"
--_Lay of the Last Minstrel_.
The character of Dee, our English "Faust," as he is not inaptly called,
has both been misrepresented and misunderstood. An enthusiast he
undoubtedly was, but not the drivelling dotard that some of his
biographers imagine. A man of profound learning, distinguished for
attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like
Faustus, and the wisest of human kind, had found out how little he knew;
had perceived that the great ocean of truth yet lay unexplored before
him. Pursuing his inquiries to the bound and limit, as he thought, of
human knowledge, and finding it altogether "vanity," he had recourse to
forbidden practices, to experiments through which the occult and hidden
qualities of nature and spirit should be unveiled and subdued to his own
will.
Evidently prompted to unhallowed intercourse by pride and ambition, he
deluded himself with the vain and wicked hope that the God who spurned
his impious requests would vouchsafe to him a new and peculiar
revelation. He would not bow to the plain and humbling tenets already
revealed, but sought another "sign,"--a miraculous testimony to himself
alone.
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