class="i0">Who did the saintship sever
From the opinion; this fails, that shall never,
Chymist of Truth and Gospel;"—

are, also, evidently Webster's, and their quality is not such as to make us unreasonably impatient for any further manifestations of his poetical skill. In the year 1654 he published another tract of singular interest and curiosity, in which he attacks the Universities and the received system of education there, always with vigour and various learning, and frequently with success. It is entitled "Academiarum Examen, or the Examination of Academies; wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method, and customes of academick and scholastic learning, and the insufficiency thereof discovered and laid open; as also some expedients proposed for the reforming of schools, and the perfecting and promoting of all kind of science; offered to the judgment of all those that love the proficiencie of arts and sciences and the advancement of learning. By Jo. Webster. In moribus et institutis academiarum, collegiorum et similium conventium quo ad doctorum hominum sedes et operas mutuas destinata sunt, omnia progressui scientiarum in ulterius adversa inveniri. Franc. Bacon de Verulamio lib. de cogitat. et vis. pag. mihi. 14. London: Printed for Giles Calvert, and are to be sold at the sign of the Black Spread-Eagle, at the west end of Paul's. 1654." 4to. In this tract, which, like some other attacks upon the seats of learning, displays more power in objection than in substitution, in pulling down than in building up again, he shews the same fondness for the philosophers of the Hermetic school, for Paracelsus, Dee, Fludd and Van Helmont, and the same adhesion to planetary sigils, astrology, and the doctrine of sympathies and primæval signatures, which is perceptible in the deliberate performance of his old age. Of himself he observes: "I owe little to the advantages of those things called the goods of fortune, but most (next under the goodness of God) to industry: however, I am a free born Englishman, a citizen of the world and a seeker of knowledge, and am willing to teach what I know, and learn what I know not." No one can read the Academiarum Examen without feeling that it is the production of a vigorous and powerful mind, which had "tasted," and that not scantily, of the "sweet fruit of far fetched and dear bought science." Yet it still remains a literary problem rather difficult of solution, how a performance so clear, well digested, and rational, could proceed, and that contemporaneously, from the same author as the cloudy and fanatical "Judgment Set and Books Opened." On behalf of the Universities, answerers started up in the persons of Ward and Wilkins, both afterwards bishops, and the part taken by the first of them in the controversy was considered of sufficient importance to form matter of commemoration in his monumental inscription. Two opponents so famous, might almost seem to threaten extinction to one, of whom it could only be said, that he had been an obscure country schoolmaster, and whose acquirements, whatever they were, were mainly the result of his own unassisted study. In the joint answer, the title of which is "Vindiciæ Academiarum, containing some briefe animadversions upon Mr. Webster's book entitled the 'Examination of Academies,' together with an appendix concerning what Mr. Hobbes and Mr. Dell have published in this argument, Oxford, 1654," 4to., there is no want of bitterness nor of controversial skill, but though, particularly in the limited arena of the prescribed course of academical study, the knowledge displayed in it is more exact, there is neither visible in it the same power of mind, nor the same breadth of views, nor even the same variety of learning, as is conspicuous in the original tract. This, with the two fanatical pieces which Webster published contemporaneously with it, were entirely unknown to his biographer, Dr. Whitaker, who has ceded him a place amongst the distinguished natives and residents of the parish of Whalley, in the full confidence "that there is no puritanical taint in his writings, and that his taste had evidently been formed upon better models.[27]" Had these early theological and literary delinquencies of the physician of Clitheroe been communicated to his historian, it may be questioned whether the portals of his provincial temple of fame would have opened to receive so heinous a transgressor. But Dr. Whitaker's deduction would have been perhaps perfectly warrantable, had Webster left no remains but his History of Metals, and Displaying of Witchcraft—so little do an author's latest works afford a clue to the character of his earliest. From 1654 to 1671, when he published his History of Metals, little is known of Webster's course of life. He appears to have retired into the country and devoted himself to medical practice and study, and to have taken up his residence in or near Clitheroe. He complains, that in the year 1658 all his books and papers were taken from him, an abstraction which, so far as his manuscripts are concerned, posterity is not called upon to lament, if they all resembled his Judgment Set and Books Opened. But his capacious and acute understanding was gradually unfolding new resources, supplying the defects, and overcoming the disadvantages of his imperfect education and desultory and irregular studies, while his matured and enlightened judgment had abandoned and discarded the fanatical pravities and erroneous tenets, which his ardent enthusiasm had too hastily imbibed. When he again became a candidate for the honours of authorship, it was evident that he knew well how to apply those quarries of learning into which, during his long recess, he had been digging so indefatigably, to furnish materials for solid and durable structures, rising in honourable and gratifying contrast to the fabrics which had preceded them. In 1671 came forth his "Metallographia, or History of Metals,"[28] in which all that recondite learning and extensive observation could bring together, on a subject which experiment had scarcely yet placed upon a rational basis, is collected. He styles himself on the Title page, "Practitioner in Physic and Chirurgery." In 1677, he published his great work. Its Title is "The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft. Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors. And Divers persons under a passive Delusion of Melancholy and Fancy. But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, Or that he sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats, Dogs, raise Tempests, or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled, the Existence of Angels and Spirits, the truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sydereal Spirits, the force of Charms and Philters; with other abstruse matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic. Falsæ etenim opiniones Hominum præoccupantes, non solum surdos, sed et cæcos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quæ aliis perspicua apparent. Galen, lib. 8. de Comp. Med. London, Printed by J.M. and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London. 1677," (fol.) In this memorable book he exhausts the subject, as far as it is possible to do so, by powerful