The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campell

I cannot help acknowledging, that a man of wisdom may at first thought, make such an objection; but reflection will presently retract it, and the same good sense that taught him to make an objection so well upon the first thought, will teach him, upon second thoughts, to acquiesce in the answer.

Infants may have, no doubt, the benefit of such an attending genius, as well as people more advanced in years; as may be seen in one of the instances, which is a very famous one, relating to the boy born in Prussia, who was attended by one constantly, from the time of his birth to his death. Besides, it is a mistake in the understanding to imagine, that death, which is the determination and end of life, is of more consequence to be known than the manner of regulating that life; for in reality, according to the right way of considering death, or the determination of a man's life, derives its importance from the steps which he took in the due regulation of it; and therefore, every, the least step proper to be taken for the due regulation of life, is of more consequence to be known than the death of a person, though this at first sight carries the face of significance, and the other nothing better than the look of a trifle. Marriage, for example, is a step in life of the utmost importance, whether we consider that estate with regard to this, or the next world. Death is but the finishing of one person, but marriage may be the introducing of many into the world with happiness; it is therefore a thing of more importance to be known beforehand, and consequently more worthy of the communication of a genius, to the man with whom he conversed. Posidonius tells us, that a certain Rhodian dying, nominated six of his equals, and said who should die first, who next, and so on, and the event answered the prediction; why, then, though some people are apt to make a jest of it, may not a man, by the intervention of his good genius, tell a woman that is to have six husbands, who she shall have first, who next, and so on, and the event answer the prediction? If men of learning may acquire such knowledge as to attain to extraordinary things by their ordinary faculties, why may not ordinary things be taught others in this extraordinary way? For will anybody say that it is easier for a man to accommodate himself to the knowledge of a demon or genius than for a demon or genius to accommodate himself to the knowledge of a man? Certain it is, indeed, that if this good genius, that induces a man with a prophetic kind of science, be anything resembling a good angel, the primary end of his being permitted to direct mankind must consist in things relating more to their welfare hereafter: yet I know not why they may not sometimes inspire, or openly direct them in human knowledge, and in things relating to human life, so they are of a good tendency; more especially since such a good inspiration may be a counterbalance to the bad knowledge which some have been inspired with by evil spirits. I would not be thought to go too far in a point of this nature, and have, therefore, though perhaps I could say much more if I followed entirely my own private opinion, and would venture to introduce it here, in order to communicate it to others, and make it a public one, said no more on this head than what divines generally teach.

But the most unexceptionable mistress, that teaches these things to be in nature, is experience. If we had very many people gifted this way, the extraordinary thing would have been become ordinary, and therefore I cannot help wondering that it should be so ordinary a thing for wise men themselves to wonder too much at things because they are extraordinary, and suspect them as frauds because they are uncommon.

There has scarce been any period of time in which some person of this prophetic class has not existed, and has not been consulted by the greatest of men, and their predictions found at the long run to come true; ignorant men always rise to their belief of them by experience, and the most learned men submit their great opinions to experience, but your men of middling talents, who make up their want of reason with bustling obstinacy and noisy contradiction, have been and still continue to be their own opposers, and without discovering the reason for what they say, they content themselves with having the laugh on their sides, and barely affirming without proving, that it is a kind of ideal juggle and intellectual legerdemain, by which these modern predictors impose things upon the eye of reason, as the corporeal eye is imposed upon by sleight of hand; but it is a strange thing that men of such quick reason cannot give us a sample of the frauds. Thus, I remember to have read, I cannot tell where, the story of some courtiers, who, when a great artist of legerdemain was to act before the King, pretended to be so quick-sighted, that nothing he did should escape their discovery, were left by his nimble fingers in the dark, and forced at last with blushes to own they had no better eyes than other people. In a word, if people will be led by suspicions and remote possibilities of fraud and contrivance of such men, all historical truth shall be ended, when it consists not with a man's private humour or prejudice to admit it. Now, therefore, to prove by experience and undeniable testimonies, that these kind of genii will submit to little offices, in order to bring men to greater good, I will give three or four curious passages that will set the reasonable reader at ease, and prepare him for reading the passages of Mr. Campbell's life with pleasure, and as a fine history of wonderful facts, that, though they seem to surpass belief, yet ought to have his credit.

What in nature can be more trivial than for a spirit to employ himself in knocking on a morning at a wainscot by the bed's-head of a man who got drunk over-night, according to the way that such things are ordinarily explained? And yet I shall give you such a relation of this, that not even the most devout and precise Presbyterian will offer to call in question. For Mr. Baxter, in his Historical Discourse of Apparitions, writes thus: —

There is now in London an understanding, sober, pious man, oft one of my hearers, who has an elder brother, a gentleman of considerable rank, who, having formerly seemed pious, of late years does often fall into the sin of drunkenness, he often lodges long together here in his brother's house; and whensoever he is drunk and has slept himself sober, something knocks at his bed's-head, as if one knocked on a wainscot; when they remove his bed it follows him; besides other loud noises, on other parts where he is, that all the house hears; they have often watched him, and kept his hands lest he should do it himself. His brother has often told it me, and brought his wife, a discreet woman, to attest it; who avers, moreover, that as she watched him, she has seen his shoes under the bed taken up, and nothing visible to touch them. They brought the man himself to me, and when we asked him how he dare sin again after such a warning, he had no excuse: but being persons of quality, for some special reason of worldly interest, I must not name him.

Two things are remarkable in this instance, says Mr. Baxter. First, what a powerful thing temptation and fleshly concupiscence is, and what a hardened heart sin brings men to; if one rose from the dead to warn such sinners, it would not of itself persuade them.

Secondly, says Mr. Baxter, it poses me to think what kind of spirit this is that has such a care of this man's soul, which makes me hope he will recover. Do good spirits dwell so near us, or are they sent on such messages? or is it his guardian angel? or is it the soul of some dead friend that suffers? and yet, retaining love to him, as Dives to his brethren, would have him saved? God yet keeps such things from us in the dark.

So far we have the authority of the renowned and famous Mr. Baxter, who makes this knocking of the spirit at the bed's-head, though what we commonly call frivolous, an important errand.

Another relation of this kind was sent to Mr. John Beaumont, whom I myself personally know, and which he has inserted in his Account of Genii, or Familiar Spirits, in a letter by an ingenious and learned clergyman of Wiltshire, who had given him the relation likewise before, by word of mouth. It is as follows: —

Near eighty years since, in the parish of Wilcot, which is by Devizes, in the vicar's house, there was heard for a considerable time the sound of a bell constantly tolling every night. The occasion was this: A debauched person who lived in the parish came one night very late and demanded the keys of the church of the vicar, that he might ring a peal, which the vicar refused to let him have, alleging the unseasonableness of the time, and that he should, by granting his desires, give a disturbance to Sir George Wroughton and his family, whose house adjoined the churchyard. Upon this refusal, the fellow went away in a rage, threatening to be revenged of the vicar, and going some time after to Devizes, met with one Cantle or Cantlow, a person noted in those days for a wizard, and he tells him how the vicar had served him, and begs his help to be even with him. The reply Cantle made him was this; Does he not love ringing? he shall have enough of it: and from that time a bell began to toll in his house, and continued so to do till Cantle's death, who confessed at Fisherton gaol, in Sarum, where he was confined by King James during his life, that he caused that sound, and that it should be heard in that place during life. The thing was so notorious that persons came from all parts to hear it; and King James sent a gentleman from London on purpose to give him satisfaction concerning the truth of the report. Mr. Beaumont had likewise this story, as he tells, from the mouth of Sir George Wroughton's own son; with this remarkable circumstance, that if any in the house put their heads out of the window they could not hear the sound, but heard it immediately again as soon as they stood in the room.

The reader here sees that good and bad genii exercise themselves upon very little functions, knocking at bed's-heads, and ringing of bells. For proof of this we have the testimonies of two divines, of a man of quality and probity, and the same satisfaction that a learned king had, who sent to inquire into the matter; and after this there can be, I think, no room for doubt.

But to carry the point still nearer home; inasmuch as I know some will leave no stone unturned to make the extraordinary actions which the person whose life I write has performed, appear impostures, and inasmuch as for this end they may say, that though many people may have been gifted in this extraordinary manner, yet not so as to make a profession of it, and therefore, from thence they take their suspicions, I shall in this place, to remove every nicest scruple they can have touching this affair, give the reader one instance of this kind likewise, before I proceed with my history.

There lived not many years since a very aged gentlewoman in London, in Water-lane, by Fleet-street, whose name was Pight, who was endowed with a prophetic spirit; and the ingenious Mr. Beaumont, whom I personally knew, and who had a familiar genius himself, gives the world this account of her. She was very well known, says he, to many persons of my acquaintance now living in London. Among others, a gentleman, whose candour I can no way suspect, has told me, that he often resorted to her as to an oracle; and that as soon as he came into her presence, she would usually tell him, that she knew what he was coming for, for that she had seen his spirit for some time before; and without his saying anything to her, she would commonly tell him what the business was which he came to consult her about, and what the event of it would be; which he always found to fall out as she said, and many other persons now living can testify the like experience of her as to themselves.

Before I conclude this chapter, I am willing to give the public one farther little history of the like kind with the foregoing ones, with this only difference, that if it be valued according to the worth the world has always attributed to the very ingenious person whom it concerns, it will be far the most famous of them all, and therefore fittest to finish this chapter, and to crown this part of the work, in which we are showing that persons have had a perception of genii or spirits, not visible at the same time to others.

The famous Torquatus Tasso, Prince of the Italian poets, and scarce inferior to the immortal Virgil himself, and who seems to enjoy the intermingled gifts of the most accurate judgment of this Latin poet, and the more fertile and copious invention and fancy of the Greek one, Homer, strongly asserted his own experience in this kind. His life was written and published in French, anno 1692, by D.C.D.D.V. who, in his preface, tells us, that in what he writ he has followed chiefly the history given us in Italian by John Baptista Manso, a Neapolitan gentleman, who had been a very intimate friend to Tasso. In his life, among other things, he acquaints us that Tasso was naturally of that melancholic temperament, which has always made the greatest men, and that this temperament being aggravated by many hardships he had undergone, it made him sometimes beside himself, and that those melancholic vapours being despatched, he came again to himself, like those that return from fits of the falling sickness, his spirit being as free as before. That, near his latter end, he retired from the city of Naples, to his friend Manso, at Bisaccia, a small town in the kingdom of Naples, where Manso had a considerable estate, and passed an autumn there in the diversions of the season.

And here the French author gives us an account of Tasso's sensible perception of a genius, as follows: – As after these amusements, he usually retired to his chamber, to entertain himself there with his friend Manso, the latter had the opportunity to inquire into one of the most singular effects of Tasso's melancholy, of this heroic melancholy, as I may call it, which raised and brightened his spirit, so far it was from depressing or rendering it obscure; and which, among the ancients, would have reasonably caused them to have ascribed a familiar demon to him, as to Socrates. They were often in a warm debate concerning this spirit, with which Tasso pretended to have so free a communication. I am too much your friend, said Manso to him one day, not to let you know what the world thinks of you concerning this thing, and what I think of it myself. Is it possible, that being enlightened as you are, you should be fallen into so great a weakness as to think you have a familiar spirit; and will you give your enemies that advantage, to be able to prove by your own acknowledgment, what they have already published to the world? You know, they say, you did not publish your Dialogue of the Messenger, as a fiction; but you would have men believe that the spirit which you make to speak there, was a real and true spirit; hence men have drawn this injurious consequence, that your studies have embroiled your imagination, so that there is made in it a confused mixture of the fictions of the poets, the inventions of the philosophers, and the doctrine of religion.

I am not ignorant, answered Tasso, of all that is spread abroad in the world on account of my Dialogue; I have taken care divers times to disabuse my friends, both by letter and word of mouth: I prevented even the malignity of my enemies, as you know at the time I published my Dialogue. Men could not be ignorant that I composed it for the young Prince of Mantua, to whom I would explain after an agreeable manner, the principal mysteries of the Platonic philosophy. It was at Mantua itself, after my second flight from Ferrara, that I formed the idea of it, and I committed it to paper a little after my unfortunate return. I addressed it to this prince, and all men might have read in the epistle dedicatory, the protestation I there make, that this dialogue, being written according to the doctrine of the Platonics, which is not always conformable to revealed truths, men must not confound what I expose there as a philosopher, with what I believe as a Christian. This distinction is by so much the more reasonable, that at that time nothing extraordinary had happened to me, and I spake not of any apparition. This can be attested by all those with whom I lodged, or whom frequented in this voyage; and therefore there is no reason for confounding the fiction of my Dialogue with what has happened to me since. I am persuaded of all you say to me, replied Manso; but truly I cannot be of what you believe, at present, concerning yourself. Will you imagine that you are in commerce with a spirit? And I ask you, of what order is that spirit? Shall we place him in the number of the rebels, whom their pride precipitated into the abyss? or of the intelligences, who continued firm in faith and submission to their creator? For there is no mean to take in the true religion, and we must not fall into the extravagances of the gnomes and sylphs of the cabalists.

Now the spirit in question cannot be a demon: you own that instead of inspiring you anything contrary to piety and religion, he often fortifies in you the maxims of Christianity: he strengthens your faith by profound reasonings, and has the same respect with you for sacred names and things. Neither can you say that it is an angel; for though you have always led a regular life, and far from all dissoluteness; though for some years past you have applied yourself, after a particular manner, to the duties of a true Christian, you will agree with me, that these sorts of favours are not common; that a man must have attained to a high degree of sanctity, and not be far from the pureness of celestial spirits, to merit a familiar converse, and bear a harmony with them. Believe me, there is nothing in all these discourses which you imagine you have with this spirit. You know, better than any man, those symptoms which the black humours wherewith you are tormented causes in you. Your vapours are the source of your visions, and yourself would not judge otherwise of another person to whom a like thing should happen; and you will come to this in your own respect also, if you will make a mature reflection, and apply yourself to blot out, by an effort of reason, these imaginations which the violence of your evil effect causes in you. You may have reason, replied Tasso, to think so of the things that pass in me; but as to myself, who have a sensible perception of them, I am forced to reason after another manner. If it were true that the spirit did not show himself to me, but in the violent assault of my vapours; if he offered to my imagination but wandering and confused species, without connection or due sequel; if he used to me frivolous reasonings, which ended in nothing; or if having begun some solid reasoning he broke it off on a sudden, and left me in darkness, I should believe with you, that all things that pass are but mere dreams and phantoms; but it is quite otherwise. This spirit is a spirit of truth and reason, and of a truth so distinct, of a reason so sublime, that he raises me often to knowledges that are above all my reasonings, though they appear to me no less clear; that he teaches me things which, in my most profound meditations, never came into my spirit, and which I never heard of any man, nor read in any book. This spirit, therefore, is somewhat of real; of whatsoever order he be, I hear him and see him, nevertheless for its being impossible for me to comprehend and define him. Manso did not yield to these facts, which Tasso would have passed for proofs; he pressed him with new questions, which were not without answers. Since you will not believe me on my word, said Tasso to him another day, after having well disputed, I must convince you by your own eyes, that these things are not pure imaginations: and the next day, conversing together in the same chamber, Manso perceived that, on a sudden, he fixed his eyes towards the window, and that he stood, as it were, immoveable; he called to him and jogged him many times, but instead of answering him; See there the spirit, says Tasso, at last, that has been pleased to come and visit me, and to entertain himself with me; look on him, and you will acknowledge the truth of what I say.

Manso, somewhat surprised, cast his eyes towards the place he showed him, and perceived nothing but the rays of the sun passing through the glass, nor did he see anything in all the chamber; though he cast his eyes round it with curiosity, and he desired him to show him the spirit, which he looked for in vain, while he heard Tasso speak with much vehemency. He declares in a letter which he writ concerning this to the Admiral of Naples, that he really heard no other voice but Tasso's own; but they were sometimes questions made by him to the pretended spirit, sometimes answers that he made to the pretended questions of the spirit, and which were couched in such admirable terms, so efficacious, concerning subjects so elevated, and so extraordinary, that he was ravished with admiration, and dared not to interrupt him. He hearkened, therefore, attentively, and being quite beside himself at this mysterious conversation, which ended at last by a recess of the spirit, as he found by the last words of Tasso; after which, Tasso, turning himself to him, Well, said he, are your doubts at last dissipated? On the contrary, answered Manso, I am more embroiled than ever; I have truly heard wonderful things; but you have not showed me what you promised me. You have seen and heard, resumed Tasso, perhaps more than – he stopped here; and Manso, who could not recover himself of his surprise, and had his head filled with the ideas of this extraordinary entertainment, found himself not in a condition to press him farther. Meanwhile he engaged himself not to speak a word to any man of these things he had heard, with a design to make them public, though he should have liberty granted him. They had many other conversations concerning this matter, after which Manso owned he was brought to that pass, that he knew not what to think or say, only, that if it were a weakness in his friend to believe these visions, he much feared it would prove contagious to him, and that he should become at last as credulous as himself.

Dr. Beaumont, who is still living, and with whom I have had formerly some acquaintance myself, has set down, among the others, this relation at large concerning Tasso, and gives this reason for it: Because, says the doctor, I think it contains a sufficient answer to what many learned friends have said to myself on the like occasion.

Perhaps it may not be ungrateful to the reader, if I subjoin here the short eulogium writ on Tasso, by the famous Thuanas, which is as follows: —

Torquatus Tasso died about the forty-fifth year of his age, a man of a wonderful and prodigious wit, who was seized with an incurable fury in his youth, when he lived at the court of Ferrara, and nevertheless, in lucid intervals, he writ many things both in verse and prose, with so much judgment, elegancy, and extreme correctness of style, that he turned at length that pity which many men had conceived for him, into an amazement; while by that fury, which, in others, makes their minds outrageous or dulls them, after it was over, his understanding became as it were more purified, more ready in inventing things, more acute in aptly disposing them after they were invented, and more copious in adorning them with choice words and weight of sentences; and that which a man of the soundest sense would scarce excogitate at his leisure, with the greatest labour and care imaginable, he, after a violent agitation of the mind set beside itself, naturally performed with a wonderful felicity, so that he did not seem struck with an alienation of mind, but with a divine fury. He that knows not these things, which all men know that have been in Italy, and concerning which himself sometimes complains, though modestly, in his writings; let him read his divine works, and he must necessarily conclude, either that I speak of another man than Tasso, or that these things were written by another man than Tasso.

After having given my readers so many memorable accounts concerning the perception men have had in all ages, and still continue to have of genii or familiar spirits, by all the senses, as seeing, hearing, &c., which accounts have been attested by men of the greatest learning and quality, if any of them still remain dissatisfied, I am contented, and desire them, for their punishment, to lay down the book before they arrive at the more pleasant parts of it, which are yet to come, and not to read one tittle farther. These unbelieving gentlemen shall then be at liberty, according as their different spirits dictate, to ridicule me in the same manner as many more learned and greater men than I have been satirized, before my time, by persons of a like infidel temper, who would fain pass incredulity upon the world as wisdom; and they may, with all the freedom in nature, bestow upon me those merry appellations which, I very well know such extraordinary freethinkers imagine to belong of right, to any author, that either believes himself, or would possess the world with an opinion and belief, that there is such a thing as the holding commerce and conversation in this habitable world with genii, and familiar spirits. I shall only first tell them all I have to say to terminate the dispute between them and me.

Those who, to give themselves the air and appearance of men of solid wisdom and gravity, load other men, who believe in spirits, with the titles of being men of folly, levity, or melancholy, are desired to learn, that the same folly, as they are pleased to term it, of opinion, is to be found in the greatest men of learning that ever existed in the universe. Let them, in order to be convinced of this, read Apuleius's book, de deo Socrat.; Censorinus's book de die Nat. c. 3; Porphyrius, in his book de Abstinentia; Agrippa, in his Treatise de Occult. Phil. 1. 3, c. 22, and also c. 21; Natalis comes in his Myth. 1. 4, c. 3; Maraviglia, in his Pseudomantia. Dissertation. 9 and 11, and Animadversion. 10; Plato in his Timœus et Cratylus; Ammianus Marcellinus's History, book 21; Hieronimus Cardanus in his book de Vita Propria, c. 47; the great Kircher, in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, vol. iii. p. 474; Pausanius, in Cliac. Poster.; that immortal orator, Cicero, lib. i. de Divinatione; lib. ii. de Natura Deorum; the Histoire Prodigieuse, written by Pere Arnault; and a book entituled Lux e Tenebris, which is a collection of modern visions and prophecies in Germany by several persons, translated into Latin, by Jo. Amos. Comenius, printed at Amsterdam, 1655. And if they will be at the pains of having due recourse to these quotations, they will find that all these men, whose learning is unquestionable, and most of whom have been in a firm and undisputed possession of fame for many centuries, have all unanimously agreed in this opinion, how foolish soever they may think it, that there ever was and ever would be a communication held between some select men and genii, or familiar spirits. I must therefore desire their pardon, if I rejoice to see them remain wise by themselves, and that I continue to be esteemed by them a fool among so much good company.

Others out of a mere contempt of religion, or cowardly, for fear of being thought pusillanimous by men, turn bravos to Heaven, and laugh at every notion of spirits as imbibed from the nurse or imposed upon us by priests, and may top these lines upon us with an elegant and a convincing magisterial sneer, though the divine Socrates was of our opinion, and even experienced it to be true, having a genius himself: —

 
The priests but finish what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
 

These bring into my mind a saying of Sir Roger L'Estrange on Seneca, which I must apply to Socrates; I join in opinion with a Christian heathen, while they remain heathen Christians.

The third sort, out of a pretended veneration to religion and divinity, may call me superstitious and chimerical. To them I answer, I will continue chimerical and superstitious with St. Austin; who gives the same opinion in his Civitate Dei with Ludovicus Vives; let them be solider and more religious divines than St. Austin in disowning it. Thus I bid these austere critics heartily farewell; but let my better-natured readers go on and find a new example of this conversation being held with the genii by our Duncan Campbell.