Astrologers and Others
Dr. Partridge, Astrologer, Physician to His Majesty, etc.
In the same age lived another noteworthy man, whose connection with the gentle craft was much more intimate, and, indeed, of almost life-long duration. This man was an astrologer, and blended with his study of the subtle influences of the stars over human affairs the study of medicine. What relation there is between these two things it were hard to tell; but certain it is, that for many years men who were not otherwise fools and knaves believed in this relation; and, combining the two “professions,” found very often that success in the one gave them a certain prestige in the other. A lucky hit in “casting the nativity” of a notable person, brought the “astrologer and physician” endless patients and no small fortune. Probably an appointment as physician to the king was due to no better cause; and, with such an appointment, of course the practitioner’s position was secure for life. This seems to have been pretty much the case with John Partridge, who is spoken of as a shoemaker in Covent Garden in 1680, and in 1682 is styled physician to His Majesty Charles II. Here is a case, then, of a cobbler who ventured ultra crepidam to some purpose, and who might very well have taken James Lackington’s motto for his own.120 Partridge, it must be allowed, was a scholar of no mean attainments, whatever he may have been as a physician, and his scholarship was self-acquired. During his apprenticeship to a shoemaker he began the study of Latin with a copy of Lilye’s Grammar, Gouldman’s Dictionary, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and a Latin Bible. Having got a sufficient knowledge of Latin to read astrological works, he betook himself to the study of Greek and Hebrew. Then came physic, with the grand result of royal patronage. Partridge was a considerable author or editor, and the list of his works shows the strong bent of his mind toward the occult science. He published a “Hebrew Calendar” for 1678; “Vade Mecum,” 1679; “Ecclesilegia, an Almanac,” 1679; the same for 1680; “The King of France’s Nativity;“ ”A Discourse of Two Moons;“ ”Mercurius Cœlestis,” being an almanac for 1681; “Prodomus, a Discourse on the Conjunction of Saturn and Mars;“ ”The Black Life of John Gadbury,” in which a brother astrologer is roundly abused; and shown to be, as a matter of course, a rogue and impostor; and a “Translation of Hadrianus a Mynsicht’s Treasury of Physic,” 1682.
The inscription over Partridge’s tomb is in Latin, as becomes the memorial of so learned a man and so eminent a physician! The visitor to the churchyard of Mortlake in Surrey may still learn—if the great destroyer has dealt gently with the record—how
Johannes Partridge, Astrologus
et Medicinæ Doctor,
was born at East Sheen, in Surrey, on the 18th January, 1644, and died in London, 24th June, 1715; how he made medicine for two kings and one queen, Carolo scilicet Secundo, Willielmo Tertio, Reginæque Mariæ; and how the Dutch University of Leyden conferred on him the diploma Medicinæ Doctor.
Partridge seems to have given his ms. of the “Conjunction of Saturn and Mars” to Elias Ashmole, who presented it in 1682, with other curiosities, to the University of Oxford, where it may still be seen in the Ashmolean Museum.121
Partridge is alluded to in Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” where the poet speaks of Belinda’s “wavy curl,” which has been stolen and placed among the stars—
“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes;
And hence the egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.”
“What sacrifices,” says the author of “The Book of Days,” “would many a sage or poet have made to be connected through all time with Pope and the charming Belinda! Yet here, in this case, we find the almanac-making shoemaker enjoying a companionship and a celebrity for qualities which, morally, have no virtue or endurance in them, but quite the reverse.” Swift, whose satire stung many an abuse to death, made endless fun of Partridge and his absurd prophecies based on astrology. In 1708 Swift published a burlesque almanac containing “predictions for the year,” etc., etc., the first of which was about Partridge himself. Fancy the astrologer’s feelings when he read the following awful announcement:—“I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die on the 29th of March next of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider it and settle his affairs in time!”
After the 29th of March was past, Partridge positively took the trouble to inform the public that he was not dead! This he did in his almanac for 1709. Whereupon the cruel Dean took the matter up again and tried to show Partridge his error. He was dead, argues Swift, if he did but know it; but then there is no accounting for some men’s ignorance! He says, “I have in another place and in a paper by itself sufficiently convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I don’t doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance.”122 Not content with this, Swift wrote an “Elegy on the supposed Death of Partridge, the Almanac-maker,” and wound up the painful business by writing his epitaph too.
THE EPITAPH.
“Here, five foot deep, lies, on his back,
A cobbler, starmonger, and quack,
Who to the stars, in pure good-will,
Does to his best look upward still.
Weep, all ye customers, that use
His pills, or almanacs, or shoes;
And you that did your fortunes seek,
Step to his grave but once a week.
This earth, which bears his body’s print,
You’ll find has so much virtue in’t,
That I durst pawn my ear ’twill tell
Whate’er concerns you full as well,
In physic, stolen goods, or love,
As he himself could when above.”
The Brothers Sibly — Ebenezer Sibly, M.D., F.R.C.P., Astrologer, etc.
Here also may be mentioned the once famous Dr. Ebenezer Sibly, the physician and astrologer, and his brother Manoah, who by turns was shoemaker, shorthand reporter, and preacher of the “heavenly doctrines” of the New Jerusalem Church. However great a figure these men may have made in their day, they have managed to drop so completely out of notice that no encyclopædia, biographical dictionary, or magazine123 the writer has met with contains any account of them. They are said to have been born in Bristol, and to have been brought up to the gentle craft.124 The first edition of Ebenezer Sibly’s “Astrological Astronomy” was published in 1789, in three vols. 8vo, and was entitled “Astronomy and Elementary Philosophy,” being a translation of Placidus de Titus. The various editions of this work contain a collection of remarkable nativities, and among them Sibly includes that of Thomas Chatterton, “the marvellous boy” of Bristol.125 Of course the astrologer sees in the horoscope of Chatterton sure signs of remarkable genius. Sibly was frequently consulted both for astrological and medical purposes, the two professions, astrology and medicine, being regarded as having a certain necessary relation. At all events, it answered the purposes of men like Sibly and Partridge to associate them in their practice. Human credulity dies hard, the race of fools seems to be endowed with wondrous vitality; even as late as 1826 Sibly’s “Celestial Science of Astrology,” in two bulky 4to vols., was published in a twelfth edition, and at that time there must have been many readers of his costly works126 on the “Occult Sciences, comprehending the Art of Foretelling Future Events and Contingencies by the Aspect and Influences of the Heavenly Bodies.” This work was accompanied by a key to physic and the occult sciences. “Many of my readers,” says the author of “Crispin Anecdotes,” “otherwise indebted to Dr. Sibly, may remember his solar and lunar tinctures, and may probably have experienced their efficacy in transmuting gold coin into aurum potabile!” In his astrological works and his edition of “Culpepper’s Herbal,” Sibly signs himself “M.D.,” “Fellow of the Royal Harmonic Philosophical Society at Paris,“ ”Member of the Royal College of Physicians in Aberdeen,” etc., etc. The “Herbal” is dated in the year of Masonry 5798, and is written from No. 1 Upper Tichfield Street, Cavendish Square, London. We have no record of the death of this illustrious son of Crispin, who, perhaps, had better have stuck to his last. He is called “the late E. Sibly, M.D.,“ in the 1817 edition of his ”Celestial Science.”
Manoah Sibly, Shorthand Writer, etc.
Manoah Sibly appears to have been a man of more varied and certainly of much more useful gifts than his brother “the doctor;” but it may well be doubted if he made as much capital out of them. He was born August 20th, 1757.127 If the writer above quoted be correct in saying that Manoah was a shoemaker, he must have made good use of his spare time, and even of his working hours, for at the age of nineteen he is said to have been teaching Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac. During the greater part of his life he was a prominent preacher in connection with the New Jerusalem or Swedenborgian community. For fifty-three years, from the time of his ordination in 1790, he held the pastorate of the congregation for which the Friars Street Chapel, London, was built in 1803. This congregation is now represented by the well-known Argyle Square Church, King’s Cross, where a tablet to his memory has been erected. Manoah Sibly does not seem at any time to have been wholly occupied with the work of preaching, although he delivered two sermons a week for forty-three years, and one a week for the remaining ten of his ministry. “Whether he dabbled in the muddy waters of astrology or no, it is rather hard to tell; probably he left the task of reading the stars, for the most part, to his more astute brother, Ebenezer. At any rate, a translation of Placidus de Titus is set down in certain lists as having been published in his name in 1789;128 and when he opened a shop as a bookseller, he dealt chiefly in works on occult philosophy. In 1795 he is styled shorthand writer to the City of London on the title-page of the published reports from his own notes of the trial of Gillman and of Thomas Hardy, the political shoemaker, whose trial and acquittal created so great an excitement throughout the country. Two years after this he obtained a situation in the Bank of England, which he held for no less than forty-three years. In addition to all this multifarious work, he found time for writing and slight editorial duties. In 1796 a volume of sermons preached in the New Jerusalem Temple appeared in his name, and in 1802 he edited a liturgy for his own church, and wrote a hymn-book. If in no other way, his memory will be perpetuated among his coreligionists by the hymns that bear his name. His first published work was a critical essay on Jeremiah 38:16, issued in 1777; and his last, a discourse on “Jesus Christ, the only Divine object of Praise,” delivered on the forty-fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the “heavenly doctrines,” appeared fifty-six years after, viz., in 1833. Manoah Sibly’s long life of fourscore and three years came to an end December 16th, 1840.
Mackey, the Learned Shoemaker of Norwich, and Two Other Learned Shoemakers
In this connection we may mention a curious instance of learning in lowly life, mentioned in one of a series of interesting articles in the Leisure Hour, already alluded to. The writer says: “In that most entertaining miscellany Notes and Queries (No. 215) we find an interesting account of a very poor Norwich shoemaker named Mackey, whose mind appears to have been a marvellous receptacle of varied learning. He died in Doughty’s Hospital, in Norwich, an asylum for aged persons there. The writer of the paper found him surrounded by the tools of his former trade and a variety of astronomical instruments and apparatus, and he instantly was ready for conversation upon the mysteries of astronomical and mythological lore, the “Asiatic Researches of Captain Wilford,” and the mythological speculations of Jacob Bryant and Maurice, quoting Latin and Greek to his auditor. He was called “the learned shoemaker.” His learning was probably greatly undigested and ungeneralized, but it was none the less another singular instance of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, as is shown by his published works on mythological astronomy and on “The Age of Mental Emancipation.” To this notice of Mackey the writer in the Leisure Hour adds an amusing story, which is too good to be omitted, of a brother of the gentle craft (a cobbler) who, in order to eclipse a rival who lived opposite to him, put over his door on his stall the well-known motto, “Mens conscia recti” (a mind conscious of rectitude). But his adversary, determined not to be outdone, showed himself also a cobbler in classics as well as in shoes, by placing over his door the astonishingly comprehensive defiance, “Men’s and Women’s conscia recti.”
Anthony Purver, the Shoemaker Who Revised the Bible
Another curious instance of extensive reading and remarkable linguistic talent, somewhat similar to that of Dr. Partridge and the learned shoemaker of Norwich, is that of Anthony Purver. He was born at Up Hurstbourne in Hampshire in 1702. His parents were poor, and put their boy apprentice to the art and mystery of making and mending boots and shoes. When his “time was out,” he betook himself to the leisurely and healthy employment of keeping sheep, and began to study. His special line in after-life was decided by his meeting with a tract which pointed out some errors of translation in the authorized version of the Bible. This led him to resolve that he would read the Scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek. Taking lessons from a Jew, Purver soon learned to read Hebrew. After this he took up Greek and Latin, until he could read with ease in either language. “On settling as a schoolmaster at Andover,“ we are told,129 ”he undertook the extraordinary labor of translating the Bible into English, which work he actually accomplished, and it was printed at the expense of Dr. Fothergill in two vols. folio. This learned shoemaker, shepherd, and schoolmaster deeply felt the need of the great work which has been accomplished in our own day by the united scholarship of England and America. In his own way he completed the Herculean task single-handed; and if his translation was not of any general and practical utility, it none the less deserves mention as a monument of self-acquired learning and honorable industry. Purver died in 1777, at the age of seventy-five.