There is reason however to doubt whether the charge of neglecting Dee, brought against Elizabeth and her ministers, is well made out, however strongly and confidently it has been assumed and repeated. Even this visit to the court of Maximilian might have had an object very different from the ostensible one. There is much probability iu Lilly's statement, who says :—" To be serious, ha was Qnoen Elizabeth's intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the secretaries of elate. He was a ready-witted man, quick of apprehension, and of great judgment in the Latin and Greek tongnes. He was a very great investigator of the more secret hermetical learning, a perfect astronomer, a curious astrologer, a serious geometrician ; to speak truth, ha was excellent in all kinds of learning." (Lilly, ' Memoirs,' p. 221.) \nerd could a man better adapted to the purpose of 'secret intelligence' than such n one be found t This view too is borne out by many striking circumstances. Being in 1571 seized with a dangerous illness in Lorraine, the queen sent two physicians to his relief. This is an act the signification of which cannot be doubted.
He afterwards returned to England and settled at Mortlake in Surrey, where he led it life of privacy for some years, devoting him self to study with great ardour, and to the collecting of astronomical and philosophical instruments, not omitting of conrso a sufficient number of beryls, talismans, and the like. lie seems also to have been consulted by persons respecting their horoscopes, ite. Ms repu tation as one who dealt with the devil seems to have strongly mani fested itself during this time in his own vicinity, as the mob is 1576 assembled, and destroyed all his collection, or nearly so ; and it was with difficulty that he and his family escaped the fury of the rabble.
In 1578, the queen being much indisposed, Mr. Dee was sent abroad to consult with the Germau physicians and philosophers (or rather astrologers) relative to the means to be employed for her recovery. This was at least the ostensible object ; but as no account of the result of this mission exists, except that we know that the queen recovered, we may perhaps infer that it was n secret political mission. After his return to England he was employed by the queen to draw up a condensed account of those countries which belonged to her crown, on the ground of being discovered by British subjects, both as to geographical description and the recorded and other evidence upon which her claim rested. With his usual activity he speedily accomplished his task, and in an incredibly short time ho presented her majesty with two largo rolls in which the discovered countries are geographically described and historically illustrated. These two curious manuscripts still exist in the Cottonian Collection in the British Mu ecutn.
About this time, too, he paid much attention to the reformation of the Calendar, n treatise on which subject by him, and which is con sidered both " learned and rational," is still in manuscript in the Ashinolean Library at Oxford.
„Most of the proceedings and writings upon which his fame with posterity as an astrologer rests, were written subsequent to this period, and he was now upwards of fifty years of age. This is not the general period at which men of activity both of mind and occu pation sink into dotage; and it is impossible, taking into account several of the succeeding circumstances of the life of Dee, to imagine that this hypothesis can be applied to his case, in explanation of the extravagances which he perpetrated about this time, and soon after. The belief in supernatural agency was general at that period, and the belief in the power of controlling that agency was equally general— we may say universal. That Dee, admitting this in common with all the orthodox, whether of the Roman Catholic or reformed religion, was liable to be the dupe of crafty men, older than himself, is evident, and that with a strong and active imagination ho should be led to interpret any sensible phenomena in accordance with it, is extremely probable. Whether he intended to be understood literally, or merely to express under those disguises information and memoranda of a very different nature, it is difficult now to determine. We incline to the latter opinion, and we think this view is borne out by circum we shall however annex the usual account, which does indeed contain the ostensible view of his later life.
In the year 1581 be took into his service an npothocary of Worcester, named Edward Kelly, as an assistant. The conversations with spirits" were held by Dee, in common with this person; ,and 'Deiced Kelly was in general Doe's amanuensis during the time they wero together. They had a speculum, which is generally said to have been "a polished piece of cannel coal," but which was doubtless glass—one of the very stenos' which Dee used being now in the British Museum. In this glass the angels Gabriel and Raphael appeared at their invocation. Hence Butler says "Kelly did all his feats upon The devil's looking-glass—a stone." The 'Book of Spirits' is not however to be considered a fair sample of Dee's absurdity, if taken literally; and we are not sure that Dee was himself the author of it. It was published in 1659, more than half a century after Dee's death, and hence its authenticity is ques tionable; but admitting its authenticity, it might have been a mere cipher, in which special passages that were worked into the general discourse were to ba taken in a secretly specified order, so as to express other facts of a political nature. This was a favourite method of cipher at that period.