Solomon's Secret Arts (87 page)

4.
James Hutton, “Theory of the Earth: or An Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe,”
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
, 1, part 2 (1788), p. 304.

5.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 40, Notes for lectures by Joseph Black, ff. 17–19.

6.
Price's Royal Society election certificate, in Royal Society Archives (hereafter RSA), EC/1781/08, shows that he was sponsored by Kirwan. The name “Higginbotham” has been crossed out and replaced with “Price.” Accessed at
http://www2.royalsociety.org
.

7.
James Price,
An Account of Some Experiments on Mercury, Made at Guildford in May, 1782
(2nd ed., Oxford, 1782), pp. 1, 15. The first edition is entitled
An Account of Some Experiments on Mercury, Made at Guildford in May, 1782. To which Is Prefixed an Abridgement of Boyle's Account of a Degradation of Gold
(Oxford, 1782). It appeared in a German translation in 1783 under the title
Versuche mit Quecksilber, Silber und Gold. Nebst einem Auszuge aus Boyles “Erzählung”
(Dessau, 1783). Surprisingly, Price has a biography in
ODNB
, as well as in John Gorton, ed.,
A General Biographical Dictionary
(3 vols, London, 1838), vol. 2.

8.
Patrick O'Brian,
Joseph Banks; A Life
(London, 1988), pp. 206–7; Warren Dawson, ed.,
The Banks Letters: A Calendar of the Manuscript Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks
(London, 1958), pp. 54–5, 361; reviews are found in
Medical Commentaries for the Years 1781–2
(London, 1787), pp. 176–90,
The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature
, 54 (1782), pp. 303–6, and
The British Magazine and Review
(3 vols, London, 1782–3), vol. 1, Oct. 1782, pp. 291–3. Gorton's
General Biographical Dictionary
gives the wrong date for Price's death, but states that Kirwan and the chemist Peter Woulfe were sent by the Royal Society to review his process.

9.
Price,
Some Experiments
, p. i.

10.
A different view of Banks can be found in John Gascoigne,
Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture
(Cambridge, 2003).

11.
The main contemporary printed source for his life is an autobiographical work,
A Memoir of the Late Rev. John Clowes, A.M., … Written by Himself
(Manchester, 1834). This is far less spiritually candid, however, than the two-volume manuscript entitled “A History of the Commencement & Progress in Great Britain of the Lord's New Church,” which is found in Chetham's Library, Ms. A.3.51–2. The biography by Theodore Compton,
The Life and Correspondence of the Reverend John Clowes, M.A.
(London, 1874), virtually sanctifies him.

12.
The changing religious situation in eighteenth-century Lancashire is discussed in Jan Albers, “Seeds of Contention: Society, Politics and the Church of England in Lancashire, 1688–1790,” PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1988, and Mark Smith,
Religion in Industrial Society: Oldham and Saddleworth, 1740–1865
(Oxford, 1994). A gloomier picture is presented in Michael Snape,
The Church of England in Industrializing Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in the Eighteenth Century
(Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2003).

13.
Thomas de Quincey,
Autobiographical Sketches
(Boston, 1853), pp. 156, 158.

14.
Chetham Library, Ms. A.3.51, ff. 14–15. For Clayton, see Richard Parkinson, ed.,
The Private Journals and Literary Remains of John Byrom
, Chetham Society, vols 23, 24, 40, 44 (2 vols in 4 parts, Manchester, 1854–7), vol. 1, part 2, p. 509 n. 1.

15.
Chetham's Library, Ms. A.3.51, ff. 49, 62–3.

16.
[John Clowes],
Dialogues, on the Nature, Design, and Evidence of the Theological Writings of the Hon. Emmanuel Swedenborg, with a Brief Account of Some of his Philosophical Works
(London, 1788), p. 227. The publisher of this volume was John Denis, son of James Lackington's Behmenist partner.

17.
John Clowes,
Sermons Preached at the Parish Church of St. John, Manchester
(London, 1790), Sermon 20, “Deformity,” p. 228.

18.
Compton,
Life and Correspondence of Clowes
, p. 62.

19.
[Clowes],
Dialogues
, p. 7.

20.
For examples,
ibid.
, p. 146; John Clowes,
The Caterpillars and the Mulberry Bush, or A True Picture of the Bad Passions and their Mischievious Effects
(Manchester, 1800), p. 10.

21.
Chetham's Library, Ms. A.3.52, f. 106; George Adams,
Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy
(5 vols, London, 1794), vol. 1, pp. 102, 281. In his
Essays on the Microscope
(London, 1787), p. xviii, a work printed by the Swedenborgian Robert Hindmarsh, Adams referred to two of Swedenborg's scientific tracts.

22.
Chetham's Library, Ms. A.3.52, ff. 56–7. The book was
On Science: Its Divine Origin, Operation, Use and End; Together with its Various Interesting Properties, Qualities and Characters
(Manchester, 1809).

23.
All of these materials, along with several biographical essays on Taylor, were published in Kathleen Raine and George Mills Harper, eds,
Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings
(Princeton, 1969).

24.
Thomas Taylor, “A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” in Raine and Harper, eds,
Thomas Taylor
, p. 374.

25.
Jason M. Kelly,
The Society of Dilettanti
(New Haven, Conn., 2009); Jonathan Scott,
The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collections of Greece and Rome
(New Haven, Conn., 2003); Goodwin,
Theosophical Enlightenment
, ch. 1; Michael Vickers, “Value and Simplicity: Eighteenth-Century Taste and the Study of Greek Vases,”
Past and Present
, 116 (1987), pp. 98–137, for Hancarville's influence on collecting; Peter Funnell, “The Symbolic Language of Antiquity,” in Michael Clark and Nicholas Penny, eds,
The Arrogant Connoisseur: Richard Payne Knight, 1751–1824
(Manchester, 1982), pp. 50–64.

26.
Pierre François Hugues, Baron d'Hancarville,
Recherches sur l'Origine, l'Esprit et les Progrès des Arts de la Grèce
(3 vols, London, 1785). Hancarville borrowed, without revealing it, some aspects of alchemical imagery, like “the philosophical egg,” symbol of chaos, from which “the world issued by means of the Generative Being”:
ibid.
, vol. 1, p. 176. Eager to establish his originality, he barely acknowledged a debt to previous theorists of the diffusion of symbols, like Athanasius Kircher or William Stukeley. Kircher is cited on minor matters in vol. 2, p. 300, and vol. 3, p. 154, while Stukeley appears in vol. 1, p. 458, in relation to the serpentine form of Avebury.

27.
Richard Payne Knight,
An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus
(London, 1786); B.F. Cook,
The Townley Marbles
(London, 1985).

28.
Taylor, “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. 345.

29.
Thomas Taylor, “The Hymns of Orpheus,” in Raine and Harper, eds,
Thomas Taylor the Platonist
, p. 173.

30.
Thomas Taylor, “The Platonic Philosopher's Creed,” in Raine and Harper, eds,
Thomas Taylor the Platonist
, pp. 440–1, 442–3, 444–5.

31.
Taylor, “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. 387.

32.
Taylor, “Platonic Philosopher's Creed,” p. 440.

33.
Flaxman has been curiously neglected by biographers. See Margaret Whinney, “Flaxman and the Eighteenth Century,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
, 19 (1956), pp. 269–82; Sarah Symmons, “The Spirit of Despair: Patronage, Primitivism and the Art of John Flaxman,”
The Burlington Magazine
, 117, 871 (1975), pp. 644–51; David Bindman, ed.,
John Flaxman
(London, 1979); David Irwin,
John Flaxman, 1755–1826: Sculptor, Illustrator, Designer
(New York, 1980); Scott,
Pleasures of Antiquity
, pp. 237–45.

34.
B.L., Add. Ms. 39781, ff. 129–30.

35.
John Flaxman,
Lectures on Sculpture
(London, 1829), pp. 331–2.

36.
W.S. Lewis, A. Dayle Wallace and Edwine M. Martz, eds,
Horace Walpole's Correspondence with the Countess of Ossory
(3 vols, New Haven, Conn., 1965), vol. 3, pp. 82–3.

37.
Goodwin,
Theosophical Enlightenment
, p. 133; “Anthony Pasquin” [John Williams], “Memoirs of the Royal Academicians,” in his
An Authentic History of Painting in Ireland
(London, 1794: reprint, London, 1970), p. 120.

38.
The only sustained study of Sibly's thought is Allen G. Debus, “Scientific Truth and Occult Tradition: The Medical World of Ebenezer Sibly (1751–1799),”
Medical History
, 26 (1982), pp. 259–78. Biographies of Ebenezer and Manoah Sibly are found in
ODNB
.

39.
George Mensforth,
The Young Student's Guide in Astrology
(London, 1785), pp. v, 17–18.

40.
Richard Phillips,
The Celestial Science of Astrology Vindicated
(London, 1785).

41.
The Astrologer's Magazine; and Philosophical Miscellany
(London, 1794). The successor to
The Conjuror's Magazine
, it ran for twelve monthly issues.

42.
For details on Sibly's life, I am indebted to Susan Sommers of St Vincent's College. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, pp. 112–17, printed in Christopher Walton,
Notes and Materials for an
Adequate Biography of … William Law
(London, 1854), pp. 595–6; Ebenezer Sibly,
An Elegy Sacred to the Memory of that Patron of Virtue, the Truly Admired and Pious John Till Adams, M.D. of Bristol
(Bristol, 1786); E. Ward, “Ebenezer Sibly,”
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
, 71 (1958), pp. 48–53; Jonathan Barry, “Piety and the Patient: Medicine and Religion in Eighteenth Century Bristol,” in Roy Porter, ed.,
Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society
(Cambridge, 1985), pp. 155, 171.

43.
Ebenezer Sibly,
A Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology
(London, 1788), pp. 1051–55. A Google search for the term “Sibly Chart” produced about ten thousand matches in November 2011.

44.
Sibly,
Celestial Science
, pp. 1059, 1117.

45.
Ibid.
, pp. 1060, 1082–3.

46.
Placidus de Titus,
A Collection of Thirty Remarkable Nativities, to Illustrate the Canons, and Prove the True Principles of Elementary Philosophy
, ed. and trans. M.S. Sibly (London, 1789), preface, p. 5. The list of publishers of this work may identify a third Sibly brother, named Edmund, as well as a mysterious “J. Sibly,” Manoah's partner, who was not his wife, Sarah. Manoah also published and added a preface to Claudius Ptolemy,
The Quadripartite; or, Four Books Concerning the Influences of the Stars
, ed. John Whalley and others (London, 1786).

47.
Manoah Sibly,
Twelve Sermons
(London, 1796).

48.
Sibly,
Celestial Science
, pp. 1093–5.

49.
Ebenezer Sibly,
The Medical Mirror or Treatise on the Impregnation of the Human Female
(London, [1796]), p. 75.

50.
Sibly,
Medical Mirror
, pp. 49–52.

51.
Sibly,
Culpeper's English Physician
, pp. 202–11; Sibly,
Celestial Science
, pp. 59, 63, 66; Ebenezer Sibly,
A Key to Physic, and the Occult Sciences
(London, 1794), pp. 22–8, 51–2.

52.
[Ebenezer Sibly],
An Universal System of Natural History
(London, [1794]), pp. 7–8. For racial thinking in this period, see Colin Kidd,
The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000
(Cambridge, 2006), ch. 4.

53.
Ebenezer Sibly,
Culpeper's English Physician; and Complete Herbal
(London, [1798]), pp. iii–iv, ix.

54.
Sibly,
Universal System
, p. 312.

55.
Ibid.
, pp. 52–9; Sibly,
Medical Mirror
, p. iii; Sibly,
Culpeper's English Physician
, p. 215.

56.
Sibly,
Culpeper's English Physician
, p. ix.

57.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 128, ff. 17–19, 27
^v
–37, 50
^v
–54; Francis Barrett,
The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; Being a Complete System of Occult Philosophy
(London, 1801), part 2, chs 34–46.

58.
John Parkins,
The Cabinet of Wealth, or The Temple of Wisdom
(Grantham, 1812), p. 6. Parkins was also the author of
The Universal Fortune-Teller; or, An Infallible Guide to the Secret and Hidden Decrees of Fate
(London, 1810). For his biography, see Owen Davies,
Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History
(London, 2007), pp. 73, 115–18, 140–3.

59.
John Worsdale,
Genethliacal Astrology
(2nd ed., Newark, 1798), pp. xvii, 72–3. Worsdale also published
A Collection of Remarkable Nativities, Calculated According to the Rules and Precepts of Claudius Ptolemy
(Newark, 1799), which indicates that he rejected the Copernican system.

60.
Worsdale,
Genethliacal Astrology
, p. 14.

61.
Ibid.
, pp. vii.

62.
Ibid.
, pp. 54–5.

63.
J.F.C. Harrison,
The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780–1850
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1979), p. 49.

64.
A Catalogue of the Very Curious, Extensive, and Valuable Library of Richard Cosway, Esq., R.A.
([London], [1821]), p. 43, lot 782.

65.
S. Bacstrom, “Erzählung einer Reise nach Spitzbergen im Jahr 1780,” in J.W. von Archenholz, ed.,
Minerva
, 2, 6 (1802), pp. 406–29.