from our children, in good fortune', or the CHAP. V. fifth house of their celestial schemes? Whether the Egyptians described a star by a figure of five points, with reference unto the five capital aspects 2, whereby they transmit their influences, or abstruser considerations? Why the cabbalistical doctors, who conceive the whole Sephiroth, or divine emanations to have guided the tenstringed harp of David, whereby he pacified the evil spirit of Saul, in strict numeration do 7 begin with the perihypate meson, or si fa ut, and so place the tiphereth answering c sol fa ut, upon the fifth string? or whether this number be oftener applied unto bad things and ends, than good in holy Scripture, and why? he may meet with abstrusities of no ready resolution.

If any shall question the rationality of that [10] magick, in the cure of the blind man by Serapis, commanded to place five fingers on his altar, and then his hand on his eyes? Why, since the whole comedy is primarily and naturally comprised in four parts, and antiquity permitted not so many persons to speak in one scene, yet would not comprehend the same in more or less than five acts? Why amongst sea-stars nature chiefly delighteth in five points? And since there are found some of no fewer than twelve, and some of seven, and nine, there are few or none discovered of six or eight? any shall enquire why the flowers of rue properly

1 'Ayan Túxn, bona fortuna, the name of the fifth house.

2 Conjunct, opposite, sextile, trigonal, tetragonal.

* Πρότασις, ἐπίτασις, κατάστασις, καταστροφή

If

CHAP. V. consist of four leaves, the first and third flower
have five? Why, since many flowers have one 198
leaf or none1, as Scaliger will have it, divers
three, and the greatest number consist of five
divided from their bottoms, there are yet so few
of two? or why nature generally beginning or
setting out with two opposite leaves at the root,
doth so seldom conclude with that order and
number at the flower? He shall not pass his
hours in vulgar speculations.

[11] If any shall further query why magnetical
philosophy excludeth decussations, and needles
transversely placed do naturally distract their
verticities? Why geomancers do imitate the
quintuple figure, in their mother characters of
acquisition and amission, &c., somewhat answer-
ing the figures in the lady or speckled beetle ?
With what equity chiromantical conjecturers
decry these decussations in the lines and mounts
of the hand? What that decussated figure
intendeth in the medal of Alexander the Great?
Why the goddesses sit commonly cross-legged-199
in ancient draughts, since Juno is described in
the same as a veneficial posture to hinder the
birth of Hercules? If any shall doubt why at
the amphidromical feasts, on the fifth day after
the child was born, presents were sent from
friends, of polypuses and cuttle fishes? Why
five must be only left in that symbolical mutiny
among the men of Cadmus? Why Proteus in
Homer, the symbol of the first matter, before
he settled himself in the midst of his sea-

1 Unifolium nullifolium.

monsters, doth place them out by fives? Why CHAP. V. the fifth year's ox was acceptable sacrifice unto Jupiter? Or why the noble Antoninus in some sense doth call the soul itself a rhombus? He shall not fall on trite or trivial disquisitions. And these we invent and propose unto acuter enquirers, nauseating crambe verities and questions over-queried. Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer; but Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour. A large field is yet left unto sharper 200 discerners to enlarge upon this order, to search out the quaternios and figured draughts of this nature, and (moderating the study of names, and mere nomenclature of plants), to erect generalities, disclose unobserved proprieties, not only in the vegetable shop, but the whole volume of nature; affording delightful truths, confirmable by sense and ocular observation, which seems to me the surest path to trace the labyrinth of truth. For though discursive enquiry and rational conjecture may leave handsome gashes and flesh-wounds; yet without conjunction of this, expect no mortal or dispatching blows unto

error.

But the quincunx1 of heaven runs low, and [12] 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations; making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves.

1 Hyades, near the horizon about midnight, at that time.

CHAP. V. Beside Hippocrates1 hath spoke so little, and the oneirocritical2 masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is little 201 encouragement to dream of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra3, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.

[13]

[14]

Night, which Pagan theology could make the daughter of Chaos, affords no advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that mass can we derive its genealogy.

All

things began in order, so shall they end, and so
shall they begin again; according to the ordainer
of order and mystical mathematicks of the city
of heaven.

Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse
up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these
drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes
open longer, were but to act our Antipodes.
The huntsmen are up in America, and they are
already past their first sleep in Persia. But
who can be drowsy at that hour which freed 202
us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering
thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must
end, and, as some conjecture, all shall awake
again?

1 De Insomniis.

2 Artemidorus et Apomazar.

3 Strewed with roses.

NOTES

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY ON

"HYDRIOTAPHIA."

Page iii. Thomas le Gros] Mentioned in Edward Browne's Journal (vol. i. p. 49), who paid a visit to Crostwick, and "had a great deal of discourse with Mr. Le Grosse, about his travails into France, the Low Countreys, and Italy, and about his pilgrimage to Loretto, and of the treasure which is in that place." Wilkin (in I) gives some account of his family. See also Blomefield's Hist. of Norfolk, xi. 8-11.

P. iii. whether they are to be scattered] whither, a plausible, but unnecessary alteration, first introduced without authority in F, has been adopted by Wilkin (I) and other modern editors.

P. iii. the ruins of Pompeys] So A, B, C, and quite correctly, as explained by the "Pompeios juvenes" in the note; Pompey's, D, E, which is adopted by Wilkin (I) and other modern editors; Pompey, F, G, without authority. If Sir T. B. had written the Pompeys, there would have been no doubt about the sense.

P. iv, note. Little directly but sea] Crostwick Hall is not twenty miles distant from the north coast of Norfolk. (Note by Wilkin in I.)

P. iv. great Hippodrome urns] So A, B, C, E; D has the great.

P. iv. noblest pile among us] Raynham Hall, in Norfolk, then recently built by Inigo Jones, 1630.

P. iv, note 3. Sir Horatio Townshend] Sir T. B. in his letters (vol. i. pp. 8, 14) mentions his being made a Lord, and also Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, 1661. He is mentioned by

M