He was one of the first who accepted the theory of Copernicus, and he successfully performed the labour of correcting the Gregorian calendar. He was, moreover, a good linguist, an earnest antiquary, and a diligent searcher of those records which tend to elucidate the history of the country, and to him is due the credit of first suggesting the formation of a “National Library,” for the preservation of those ancient writings in which lie “the treasures of all antiquity, and the everlasting seeds of continual excellency.” Paradoxical as it may seem, there was with the splendour and universality of his genius much childlike simplicity; and his credulous confiding nature often exposed him to the iniquitous arts of those about him; while his reckless extravagance, his love of ostentatious display, his debts, and his carelessness of the method which brought relief, kept him in continuous disquiet. He was part of the age in which he lived in that he was fond of alchemy, a believer in the divining-rod, and a devout practitioner of the astral science; but it is to be feared that his straitened circumstances sometimes prompted him to have recourse to tricks and artifices that his better judgment condemned. He was a strange mixture of pride and gentleness, of goodness and credulity. He discoursed learnedly with foreign philosophers, tended his little folks in their sicknesses, and soothed them in their childish griefs and sorrows; gazed into the glittering depths of his magic mirror and smiled good temperedly at his shrewish wife’s scoldings; dispensed his hospitalities and gossiped freely with the aristocratic personages who sought his society, and pawned his property to pay for their entertainment; contended with an archbishop and sought peace with the irrepressible Carter and his unruly associates; but we willingly forget the weaknesses and the foibles of the man when we remember the genius and the learning of the philosopher. With all his failings Dee possessed much kindness of heart, and though Manchester may not have been greatly advantaged by the ecclesiastical supervision of the “Wizard Warden,” he was yet, in many respects, much to be preferred to the needy Scotch courtier whom King James appointed as his successor. [Illustration] [Illustration: BEESTON CASTLE.] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. BEESTON CASTLE.