“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilt of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers (traitors), by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an inforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a Divine thrusting on; an admirable evasion of whoremaster to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under _Ursa Major_; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.—Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled at my bastardizing.”—SHAKSPEARE. It is a singular fact, that men the most eminent for their learning were those who indulged most in the favourite superstition of judicial Astrology; and as the ingenious Tenhove observes, whenever an idea germinates in a learned head, it shoots with additional luxuriance. At the present time, however, a belief in judicial Astrology can only exist in the people, who may be said to have no belief at all; for mere traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a belief. It is said that Dr. Fludd[6] was in possession of the MSS. of Simon Forman, the Astrologer. We have seen that the studies of Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine, were early united in several persons connected with the faculty of medicine. Real Astronomy gave birth to judicial Astrology; which offering an ample field to enthusiasm and imposture, was eagerly pursued by many who had no scientific purpose in view. It was connected with various juggling tricks and deceptions, affected an obscure jargon of language, and insinuated itself into every thing in which the hopes and fears of mankind were concerned. The professors of this pretended science were at first generally persons of mean education, in whom low cunning supplied the place of knowledge. Most of them engaged in the empirical practice of physic, and some, through the credulity of the times, even arrived at a degree of eminence in it; yet since the whole foundation of their art was folly and deceit, they nevertheless gained many proselytes and dupes, both among the well-informed and the ignorant. When Charles the First was confined, Lilly, the famous Astrologer, was consulted for the hour that should favour his escape.