from the then Scotch manner of expression into a more modern English dress, made absolutely necessary.

My Dearest Father,

The same odd variety of accident, which put it out of my power to be personally present with you for so long a time, put it likewise out of my power to write to you. At last fortune has so ordered it, that I can send a letter to you before I can come myself, and it is written expressly to tell you the adventures I have met with, which have detained me this tedious space of time from my dear father, and because the same captain of a ship that brings you this, might as easily have brought your son to speak for himself. I shall in the next place lay before you the necessity there is for my stay a little longer among the strange natives of the country where I now inhabit, and where I am, in a manner, become naturalized.

You have, no doubt of it, been informed by my companions, some of whom I hope got safe back again, if not all, that I was lost, where many a brave man has perished before me, by going over the high precipices of the mountain Brassah, in a basket, sliding down by a rope. I must suppose I have given you the anguish of a father for a son, who you thought had lost his life by such a foolhardy attempt, and I implore your pardon with all the power of filial contrition, penitence, and duty. You have always showed me such singular marks of paternal affection, that I know your receipt of this letter will fill your heart with joy, and cause you to sign me an absolution and free pardon for all the errors I have committed, and think the sufferings I have undergone for my rashness and indiscretion, a sufficient atonement for my crime of making you by my undutifulness, a partner of my sorrows. To free you the more from this uneasiness, I know I need only tell you, that every grief of mine is gone excepting one, which is, that I must still lose the pleasure of seeing you a little longer. There was never surely a more bitter night than that which must by me be for ever remembered, when I was lost in the mountain of Brassah, where I must, for aught I know, have lived for ever a wild single inhabitant, but that the storm which made the night so uneasy to me, rendered the first approach of daylight, beyond measure delightful. The first providential glimpse of the morning gave me a view of a ship driven by the tempest into a creek of the rock, that was by nature formed like a harbour; a miraculous security of deliverance, as I thought, both for the ship's crew and myself. I made all the haste I could, you may be sure, to them, and I found them to be Dutchmen that were come for fish; but in lieu of fish I instructed them to load it with eggs and fowl, which we compassed very happily in a short space of time, and I was to be a sharer with the captain in the lading, and bargained to go for Holland, to see the sale, and nature of the traffic; but when we were at sea, after much bad weather, we made towards Zealand, but we were driven upon the coast of Finland by a new storm, and thence into Lapland, where I now am, and from whence I send you this letter.

I could not come into a place so properly named for my reception; as I had been undutiful to you, and fortune seemed to make me an exile, or a banished man, by way of punishment for the vices of my youth; so Lapland (which is a word originally derived from the Finland word lappi, that is, exiles, and from the Sweden word lap, signifying banished, from which two kingdoms most of our inhabitants were banished hither, for not embracing the Christian religion), was certainly the properest country in the world to receive me.

When first I entered this country, I thought I was got into quite another world; the men are all of them pigmies to our tall, brawny Highlanders; they are, generally speaking, not above three cubits high, insomuch that though the whole country of Lapland is immensely large, and I have heard it reckoned by the inhabitants to be above a hundred German leagues in length, and fourscore and ten in breadth, yet I was the tallest man there, and looked upon as a giant. The district in which I live now, is called Uma Lapmark. You must understand, sir, that when I landed at North Cape, in Kimi Lapmark, another district of Lapland, there was at that time a most beautiful lady come to see a sick relation of her father's, who was prefect, or governor of Uma Lapmark, which is a post of great distinction. This lady, by being frequently in the company of French merchants, who traffic now and then in that province of Uma Lapmark, understood French, and having heard of a man six foot and a half high, desired to see me, and when I came, she happened mightily to like my person; and she talked French, which when I answered, she made great signs of joy, that she could communicate her sentiments to me, and she told me who she was, how rich, and that not one in the company besides could understand a syllable we said, and so I might speak my mind freely to her; she told me the customs of the country, that it was divided into cantons, like our shires, and those cantons into rekars, or certain grounds allotted to families, that are just like our clans. As she was beyond measure beautiful, she was extremely good humoured, a thing rarely to be met among Lapland women, of a better stature than her country women, and very rich, and of good birth: I thought it would be a prodigious turn of fortune, for a man in my circumstances, if I could make any progress in her heart, which she seemed a little to open to me, in such a manner, for the beginning, as if such a successful event, if managed with prudence, might not be despaired off. Souls that are generous are apt to love, and compassion is the best introducer of love into a generous bosom, and that was the best stock I had to go upon in my courtship! I told her of all my calamities, my dangers, and my escapes; the goodness of my birth, as being allied to one of the greatest nobles in our island; and still she would ask me to tell it her over again, though every time I told it, just at such and such passages, she was forced to drop the tears from her eyes. In fine, I grew more in love with her, more out of a sense of gratitude now, than by the power of her charms before; the matter in a few days went so far, that she owned to me I had her heart. As to marriage, I did not then know the custom of the nation; I thought that if it proved only dangerous to me, I loved her so well that I intended to marry her, though the law was to pronounce me dead for it; but I did not know whether it might not be perilous for her too, to engage in such a state with me, and I resolved in that case, rather to be singly unhappy, than to involve her in distress, and make her the fair companion of my woes. I would not tell her so, for fear she should out of love hide from me those dangers, and therefore using a kind sort of dissimulation, I conjured her to tell me the laws and customs of marriages in that country to a tittle, and that nothing should hinder us from happiness. She told me exactly, as I find since. Our marriage, said she, will be very hard to compass; provided we follow the strict rule of the country. For our women here, are bound not to see the man who makes their addresses to them, in some time. His way of courtship is to come to the parents, and his nearest friends and relations must make her father presents, and supplicate him like a king, to grant him his daughter. The courtship often lasts two or three years, and sometimes has not its effect at last; but if it has, the woman is dragged by her father and brother to church, as unwilling to go to be married, which is looked upon as a greater part of modesty in her, according to the greater disinclination she shows. My father and brother, said she, will both be against it; you have no relations in this country to move your suit, I cannot be so hypocritical as to be dragged unwillingly to him I own I desire for my lawful husband, and therefore, as I have an inclination to you, and I dare own I have, I will not follow those methods which I disapprove. I have talked with several Swedes, and several polite Frenchmen, about their manner of espousals, and I am told, that when souls are naturally united by affection, the couple so mutually and reciprocally loving, though they had rather have their parents' leave if likely to be got, yet, unwilling to be disappointed, only go to the next minister's and marry for better for worse. This way I approve of, for where two persons naturally love each other, the rest is nothing but a modest restraint to their wishes, and since it is only custom, my own reason teaches me there is no error committed, nor any harm done in breaking through it upon so commendable an occasion. I have, added she, a thousand rein-deer belonging to me, beyond my father's power of taking away, and a third share in a rekar or clan, that is ten leagues in compass, in the byar or canton of Uma Lapmark. This is at my own disposal, and it is all your own, if you please to accept of it with me. Our women are very coy, when they are courted, though they have never so much an inclination to their suitor; but good reason and the commerce I have had with persons of politer nations than ours is, teach me that this proceeds entirely from vanity and affectation, and the greatest proof of a woman's modesty, chastity, and sincerity, certainly consists, contrary to the general corrupted opinion, in yielding up herself into the arms of the man she loves. For she that can dally with a heart she prizes, can give away her heart, when she is once balked, to any man, even though she dislikes him. You must judge, my dear father, I must be touched with a woman that was exceeding beautiful, beyond any of her nation, and who had thoughts as beautiful as her person. I therefore was all in rapture, and longed for the matrimony, but still loved her enough to propose the question, I resolved, to her, viz., if it would not be in her nation accounted a clandestine marriage, and prove of great damage to her.

To this she answered with all the wisdom which could be expected from a woman who had given such eminent tokens of her judgment on other points, amidst a nation so barbarous in its manners, and so corrupt in its principles, as Lapland is. I am, said she, answerable to my father, for nothing by our laws, having no portion of him, but only what was presented me by my relations at my birth, according to custom, in lands and rein-deer. My father is but deputy governor; it is a Swede who is the governor of Uma; and if I pay to him at every mart and fair the due tribute, which must either consist of fifty rein-deer or one hundred and fifty rixdollars, he will have the priest that marries us present at the court of justice, according to our custom, and keep us in possession of our rights, that we may be enabled to pay tribute to the crown of Sweden. Indeed, before the abolition of the Birkarti, which were our native judges, we could not have married thus without danger to us both; but now there is none at all.

My dear father, you must easily imagine that I could not help embracing with all tenderness so dear and so lovely a woman. In fine, I am married to her, I have lived very happy hitherto, and am now grown more happy, for she is big with child; and likely, before my letter comes to your hands, to make you a grandfather of a pretty boy. You will perhaps wonder that I name the sex of the child before it comes into the world, but we have a way in Lapland of finding that out, which though some judicious people call superstitious, I am really persuaded of by experience, and therefore I indulged my dear wife's curiosity, when she signified to me she had a mind to make the usual trial, whether the child she was going to be delivered of would be a boy or a girl.

You must understand, my dear father, the people here judge of the sex of the child by the moon, unto which they compare a big-bellied woman. If they see a star appear just above the moon, it is a sign it will be a boy, but, if the star be just below the moon, they conjecture her to be big with a girl. This observation and remark of Laplanders has, I know, been accounted by some, and those wise and judicious men too, to be ridiculously superstitious; but I have been led into an easy belief of this mystery, by a mistress that is superior to wisdom itself, constant, and therefore probably infallible, experience. I therefore indulged my wife in this her request, and went with her to the ceremony; the star appeared above the moon, which prognosticates a boy, which I wish may, and I scarce doubt will, prove true, and when she is brought to bed I will send you word of it. It is remarkable, likewise, that a star was seen just before the moon, which we also count a very good omen. For it is a custom likewise here in Lapland, to consult the moon, as an oracle about the health and vigour of the child. If a star be seen just before the moon, we count it a sign of a lusty and well grown child, without blemish; if a star comes just after, we reckon it a token that the child will have some defect or deformity, or die soon after it is born.

Having thus told you the manners of the country I live in at present, as much at large as the nature of a letter will permit, and related to you my own happy circumstances, and the kindly promises of the heavens that are ushering in the birth of my child, I would not have you think that I addict myself to the superstitions of the country, which are very many and groundless, and arising partly from the remainder of Pagan worship, which is still cultivated among some of the more obstinate inhabitants. I have, on the contrary, since I married her, endeavoured to repay my wife's temporal blessings to me with those that are endless, instructed her in all the points of religion, and made her perfectly a Christian; and she, by her devotion and prayers for me, makes me such amends for it that I hope in us two St. Paul's saying will be verified, viz., "That the woman shall be sanctified in her husband, and the husband shall be sanctified in his wife."

However, I must take notice in this place, with all due deference to Christianity, that though I am obliged to applaud the prudence and piety of Charles the Ninth of Sweden, who, constituting Swedish governors over this country, abrogated their practice of superstitions and art magic upon pain of death, yet that king carried the point too far, and intermingled with these arts the pretensions to the gift of a second-sight, which you know how frequent it is with us in Scotland, and which, I assure you, my wife (though she durst not publicly own it for fear of incurring the penalty of those Swedish laws) does, as it were, inherit (for all her ancestors before her have had it from time immemorial) to a greater degree than ever I knew any of our countrywomen or countrymen.

One day last week she distracted me between the extremes of joy and sorrow. She told me I should see you shortly, and that my coming son would grow to be one of the most remarkable men in England and Scotland, for his power of foresight; but that I should speedily lose her, and meet with difficulties in my own country, in the same manner as my father, meaning you, sir, had done before me, and on the same account, viz., of civil broils, and intestine wars in Scotland.

These unfortunate parts of her relation I would not conceal from you, because the veracity of her notions should appear, if they are true, though you may be sure I much wish they all may prove false to the very last; excepting that wherein she tells me, my son will be greatly remarkable, and that I shall shortly see my dear father, which I daily long for, and will endeavour to do as soon as possible. Pray remember me to all friends; being,

Honoured sir,

Your most dutiful and loving son,
Archibald Campbell.

THE SECOND LETTER.

I am now the happiest man alive; the prosperous part of my wife's predictions, which I mentioned to you in my last, is come in some measure to pass. The child she has brought me proves a boy, and as fine a one as I ever beheld, (if fondness for my own makes me not blind); and sure it cannot be fondness, because other plain circumstances joined at his birth to prove it a more than ordinary remarkable one. He was born with a caul upon his head, which we count one of the luckiest signs that can be in nature; he had likewise three teeth ready cut through the gums, and we reckon that an undeniable testimony and promise given to the world by nature, that she intends such a person for her extraordinary favourite, and that he is born for great things, which I daily beg of heaven may come to pass.

Since I have known for some months what it is to be a father, it adds a considerable weight to those affections which I had for my wife. I thought that my tenderness for her was at the height of perfection before; which shows how little we know of those parts of nature that we have yet never tried, and of which we have not yet been allotted our share to act upon the stage of life. I find that I did love her then as well as a husband could love a wife, that is, a wife without a child; but the love to a wife that has a child, is a feeling wonderful and inexpressibly different. A child is the seal and the pledge of love. Meditating upon this, has likewise doubled my affection to you. I loved you before, as a son, and because as such, I felt your tenderness; but my love is much increased now, because I know the tenderness which you felt for me as a father. With these pleasing images of thought, I often keep you nearer company at this vast distance, than when I lived irregularly under your eye. These reflections render a solitary life dear to me. And though I have no manner of acquaintance with her relations, who hate me, as I am told, nor indeed with almost any of the inhabitants, but my own domestics, and those I am forced to deal with, yet I have as much, methinks, as I wish for, unless I could come over to Shetland and live with you, which I the more ardently desire, because I think I and my wife could be true comforts to you, in your advanced years; now I know what living truly is. I am daily persuading my wife to go with me; but she denies me with kind expressions, and says, she owes too much to the place, however less pleasant in itself than other climates, where she had the happiness of first joining hands with me in wedlock, ever to part from it. But I must explain how I ask, and how she refuses. I resolved never directly and downrightly to ask her, because I know she can refuse me nothing; and that would be bearing hard upon the goodness of her will. But my way of persuading her consists in endeavouring to make her in love with the place, by agreeable descriptions of it, and likewise of the humane temper of the people; so that I shortly shall induce her to signify to me that it is her own will to come with me, and then I shall seem rather to consent to her will, than to have moved it over to my own. These hopes I have of seeing my dear father very shortly, and I know such news would make this letter, which I therefore send, more acceptable to him, to whom I will be,

A most dutiful and
affectionate son, till death,
Archibald Campbell.

P.S. If I cannot bring my wife to change this country for another, I have brought her to that pitch of devotion, that whenever Providence, which, notwithstanding her predictions, I hope will be long yet, shall call her to change this world for another, it will be happy with her there; she joins with me in begging your blessing to me, herself, and our little Duncan, whom we christened so, out of respect to the name you bear.

THE THIRD LETTER.

My dear Father,

I am lost in grief; I had just brought my wife (her that was my wife, for I have none now, I have lost all joy), in the mind of coming over to be a comfort to you. But now grief will let me say no more than that I am coming to beg comfort from you, and by this I prepare you to receive, when he comes, a son in tears and mourning.

Archibald Campbell.

P.S. I have a babe, not much above two years old, must bear the hardships of travelling over the ice, and all through Muscovy, for no ships can stir here for many months; and I cannot bear to live in this inhospitable place, where she died, that only could make it easy to me, one moment beyond the first opportunity I have of leaving it. She is in heaven; that should make me easy, but I cannot; I am not so good a Christian as she was—I am lost and ruined.

CHAPTER II.

AFTER THE DEATH OF MR. DUNCAN CAMPBELL'S MOTHER IN LAPLAND, HIS FATHER, ARCHIBALD, RETURNED WITH HIS SON TO SCOTLAND. HIS SECOND MARRIAGE, AND HOW HIS SON WAS TAUGHT TO WRITE AND READ.

Mr. Archibald Campbell, having buried his Lapland lady, returned to Scotland, and brought over with him his son, Mr. Duncan Campbell. By that time he had been a year in his own country, he married a second wife; a lady whom I had known very well for some years, and then I first saw the boy; but, as they went into the western islands, I saw them not again in three years. She being, quite contrary to the cruel way much in use among stepmothers, very fond of the boy, was accustomed to say, she did, and would always think him her own son. The child came to be about four years of age, as she has related to me the story since, and not able to speak one word, nor to hear any noise; the father of him used to be mightily oppressed with grief, and complain heavily to his new wife, who was no less perplexed, that a boy so pretty, the son of so particular a woman, which he had made his wife, by strange accidents and adventures, and a child coming into the world with so many amazing circumstances attending his birth, should lose those precious senses by which alone the social commerce of mankind is upheld and maintained, and that he should be deprived of all advantages of education, which could raise him to the character of being the great man that so many concurring incidents at his nativity promised and betokened he would be.

One day, a learned divine, who was of the university of Glasgow, but had visited Oxford, and been acquainted with the chief men of science there, happening to be in conversation with the mother-in-law of this child, she related to him her son's misfortunes, with so many marks of sorrow, that she moved the good old gentleman's compassion, and excited in him a desire to give her what relief and consolation he could in this unhappy case. His particular inclination to do her good offices, made him recollect, that, at the time he was at Oxford, he had been in company with one Doctor Wallis, a man famous for learning, who had told him that he had taught a born deaf and dumb man to write, and to read, and even to utter some sounds articulately with his mouth; and that he told him he was then going to commit to print the method he made use of in so instructing that person, that others, in the like unfortunate condition might receive the same benefits and advantages from other masters, which his deaf and dumb pupil had received from him. A dumb man recovering his speech, or a blind man gaining his sight, or a deaf one getting his hearing, could not be more overjoyed than Mrs. Campbell was at these unexpected tidings, and she wept for gladness when he told it. The good gentleman animated and encouraged her with the kindest promises, and to keep alive her hopes, assured her he would send to one of the chief booksellers in London to inquire after the book, who would certainly procure it him if it was to be got, and that afterwards he would peruse it diligently, make himself master of Doctor Wallis's method, and though he had many great works upon his hands at that time, he would steal from his other studies leisure enough to complete so charitable an office, as teaching the dumb and deaf to read and to write, and give her son, who was by nature deprived of them, the advantages of speech, as far as art would permit that natural defect to be supplied by her powerful interposition.

When the mother came home, the child, who could hear no knocking, and therefore it must be by a strange and inexplicable instinct in nature, was the first that ran to the door, and falling in a great fit of laughter, a thing it was not much used to before, having on the contrary rather a melancholy cast of complexion, it clung round its mother's knees, incessantly embracing and kissing them, as if just at that time it had an insight into what the mother had been doing for it, and into its own approaching relief from its misery.

When the mother came with the child in her hand to the father, to tell him the welcome news, the child burst afresh into a great fit of laughter, which continued for an unusual space of time; and the scene of such reciprocal affection and joy between a wife and her own husband, on so signal an occasion, is a thing easier to be felt by parents of a good disposition, imagining themselves under the same circumstances, with regard to a child they loved with fondness, than to be expressed or described by the pen of any writer. But it is certain, whenever they spoke of this affair, as anybody, who knows the impatience of parents for the welfare of an only child, may guess, they must be often discoursing it over, and wishing the time was come; the boy, who used seldom so much as to smile at other times, and who could never hear the greatest noise that could be made, would constantly look wishfully in their faces and laugh immoderately, which is a plain indication that there was then a wonderful instinct in nature, as I said before, which made him foretaste his good fortune, and, if I may be allowed the expression, the dawnings as it were of the second-sight, were then pregnant within him.

To confirm this, the happy hour of his deliverance being come, and the doctor having procured Mr. Wallis's book, came with great joy, and desired to see his pupil; scarce were the words out of his mouth when the child happened to come into the room, and running towards the doctor, fell on his knees, kissed his hand eagerly, and laughed as before, which to me is a demonstration that he had an insight into the good which the doctor intended him.

It is certain, that several learned men, who have written concerning the second-sight, have demonstrated by incontestable proofs, and undeniable arguments, that children, nay, even horses and cows, see the second-sight, as well as men and women advanced in years. But of this I shall discourse at large in its proper place, having allotted a whole future chapter for that same subject of second-sightedness.

In about half a year, the doctor taught his little dumb pupil first to know his letters, then to name anything whatsoever, to leave off some savage motions which he had taken of his own accord before, to signify his mind by, and to impart his thoughts by his fingers and his pen, in a manner as intelligible, and almost as swift through the eyes, as that is of conveying our ideas to one another, by our voices, through the conduits and portholes of the ears. But in little more than two years he could write and read as well as anybody. Because a great many people cannot conceive this, and others pretend it is not to be done in nature, I will a little discourse upon Doctor Wallis's foundation, and show in a manner obvious to the most ignorant, how this hitherto mysterious help may be easily administered to the deaf and the dumb, which shall be the subject of the ensuing chapter.

But I cannot conclude this without telling the handsome saying with which this child, when not quite six years old, as soon as he thought he could express himself well, paid his first acknowledgment to his master, and which promised how great his future genius was to be, when so witty a child ripened into man. The words he wrote to him were these, only altered into English from the Scotch.

Sir,

It is no little work you have accomplished. My thanks are too poor amends; the world, sir, shall give you thanks; for as I could not have expressed myself without your teaching me, so those that can talk, though they have eyes, cannot see the things which I can see, and shall tell them; so that in doing me this, you have done a general service to mankind.

CHAPTER III.

THE METHOD OF TEACHING DEAF AND DUMB PERSONS TO WRITE, READ, AND UNDERSTAND A LANGUAGE.

It is, I must confess, in some measure, amazing to me that men, of any moderate share of learning, should not naturally conceive of themselves a plain reason for this art, and know how to account for the practicability of it, the moment they hear the proposition advanced; the reasons for it are so obvious to the very first consideration we can make about it. It will be likewise as amazing to me that the most ignorant should not conceive it, after so plain a reason is given them for it, as I am now going to set down.

To begin: how are children at first taught a language that can hear? are they not taught by sounds? and what are those sounds, but tokens and signs to the ear, importing and signifying such and such a thing? If, then, there can be signs made to the eye, agreed by the party teaching the child, that they signify such and such a thing, will not the eye of the child convey them to the mind, as well as the ear? They are indeed different marks to different senses, but both the one and the other do equally signify the same things or notions, according to the will of the teacher, and consequently must have an equal effect with the person who is to be instructed, for though the manners signifying are different, the things signified are the same.

For example; if, after having invented an alphabet upon the fingers, a master always keeps company with a deaf child, and teaches it to call for whatsoever it wants by such motions of the fingers which, if put down by letters, according to each invented motion of each finger, would form in writing a word of a thing which it wanted; might not he by these regular motions teach its eye the same notions of things, as sounds do to the ears of children that hear? The manner of teaching the alphabet by fingers, is plainly set down in the following table.

When the deaf child has learned by these motions a good stock of words, as children that hear first learn by sounds, we may, methinks, call not improperly, the fingers of such a dumb infant, its mouth, and the eye of such a deaf child, its ear. When he has learnt thus far, he must be taught to write the alphabet, according as it was adapted to the motions of his fingers; as for instance, the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, by pointing to the top of the five fingers, and the other letters, b, c, d, &c., by such other place or posture of a finger, as in the above-mentioned table is set forth, or otherwise, it shall be agreed upon. When this is done, the marks B, R, E, A, D, and so of all other words, corresponding with such fingers, conveys through his eyes, unto his head, the same notion, viz., the thing signified, as the sound we give to those same letters, making the word 'bread,' do into our head, through the ears.

This once done, he may be easily taught to understand the parts of speech, as the verb, the noun, pronoun, &c., and so, by rules of grammar and syntax, to compound ideas, and connect his words into a language. The method of which, since it is plainly set forth in Doctor Wallis's letter to Mr. Beverly, I shall set it down by way of extract; that people in the same circumstances with the person we treat of, and of the like genius, may not have their talents lost for want of the like assistance.

When once a deaf person has learned so far as to understand the common discourse of others, and to express his mind tolerably well in writing, I see no room to doubt but that, provided nature has endowed him with a proper strength of genius, as other men that hear, he may become capable, upon farther improvement, of such farther knowledge as is attainable by reading. For I must here join with the learned Doctor Wallis in asserting, as to the present case before us, that no reason can be assigned why such a deaf person may not attain the understanding of a language as perfectly as those that hear; and with the same learned author I take upon me to lay down this proposition as certain, that allowing the deaf person the like time and exercise, as to other men is requisite in order to attain the perfection of a language, and the elegance of it, he may understand as well, and write as good language, as other men; and abating only what doth depend upon sound, as tones, cadences, and such punctilios, no whit inferior to what he might attain to, if he had his hearing as others have?

An Extract from Dr. Wallis, concerning the method of teaching the Deaf and Dumb to Read.

It is most natural, (as children learn the names of things), to furnish him by degrees with a nomenclator, containing a competent number of names of things common and obvious to the eye, that you may show the thing answering to such a name, and these digested under convenient titles, and placed under them in such convenient order, in several columns, or other orderly situation in the paper, as by their position best to express to the eye their relation or respect to one another. As contraries or correlatives one against the other, subordinates or appurtenances under their principle, which may serve as a kind of local memory.

Thus, in one paper, under the title mankind, may be placed, not confusedly, but in decent order, man, woman, child (boy, girl).

In another paper, under the title body, may be written, in like convenient order, head (hair, skin, ear), face, forehead, eye (eyelid, eyebrow), cheek, nose (nostril), mouth (lip, chin), neck, throat, back, breast, side (right side, left side), belly, shoulders, arm (elbow, wrist, hand,—back, palm), finger (thumb, buckle, nail), thigh, knee, leg (shin, calf, ancle), foot (heel, sole), toe.

And when he hath learned the import of words in each paper, let him write them in like manner, in distinct leaves or pages of a book, prepared for that purpose, to confirm his memory, and to have recourse to it upon occasion.

In a third paper, you may give him the inward parts; as skull (brain), throat (windpipe, gullet), stomach, guts, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidney, bladder (urine), vein (blood), bone (marrow), flesh, fat, &c.

In another paper, under the title beast, may be placed horse (stonehorse, gelding), mare (colt), bull (ox), cow, calf. Sheep, ram (wether), ewe (lamb), hog, boar, sow, pig, dog, (mastiff, hound, greyhound, spaniel), bitch (whelp, puppy), hare, rabbit, cat, mouse, rat, &c.

Under the title bird, or fowl, put cock, capon, hen, chick, goose (gander), gosling, duck (drake), swan, crow, kite, lark, &c.

Under the title fish, put pike, eel, place, salmon, lobster, crawfish, &c.

You may then put plants or vegetables under several heads or subdivisions of the same head; as tree (root, body, bark, bough, leaf, fruit), oak, ash, apple-tree, pear-tree, vine, &c. Fruit: apple, pear, plum, cherry, grape, nut, orange, lemon. Flower; rose, tulip, gilliflower herb, (weed), grass, corn, wheat, barley, rye, pea, bean.

And the like of inanimates; as heaven, sun, moon, star, element, earth, water, air, fire; and under the title earth,—clay, sand, gravel, stone. Metal; gold, silver, brass, copper, iron (steel), lead, tin (pewter), glass. Under the title water, put sea, pond, river, stream; under that of air, put light, dark, mist, fog, cloud, wind, rain, hail, snow, thunder, lightning, rainbow. Under that of fire; coal, flame, smoke, soot, ashes.

Under the title clothes, put woollen (cloth, stuff), linen (holland, lawn, lockarum), silk, (satin, velvet), hat, cap, band, doublet, breeches, coat, cloak, stocking, shoe, boot, shirt, petticoat, gown, &c.

Under the title house, put wall, roof, door, window, casement, room.

Under room, put shop, hall, parlour, dining-room, chamber, study, closet, kitchen, cellar, stable, &c.

And under each of these, as distinct heads, the furniture or utensils belonging thereunto; with divisions and subdivisions, as there is occasion, which I forbear to mention, that I be not too prolix.

And in like manner, from time to time, may be added more collections, or classes of names or words, conveniently digested, under distinct heads, and suitable distributions, to be written in distinct leaves or pages of his book in such order as may seem convenient.

When he is furnished with a competent number of names, though not so many as I have mentioned, it will be seasonable to teach him under the titles singular and plural, the formation of plurals from singulars, by adding s, or es; as hand, hands; face, faces; fish, fishes, &c., with some few irregulars, as man, men; woman, women; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; mouse, mice; louse, lice; ox, oxen, &c.

Which, except the irregulars, will serve for possessives, to be after taught him, which are formed by their primitives by like addition of s or es, except some few irregulars, as my, mine; thy, thine; our, ours; your, yours; his, her, hers; their, theirs, &c.

And in all those and other like cases, it will be proper first to show him the particulars, and then the general title.

Then teach him in another page or paper, the particles, a, an, the, this, that, these, those.

And the pronouns, I, me, my, mine, thou, thee, thy, thine, we, us, our, ours, ye, you, your, yours, he, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its, they, them, their, shoes, heirs, who, whom, whose.

Then under the titles substantive, adjective, teach him to connect these, as my hand, your head, his foot, his feet, her arm, her arms, our hats, their John's coat, William's band, &c.

And in order to furnish him with more adjectives, under the title colours, you may place black, white, gray, green, blue, yellow, red, &c., and having showed the particulars, let him know that these are called colours. The like for taste and smell; as sweet, bitter, sour, stink.

And for hearing, sound, noise, word.

Then for touch or feeling, hot, warm, cold, cool, wet, moist, dry, hard, soft, tough, brittle, heavy, light, &c.

From whence you may furnish him with more examples of adjectives with substantives; as white bread, brown bread, green grass, soft cheese, hard cheese, black hat, my black hat, &c.

And then inverting the order, substantive, adjective, with the verb copulative between; as silver is white, gold is yellow, lead is heavy, wood is light, snow is white, ink is black, flesh is soft, bone is hard, I am sick, I am not well, &c., which will begin to give him some notion of syntax.

In like manner when substantive and substantive are so connected; as gold is a metal, a rose is a flower, they are men, they are women, horses are beasts, geese are fowls, larks are birds, &c.

Then as those before relate to quality, you may give him some other words relating to quantity. As long, short, broad, narrow; thick, thin; high, tall, low; deep, shallow, great, big, small (little), much, little; many, few, full, empty; whole, part, piece; all, some, none, strong, weak, quick, slow, equal, unequal, bigger, less.

Then words of figure; as straight, crooked, plain, bowed, concave, hollow, convex; round, square, three-square, sphere, globe, bowl, cube, die, upright, sloping, leaning forward, leaning backward, like, unlike.

Of gesture; as stand, lie, sit, kneel, sleep.

Of motion; as move, stir, rest, walk, go, come, run, leap, ride, fall, rise, swim, sink, drawn, slide, creep, crawl, fly, pull, draw, thrust, throw, bring, fetch, carry.

Then words relating to time; place, number, weight, measure, money, &c., are, in convenient time, to be showed him distinctly; for which the teacher, according to his discretion, may take a convenient season.

As likewise the time of the day; the days of the week, the days of the month, the months of the year, and other things relating to the almanack, which he will quickly be capable to understand, if once methodically shown him.

As likewise the names and situation of places and countries, which are convenient for him to know; which may be orderly written in his book, and showed him in the map of London, England, Europe, the world, &c.

But these may be done at leisure, as likewise the practice of arithmetic, and other like pieces of learning.

In the mean time, after the concord of substantive and adjective, he is to be showed by convenient examples, that of the nominative and verb; as, for instance, I go, you see, he sits, they stand, the fire burns, the sun shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, the water runs, and the like, with the titles in the top nominative verb.

After this, under the titles nominative verb, accusative, give him examples of verbs transitive; as I see you, you see me, the fire burns the wood, the boy makes the fire, the cook roasts the meat, the butler lays the cloth, we eat our dinner.

Or even with a double accusative; as, you teach me writing or to write, John teacheth me to dance, Thomas, tell me a tale, &c.

After this you may teach him the flexion or conjugation of the verb, or what is equivalent thereunto; for in our English tongue each verb hath but two tenses, the present and the preter; two participles, the active and the passive; all the rest is performed by auxiliaries, which auxiliaries have no more tenses than the other verbs.

Those auxiliaries are, do, did, will, would, shall, should, may, might, can, could, must, ought, to, have, had, am, be, was. And if by examples you can insinuate the signification of these few words, you have taught him the whole flexion of the verb.

And here it will be convenient, once for all, to write him out a full paradigm of some one verb, suppose 'to see,' through all those auxiliaries.

The verb itself hath but these four words to be learned, see, saw, seeing, seen, save that after thou, in the second person singular, in both tenses, we add est, and in the third person singular, in the present tense, eth or es, or instead thereof, st, th, s, and so in all verbs.

Then to the auxiliaries, do, did, will, would, shall, should, may, might, can, could, must, ought, to, we join the indefinite see. And after have, had, am, be, was, the passive particle seen, and so for all other verbs.

But the auxiliary, 'am,' or 'be,' is somewhat irregular in a double form.

Am, art, is; plural are; was, wast, was; plural were.

Be, beest, be; plural be; were, wert, were; plural were.

Be, am, was, being, been.

Which, attended with the other auxiliaries, make us the whole passive voice.

All verbs, without exceptions, in the active participle, are formed by adding ing, as see, seeing; teach, teaching, &c.

The preter tense and the participle are formed regularly, by adding ed, but are often subject to contractions and other irregularities, sometimes the same in both, sometimes different, and therefore it is convenient here to give a table of verbs, especially the most usual, for those three cases, which may at once teach their signification and formation; as boil, boiled; roast, roasted, roasted; bake, baked, baked, &c.; teach, taught, taught; bring, brought, brought; buy, bought, bought, &c.; see, saw, seen; give, gave, given; take, took, taken; forsake, forsook, forsaken; write, wrote, written, &c.; with many more fit to be learned.

The verbs being thus dispatched, he is then to learn the prepositions, wherein lies the whole regimen of the noun. For diversity of cases we have none, the force of which is to be insinuated by convenient examples, suited to their different significations; as for instance, of a piece of bread, a pint of wine, the colour of a pot, the colour of gold, a ring of gold, a cup of silver, the mayor of London, the longest of all, &c.

And in like manner, for, off, on, upon, to, unto, till, until, from, at, in, within, out, without, into, out of; about, over, under; above, below; between, among; before, behind, after; for, by, with, through, against, concerning; and by this time he will be pretty well enabled to understand a single sentence.

In the last place, he is in like manner to be taught conjunctions, which serve to connect not words only, but sentences; as and, also; likewise, either or whether; neither, nor, if, then, why, wherefore, because, therefore, but, though, yet, &c.; and these illustrated by convenient examples in each case, as, Because I am cold, therefore I go to the fire, that I may be warm, for it is cold weather.

If it were fair, then it would be good walking, but however, though it rain, yet I must go, because I promised; with other like instances.

And by this time his book, if well furnished with plenty of words, and those well digested under several heads, and in good order, and well recruited from time to time as new words occur, will serve him in the nature of a dictionary and grammar.

And in case the deaf person be otherwise of a good natural capacity, and the teacher of a good sagacity, by this method, proceeding gradually step by step, you may, with diligence and due application of teacher and learner, in a year's time, or thereabouts, perceive a greater progress than you would expect, and a good foundation laid for farther instruction in matters of religion and other knowledge which may be taught by books.

It will be convenient all along to have pen, ink, and paper, ready at hand, to write down in a word what you signify to him by signs, and cause him to write, or show how to write what he signifies by signs, which way of signifying their mind by signs deaf persons are often very good at; and we must endeavour to learn their language, if I may so call it, in order to teach them ours, by showing what words answer to their signs.

It will be convenient, also, as you go along, after some convenient progress made, to express, in as plain language as may be, the import of some of the tables; as for instance:—

The head is the highest part of the body, the feet the lowest part; the face is the fore part of the head, the forehead is over the eyes, the cheeks are under the eyes, the nose is between the cheeks, the mouth is under the nose and above the chin, &c.

And such plain discourse put into writing, and particularly explained, will teach him by degrees to understand plain sentences; and like advantages a sagacious teacher may take, as occasion offers itself from time to time.

This extract is mostly taken out of the ingenious Dr. Wallis, and lying hid in that little book, which is but rarely inquired after and too scarcely known, died in a manner with that great man. And as he designed it for the general use of mankind that laboured under the misfortune of losing those two valuable talents of hearing and speaking, I thought it might not be amiss (in the life of so particular a dumb person as I am writing) to give them this small but particular fragment of grammar and syntax.

It is exactly adjusted to the English tongue; because such are the persons with whom the Doctor had to deal, and such the persons whose benefit alone I consult in this treatise.

One of the chief persons who was taught by Dr. Wallis was Mr. Alexander Popham, brother-in-law (if I am not mistaken) to the present Earl of Oxford; and he was a very great proficient in this way; and though he was born deaf and dumb, understood the language so well as to give under his hand, many rare indications of a masterly genius.

The uncle of his present Sardinian Majesty, as I have been credibly informed, had the want of the same organs, and yet was a perfect statesman, and wrote in five or six different languages elegantly well.

Bishop Burnet, in his book of travels, tells us a wonderful story, almost incredible; but tells it as a passage that deserves our belief. It is concerning a young lady at Genoa, who was not only deaf and dumb, but blind, too, it seems, into the bargain; and this lady, he assures us as a truth, could, by putting her hand on her sister's mouth, know everything she said.

But to return back to England. We have many rare instances of our own countrymen, the principal of whom I shall mention, as their names occur to my memory. Sir John Gawdy, Sir Thomas Knotcliff, Sir —— Gostwick, Sir Henry Lydall, and Mr. Richard Lyns of Oxford, were all of this number, and yet men eminent in their several capacities, for understanding many authors, and expressing themselves in writing with wonderful facility.

In Hatton garden, there now lives a miracle of wit and good nature, I mean the daughter of Mr. Loggin, who, though born deaf and dumb, (and she has a brother who has the same impediments), yet writes her mind down upon any subject with such acuteness as would amaze learned men themselves and put many students that have passed for wits, to the blush, to see themselves so far surpassed by a woman amidst that deficiency of the common organs. If anybody speaks a word distinctly, this lady will, by observing narrowly the motion of the speaker's lips pronounce the word afterwards very intelligibly.

As there are a great many families in England and Ireland that have several, and some even have five or six dumb persons belonging to them; and as a great many more believe it impossible for persons born deaf and dumb to write and read, and have thence taken occasion to say and assert that Mr. Campbell could certainly speak, I could never think it a digression in the history of this man's life to set down the grammar by which he himself was taught, and which he has taught others (two of which scholars of his are boys in this town), partly to confute the slander made against him, and partly for the help of others dumb and deaf, whose parents may by these examples be encouraged to get them taught.

CHAPTER IV.

YOUNG DUNCAN CAMPBELL RETURNS WITH HIS MOTHER TO EDINBURGH. THE EARL OF ARGYLE'S OVERTHROW. THE RUIN OF MR. ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL AND HIS DEATH. YOUNG DUNCAN'S PRACTICE IN PREDICTION AT EDINBURGH WHILE YET A BOY.

Our young boy, now between six and seven years of age, half a Highlander and half a Laplander, delighted in wearing a little bonnet and plaid, thinking it looked very manly in his countrymen, and his father, as soon as he was out of his hanging sleeves, and left off his boy's vest, indulged him with that kind of dress, which is truly antique and heroic. In this early part of his nonage he was brought to Edinburgh by his mother-in-law, where I myself grew afresh acquainted with her, his father being then but lately dead, just after the civil commotion, and off and on, I have known him ever since, and conversed with him very frequently during that space of time, which is now about three or four and thirty years, so that whatever I say concerning him in the future pages I shall relate to the reader from my own certain knowledge, which, as I resolved to continue anonymous, may, perhaps, not have so much weight and authority as if I had prefixed my name to the account. Be that as it will, there are hundreds of living witnesses that will justify each action I relate, and his own future actions while he lives will procure belief and credit to the precedent ones, which I am going to record; so that if many do remain infidels to my relations, and will not allow them exact (the fate of many as credible and more important historians than myself), I can however venture to flatter myself that greater will be the number of those who will have a faith in my writings than of those who will reject my accounts as incredible.

Having just spoke of the decease of Mr. Archibald Campbell, the father of our young Duncan Campbell, it will not be amiss here to observe how true the predictions of his Lapland mother were, which arose from second-sight, according to the notices given by the child's father, to his grandfather, in his letter from Lapland, even before it was born, which shows that the infant held this second-sighted power, or occult faculty of divination, even by inheritance.

In the year 1685, the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyle sailed out of the ports of Holland without any obstruction, the Earl of Argyle in May; with three ships for Scotland, and Monmouth in June, with the same number for England.

The Earl setting out first, was also the first at landing. Argyle having attempted to land in the north of Scotland, and being disappointed by the vigilance of the Bishop of the Orcades, landed in the west, and encamped at Dunstaffnage Castle, in the province of Lorn, which had belonged to him. He omitted nothing that might draw over to him all the malcontents in the kingdom, whom he thought more numerous than they afterwards appeared to be. He dispersed about his declarations, wherein, after protesting that he had taken up arms only in defence of religion and the laws, against an unjust usurper (so he styled James the Second), he invited all good Protestants, and such Scotch as would assert their liberty, to join him against a prince, he said, who was got into the throne to ruin the Reformation, and to bring in Popery and arbitrary power. Next he sent letters to those he thought his friends, among whom was Mr. Archibald Campbell, who, according to the vast deference payed by the Scots to their chief, joined him, though in his heart of quite a different principle, to call them to his assistance. He detached two of his sons to make inroads in the neighbourhood, and compel some by threats, others by mighty promises, to join him. All his contrivances could not raise him above three thousand men, with whom he encamped in the Isle of Bute, where he was soon, in a manner besieged by the Earl of Dumbarton, with the king's forces, and several other bodies, commanded by the Duke of Gordon, the Marquis of Athol, the Earl of Arran, and other great men, who came from all parts to quench the fire before it grew to a head.

The Earl of Argyle being obliged to quit a post he could not make good, went over into a part of the country of his own name, where, having hastily fortified a castle called Ellingrey, he put into it the arms and ammunition taken out of his ships, which lay at anchor under the cannon of a fort he erected near that place. There his rout began; for going out from the castle with his forces to make an incursion, one of his parties was defeated by the Marquis of Athol, who slew four hundred of his men; and Captain Hamilton, who attacked his ships with some of the king's, and took them without any resistance.

The Earl of Dumbarton advancing towards him, at the same time, by long marches, while he endeavoured to secure himself by rivers, surprised him passing the Clyde in the village of Killern, as he was marching towards Lenox. Dumbarton coming upon them at night, would have stayed till the next day to attack the rebels, but they gave him not so much time, for they passed the river in the night, in such confusion, that being overcome by fear, they dispersed as soon as over. Argyle could scarce rally so many as would make him a small guard, which was soon scattered again; Dumbarton having passed the river, and divided his forces to pursue those that fled. Argyle had taken guides to conduct him to Galloway; but they mistaking the way, and leading him into a bog, most of those that still followed him quitted their horses, every man shifting for himself.

Argyle himself was making back alone towards the Clyde, when two resolute servants, belonging to an officer in the king's army meeting him, though they knew him not, bid him surrender. He fired at and missed them; but they took better aim, and wounded him with a pistol ball. Then the earl drawing his two pistols out of the holsters, quitted his horse, that was quite tired, and took the river. A country fellow, who came with those two, that had first assaulted him, pursued him with a pistol in his hand; the earl would have fired one of his, but the flint failing he was dangerously wounded in the head by the peasant. He discovered himself as he fell senseless, crying out. Unfortunate Argyle. This nobleman, how far soever he may be thought misled in principle, was certainly in his person a very brave and a very gallant hero. They made haste to draw him out and bring him to himself; after which, being delivered up to the officers, the erring, unfortunate great man, was conducted to Edinburgh and there beheaded.

Many gentlemen that followed the fortunes of this great man, though not in his death, they shared in all the other calamities attending his overthrow. They most of them fled into the remotest isles and the obscurest corners of all Scotland; contented with the saving of their lives; they grew exiles and banished men of their own making, and abdicated their estates before they were known to be forfeited, because, for fear of being informed against by the common fellows they commanded, they durst not appear to lay their claims. Of this number was Mr. Archibald Campbell, and this new disaster wounded him deep into the very heart, after so many late misadventures, and sent him untimely to the grave. He perfectly pined away and wasted; he was six months dying inch by inch, and the difference between his last breath and his way of breathing during all that time, was only, that he expired with a greater sigh than he ordinarily fetched every time when he drew his breath.

Everything the Lapland lady had predicted so long before, being thus come to pass, we may the less admire at the wonders performed by her son, when we consider this faculty of divination to be so derived to him from her, and grown as it were hereditary.

Our young prophet, who had taught most of his little companions to converse with him by finger, was the head at every little pastime and game they played at. Marbles, which he used to call children's playing at bowls, yielded him mighty diversion; and he was so dexterous an artist at shooting that little alabaster globe from between the end of his forefinger and the knuckle of his thumb, that he seldom missed hitting plum, as the boys call it, the marble he aimed at, though at the distance of two or three yards. The boys always when they played coveted to have him on their side, and by hearing that he foretold other things, used to consult him, when they made their little matches, which were things of great importance in their thoughts, who should get the victory. He used commonly to leave these trifles undecided, but if ever he gave his opinion in these trivial affairs, the persons fared well by their consultation, for his judgment about them was like a petty oracle, and the end always answered his prediction. But I would have my reader imagine, that though our Duncan Campbell was himself but a boy, he was not consulted only by boys; his penetration and insight into things of a high nature, got air, and being attested by credible witnesses won him the esteem of persons of mature years and discretion.

If a beautiful young virgin languished for a husband, or a widow's mind was in labour to have a second venture of infants by another spouse; if a housekeeper had lost anything belonging to her master, still little Duncan Campbell was at hand; he was the oracle to be applied to, and the little chalked circle, where he was diverting himself with his play-fellows near the cross at Edinburgh, was frequented with as much solicitation, and as much credit, as the tripos of Apollo was at Delphos in ancient times.

It was highly entertaining to see a young blooming beauty come and slily pick up the boy from his company, carry him home with as much eagerness as she would her gallant, because she knew she should get the name of her gallant out of him before he went, and bribe him with a sugarplum to write down the name of a young Scotch peer in a green ribbon that her mouth watered after.

How often after he has been wallowing in the dust, have I myself seen nice squeamish widows help him up in their gilded chariots, and give him a pleasant ride with them, that he might tell them they should not long lie alone; little Duncan Campbell had as much business upon his hands as the parsons of all the parishes in Edinburgh. He commonly was consulted, and named the couples before the minister joined them; thus he grew a rare customer to the toyshop, from whence he most usually received fees and rewards for his advice. If Lady Betty Such a one was foretold that she should certainly have Beau Such a one in marriage, then little Duncan was sure to have a hobby-horse from the toyshop, as a reward for the promised fop. If such a widow, that was ugly, but very rich, was to be pushed hard for as she pretended, though in reality easily won, little Duncan, upon insuring her such a captain, or such a lieutenant-colonel, was sure to be presented from the same child's warehouse, with a very handsome drum, and a silvered trumpet.

If a sempstress had an itching desire for a parson, she would, upon the first assurance of him, give the little Apollo a pasteboard temple, or church, finely painted, and a ring of bells into the bargain, from the same toy-office.

If a housekeeper lost any plate, the thief was certain to be catched, provided she took little master into the store room, and asked him the question, after she had given him his bellyful of sweetmeats.

Neither were the women only his consulters; the grave merchants, who were anxious for many ventures at sea, applied to the boy for his opinion of their security, and they looked upon his opinion to be as safe as the insurance office for ships. If he but told them, though the ship was just set sail, and a tempest rose just after on the ocean, that it would have a successful voyage, gain the port designed, and return home safe laden with the exchange of traffic and merchandize, they dismissed all their fears, banished all their cares, set their hearts at ease, and, safe in his opinion, enjoyed a calm of mind amidst a storm of weather.

I myself knew one Count Cog, an eminent gamester, who was a person so far from being of a credulous disposition, that he was an unbeliever in several points of religion, and the next door to an infidel; yet, as much as he was a stranger to faith, he was mastered and overpowered so far in his incredulity by the strange events which he had seen come frequently to pass from the predictions of this child, that he had commonly daily access to this boy to learn his more adverse and more prosperous hours of gaming. At first indeed he would try, when the child foretold him his ill fortune, whether it would prove true, and relying upon the mere hazard and turn of the die, he had always, as he observed, a run of ill luck on those forbidden days, as he never failed of good if he chose the fortunate hours directed by the boy. One time above all the rest, just before he was departing from Edinburgh, and when the season of gaming was almost over—most persons of wealth and distinction withdrawing for pleasure to their seats in the country—he came to young Duncan Campbell to consult, and was extremely solicitous to know how happily or unluckily he should end that term, as we may call it, of the gamester's weighty business, viz., play, there being a long vacation likely to ensue, when the gaming table would be empty, and the box and dice lie idle and cease to rattle. The boy encouraged him so well with his predictions on this occasion, that Count Cog went to the toyshop, brought him from thence a very fine ivory T totum, as children call it, a pretty set of painted and gilded little ninepins and a bowl, and a large bag of marbles and alloys; and what do you think the gamester got by this little present and the prediction of the boy? why, without telling the least tittle of falsehood, within the space of the last week's play, the gains of Count Cog really amounted to no less than 20,000l. sterling neat money.

Having mentioned these persons of so many different professions by borrowed names, and perhaps in a manner seemingly ludicrous, I would not have my reader from hence take occasion of looking on my account as fabulous. If I was not to make use of borrowed names, but to tell the real characters and names of the persons, I should do injury to those old friends of his who first gave credit to our young seer, while I am endeavouring to gain him the credit and esteem of new ones, in whose way it has not yet happened to consult him. For many persons are very willing to ask such questions as the foregoing ones; but few or none willing to have the public told they asked them; though they succeeded in their wish, and were amply satisfied in their curiosity. I have represented them perhaps in a ludicrous manner, because though they are mysterious actions they are still the actions of a boy, and as the rewards he received for his advices did really and truly consist of such toys as I mentioned, so could they not be treated of in a more serious manner, without the author's incurring a magisterial air of pedantry, and showing a mind, as it were, of being mighty grave and sententious about trifles. There are, however, some things of greater weight and importance done by him in a more advanced stage of life, which will be delivered to the public with that exactitude and gravity which becomes them; and in some of those relations the names of some persons that are concerned shall be printed, because it will not at all be injurious to them, or because I have their leave, and they are still living to testify what I shall relate.

In the mean time, as the greatest part of his nonage was spent in predicting almost innumerable things, which are all, however, reducible to the general heads above mentioned, I will not tire the reader with any particulars; but instead of doing that, before I come to show his power of divination, in the more active parts of his life, and when after removing from Edinburgh to London, he at last made it his public profession; I shall account how such divinations may be made, and divert the reader with many rare examples, taken from several faithful and undoubted historians, of persons who have done the like before him, some in one way, and some in another; though in this he seems to be peculiar, and to be, if I may be allowed the expression, a species by himself, alone in the talent of prediction; that he has collected within his own individual capacity all the methods which others severally used, and with which they were differently and singly gifted in their several ways of foreseeing and foretelling.

This art of prediction is not attainable any otherwise, than by these three ways; first, it is done by the company of familiar spirits and genii, which are of two sorts; some good and some bad; who tell the gifted person the things of which he informs other people. Secondly, it is performed by the second-sight, which is very various, and differs in most of the possessors, it being but a very little in some, very extensive and constant in others; beginning with some in their infancy, and leaving them before they come to years; happening to others in a middle age, to others again in an old age, that never had it before, and lasting only for a term of years, and now and then for a very short period of time; and in some, intermitting, like fits as it were, of vision, that leave them for a time, and then return to be as strong in them as ever, and it being in a manner hereditary to some families, whose children have it from their infancy, without intermission, to a great old age, and even to the time of their death, which they often foretell before it comes to pass, to a day, nay, even to an hour. Thirdly, it is attained by the diligent study of the lawful part of the art of magic.

Before I give the reader an account, as I shall do in three distinct discourses, first, concerning the intercourse which familiar spirits, viz., the good and bad genii, have had and continue to have to a great degree with some select parts of mankind; secondly, concerning the wonderful and almost miraculous power of a second-sight, with which many, beyond all controversy, have been extraordinarily but visibly gifted; and, thirdly, concerning the pitch of perfection to which the magic science has been carried and promoted by some adepts in that mysterious art; I will premise a few particulars about the genii which attended our little Duncan Campbell, and about the second-sight which he had when yet a child, and when we may much more easily believe that the wonders he performed and wrote of, must have been rather brought about by the intervention of such genii and the mediation of such a sight, than that he could have invented such fables concerning them, and compassed such predictions as seem to want their assistance, by the mere dint of a child's capacity.

One day, I remember, when he was about nine years of age, going early to the house where he and his mother lived, and it being before his mother was stirring, I went into little Duncan Campbell's room to divert myself with him, I found him sitting up in his bed with his eyes broad open, but as motionless as if he had been asleep, or even, if it had not been for a lively beautiful colour which the little pretty fair silver-haired boy always had in his cheeks, as if he had been quite dead; he did not seem so much as to breathe; the eyelids of him were so fixed and immoveable, that the eyelashes did not so much as once shake, which the least motion imaginable must agitate; not to say that he was like a person in an ecstacy, he was at least in what we commonly call a brown study, to the highest degree, and for the largest space of time I ever knew. I, who had been frequently informed by people who have been present at the operations of second-sighted persons, that at the sight of a vision the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring till the object vanishes; I, I say, sat myself softly down on his bed-side, and with a quiet amazement observed him, avoiding diligently any motion that might give him the least disturbance, or cause in him any avocation or distraction of mind from the business he was so intent upon. I remarked that he held his head sideways, with his mouth wide open, and in a listening posture, and that after so lively a manner, as, at first general thought, made me forget his deafness, and plainly imagine he heard something, till the second thought of reflection brought into my mind the misfortune that shut up all passage for any sound through his ears. After a steadfast gaze, which lasted about seven minutes, he smiled, and stretched his arms as one recovering from a fit of indolence, and rubbed his eyes; then turning towards me, he made the sign of a salute, and hinted to me, upon his fingers, his desire for pen, ink, and paper, which I reached him from a little desk that stood at his bed's feet.

Placing the paper upon his knees, he wrote me the following lines, which together with my answers I preserve by me, for their rarity, to this very day, and which I have transcribed word for word, as they form a little series of dialogue.

Duncan Campbell. I am sorry I cannot stay with you; but I shall see my pretty youth and my lamb by and by, in the fields, near a little coppice or grove, where I go often to play with them, and I would not lose their company for the whole world; for they and I are mighty familiar together, and the boy tells me everything that gets me my reputation among the ladies and nobility, and you must keep it secret.

My question. I will be sure to keep it secret; but how do you know you are to meet them there to-day? Did the little boy appoint you?

Duncan Campbell. Yes, he did, and signified that he had several things to predict to me concerning people, that he foreknew would come to me the week following to ask me questions.

My question. But what was you staring at when I came in?

Duncan Campbell. Why, at that little boy that goes along with the lamb I speak of, and it was then he made me the appointment.

My question. How does he do it? Does he write?

Duncan Campbell. No, he writes sometimes, but oftener he speaks with his fingers, and mighty swift; no man can do it so quick, or write half so soon; he has a little bell in his hand, like that which my mother makes me a sign to shake when she wants the servants: with that he tickles my brain strangely, and gives me an incredible delight of feeling in the inside of my head; he usually wakes me with it in the morning when he comes to make me an appointment. I fancy it is what you call hearing, which makes me mighty desirous I could hear in your way; it is sweeter to the feeling, methinks, than anything is to the taste; it is just as if my head was tickled to death, as my nurse used to tickle my sides; but it is a different feeling, for it makes things like little strings tremble in my temples and behind my ears. Now I remember, I will tell you what it is like, that makes me believe it is like your hearing, and that strange thing which you that can speak, call sound or noise: because, when I was at church with my mother, who told me the bells could be heard ringing a mile off, as I was kneeling on the bench, and leaning over the top of the pew and gnawing the board, every time the man pulled the rope, I thought all my head beat as if it would come to pieces, but yet it pleased me methought, rather than pained me, and I would be always gnawing the board when the man pulled the rope, and I told my mother the reason: the feeling of that was something like the little bell, but only that made my head throb, as if it would break, and this tickles me, and makes, as it were, little strings on the back of my ears dance and tremble like anything; is not that like your way of hearing? If it be, it is a sweet thing to hear; it is more pleasant than to see the finest colours in the world; it is something like being tickled in the nose with a feather till one sneezes, or like the feeling after one strikes the leg when it has been numb, or asleep, only with this difference, that those two ways give a pain, and the other a pleasure. I remember, too, when I had a great cold, for about two months, I had a feeling something like it, but that was blunt, dull, confused, and troublesome. Is not this like what you call hearing?

My question.—It is the finest kind of hearing, my dear: it is what we call music. But what sort of a boy is that that meets you? and what sort of a lamb?

Duncan Campbell. Oh! though they are like other boys and other lambs which you see, they are a thousand times prettier and finer? you never saw such a boy nor such a lamb in your lifetime.

My question. How big is he? As big as you are? And what sort of a boy is he?

Duncan Campbell. He is a little little pretty boy, about as tall as my knee, his face is as white as snow, and so are his little hands; his cheeks are as red as a cherry, and so are his lips; and when he breathes, it makes the air more perfumed than my mother's sweet bags that she puts among the linen; he has got a crown of roses, cowslips, and other flowers upon his head, such as the maids gather in May; his hair is like fine silver threads, and shine like the beams of the sun; he wears a loose veil down to his feet, that is as blue as the sky in a clear day, and embroidered with spangles, that look like the brightest stars in the night; he carries a silver bell in one hand, and a book and pencil in the other, and he and the little lamb will dance and leap about me in a ring as high as my head; the lamb has got a little silver collar with nine little bells upon it; and every little piece of wool upon its back, that is as white as milk, is tied up all round it in puffs, like a little miss's hair, with ribbons of all colours; and round its head, too, are little roses and violets stuck very thick into the wool that grows upon its forehead, and behind and between its ears, in the shape of a diadem. They first meet me dancing thus; and after they have danced some time, the little boy writes down wonderful things in his book, which I write down in mine; then they dance again, till he rings his bell, and then they are gone all of a sudden, I know not where; but I feel the tinkling in the inside of my head caused by the bell less and less, till I don't feel it at all, and then I go home, read over my lesson in my book, and when I have it by heart, I burn the written leaves, according as the little boy bids me, or he would let me have no more. But I hear the little bell again, the little boy is angry with me, he pulled me twice by the ear, and I would not displease him for anything, so I must get up and go immediately to the joy and delight of my life.

I told him he might, if he would promise me to tell me farther another time; he said he would, if I would keep it secret. I told him I would, and so we parted; though just before he went, he said he smelt some venison, and he was sure they would shortly have some for dinner; and nothing was so sure as that, my man had my orders to bring a side of venison to me the next day to Mrs. Campbell's, for I had been hunting, and came thither from the death of a deer that morning; and intended, as usual, to make a stay there for two or three days.

There are, I know, many men of severe principles, and who are more strict, grave, and formal in their manner of thinking, than they are wise, who will be apt to judge of these relations as things merely fabulous and chimerical, and not contented with being disbelievers by themselves, will labour to insinuate into others this pernicious notion, that it is a sign of infirmity and weakness in the head to yield them credit. But though I could easily argue these Sir Gravities down, though a sentence or two would do their business, put them beyond the power of replying, and strike them dumb, yet do I think it not worth my while; their greatest and most wonted objection against these Eudemons and Kakodemons, being, that it arises all from the work of fancy, in persons of a melancholic blood. If we consider the nature of this child's dialogue with me, will it not be more whimsically strange and miraculous, to say that a child of nine years' old had only a fancy of such things as these, of which it had never heard anybody give an account, and that it could, by the mere strength of imagination, predict such things as really after came to pass, than it is, when it does so strangely predict things, to believe the child does it in the manner itself owns it does, which is by the intervention of a good demon, or a happy genius. Departing, therefore, from these singular and wise men's opinions, who will believe nothing excellent can happen to others, which it has not been their lot to enjoy a share of, I shall take my farewell hastily of them, without losing my own time or theirs, in the words of the ingenious Monsieur le Clerc: Acerbos homines non moror, indignos quippe, qui hæc studia tractent, aut quorum, judicii ulla ratio habeatur.

I shall rather see how far these things have lain open to the eyes of, and been explained by the ancient sages; I will relate who among them were happy in their genii, and who among the moderns, whose examples may be authorities for our belief; I will set down as clearly as I can what perception men have had of genii or spirits by the sense of seeing; what by the sense of hearing; what by the sense of feeling, touching, or tasting; and in fine, what perception others have had of these genii by all the senses, what by dreams, and what by magic, a thing rarely to be met with at once in any single man, and which seems particular to the child, who was the subject of our last little historical account. When I have brought examples and the opinions of wise philosophers, and the evidence of undeniable witnesses, which one would think sufficient to evince persons of the commerce men have with spirits, if they were not past all sense of conviction; I shall, not so much to corroborate what I say, as to shame some wiseacres, who would by their frail reason scan all things, and pretend to solve the mysteries ascribed to spirits, as facts merely natural, and who would banish from the thoughts of men all belief of spirits whatsoever, I shall, I say, in order to put to shame these wiseacres, if they have any shame left, produce the opinions of the Fathers as divines, show the doctrines of spirits in general to be consistent with Christianity, that they are delivered in the Scripture and by Christian tradition, in which, if they will not acquiesce, I shall leave them to the labyrinth of their own wild opinions, which in the end will so perplex their judgments of things, that they will be never able to extricate themselves; and these different heads will be the subject of the chapter ensuing; and will, or I am greatly mistaken, form both an instructive, edifying, and entertaining discourse, for a reader really and truly intelligent, and that has a good taste and relish for sublime things.

CHAPTER V.

AN ARGUMENT PROVING THE PERCEPTION WHICH MEN HAVE, AND HAVE HAD, BY ALL THE SENSES, AS SEEING, HEARING, ETC., OF DEMONS, GENII, OR FAMILIAR SPIRITS.

It is said in the ninth book of the Morals of Aristotle, It is better to come at the probable knowledge of some things above us in the heavens, than to be capable of giving many demonstrations relating to things here below. This is no doubt an admirable proposition, and speaks the lofty aims of that sublime mind from whence it proceeded. Among all the disquisitions in this kind, none seem to me more excellent than those which treat concerning the genii that attend upon men, and guide them in the actions of life. A genius, or demon, of the good kind, is a sort of mediate being, between human and divine, which gives the mind of man a pleasant conjunction with angelic and celestial faculties, and brings down to earth a faint participation of the joys of heaven. That there have been such fortunate attendants upon wise men, we have many rare instances. They have been ascribed to Socrates, Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Iamblicus, Chicus, Scaliger, and Cardan. The most celebrated of all these ancients, was Socrates; and as for his having a genius, or demon, we have the testimonies of Plato, Xenophon, and Antisthenes, his contemporaries, confirmed by Laertius, Plutarch, Maximus Tyrius, Dion Chrysostomus, Cicero, Apuleius, Ficinus, and others; many of the moderns, besides Tertullian, Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, Austin, and others; and Socrates himself, in Plato's Theage, says, By some divine lot I have a certain demon which has followed me from my childhood as an oracle; and in the same place intimates that the way he gained his instruction, was by hearing the demon's voice. Nothing is certainly so easy as for men to be able to contradict things, though never so well attested, with such an air of truth as to make the truth of the history doubted by others as well as themselves, where no demonstrative proof can be brought to convince them. This has been the easy task of those who object against the demon of Socrates; but when no demonstrative proof is to be had on either side, does not wisdom incline us to lean to the most probable? Let us then consider whether the evidences are not more credible, and witnesses of such a thing are not persons of more authority than these men are, who vouchsafe to give no reason but their own incredulity, for maintaining the contrary, and whether those, therefore, by the right rule of judging, ought not much sooner than these, to gain over our assent to their assertions?

We will, however, laying aside the histories of those ancient times, the sense whereof, by various readings and interpretations being put upon the words, is rendered obscure and almost unintelligible, descend to more modern relations, the facts whereof shall be placed beyond doubt, by reason of the evidences we will bring to attest them, and shall consequently prove the perception men have of spirits, or genii, by every sense.

SECTION I.

We will first begin as to the perception of spirits by the sight.

Mr. Glanvil, in his Collections of Relations, for proving Apparitions, Spirits, &c., tells us of an Irishman that had like to have been carried away by spirits, and of the ghost of a man, who had been seven years dead, that brought a medicine to his bed-side.

The relation is thus:—

A gentleman in Ireland, near to the Earl of Orrery's, sending his butler one afternoon to buy cards, as he passed a field, to his wonder, he espied a company of people sitting round a table, with a deal of good cheer before them, in the midst of the field; and he, going up towards them, they all arose and saluted him, and desired him to sit down with them; but one of them whispered these words in his ear: Do nothing this company invites you to. Hereupon he refused to sit down at the table, and immediately table and all that belonged to it were gone, and the company are now dancing and playing upon musical instruments. And the butler being desired to join himself with them, but he refusing this also, they all fall to work, and he not being to be prevailed with to accompany them in working, any more than in feasting or dancing, they all disappeared, and the butler is now alone; but instead of going forwards, home he returns, as fast as he could drive, in a great consternation; and was no sooner entered his master's door, but he fell down and lay some time senseless, but coming again to himself, he related to his master what had passed.

The night following, there comes one of his company to his bed-side, and tells him, that if he offered to stir out of the doors the next day, he would be carried away. Hereupon he kept within; but towards the evening, having need to make water, he adventured to put one foot over the threshold (several standing by), which he had no sooner done but they espied a rope cast about his middle; and the poor man was hurried away with great swiftness, they following him as fast as they could, but could not overtake him; at length they espied an horseman coming towards him, and made signs to him to stop the man whom he saw coming near him, and both ends of the rope, but nobody drawing; when they met he laid hold of one end of the rope, and immediately had a smart blow given him over his arm with the other end; but by this means the man was stopped, and the horseman brought him back with him.

The Earl of Orrery hearing of these strange passages, sent to the master to desire him to send this man to his house, which he accordingly did; and the morning following, or quickly after, he told the earl that his spectre had been with him again, and assured him that that day he should most certainly be carried away, and that no endeavours should avail to the saving of him; upon this he was kept in a large room with a considerable number of persons to guard him, among whom was the famous stroaker, Mr. Greatrix, who was a neighbour. There were, besides other persons of quality, two bishops in the house at the same time, who were consulted concerning the making use of a medicine, the spectre or ghost prescribed, of which mention will be made anon, but they determined on the negative.

Till part of the afternoon was spent, all was quiet; but at length he was perceived to rise from the ground, whereupon Mr. Greatrix and another lusty man clapped their arms over his shoulders, one of them before him, and the other behind, and weighed him down with all their strength; but he was forcibly taken up from them, and they were too weak to keep their hold, and for a considerable time he was carried into the air, to and fro over their heads, several of the company still running under him to prevent his receiving hurt if he should fall; at length he fell, and was caught before he came to the ground, and had by that means no hurt.

All being quiet till bed-time, my lord ordered two of his servants to lie with him, and the next morning he told his lordship, that his spectre was again with him, and brought a wooden dish with grey liquor in it, and bid him drink it off; at the first sight of the spectre he said he endeavoured to awake his bed-fellows; but it told him, that that endeavour should be in vain; and that he had no cause to fear him, he being his friend, and he that at first gave him the good advice in the field, which had he not followed, he had been before now perfectly in the power of the company he saw there; he added, that he concluded it was impossible but that he should have been carried away the day before, there being so strong a combination against him; but now he could assure him there would be no more attempts of that nature, but he being troubled with two sorts of sad fits, he had brought that liquor to cure him of them, and bid him drink it; he peremptorily refusing, the spectre was angry, and upbraided him with great disingenuity, but told him, however, he had a kindness for him, and that if he would take plantain juice he should be well of one sort of fits, but he should carry the other to his grave; the poor man having by this somewhat recovered himself, asked the spectre whether by the juice of plantain he meant that of the leaves or roots? It replied, The roots.

Then it asked him whether he did not know him? He answered, No; it replied, I am such a one; the man answered he had been long dead; I have been dead, said the spectre or ghost, seven years, and you know that I lived a loose life, and ever since, I have been hurried up and down in a restless condition with the company you saw, and shall be to the day of judgment; then he proceeded to tell him, that had he acknowledged God in his ways, he had not suffered such severe things by their means; and farther said, you never prayed to God before that day you met with this company in the fields.

This relation was sent to Dr. Henry More by Mr. E. Fowler, who said, Mr. Greatrix told it several persons; the Lord Orrery also owned the truth of it; and Mr. Greatrix told it to Dr. Henry More himself, who particularly inquired of Mr. Greatrix about the man's being carried up into the air, above men's heads, in the room, and he did expressly affirm that he was an eye-witness thereof.

A vision which happened to the ingenious and learned Dr. Donne, may not improperly be here inserted. Mr. Isaac Walton, writing the life of the said doctor, tells us, that the doctor and his wife, living with Sir Robert Drury, who gave them a free entertainment at his house in Drury-lane, it happened that the Lord Haye was by King James sent in an embassy to the French King, Henry IV., whom Sir Robert resolved to accompany, and engaged Dr. Donne to go with them, whose wife was then with child, at Sir Robert's house. Two days after their arrival at Paris, Dr. Donne was left alone in that room in which Sir Robert and he and some other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and as he left so he found Dr. Donne alone, but in such an ecstacy, and so altered in his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him, insomuch that he earnestly desired Dr. Donne to declare what had befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Dr. Donne was not able to make a present answer; but after a long and perplexed pause, did at last say, I have seen a dreadful vision, since I saw you; I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me, through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms; this I have seen since I saw you. To which Sir Robert replied, Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you, and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake. To which Dr. Donne's reply was, I cannot be surer that I now live than that I have not slept since I saw you, and am as sure at her second appearing she stopped and looked me in the face and vanished. Rest and sleep had not altered Dr. Donne's opinion the next day; for he then affirmed this vision with a more deliberate and so confirmed a confidence, that he inclined Sir Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true, who immediately sent a servant to Drury house, with a charge to hasten back and bring him word whether Mrs. Donne were alive; and if alive, what condition she was in as to her health. The twelfth day the messenger returned with this account; that he found and left Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in bed, and that after a long and dangerous labour she had been delivered of a dead child, and upon examination the abortion proved to be the same day, and about the very hour that Dr. Donne affirmed he saw her pass by in his chamber. Mr. Walton adds this, as a relation which will beget some wonder, and well it may, for most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion that visions and miracles are ceased, and though it is most certain that two lutes both being strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other, that is not touched, being laid upon the table at a fit distance, will, like an echo to a trumpet, warble a faint, audible harmony in answer to the same tune, yet many will not believe that there is any such thing as a sympathy with souls, &c.

SECTION II.

I shall next relate some little histories to show what perception men have had of spirits by the sense of hearing. For, as Wierus says, spirits appear sometimes invisibly, so that only a sound, voice, or noise, is perceived by men, viz., a stroke, knocking, whistling, sneezing, groaning, lamenting, or clapping of the hands, to make men attent to inquire or answer.

In Luther's Colloquia Mensalia, &c., set forth in Latin, at Frankfort, anno 1557, it being a different collection from that of Aurifaber, which is translated from high Dutch into English. We have the following relation:—

It happened in Prussia, that as a certain boy was born, there presently came to him a genius, or what you please to call it, for I leave it to men's judgments, who had so faithful a care of the infant, that there was no need either of mother or servant; and, as he grew up, he had a like care of him; he went to school with him, but so, that he could never be seen either by himself, or any others in all his life. Afterwards he travelled into Italy, he accompanied him, and whensoever any evil was like to happen to him, either on the road or in the inn, he was perceived to foretell it by some touch or stroke; he drew off his boots as a servant; if he turned his journey another way, he continued with him, having the same care of him in foretelling evil; at length he was made a canon; and as, on a time, he was sitting and feasting with his friends in much jollity, a vehement stroke was struck on a sudden on the table, so that they were all terrified; presently the canon said to his friends, be not afraid, some great evil hangs over my head. The next day he fell into a great fever, and the fit continued on him for three whole days, till he died, miserably.

Captain Henry Bell, in his narrative prefixed to Luther's Table, printed in English, anno 1652, having acquainted us how the German copy printed of it had been discovered under ground, where it had lain hid fifty-two years, that edition having been suppressed by an edict of the Emperor Rudolphus the second, so that it was death for any person to keep a copy thereof; and having told us that Casparus van Spar, a German gentleman, with whom he was familiarly acquainted, while he negotiated affairs in Germany for King James the first, was the person that discovered it, anno 1626, and transmitted it into England to him, and earnestly desired him to translate the said book into English, says, he accordingly set upon the translation of it many times, but was always hindered from proceeding in it by some intervening business. About six weeks after he had received the copy, being in bed with his wife, one night, between twelve and one of the clock, she being asleep, but himself awake, there appeared to him an ancient man standing at his bed-side, arrayed all in white, having a long and broad white beard hanging down to his girdle, who taking him by his right ear, said thus to him: Sirrah! will you not take time to translate that book which is sent unto you out of Germany? I will shortly provide for you both place and time to do it; and then he vanished. Hereupon, being much affrighted, he fell into an extreme sweat, so that his wife awaking and finding him all over wet, she asked him what he ailed? He told her what he had seen and heard; but he never regarded visions nor dreams, and so the same fell out of his mind. But a fortnight after, being on a Sunday; at his lodging in King-street, Westminster, at dinner with his wife, two messengers were sent from the whole council-board, with a warrant to carry him to the Gate-house, Westminster, there to be kept till farther order from the lords of the council; upon which warrant he was kept there ten whole years close prisoner, where he spent five years of it in translating the said book, having good cause to be mindful of the old man's saying: I will shortly provide for you both place and time to translate it.

Though the perception of spirits chiefly affects the hearing and seeing faculties, yet are not the other senses without some participation of these genial objects, whether good or evil; for, as St. Austin says, The evil work of the devil creeps through all the passages of the senses; he presents himself in figures, applies himself to colours, adheres to sounds, introduces odours, infuses himself in savours, and fills all the passages of intelligence; sometimes cruelly tormenting with grief and fear, sometimes sportingly diverting man or taunting with mocks; and on the other hand, as the learned Walter Hilton, a great master of contemplative life, in his Scale of Perfection sets forth, that appearances or representations to the corporeal senses may be both good and evil.

But before I conclude upon this head, to give still more weight and authority to the perception men have had of these genii, both by the senses of hearing and seeing, I will relate two very remarkable fragments of history of this kind, told us by persons who demand our credit, and done within the memory of our grandfathers and fathers.

The first is concerning that Duke of Buckingham who was stabbed by Felton, August the twenty-third, 1628.

Mr. Lilly, the astrologer, in his book entituled Monarchy or No Monarchy, in England, printed in quarto, 1651; having mentioned the Duke of Buckingham, writes as follows: Since I am upon the death of Buckingham, I shall relate a true story, of his being admonished often of the death he should die, in this manner:—

An aged gentlemen, one Parker, as I now remember, having formerly belonged unto the duke, or of great acquaintance with the duke's father, and now retired, had a demon appeared several times to him in the shape of Sir George Villiers, the duke's father: this demon walked many times in Parker's bedchamber, without any action of terror, noise, hurt, or speech; but at last, one night, broke out in these words: Mr. Parker, I know you loved me formerly, and my son George at this time very well, I would have you go from me, you know me very well to be his father, old Sir George Villiers of Leicestershire, and acquaint him with these and these particulars, &c.; and that he above all refrain the council and company of such and such, whom he then nominated, or else he will come to destruction, and that suddenly. Parker, though a very discreet man, partly imagined himself in a dream all this time; and being unwilling to proceed upon no better grounds, forbode addressing himself to the duke; for he conceived, if he should acquaint the duke with the words of his father, and the manner of his appearance to him, such apparitions being not usual, he should be laughed at and thought to dote, in regard he was aged. Some few nights past without farther trouble to the old man, but not very many nights after, old Sir George Villiers appeared again, walked quick and furiously in the room, seemed angry with Parker, and at last said, Mr. Parker, I thought you had been my friend so much, and loved my son George so well, that you would have acquainted him with what I desired, but I know you have not done it; by all the friendship that ever was betwixt you and me, and the great respect you bear my son, I desire you to deliver what I formerly commanded you to my son. The old man seeing himself thus solicited, promised the demon he would, but first argued it thus, that the duke was not easy to be spoken withal, and that he would account him a vain man to come with such a message from the dead: nor did he conceive the duke would give any credit to him; to which the demon thus answered: If he will not believe you have this discourse from me, tell him of such a secret and named it, which he knows none in the world ever knew but myself and him. Mr. Parker being now well satisfied that he was not asleep, and that the apparition was not a vain delusion, took a fit opportunity, and seriously acquainted the duke with his father's words and the manner of his apparition. The duke laughed heartily at the relation, which put old Parker to a stand, but at last he assumed courage, and told the duke that he acquainted his father's ghost with what he found now to be true, viz., scorn and derision. But, my lord, says he, your father bid me acquaint you by this token, and he said it was such as none in the world but your two selves did yet know. Hereat the duke was amazed and much astonished, but took no warning or notice thereof, keeping the same company still, advising with such counsellors and performing such actions as his father by Parker countermanded. Shortly after, old Sir George Villiers, in a very quiet but sorrowful posture, appears again to Parker, and said, Mr. Parker, I know you delivered my words to George, my son, I thank you for so doing, but he slighted them, and now I only request this more at your hands, that once again you repair to my son, and tell him that if he will not amend, and follow the counsel I have given him, this knife or dagger, and with that he pulled a knife or dagger from under his gown, shall end him; and do you, Mr. Parker, set your house in order, for you shall die at such a time. Mr. Parker once more engaged, though very unwillingly, to acquaint the duke with the last message, and so did; but the duke told him to trouble him no farther with such messages and dreams, and told him he perceived he was now an old man and doted; and within a month after, meeting Mr. Parker on Lambeth bridge, said, Now, Mr. Parker, what say you of your dream? Who only returned; Sir, I wish it may never have success, &c. But within six weeks after, he was stabbed with a knife, according to his father's admonition beforehand, and Mr. Parker died soon after he had seen the dream or vision performed.

This relation is inserted also in the great Lord Clarendon's History, and in Sir R. Baker's Chronicle. The Lord Clarendon, in his History, vol. i. lib. i., having given some relations, says, that amongst others, there was one, meaning this of Parker, which was upon a better foundation of credit than usually such discourses are founded upon. And he tells us that Parker was an officer in the king's wardrobe in Windsor Castle, of a good reputation for honesty and discretion, and then about the age of fifty years or more. This man had, in his youth, been bred in a school in the parish where Sir George Villiers, the father of the duke lived, and had been much cherished and obliged in that season of his age by the said Sir George, whom afterwards he never saw. About six months before the miserable end of the Duke of Buckingham the apparition was seen. After the third appearance, he made a journey to London, where the court then was; he was very well known to Sir Ralph Freeman, one of the masters of the requests, who had married a lady that was nearly allied to the duke, and was himself well received by him. He informed the duke with the reputation and honesty of the man, and Sir Ralph Freeman carried the man the next morning, by five of the clock, to Lambeth, according to the duke's appointment, and there presented him to the duke, who received him courteously at his landing, and walked in conference near an hour with him, and Sir Ralph's and the duke's servants at such a distance that they heard not a word; but Sir Ralph always fixed his eyes on the duke, who sometimes spoke with great commotion and disorder; and the man told Sir Ralph in their return over the water, that when he mentioned those particulars that were to gain him credit, the duke's colour changed, and he swore he could come to that knowledge only by the devil; for that those particulars were known only to himself and to one person more, who, he was sure, would never speak of them. So far the Lord Clarendon.

I will now subjoin an authentic relation, which Mr. Beaumont tells us at the end of his book of Genii, or Familiar Spirits, printed in the year 1705, he had just before received from the mouth of the then Bishop of Gloucester himself. It is as follows, word for word:—

Sir Charles Lee, by his first lady, had only one daughter, of which she died in childbirth; and when she died, her sister, the Lady Everard, desired to have the education of the child; and she was by her very well educated till she was marriageable; and a match was concluded for her with Sir William Perkins, but was then prevented in an extraordinary manner. Upon a Thursday night, she thinking she saw a light in her chamber after she was in bed, knocked for her maid, who presently came to her; and she asked why she left a candle burning in her chamber? The maid said she left none, and there was none, but what she brought with her at that time. Then she said it was the fire; but that the maid told her was quite out, and said she believed it was only a dream: whereupon she said it might be so, and composed herself again to sleep; but about two of the clock she was awakened again, and saw the apparition of a little woman between her curtain and her pillow, who told her she was her mother, and that she was happy, and that by twelve of the clock that day she should be with her; whereupon she knocked again for her maid, called for her clothes, and when she was dressed, went into her closet, and came not out again till nine; and then brought out with her a letter, sealed, to her father, brought it to her aunt, the Lady Everard, told her what had happened, and desired that, as soon as she was dead, it might be sent to him; but the lady thought she was suddenly fallen mad; and thereupon sent presently away to Chelmsford for a physician and surgeon, who both came immediately, but the physician could discern no indication of what the lady imagined, or of any indisposition of her body; notwithstanding, the lady would needs have her let blood, which was done accordingly; and when the young woman had patiently let them do what they would with her, she desired that the chaplain might be called to read prayers, and when prayers were ended, she took her guitar and psalm book, and sat down upon a chair without arms, and played and sung so melodiously and admirably, that her music master, who was then there, admired at it; and near the stroke of twelve, she rose and sat herself down in a great chair with arms, and presently fetching a strong breathing or two, immediately expired, and was so suddenly cold as was much wondered at by the physician and surgeon. She died at Waltham, in Essex, three miles from Chelmsford; and the letter was sent to Sir Charles, at his house in Warwickshire; but he was so afflicted with the death of his daughter, that he came not till she was buried: but when he came he caused her to be taken up, and to be buried by her mother at Edmonton, as she desired in her letter. This was about the year one thousand six hundred and sixty-two or sixty-three; and this relation the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Gloucester had from Sir Charles Lee himself; and Mr. Beaumont printed it in his book above mentioned, from the bishop's own mouth.

The relations which I have given above, are not like the trifling accounts too often given of these things, and therefore causing grave ones to be ridiculed in common with them. They are of that nature, that, whoever attempts to ridicule them, will, instead of turning them into jest, become the object of ridicule himself.

The first story, which has in it such amazing circumstances, and such uncommon and dreadful incidents concerning the butler in Ireland, is, as the reader sees, attested by no less a personage than an Earl of Orrery, two bishops, and many other noblemen and gentlemen being present and eye-witnesses of what the earl said. What greater testimony would the most incredulous have? They say such things are told for interest. What interest could an earl and many noblemen have in promoting such an imposture? The incredulous say, likewise, great and learned men delight sometimes in putting frauds upon the world, and after laugh at their credulity. Would a number of noble laymen choose two prelates to carry on such a fraud; and would two pious bishops probably combine with several, and some servants there present, in spreading such a deceit? It is past believing, and it demands the strictest of moral faith that can be given to the most unquestioned history that the pen of man ever wrote.

The second story is founded, first, upon the experience of one of the most ingenious men of that age, Dr. Donne, and then upon the proof made by his friend Sir Robert Drury, who could at first scarce believe it; and shall we doubt the credit of men, whose company, for their credit be it spoken, a British ambassador was proud of gaining.

The third story is told by Luther himself, who began the great work of the Reformation.

The fourth is told by one that was a king's public minister and told from his own trial of the matter, where he could have no interest in the telling it.

The fifth is related by those great historians, the Lord Clarendon and Sir Richard Baker, as a truth relied upon by themselves, and fit to be credited by their readers.

The sixth and last was related to Mr. Beaumont, by the Lord Bishop of Gloucester, who received the account from Sir Charles Lee himself, to whose granddaughter the matter happened.

Men who will not believe such things as these, so well attested to us, and given us by such authorities, because they did not see them themselves, nor anything of the like nature, ought not only to deny the demon of Socrates, but that there was such a man as Socrates himself; they should not dispute the genii of Cæsar, Cicero, Brutus, Marc Antony, but avow that there were never any such men existing upon earth, and overthrow all credible history whatsoever. Meanwhile, all men, but those who run such lengths in their fantastical incredulity, will, from the facts above mentioned, rest satisfied, that there are such things as evil and good genii, and that men have sometimes a commerce with them by all their senses, particularly those of seeing and hearing, and will not therefore be startled at the strange fragments of histories which I am going to relate of our young Duncan Campbell, and look upon some wonderful adventures which he performed by the intervention of his familiar demon or genius, as falsehoods, only because they are uncommon and surprising, more especially since they were not done in a corner, but by an open way of profession of a predictor of things, in the face of the metropolis of London, where he settled young, as will appear in the progress of his life. However, some people, notwithstanding all this, may allege, that though a man may have a genius appear to him, so as to convey into his mind, through his senses, the knowledge of things that are to come to pass, yet this happens but on very eminent and extraordinary occasions. The murder, for example, of a prime minister, and the favourite of a monarch, in such a manner as it was performed on the great Duke of Buckingham, by Felton, was a thing so uncommon, that it might perhaps deserve, by the permission of Heaven, an uncommon prediction; the others likewise are instances eminent in their way, particularly that of the lady Everard's niece; for that young lady being then marriageable, and a treaty for that end being on foot with Sir William Perkins, the Divine Providence foreseeing that such a state might call away her thoughts, hitherto bent on him and spiritual affairs, and fix them on the trifles of this world, might perhaps permit her to be called by a holy mother to the state of happiness she before her enjoyed, lest her daughter's mind should change, and she go into the ways of a sinner. But if these supereminent, these scarce and rare examples, may be admitted of man's holding a conversation with the spiritualized beings of another world; it will, however, be far below the dignity of human reason, methinks, to make such large concessions to people who pretend to converse that wonderful way, as to allow them the credit of being able to do it upon every slight occasion, and every indifferent occurrence of human life.

I cannot help acknowledging, that a man of wisdom may at first thought, make such an objection; but reflection will presently retract it, and the same good sense that taught him to make an objection so well upon the first thought, will teach him, upon second thoughts, to acquiesce in the answer.

Infants may have, no doubt, the benefit of such an attending genius, as well as people more advanced in years; as may be seen in one of the instances, which is a very famous one, relating to the boy born in Prussia, who was attended by one constantly, from the time of his birth to his death. Besides, it is a mistake in the understanding to imagine, that death, which is the determination and end of life, is of more consequence to be known than the manner of regulating that life; for in reality, according to the right way of considering death, or the determination of a man's life, derives its importance from the steps which he took in the due regulation of it; and therefore, every, the least step proper to be taken for the due regulation of life, is of more consequence to be known than the death of a person, though this at first sight carries the face of significance, and the other nothing better than the look of a trifle. Marriage, for example, is a step in life of the utmost importance, whether we consider that estate with regard to this, or the next world. Death is but the finishing of one person, but marriage may be the introducing of many into the world with happiness; it is therefore a thing of more importance to be known beforehand, and consequently more worthy of the communication of a genius, to the man with whom he conversed. Posidonius tells us, that a certain Rhodian dying, nominated six of his equals, and said who should die first, who next, and so on, and the event answered the prediction; why, then, though some people are apt to make a jest of it, may not a man, by the intervention of his good genius, tell a woman that is to have six husbands, who she shall have first, who next, and so on, and the event answer the prediction? If men of learning may acquire such knowledge as to attain to extraordinary things by their ordinary faculties, why may not ordinary things be taught others in this extraordinary way? For will anybody say that it is easier for a man to accommodate himself to the knowledge of a demon or genius than for a demon or genius to accommodate himself to the knowledge of a man? Certain it is, indeed, that if this good genius, that induces a man with a prophetic kind of science, be anything resembling a good angel, the primary end of his being permitted to direct mankind must consist in things relating more to their welfare hereafter: yet I know not why they may not sometimes inspire, or openly direct them in human knowledge, and in things relating to human life, so they are of a good tendency; more especially since such a good inspiration may be a counterbalance to the bad knowledge which some have been inspired with by evil spirits. I would not be thought to go too far in a point of this nature, and have, therefore, though perhaps I could say much more if I followed entirely my own private opinion, and would venture to introduce it here, in order to communicate it to others, and make it a public one, said no more on this head than what divines generally teach.

But the most unexceptionable mistress, that teaches these things to be in nature, is experience. If we had very many people gifted this way, the extraordinary thing would have been become ordinary, and therefore I cannot help wondering that it should be so ordinary a thing for wise men themselves to wonder too much at things because they are extraordinary, and suspect them as frauds because they are uncommon.

There has scarce been any period of time in which some person of this prophetic class has not existed, and has not been consulted by the greatest of men, and their predictions found at the long run to come true; ignorant men always rise to their belief of them by experience, and the most learned men submit their great opinions to experience, but your men of middling talents, who make up their want of reason with bustling obstinacy and noisy contradiction, have been and still continue to be their own opposers, and without discovering the reason for what they say, they content themselves with having the laugh on their sides, and barely affirming without proving, that it is a kind of ideal juggle and intellectual legerdemain, by which these modern predictors impose things upon the eye of reason, as the corporeal eye is imposed upon by sleight of hand; but it is a strange thing that men of such quick reason cannot give us a sample of the frauds. Thus, I remember to have read, I cannot tell where, the story of some courtiers, who, when a great artist of legerdemain was to act before the King, pretended to be so quick-sighted, that nothing he did should escape their discovery, were left by his nimble fingers in the dark, and forced at last with blushes to own they had no better eyes than other people. In a word, if people will be led by suspicions and remote possibilities of fraud and contrivance of such men, all historical truth shall be ended, when it consists not with a man's private humour or prejudice to admit it. Now, therefore, to prove by experience and undeniable testimonies, that these kind of genii will submit to little offices, in order to bring men to greater good, I will give three or four curious passages that will set the reasonable reader at ease, and prepare him for reading the passages of Mr. Campbell's life with pleasure, and as a fine history of wonderful facts, that, though they seem to surpass belief, yet ought to have his credit.

What in nature can be more trivial than for a spirit to employ himself in knocking on a morning at a wainscot by the bed's-head of a man who got drunk over-night, according to the way that such things are ordinarily explained? And yet I shall give you such a relation of this, that not even the most devout and precise Presbyterian will offer to call in question. For Mr. Baxter, in his Historical Discourse of Apparitions, writes thus:—

There is now in London an understanding, sober, pious man, oft one of my hearers, who has an elder brother, a gentleman of considerable rank, who, having formerly seemed pious, of late years does often fall into the sin of drunkenness, he often lodges long together here in his brother's house; and whensoever he is drunk and has slept himself sober, something knocks at his bed's-head, as if one knocked on a wainscot; when they remove his bed it follows him; besides other loud noises, on other parts where he is, that all the house hears; they have often watched him, and kept his hands lest he should do it himself. His brother has often told it me, and brought his wife, a discreet woman, to attest it; who avers, moreover, that as she watched him, she has seen his shoes under the bed taken up, and nothing visible to touch them. They brought the man himself to me, and when we asked him how he dare sin again after such a warning, he had no excuse: but being persons of quality, for some special reason of worldly interest, I must not name him.

Two things are remarkable in this instance, says Mr. Baxter. First, what a powerful thing temptation and fleshly concupiscence is, and what a hardened heart sin brings men to; if one rose from the dead to warn such sinners, it would not of itself persuade them.

Secondly, says Mr. Baxter, it poses me to think what kind of spirit this is that has such a care of this man's soul, which makes me hope he will recover. Do good spirits dwell so near us, or are they sent on such messages? or is it his guardian angel? or is it the soul of some dead friend that suffers? and yet, retaining love to him, as Dives to his brethren, would have him saved? God yet keeps such things from us in the dark.

So far we have the authority of the renowned and famous Mr. Baxter, who makes this knocking of the spirit at the bed's-head, though what we commonly call frivolous, an important errand.

Another relation of this kind was sent to Mr. John Beaumont, whom I myself personally know, and which he has inserted in his Account of Genii, or Familiar Spirits, in a letter by an ingenious and learned clergyman of Wiltshire, who had given him the relation likewise before, by word of mouth. It is as follows:—

Near eighty years since, in the parish of Wilcot, which is by Devizes, in the vicar's house, there was heard for a considerable time the sound of a bell constantly tolling every night. The occasion was this: A debauched person who lived in the parish came one night very late and demanded the keys of the church of the vicar, that he might ring a peal, which the vicar refused to let him have, alleging the unseasonableness of the time, and that he should, by granting his desires, give a disturbance to Sir George Wroughton and his family, whose house adjoined the churchyard. Upon this refusal, the fellow went away in a rage, threatening to be revenged of the vicar, and going some time after to Devizes, met with one Cantle or Cantlow, a person noted in those days for a wizard, and he tells him how the vicar had served him, and begs his help to be even with him. The reply Cantle made him was this; Does he not love ringing? he shall have enough of it: and from that time a bell began to toll in his house, and continued so to do till Cantle's death, who confessed at Fisherton gaol, in Sarum, where he was confined by King James during his life, that he caused that sound, and that it should be heard in that place during life. The thing was so notorious that persons came from all parts to hear it; and King James sent a gentleman from London on purpose to give him satisfaction concerning the truth of the report. Mr. Beaumont had likewise this story, as he tells, from the mouth of Sir George Wroughton's own son; with this remarkable circumstance, that if any in the house put their heads out of the window they could not hear the sound, but heard it immediately again as soon as they stood in the room.

The reader here sees that good and bad genii exercise themselves upon very little functions, knocking at bed's-heads, and ringing of bells. For proof of this we have the testimonies of two divines, of a man of quality and probity, and the same satisfaction that a learned king had, who sent to inquire into the matter; and after this there can be, I think, no room for doubt.

But to carry the point still nearer home; inasmuch as I know some will leave no stone unturned to make the extraordinary actions which the person whose life I write has performed, appear impostures, and inasmuch as for this end they may say, that though many people may have been gifted in this extraordinary manner, yet not so as to make a profession of it, and therefore, from thence they take their suspicions, I shall in this place, to remove every nicest scruple they can have touching this affair, give the reader one instance of this kind likewise, before I proceed with my history.

There lived not many years since a very aged gentlewoman in London, in Water-lane, by Fleet-street, whose name was Pight, who was endowed with a prophetic spirit; and the ingenious Mr. Beaumont, whom I personally knew, and who had a familiar genius himself, gives the world this account of her. She was very well known, says he, to many persons of my acquaintance now living in London. Among others, a gentleman, whose candour I can no way suspect, has told me, that he often resorted to her as to an oracle; and that as soon as he came into her presence, she would usually tell him, that she knew what he was coming for, for that she had seen his spirit for some time before; and without his saying anything to her, she would commonly tell him what the business was which he came to consult her about, and what the event of it would be; which he always found to fall out as she said, and many other persons now living can testify the like experience of her as to themselves.

Before I conclude this chapter, I am willing to give the public one farther little history of the like kind with the foregoing ones, with this only difference, that if it be valued according to the worth the world has always attributed to the very ingenious person whom it concerns, it will be far the most famous of them all, and therefore fittest to finish this chapter, and to crown this part of the work, in which we are showing that persons have had a perception of genii or spirits, not visible at the same time to others.

The famous Torquatus Tasso, Prince of the Italian poets, and scarce inferior to the immortal Virgil himself, and who seems to enjoy the intermingled gifts of the most accurate judgment of this Latin poet, and the more fertile and copious invention and fancy of the Greek one, Homer, strongly asserted his own experience in this kind. His life was written and published in French, anno 1692, by D.C.D.D.V. who, in his preface, tells us, that in what he writ he has followed chiefly the history given us in Italian by John Baptista Manso, a Neapolitan gentleman, who had been a very intimate friend to Tasso. In his life, among other things, he acquaints us that Tasso was naturally of that melancholic temperament, which has always made the greatest men, and that this temperament being aggravated by many hardships he had undergone, it made him sometimes beside himself, and that those melancholic vapours being despatched, he came again to himself, like those that return from fits of the falling sickness, his spirit being as free as before. That, near his latter end, he retired from the city of Naples, to his friend Manso, at Bisaccia, a small town in the kingdom of Naples, where Manso had a considerable estate, and passed an autumn there in the diversions of the season.

And here the French author gives us an account of Tasso's sensible perception of a genius, as follows:—As after these amusements, he usually retired to his chamber, to entertain himself there with his friend Manso, the latter had the opportunity to inquire into one of the most singular effects of Tasso's melancholy, of this heroic melancholy, as I may call it, which raised and brightened his spirit, so far it was from depressing or rendering it obscure; and which, among the ancients, would have reasonably caused them to have ascribed a familiar demon to him, as to Socrates. They were often in a warm debate concerning this spirit, with which Tasso pretended to have so free a communication. I am too much your friend, said Manso to him one day, not to let you know what the world thinks of you concerning this thing, and what I think of it myself. Is it possible, that being enlightened as you are, you should be fallen into so great a weakness as to think you have a familiar spirit; and will you give your enemies that advantage, to be able to prove by your own acknowledgment, what they have already published to the world? You know, they say, you did not publish your Dialogue of the Messenger, as a fiction; but you would have men believe that the spirit which you make to speak there, was a real and true spirit; hence men have drawn this injurious consequence, that your studies have embroiled your imagination, so that there is made in it a confused mixture of the fictions of the poets, the inventions of the philosophers, and the doctrine of religion.

I am not ignorant, answered Tasso, of all that is spread abroad in the world on account of my Dialogue; I have taken care divers times to disabuse my friends, both by letter and word of mouth: I prevented even the malignity of my enemies, as you know at the time I published my Dialogue. Men could not be ignorant that I composed it for the young Prince of Mantua, to whom I would explain after an agreeable manner, the principal mysteries of the Platonic philosophy. It was at Mantua itself, after my second flight from Ferrara, that I formed the idea of it, and I committed it to paper a little after my unfortunate return. I addressed it to this prince, and all men might have read in the epistle dedicatory, the protestation I there make, that this dialogue, being written according to the doctrine of the Platonics, which is not always conformable to revealed truths, men must not confound what I expose there as a philosopher, with what I believe as a Christian. This distinction is by so much the more reasonable, that at that time nothing extraordinary had happened to me, and I spake not of any apparition. This can be attested by all those with whom I lodged, or whom frequented in this voyage; and therefore there is no reason for confounding the fiction of my Dialogue with what has happened to me since. I am persuaded of all you say to me, replied Manso; but truly I cannot be of what you believe, at present, concerning yourself. Will you imagine that you are in commerce with a spirit? And I ask you, of what order is that spirit? Shall we place him in the number of the rebels, whom their pride precipitated into the abyss? or of the intelligences, who continued firm in faith and submission to their creator? For there is no mean to take in the true religion, and we must not fall into the extravagances of the gnomes and sylphs of the cabalists.

Now the spirit in question cannot be a demon: you own that instead of inspiring you anything contrary to piety and religion, he often fortifies in you the maxims of Christianity: he strengthens your faith by profound reasonings, and has the same respect with you for sacred names and things. Neither can you say that it is an angel; for though you have always led a regular life, and far from all dissoluteness; though for some years past you have applied yourself, after a particular manner, to the duties of a true Christian, you will agree with me, that these sorts of favours are not common; that a man must have attained to a high degree of sanctity, and not be far from the pureness of celestial spirits, to merit a familiar converse, and bear a harmony with them. Believe me, there is nothing in all these discourses which you imagine you have with this spirit. You know, better than any man, those symptoms which the black humours wherewith you are tormented causes in you. Your vapours are the source of your visions, and yourself would not judge otherwise of another person to whom a like thing should happen; and you will come to this in your own respect also, if you will make a mature reflection, and apply yourself to blot out, by an effort of reason, these imaginations which the violence of your evil effect causes in you. You may have reason, replied Tasso, to think so of the things that pass in me; but as to myself, who have a sensible perception of them, I am forced to reason after another manner. If it were true that the spirit did not show himself to me, but in the violent assault of my vapours; if he offered to my imagination but wandering and confused species, without connection or due sequel; if he used to me frivolous reasonings, which ended in nothing; or if having begun some solid reasoning he broke it off on a sudden, and left me in darkness, I should believe with you, that all things that pass are but mere dreams and phantoms; but it is quite otherwise. This spirit is a spirit of truth and reason, and of a truth so distinct, of a reason so sublime, that he raises me often to knowledges that are above all my reasonings, though they appear to me no less clear; that he teaches me things which, in my most profound meditations, never came into my spirit, and which I never heard of any man, nor read in any book. This spirit, therefore, is somewhat of real; of whatsoever order he be, I hear him and see him, nevertheless for its being impossible for me to comprehend and define him. Manso did not yield to these facts, which Tasso would have passed for proofs; he pressed him with new questions, which were not without answers. Since you will not believe me on my word, said Tasso to him another day, after having well disputed, I must convince you by your own eyes, that these things are not pure imaginations: and the next day, conversing together in the same chamber, Manso perceived that, on a sudden, he fixed his eyes towards the window, and that he stood, as it were, immoveable; he called to him and jogged him many times, but instead of answering him; See there the spirit, says Tasso, at last, that has been pleased to come and visit me, and to entertain himself with me; look on him, and you will acknowledge the truth of what I say.

Manso, somewhat surprised, cast his eyes towards the place he showed him, and perceived nothing but the rays of the sun passing through the glass, nor did he see anything in all the chamber; though he cast his eyes round it with curiosity, and he desired him to show him the spirit, which he looked for in vain, while he heard Tasso speak with much vehemency. He declares in a letter which he writ concerning this to the Admiral of Naples, that he really heard no other voice but Tasso's own; but they were sometimes questions made by him to the pretended spirit, sometimes answers that he made to the pretended questions of the spirit, and which were couched in such admirable terms, so efficacious, concerning subjects so elevated, and so extraordinary, that he was ravished with admiration, and dared not to interrupt him. He hearkened, therefore, attentively, and being quite beside himself at this mysterious conversation, which ended at last by a recess of the spirit, as he found by the last words of Tasso; after which, Tasso, turning himself to him, Well, said he, are your doubts at last dissipated? On the contrary, answered Manso, I am more embroiled than ever; I have truly heard wonderful things; but you have not showed me what you promised me. You have seen and heard, resumed Tasso, perhaps more than——he stopped here; and Manso, who could not recover himself of his surprise, and had his head filled with the ideas of this extraordinary entertainment, found himself not in a condition to press him farther. Meanwhile he engaged himself not to speak a word to any man of these things he had heard, with a design to make them public, though he should have liberty granted him. They had many other conversations concerning this matter, after which Manso owned he was brought to that pass, that he knew not what to think or say, only, that if it were a weakness in his friend to believe these visions, he much feared it would prove contagious to him, and that he should become at last as credulous as himself.

Dr. Beaumont, who is still living, and with whom I have had formerly some acquaintance myself, has set down, among the others, this relation at large concerning Tasso, and gives this reason for it: Because, says the doctor, I think it contains a sufficient answer to what many learned friends have said to myself on the like occasion.

Perhaps it may not be ungrateful to the reader, if I subjoin here the short eulogium writ on Tasso, by the famous Thuanas, which is as follows:—

Torquatus Tasso died about the forty-fifth year of his age, a man of a wonderful and prodigious wit, who was seized with an incurable fury in his youth, when he lived at the court of Ferrara, and nevertheless, in lucid intervals, he writ many things both in verse and prose, with so much judgment, elegancy, and extreme correctness of style, that he turned at length that pity which many men had conceived for him, into an amazement; while by that fury, which, in others, makes their minds outrageous or dulls them, after it was over, his understanding became as it were more purified, more ready in inventing things, more acute in aptly disposing them after they were invented, and more copious in adorning them with choice words and weight of sentences; and that which a man of the soundest sense would scarce excogitate at his leisure, with the greatest labour and care imaginable, he, after a violent agitation of the mind set beside itself, naturally performed with a wonderful felicity, so that he did not seem struck with an alienation of mind, but with a divine fury. He that knows not these things, which all men know that have been in Italy, and concerning which himself sometimes complains, though modestly, in his writings; let him read his divine works, and he must necessarily conclude, either that I speak of another man than Tasso, or that these things were written by another man than Tasso.

After having given my readers so many memorable accounts concerning the perception men have had in all ages, and still continue to have of genii or familiar spirits, by all the senses, as seeing, hearing, &c., which accounts have been attested by men of the greatest learning and quality, if any of them still remain dissatisfied, I am contented, and desire them, for their punishment, to lay down the book before they arrive at the more pleasant parts of it, which are yet to come, and not to read one tittle farther. These unbelieving gentlemen shall then be at liberty, according as their different spirits dictate, to ridicule me in the same manner as many more learned and greater men than I have been satirized, before my time, by persons of a like infidel temper, who would fain pass incredulity upon the world as wisdom; and they may, with all the freedom in nature, bestow upon me those merry appellations which, I very well know such extraordinary freethinkers imagine to belong of right, to any author, that either believes himself, or would possess the world with an opinion and belief, that there is such a thing as the holding commerce and conversation in this habitable world with genii, and familiar spirits. I shall only first tell them all I have to say to terminate the dispute between them and me.

Those who, to give themselves the air and appearance of men of solid wisdom and gravity, load other men, who believe in spirits, with the titles of being men of folly, levity, or melancholy, are desired to learn, that the same folly, as they are pleased to term it, of opinion, is to be found in the greatest men of learning that ever existed in the universe. Let them, in order to be convinced of this, read Apuleius's book, de deo Socrat.; Censorinus's book de die Nat. c. 3; Porphyrius, in his book de Abstinentia; Agrippa, in his Treatise de Occult. Phil. 1. 3, c. 22, and also c. 21; Natalis comes in his Myth. 1. 4, c. 3; Maraviglia, in his Pseudomantia. Dissertation. 9 and 11, and Animadversion. 10; Plato in his Timœus et Cratylus; Ammianus Marcellinus's History, book 21; Hieronimus Cardanus in his book de Vita Propria, c. 47; the great Kircher, in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, vol. iii. p. 474; Pausanius, in Cliac. Poster.; that immortal orator, Cicero, lib. i. de Divinatione; lib. ii. de Natura Deorum; the Histoire Prodigieuse, written by Pere Arnault; and a book entituled Lux e Tenebris, which is a collection of modern visions and prophecies in Germany by several persons, translated into Latin, by Jo. Amos. Comenius, printed at Amsterdam, 1655. And if they will be at the pains of having due recourse to these quotations, they will find that all these men, whose learning is unquestionable, and most of whom have been in a firm and undisputed possession of fame for many centuries, have all unanimously agreed in this opinion, how foolish soever they may think it, that there ever was and ever would be a communication held between some select men and genii, or familiar spirits. I must therefore desire their pardon, if I rejoice to see them remain wise by themselves, and that I continue to be esteemed by them a fool among so much good company.

Others out of a mere contempt of religion, or cowardly, for fear of being thought pusillanimous by men, turn bravos to Heaven, and laugh at every notion of spirits as imbibed from the nurse or imposed upon us by priests, and may top these lines upon us with an elegant and a convincing magisterial sneer, though the divine Socrates was of our opinion, and even experienced it to be true, having a genius himself:—

The priests but finish what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man.

These bring into my mind a saying of Sir Roger L'Estrange on Seneca, which I must apply to Socrates; I join in opinion with a Christian heathen, while they remain heathen Christians.

The third sort, out of a pretended veneration to religion and divinity, may call me superstitious and chimerical. To them I answer, I will continue chimerical and superstitious with St. Austin; who gives the same opinion in his Civitate Dei with Ludovicus Vives; let them be solider and more religious divines than St. Austin in disowning it. Thus I bid these austere critics heartily farewell; but let my better-natured readers go on and find a new example of this conversation being held with the genii by our Duncan Campbell.

CHAPTER VI.

A NARRATIVE OF MR. CAMPBELL'S COMING TO LONDON AND TAKING UPON HIM THE PROFESSION OF A PREDICTOR; TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF MANY STRANGE THINGS THAT CAME TO PASS JUST AS HE FORETOLD.

To proceed on regularly with the life of young Duncan Campbell, I must let the reader know that he continued thus conversing with his little genius, as is set forth above in the dialogue he had with me, and predicting many things of the like nature, as I have described, till the year 1694, when he was just fourteen years of age, and then he left Scotland.

But before I come to speak of the manner of his departure from thence, his half native country, inasmuch as his father was of that country, and he had his education there, what education he could have, being deaf and dumb. I must let the reader know that in the year 1692, my very good friend, Mrs. Campbell, his mother-in-law, died, and left him there at Edinburgh, an orphan of twelve years of age.

He was, I may venture to say, the most beautiful boy of that age I ever knew; and the sensible reader, who considers a child of good birth, with the misfortunes of being deaf and dumb, left fatherless and motherless in the wide world, at twelve years old, without any competency for his maintenance and support, without any relations, in a manner, that knew him or assisted him; all the little fortune his father had having been lost in the civil commotions in Scotland, as I have related above, need not hear me describe the compassion I and many more had for him; because such a reader must certainly feel in his own bosom the same lively acts of pity and commiseration at the hearing of such a mishap as I had at the seeing it, or at least as I have now revived afresh within me at the relating it.

However, it came so to pass, that a person of the name of Campbell, and who was a distant relation of the boy, though he himself was but in indifferent circumstances, was resolved to see him provided for one way or another, in a manner somewhat suitable to his condition, and till that time to take the best care of him himself that he was able.

Several ladies of quality who had known his perfections, coveted to make the boy one of their domestics, as a page, or a playfellow to their children; for though he could not speak, he had such a vivacity in all his actions, such a sprightliness of behaviour, and such a merriment accompanying all his gestures, that he afforded more entertainment than the prettiest and wittiest little prattlers at those years are wont to do. Mr. Campbell had certainly accepted of some of these fortunate offers for his little cousin, which were many of them likely to prove very advantageous, if it had not been put in his head by some friends, particularly myself, that if he had a mind to dispose of the boy in that manner, the best way he could take would be to present him to the late Earl of Argyle, who for his namesake and for his father's sake, as well as the qualifications and endowments of the boy, would more naturally, according to all probability, take a greater pleasure and delight in him, and consequently provide better for him, and with a more lasting care, than any other person of quality that had a sudden liking to him, which might change, and took him as a stranger out of a bare curiosity. Mr. Campbell was by these reasons overruled in the disposal of his little dumb prophetical cousin, as he called him, and resolved that an offer should be made of him to the present illustrious Duke of Argyle's most noble father. But it so unfortunately happened, that the earl making very much a longer stay at London than was expected, Mr. Campbell, the uncle, sent our young Duncan Campbell, his nephew, handsomely accoutred, and with a handsome sum of money in his pocket, by sea, with Captain Meek of Kircaldie, to London, with letters of recommendation to the earl's favour, and just a few days before young Duncan arrived in London, the earl was set out on his journey to his seat in Scotland.

I had now left him for near three years, not having seen him since about a year after his mother's death; and then coming to London, I had by mere accident an appointment to meet some Scotch gentlemen at the Buffalo at Charing-cross. There happened at that time to be a great concourse of Scotch nobility there at an entertainment; and one of the ladies and gentlemen passing by and seeing one of my friends, desired him to come in, and told him both he and his companion should be very welcome to partake of the diversion. The lady told him they had got a lovely youth, a Scotch miracle, among them, that would give us exquisite delight, and write down to us all the occurrences of our future lives, and tell us our names upon our first appearance. The moment I heard of it, Duncan Campbell came into my head; but as it is a thing not rare to be met with in Scotland for second sighted persons to tell such things, and as the Earl of Argyle was in the north, I thought little Duncan had been under his protection and with him, and did not dream of meeting with him there; and accordingly told my friend, before I went in, that I believed I knew a lad in Scotland would exceed this in foresight, let him be as dexterous in his art as he would.

As soon as I entered the room, I was surprised to find myself encompassed and surrounded by a circle of the most beautiful females that ever my eyes beheld. In the centre of this angelic tribe was seated a heavenly youth, with the most winning comeliness of aspect that ever pleased the sight of any beholder of either sex; his face was divinely fair, and tinged only with such a sprightly blush as a painter would use to colour the picture of health with, and the complexion was varnished over by a blooming like that of flourishing fruit, which had not yet felt the first nippings of an unkind and an uncivil air; with this beauty was joined such a smiling draught of all the features as is the result of pleasantry and good humour. His eyes were large, full of lustre, majestic, well set, and the soul shone so in them, as told the spectators plainly how great was the inward vivacity of his genius; the hair of his head was thick, and reclined far below his shoulders; it was of a fine silver colour, and hung down in ringlets like the curling tendrils of a copious vine. He was by the women entertained, according to the claim which so many perfections joining in a youth just ripening into manhood might lay to the benevolent dispositions of the tender sex. One was holding the basin of water, another washing a hand, a third with a towel drying his face, which another fair had greedily snatched the pleasure of washing before, while a fourth was disposing into order his silver hairs with an ivory comb, in a hand as white, and which a monarch might have been proud to have had so employed in adjusting the crown upon his head; a fifth was setting into order his cravat; a sixth stole a kiss, and blushed at the innocent pleasure, and mistook her own thoughts as if she kissed the angel and not the man; and they all rather seemed to adore than to love him, as if they had taken him not for a person that enjoyed the frequent gift of the second-sight, but as if he had been some little prophet peculiarly inspired; and while they all thus admired and wondered, they all consulted him as an oracle. The surprise of seeing a young man so happy amidst the general concurring favours of the fair, made me be for awhile lost in a kind of delightful amazement, and the consideration of what bliss he was possessed made me scarce believe my own eyes, when they told me it was Duncan Campbell, who I had left an unhappy orphan at Edinburgh. But so it was, though he was much altered in stature, being now shot up pretty fast in his growth since I had seen him, and having gained a kind of a fixed comportment, such as we may daily observe in those who are taking leave of their minority, and stepping into a stage of maturer life.

The first remarkable thing I knew him do in London, being in this splendid company, where there were so many undoubted witnesses of quality too, that had ocular proof of his predictions at that public tavern: I choose to record it here in the first place according to its due order. It was in the year 1698.

Among this angelical class of beauties were Dr. W—lw—d's lady and daughter. Upon earth there was not sure a more beautiful creature than the daughter was; she was the leading light of all the sparkling tribe; and Otway's character suits her exactly; for she was among ten thousand eminently fair. One would imagine prosperous and lucky fortune was written upon her face, and that nothing unhappy could be read in so fair a book; and it was therefore the unanimous consent of all, that by way of good omen to the rest, his predictions should begin to be opened luckily that day, and that therefore he should first of all be consulted about her.

Accordingly, the mother, to be satisfied of his talent before she proceeded to any other questions, asked him in writing if he knew the young lady, her name, and who she was. After a little ruminating and pondering upon the matter, and taking an exact view of the beauty, he wrote down her name, told Mrs. W—lw—d she was her daughter, and that her father was a doctor. Convinced by his so readily telling the name and quality of persons he had never seen in his lifetime, that fame had not given a false character of his capacity, she proceeded in her questions as to her future fortune. He gazed afresh at her very eagerly for some time, and his countenance during that time of viewing her seemed to be ruffled with abundance of disturbance and perplexity. We all imagined that the youth was a little touched at the heart himself with what he saw, and that instead of telling hers, he had met in her bright eyes with his own destiny, the destiny of being for ever made a slave and a captive to so many powerful and almost irresistible charms.

At length, after having a long debate within himself, which we thought proceeded from the strugglings of love and passion, he fetching a great sigh, which still convinced us more, took the pen and wrote to Mrs. W—lw—d, that he begged to be excused, and that his pen might remain as dumb and silent as his tongue on that affair. By this answer we concluded, one and all, that our former conjectures were true, and we joined in pressing him the more earnestly to deliver his real and sincere opinion concerning the accidents upon which the future fortunes of her life were to turn and depend. He showed many mighty reluctances in the doing it; and I have often since considered him in the same anguish as the late great Dr. Ratcliff, who was endeavouring by study to save a certain fair one, whom he loved with a vehemence of temper, and who was, as his reason told him, got far away beyond the reach of the art of physic to recover. At last he wrote in plain terms that his backwardness and unwillingness to tell it, arose from his wishes that her fortune would be better than his certain foreknowledge of it told him it would be, and begged that we would rest satisfied with that general answer, since it was in so particular a case, where he himself was a well-wisher in vain, to the lady about whom he was consulted. The young lady herself thinking that if she knew any disasters that were to befall her she might, by knowing the nature of them beforehand, and the time when they were likely to happen, be able, by timely prudence and forecast, to avert those evils, with many beseechings urged him to reveal the fatal secret. After many struggles to avoid it, and as many instances made to him both by mother and daughter for the discovery of his prescience in that point, he complied with very great difficulty; and blotting the paper with tears that trickled fast from his eyes, he gave her the lamentable scroll, containing the words that follow; viz., I wish it had not fallen to my lot to tell this lady, whom everybody that but once looks at her must admire, though they must not have leave to love, that she is not much longer to be possessor of that lovely face, which gains her such a number of adorers. The smallpox will too soon turn a ravisher, and rifle all those sweets and charms that might be able to vanquish a king and to subdue a conqueror of mighty battles. Her reign is doomed, alas! to be as short as it is now great and universal; I believe she has internal beauties of the mind, not the least inferior to those external excellences of the body; and she might, perhaps, by the power of her mind alone, be absolute queen of the affections of men, if the smallpox threatened not too surely to be her farther enemy, and, not contented to destroy the face, was not perversely bent to destroy the whole woman. But I want words to express my sorrow. I would not tell it if you did not extort the baneful secret from my bosom. This fair creature, whose beauty would make one wish her immortal, will, by the cruel means of the smallpox, give us too sudden a proof of her mortality. But neither the mother nor herself ought too much to repine at this, seeing it appears to be the decree of Providence, which is always to be interpreted as meant for our good, and seeing it may be the means of translating her the sooner only to her kindred angels, whose beauty she so much resembles here on earth, and to be among the lowest class of whom, is better than being the greatest beauty of the world here below, and wearing an imperial crown. While I comfort you, I cannot help the force of nature, which makes me grieve myself; and I only give you, because you compel me to it, so particular and so exact an answer to so particular and so exacting a question.

The mother, who took the paper, was prudent enough to conceal from the daughter what he said; but nature would force its way, and bubbled from her eyes; and the daughter perceiving that, pressed hard to see it, and wept at the consideration that hard fate, though she knew not particularly what way, was to befall her. Never surely was anything so beautiful in tears, and I obtained of the mother to see the writing. At last, in general terms, to free her from a suspense of mind, it was told her that some trouble should happen to her that should diminish her beauty. She had courage enough to hear that misfortune with disdain, and crying, If that be all, I am armed, I don't place much pride in that which I know age must shortly after destroy, if trouble did not do it before; and she dried up her tears; and, if what Mr. Bruyere says, be true, viz., that the last thing a celebrated woman thinks of when she dies, is the loss of her beauty, she showed an admirable pattern of female philosophy, in bearing such a cruel prediction with such unspeakable magnanimity, as exceeded even the patience of stern stoicism, considering she was a woman, to whom beauty is more dear than life.

If any evil, that is impending over people's heads, could be evaded by foreknowledge, or eluded by art, she had the fairest opportunity of having this prediction annulled, which would have been more to the satisfaction of the predictor than knowing it verified, than ever any woman had. Her mother was specifically told that the fatal distemper should be the smallpox; her father was, and is still, a very eminent physician; and distempers of that kind, especially, are much more easily prevented by care, than cured by art, and by art more easily set aside, when there is a timely warning given to a physician to prepare the body against the danger of the poison, than when the distemper has once catched hold of a body at unawares, when it is unpurged of any gross humours that may accompany it. But neither the foreknowledge and caution of the mother, nor the skill and wisdom of the great physician her father, were sufficient to ward off the approaching harm, that was written in the books of fate. Not many suns had finished their yearly courses, before she was forced to submit to the inevitable stroke of death, after the infectious and malicious malady had first ravished her beauty, rioted in all her sweets, and made an odious deformed spectacle of the charmer of mankind. The death of the daughter worked hard upon the mother's bowels, and dragged her speedily after her, with a broken heart to the grave.

This lady, whose fortune so great and so distinguished an assembly had chosen to hear as a happy forerunner and lucky omen of all their own, which were to be asked afterwards in their turns, proving so contrary to their expectations, already unfortunate in the prediction, and having been in tears about the matter, disheartened all the rest of the beauties from consulting him farther that day. The person who kept the tavern, by name, Mrs. Irwin, alleged that as some people were very fortunate, and others unfortunate upon the same day, so one lady might be before told a mishap one minute, and another lady all the prosperity in nature the very next minute following, and therefore that what the unfortunate lady had heard was not to be taken as ominous, or as what could malignantly influence the day, neither ought it to be the least hinderance to any who had the curiosity of being let into the secrets of time beforehand. However, whether the ladies were convinced or no; if she prevailed over their belief in that point, she could not prevail over their humour, which, though they might not believe the former prediction ominous to themselves, were naturally awed for fear of the like, peradventure, for a time, and so it was agreed, nemine contradicente, as a witty lady wrote it down, That no more petitions should for that day be presented by any of that company to his dumb, yet oracular, majesty. Mrs. Irwin, however, would have her way; said she did not presume to such honour as to call herself of that company, and that therefore she might consult him without breaking through the votes of the assembly. Many endeavoured to dissuade her, but as she was passionately fond of knowing future events; and had a mighty itch to be very inquisitive with the oracle about what might happen, not only to herself, but her posterity; it was agreed that he should have the liberty of satisfying her curiosity, since she presumed her fortune was sure to be so good, and was so forward and eager for the knowledge of it. But, alas! such is too often the fantastical impulse of nature unluckily depraved, that it carries us often into wishes of knowing, what when known we would be glad to unknow again, and then our memory will not let us be untaught.

Mrs. Irwin was at that time in a pretty commodious way of business, everything in plenty round about her, and lived more like a person of distinction, that kept such a cellar of wine, open house, and a free table, than like one who kept a tavern. She brought in her pretty children, that were then almost babies, the youngest having not long been out of the nurse's arms, or trusted to the use of its own legs. These children she loved as a mother should love children; they were the delight of her eyes all day, and the dream of her imagination all night. All the passions of her soul were confined to them; she was never pleased but when they were so, and always angry if they were crossed; her whole pride was centered in them, and they were clothed and went attended more like the infants of a princess, than of a vintner's relict. The fortune of these was what she had near at heart, and of which she was so eager of being immediately apprised. Her impatience was proportionable to the love she had for them, and which made her wish to foreknow all the happiness that was like to attend them. She sat cheerfully down, presented one to him, and smiling, wrote the question in general terms, viz., is this boy to be happy or unhappy. A melancholy look once more spread itself all over the face of the predictor, when he read the too inquisitive words, and he seemed mightily to regret being asked a question, to which he was by his talent of foreseeing compelled to give so unwelcome an answer. The colour of the poor woman flushed and vanished alternately, and very quick, and she looked not quite like the picture of despair, but a disconsolate woman, with little hopes on one hand, and great doubts and dismal fears on the other. She professed she read great evil in the troubles of his face, thanked him for his good nature, told him that they all knew that though he could foretell he could not alter the acts and decretals of fate, and therefore desired him to tell her the worst; for that the misfortunes, were they never so great, would be less dreadful to her than remaining in the state of fear and suspension. He at last wrote down to her that great and unexpected and even unavoidable accidents would involve the whole family in new calamities, that the son she asked him about would have the bitterest task of hardship to go through withal, while he lived, and that to finish all more unhappily, he would be basely and maliciously brought to an untimely end, by some mortal enemy or other, but that she should not trouble herself so much on that head, she would never see it, for it would happen some years after she was departed from the world. This melancholy account closed up the book of predictions for that day, and put a sad stop to all the projected mirth and curiosity. Now I must tell the reader how and when the event answered the prediction. And in a few words, it was thus; poor Mrs. Irwin, by strange accidents, decayed in the world, and dying poor, her sons were forced to be put out apprentices to small trades, and the son, whom the above-mentioned prediction concerned, was, for stealing one cheese from a man in the Haymarket, severely prosecuted at the Old Bailey, and on Wednesday, the 23rd of December, 1713, hanged at Tyburn, with several other criminals.

The two foregoing passages are of so tragical a nature, that it is time I should relieve the minds of my readers with some histories of ladies who consulted him with more success and advantage, to whom his predictions were very entertaining, when they so came to pass in their favour, the relation whereof will consequently be agreeable to all readers who have within them a mixture of happy curiosity and good nature.

Two ladies, who were the most remarkable beauties in London, and most courted, turned at the same time their thoughts to matrimony; and being satiated, I may say wearied, with the pleasure of having continually after them a great number and variety of adorers, resolved each, about the same time, to make a choice of their several men, to whom they thought they could give most happiness, and from whom they might receive most. Their names, for they are both persons of distinction, shall be Christallina and Urbana. Christallina was a virgin, and Urbana a young widow. Christallina engrossed the eyes, the hearts, and the sighs of the whole court; and wherever she appeared, put any court lady out of her place, that had one before in the heart of any youth; and was the most celebrated toast among the beau monde. Urbana's beauty made as terrible havock in the city; all the citizens' daughters that had many admirers, and were in fair hopes of having husbands when they pleased themselves, as soon as Urbana had lost her old husband, found that they every day lost their lovers; and it was a general fear among the prettiest maids, that they should remain maids still, as long as Urbana remained a widow. She was the monopolizer of city affection, and made many girls, that had large stocks of suitors, bankrupts in the trade of courtship, and broke some of their hearts, when her charms broke off their amours. Well, but the day was near at hand when both the belles of the court and the city damsels were to be freed from the ravages which these two tyrants, triumphant in beauty and insolent in charms, made among the harvest of love. Each had seen her proper man, to whom the enjoyment of their person was to be dedicated for life. But it being an affair of so lasting importance, each had a mind to be let into the knowledge of the consequences of such a choice, as far as possible, before they stepped into the irrevocable state of matrimony. Both of them happened to take it into their heads, that the best way to be entirely satisfied in their curiosity, was to have recourse to the great predictor of future occurrences, Mr. Duncan Campbell, whose fame was at that time spread pretty largely about the town. Christallina and Urbana were not acquainted with each other, only by the report which fame had made of beauty. They came to Mr. Campbell's on the same day, and both with the same resolution of keeping themselves concealed and under masks, that none of the company of consulters, who happened to be there, might know who they were. It happened that on that very day, just when they came, Mr. Campbell's rooms were more than ordinarily crowded with curious clients of the fair sex, so that he was obliged to desire these two ladies, who expressed so much precaution against, and fear of having their persons discovered, to be contented with only one room between them, and with much ado they complied with the request, and condescended to sit together incog. Distant compliments of gesture passed between them, the dress and comportment of each making them appear to be persons of figure and breeding, and after three or four modish courtesies, down they sat, without so much as once opening their lips, or intending so to do. The silence between them was very formal and profound for near half an hour, and nothing was to be heard but the snapping of fans, which they both did very tunably, and with great harmony, and played as it were in concert.

At last, one of the civil, well-bred mutes, happening to sneeze, the other very gracefully bowed, and before she was well aware, out popped the words, Bless you, madam. The fair sneezer returned the bow, with an—I thank you, madam. They found they did not know one another's voices, and they began to talk very merrily together, with pretty great confidence, and they taking a mutual liking from conversation, so much familiarity grew thereupon instantly between them, that they began not only to unmask, but to unbosom themselves to one another, and confess alternately all their secrets. Christallina owned who she was, and told Urbana the beau and courtier that had her heart. Urbana as frankly declared that she was a widow, that she would not become the lady's rival, that she had pitched upon a second husband, an alderman of the city. Just by that time they had had their chat out, and wished one another the pleasure of a successful prediction, it came to Christallina's turn to visit the dumb gentleman, and receive from his pen oracular answers to all the questions she had to propose. Well, he accordingly satisfied her in every point she asked him about; but while she was about this, one of Mr. Campbell's family going with Urbana to divert her a little, the widow rallied at the virgin as a fool, to imagine that she should ever make a conquest of the brightest spark about the court, and then let fly some random bolts of malice to wound her reputation for chastity. Now it became the widow's turn to go and consult; and the same person of Mr. Campbell's family in the mean time entertained Christallina. The maid was not behindhand with the widow; she rallied against the widow, represented her as sometimes a coquette, sometimes a lady of pleasure, sometimes a jilt, and lifted up her hands in wonder and amazement that Urbana should imagine so rich a man as an alderman such a one, should fall to her lot. Thus Urbana swore and protested that Christallina could never arrive at the honour of being the wife to the courtly Secretarius, let Mr. Campbell flatter her as he would; and Christallina vowed that Campbell must be a downright wizard if he foretold that such a one as Urbana would get Alderman Stiffrump as a husband, provided a thing so improbable should come to pass.

However, it seems, Duncan had told them their own names and the names of their suitors, and told them farther, how soon they were both to be married, and that too directly to their heart's content, as they said rejoicingly to themselves, and made their mutual gratulations.

They went away each satisfied that she should have her own lover, but Christallina laughed at Mr. Campbell for assigning the alderman to Urbana; and Urbana laughed at him for promising the courtier to the arms of Christallina.

This a pretty good figure of the tempers of two reigning toasts with regard to one another.

First, their curiosity made them, from resolving to be concealed, discover one another wilfully; from utter strangers grow as familiar as old friends in a moment, swear one another to secrecy, and exchange the sentiments of their hearts together; and, from being friends, become envious of each other's enjoying a similitude of happiness; the compliments made on either side face to face, were, upon the turning of the back, turned into reflections, detraction, and ridicule; each was a self-lover and admirer of her own beauty and merit, and a despiser of the other's.

However, Duncan Campbell, proved at last to be in the right; Urbana was wrong in her opinion of Christallina's want of power over Secretarius, and Christallina was as much out in her opinion that Urbana would miss in her aim of obtaining Stiffrump; for they both proved in the right of what they thought with regard to their own dear single persons, and were made happy according to their expectations, just at the time foretold by Mr. Campbell.

Christallina's ill wishes did not hinder Urbana from being mistress of Alderman Stiffrump's person and stock, nor did Urbana's hinder Christallina from showing herself a shining bride at the Ring, in Secretarius's gilded chariot, drawn by six prancers of the proud Belgian kind, with her half dozen of liveries with favours in their hats, waiting her return at the gate of Hyde Park.

Both loved and both envied, but both allowed of Mr. Campbell's foreknowledge.

Having told you two very sorrowful passages, and one tolerably successful and entertaining; I shall now relate to you another of my own knowledge, that is mixed up with the grievous and the pleasant, and chequered, as it were, with the shade and the sunshine of fortune.

Though there are vicissitudes in every stage of life under the sun, and not one ever ran continually on with the same series of prosperity; yet those conditions which are the most liable to the signal alterations of fortune, are the conditions of merchants; for professed gamesters I reckon in a manner as men of no condition of life at all; but what comes under the statute of vagabonds.

It was, indeed, as the reader would guess, a worthy and a wealthy merchant, who was to run through these different circumstances of being. He came and visited our Mr. Campbell in the year 1707, he found him amidst a crowd of consulters; and being very eager and solicitous to know his own fortune just at that critical juncture of time, he begged of him, if possible, to adjourn his other clients to the day following, and sacrifice that one wholly to his use; which as it was probably more important than all the others together, so he wrote down that he would render the time spent about it more advantageous to Mr. Campbell; and, by way of previous encouragement, threw him down ten guineas as a retaining fee.

Mr. Campbell, who held money in very little esteem, and valued it so much too little, that he has often had my reprehensions on that head, paused a little, and after looking earnestly in the gentleman's face, and reading there, as I suppose, in that little space of time in general, according to the power of the second-sight, that what concerned him was highly momentous, wrote him this answer; That he would comply with his requests, adjourn his other clients to the day following, and set apart all the remnant of that, till night, for inspecting the future occurrences of which he had a mind to be made a master.

There is certainly a very keen appetite in curiosity; it cannot stay for satisfaction, it is pressing for its necessary repast, and is without all patience: hunger and thirst are not appetites more vehement and more hard and difficult to be repressed than that of curiosity; nothing but the present now is able to allay it. A more expressive picture of this I never beheld than in the faces of some, and the murmurs and complaints of others, in that little inquisitive company, when the unwelcome note was given about signifying an adjournment for only twenty-four hours.

The colour of a young woman there came and went a hundred times, if possible, in the space of two minutes; she blushed like a red rose this moment, and in the switch of an eyelash she was all over as pale as a white one: the suitor, whose name her heart had gone pit-a-pat for the space of an hour to be informed of from the pen of a seer, was now deferred a whole day longer; she was once or twice within an ace of swooning away, but he comforted her in particular, by telling her, though he said it only by way of jest, that the day following would be a more lucky day to consult about husbands than the present that she came on. The answer was a kind of cordial to her hopes, and brought her a little better to herself.

Two others, I remember, sisters and old maids, that it seems were misers, women ordinarily dressed and in blue aprons, and yet, by relation, worth no less than two thousand pounds each, were in a peck of troubles about his going and leaving them unsatisfied. They came upon an inquiry after goods that were stolen, and they complained that by next morning at that time, the thief might be got far enough off, and creep into so remote a corner, that he would put it beyond the power of the devil and the art of conjuration to find him out and bring him back again. The disturbance and anxiety that was to be seen in their countenances was like that which is to be beheld in the face of a great losing gamester, when his all, his last great stake, lies upon the table, and is just sweeping off by another winning hand into his own hat.

The next was a widow who bounced, because, as she pretended, he would not tell her what was best to do with her sons, and what profession it would be most happy for them to be put to; but in reality all the cause of the widow's fuming and fretting, was not that she wanted to provide for her sons, but for herself; she wanted a second husband, and was not half so solicitous about being put in a way of educating those children she had already, as of knowing when she should be in a likelihood of getting more. This was certainly in her thoughts, or else she would never have flounced about in her weed, from one end of the room to the other, and all the while of her passion, smile by fits upon the merchant, and leer upon a young pretty Irish fellow that was there. The young Irishman made use of a little eye-language; she grew appeased, went away in quite a good humour, scuttled too airily down stairs for a woman in her clothes, and the reason was certainly that she knew the matter before, which we took notice of presently after: the Irishman went precipitately after her down stairs without taking his leave.

But neither were the two misers for their gold, the virgin for a first husband, nor the widow for a second, half so eager as another married woman there was for the death of her spouse. She had put the question in so expecting a manner for a lucky answer, and with so much keen desire appearing plainly in her looks, that no big-bellied woman was ever more eager for devouring fruit; no young, hasty bridegroom, just married to a beauty, more impatient for night and enjoyment, than she was to know what she thought a more happy moment, the moment of her husband's last agonising gasp. As her expectation was the greatest, so was her disappointment, too, and consequently her disorder upon his going and leaving her unresolved. She was frantic, raging, and implacable; she was in such a fury at the delay of putting off her answer to the day following, that in her fury she acted as if she would have given herself an answer which of the two should die first, by choking herself upon the spot, with the indignation that swelled in her stomach and rose into her throat on that occasion. It may look like a romance to say it, but indeed they were forced to cut her lace, and then she threw out of the room with great passion; but yet had so much of the enraged wife left, beyond the enraged woman, as to return instantly up stairs, and signify very calmly, she would be certain to be there next day, and beseeched earnestly that she might not meet with a second disappointment.

All this hurry and bustle created a stay a little too tedious for the merchant, who began to be impatient himself, especially when word was brought up that a fresh company was come in; but Mr. Campbell was denied to them; and to put a stop to any more interruptions, the merchant and the dumb gentleman agreed to slip into a coach, drive to a tavern in the city, and settle matters of futurity over a bottle of French claret.

The first thing done at the tavern, was Mr. Campbell's saluting him upon a piece of paper by his name, and drinking his health. The next paper held a discourse of condolence for a disaster that was past long since; namely, a great and considerable loss that happened to his family, in the dreadful conflagration of the city of London. In the third little dialogue which they had together, he told the merchant that losses and advantages were general topics, which a person unskilled in that art might venture to assign to any man of his profession; it being next to impossible that persons who traffic should not sometimes gain, and sometimes lose. But, said Mr. Duncan Campbell, I will sketch out particularly, and specify to you some future misfortunes with which you will unavoidably meet; it is in your stars, it is in destiny, that you should have some trials, and therefore when you are forewarned, take a prudent care to be forearmed with patience, and by longanimity, and meekly and resignedly enduring your lot, render it more easy, since impatience can't avert it, and will only render it more burdensome and heavy. He gave these words to the merchant; who pressed for his opinion that moment. By your leave, resuming the pen, said the dumb gentleman, in writing, we will have this bottle out first and tap a fresh one, that you may be warmed with courage enough to receive the first speculative onset of ill fortune, that I shall predict to you, with a good grace, and that may perhaps enable you to meet it when it comes to reduce itself into action, with a manful purpose and all becoming resolution. The merchant agreed to the proposal, and put on an air of the careless and indifferent as well as he could, to signify that he had no need to raise up an artificial courage from the auxiliary forces of the grape. But nature, when hard pressed, will break through all disguises, and not only notwithstanding the air of pleasantry he gave himself, which appeared forced and constrained, but in spite of two or three sparkling and enlivening bumpers, a cloud of care would ever and anon gather and shoot heavily across his brow, though he laboured all he could to dispel it as quickly, and to keep fair weather in his countenance. Well, they had cracked the first bottle, and the second succeeded upon the table, and they called to blow a pipe together. This pipe Mr. Campbell found had a very ill effect; it is certainly a pensive kind of instrument, and fills a mind, anything so disposed, with disturbing thoughts, black fumes, and melancholy vapours, as certainly as it doth the mouth with smoke. It plainly took away even the little sparks of vivacity which the wine had given before; so he wrote for a truce of firing those sort of noxious guns any longer, and they laid down their arms by consent, and drank off the second bottle. A third immediately supplied its place, and at the first glass, the opening of the bottle, Mr. Campbell began to open to him his future case, in the following words: Sir, you have now some ventures at sea from such and such a place, to such a value. Don't be discomforted at the news which you certainly will have within three months, but it will be false at last, that they are by three different tempests made the prey of the great ocean, and enrich the bottom of the sea, the palace of Neptune. A worse storm than all these attends you at home, a wife who is, and will be more, the tempest of the house wherein she lives. The high and lofty winds of her vanity will blow down the pillars of your house and family; the high tide of her extravagance will roll on like a resistless torrent, and leave you at low water, and the ebb of all your fortunes. This is the highest and the most cutting disaster that is to befall you; your real shipwreck is not foreign but domestic; your bosom friend is to be your greatest foe, and even your powerful undoer for a time; mark what I say, and take courage, it shall be but for a time, provided you take courage; it will upon that condition be only a short and wholesome taste of adversity given to you, that you may relish returning prosperity with virtue, and with a greater return of thanks to Him that dispenses it at pleasure to mankind. Remember, courage and resignation is what I advise you to; use it, as becomes you, in your adversity, and believe that as I foretold that adversity, so I can foretell a prosperity will again be the consequence of those virtues; and the more you feel the one ought not to cast you down, but raise your hopes the more, that he who foretold you that so exactly, could likewise foretell you the other. The merchant was by this put into a great suspense of mind, but somewhat easier by the second prediction being annexed so kindly to the first fatal one. They crowned the night with a flask of Burgundy, and then parting, each went to their respective homes.

The reader may perchance wonder how I, who make no mention of my being there, as in truth I was not at the tavern, should be able to relate this as of my own knowledge; but if he pleases to have patience to the end of the story, he will have entire satisfaction in that point.

About half a year after, the merchant came again, told him that his prediction was too far verified, to his very dear cost, and that he was now utterly undone, and beyond any visible means of a future recovery, and doubting lest the other fortunate part of the prediction was only told him by way of encouragement, for groundless doubts and fears always attend a mind implunged in melancholy, besought him very earnestly to tell him candidly and sincerely if there was no real prospect of good, and rid him at once of the uneasiness of such a suspension of thought; But pray too, said he, with all the vehemence of repeated expostulation, satisfy me if there are any farther hopes on this side the grave?