I ORACLES NOSTRADAMUS 3> JOHN M. KELLY LIBDADY Donated by The Redemptorists of the Toronto Province from the Library Collection of Holy Redeemer College, Windsor University of St. Michael's College, Toronto "QLr REQEEhi uhiff^fini WINDSOR Oracles of NostradaiMus TR^w CHAS. A. WARD. " Gentem quidem nullam video, ncque tarn humanam atque doctam, neque tam immanctn tamque barbaram, qua: non —significan futura, et h quibusdam intelligi prxdicique posac censcftt." CiCERo. /V Pii/inatione, i. 2. LONDON : The Leadenhall Prefs, E.C. Sim/kin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent <&• Co., Ltd: Neiv York : Scribmr & Welford, 74s &= 74S, Broadway. (.4 ft rights reserved.) "Quorum poientia intellectualis immediate a Deo agitata dicuntur voluntas heroes at creditur, prophetos ; quorum ; quorum intellectus et voluntas censetur agitata a potentiis invisibilibus dependentibus, appellantur magi." — Christ. Thomasius, in Brumk, Hist. Phil. v. !;i2. THE LEADENHALL PRESS, LO.-^DON, E.C. (T. 4543) ' Tu te mocques aussi des prophetes que Dieu Choisit en tes enfants et les fait au milieu De ton sein apparoitre, afin de te predire Ton ntaVieur d vcnir ; mats tu ti^enfais qui rire. Ou soil que le grand Dieu ['immense eternite Ait de Nostradamus I'enthousiasme excite, Ou soit que le demon bon ou mauvais Tagite . Comme un oracle antique, il a de mainte annee " Predit la plus grand part de nostre destinee. RoNSARD, To Nostradamus. i'AT^ TO MY MOTHER. OiSky 4v avBpwwottrt warphs Kol fivrpits &fifivov 'EirAero, rots iffiTj, Ki'pce, fitfjLTjXe Si'kjj- Theocnis, p. i6, ed. 1766. " But higher far my proud pretensions rise,— The son of parents passed into the skies." CowpER^On My Mother's Picture, line 110. IP THERE CAN BE ANYTHING IN A BOOK LIKB THIS WORTHV OP DEDICATION TO A BEING SO NOBLE AS THOU IN LIFE WERT EVER. A CEINC NOW MORE ENNOBLED STILL DV THE HEAVEN- BLEACHED RAIMfNT OF IMMORTALITY lUT ON; TO THEE, PURE SOUL SERENE ! TO THEE DOES THY STILL LOVING SON, EARTH-HAMMERED, DEDI- CATE THIS THE BEST LABOUR OP HIS HEART AND HEAD AND YEARS* THE BEST OF IT IS THINE INDEED already; AND WERE THE REST WORSE HARVESTED THAN TERHAPS IT IS. —MORTALITY BEING ALLOWED FOR DULY,—THY SOUL RECEIVING MUST BE MUCH CHANCED BY EXALTATION, IF QUBEN-LIKE, IT CANNOT MAKE A SORRY LOVE- GIFT RICH BY GOLDEN WELCOME GIVEN IT. IF THINGS OP KITH BE KIN, GOD WILLING, WE SHALL MEET AGAIN ERE LONG. TILL WHEN, FROM THIS BARE HEATH TERRENE ANU HOME- LESS, I SPEED THE WORD ADIEU- DEAR ONE I FOR A LITTLE WHILE ADIEU. THY SON. C. A. W. ''%^. THREE PROPHECIES OF OLD TIME. Thai Troy should triumph in Rome— Nvf 8c St^ Alvfiaa ^it; Tpaitiratv ava^fi, Kcu iraidwy ircuSfSf to/ Kty ^i^T&nKrBi yivuvrai. Iliad, XX. 306. That America should be discovered — " Venient annis Sxcula seris, quibus Oceanus Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens Pateat Tellus, Tiphysque novos Delegat orbes ; nee sit terris Ultima Thule." Seneca. French Revolution, 1788-89, predicted in loih Century. " Des le X' siecle, Albumasar avait calcule que I'annee mil stpt lent quatre-vingt-neuf serait feconde en revolutions sociales, a cause de I'une des grandes conjonctions de Satume. L'astrologie est vanile, tout ce vous voudrez mais enfin voila erreur, mensonge, que ; une prediction d'une authenticite irrecusable."—.\LBUmasar, De Magiiis Conjunctionibus Tract, ii.. Different. 8. Vide MloNfe, />/</. des Prophities, ii. 339. fRANSFERfttU PREFACE. This is no doubt a strange book. An attempt to gather a meaning out of a few of the involved, crabbed, and mystical quatrains of the great seer of I'Vance, the greatest perhaps that the world has ever seen, must of necessity be strange. My treatment, too, may possibly seem to many no less strange than the subject-matter itself I will speak specially as to this latter point towards the close of the preface. In last December, treating upon Nostradamus in \.\\c'Gentleinan's jMaga::iiu; I had occasion to remark that every honest man of awakened powers is a kind of prophet, and has to do with the future, or eternity, as it is usually styled. Since then I have come upon the same idea in the writings of Philo Judaeus. He thinks that the Scriptures testify in some sort that every good man is a prophet : " For a prophet says nothing of his own, but everjthing that is one else and it is he says strange, and prompted by some ; not lawful for a wicked man to be an interpreter of God, as also said but this no wicked man can be properly to be inspired ; VI II PREFACE. statement is only appropriate to the wise man alone, since lie alone is a sounding instrument of God's voice."— PHILO,/^«r of Divine Things, § 52, Bohn, ii. 146. Again, at page 32 of this book, it will be seen that I have described the faculty of anticipating the future, as a thing so remarkably developed in Nostradamus, a being, if once we admit its existence in him, per- that ceptive endowment of the whole human race, must be classified as a sixth sense. I have since found, with no little delight, that Coleridge, in his 'Table Talk" (ed. 1836, p. 19), designated such " faculty as an inner sense," for, speaking of ghosts and dreams, he says ; " It Is impossible to say whether an inner sense does not but which really exist in the mind, seldom developed, indeed, may have a power of presentiment. All the external senses in the mind the can see an have their correspondents ; eye there not object before it is distinctly apprehended ; why may be a corresponding power in the soul ? The power of prophecy of might have been merely a spiritual excitation this dormant • faculty." * This noble and enlarged thought is worthy of Coleridge, who is the greatest thinker of our century, whether you take him as poet or philosopher. Nobody has yet claimed for him the pre-eminence which, I believe, to be his. The peculiar, nay, unique frailties of the man have blinded the men of his own time to the super-eminent, intellectual, practical, and imaginative endowments with wl ich he was so affluently furnished. By the middle of next centurj-, some hundred or so years from his death, the fact will have dawned upon the world, if not before. " It will then be recognized that such a personality as his, was a great birth of time," and to be registered as such in the death- less calendar of genius. Saint, seer, and sage was that man. Not "spoilt in the making," as the witty Lamb put it, with all PREFACE. IX In the matter of prophecy, Photius says, in his " Amphilochia," that prophecy is by no means the lambent malice of a friend jocose. We must admit, of course, some damage that hindered general currency, as also the attainment of such now worthless cash-results as fell to beings distinctly inferior to himself, such as Hyron, Southcy, them to Wordsworth, Moore, great as some estimate be ; and this failure shut Coleridge out from social success,—that success which most of us so ignorantly and greedily covet here, because the chief of it makes the present comfortable. But reason, any shortcoming hurtful to success, that may be observable in Coleridge, no douin arose from his being far too preat to be adequately measured by any of his fellow-men. Many of them were, it is true, highly capable men as the world goes. Even beside Carlyle, however, who has disparaged him, when placed him, dwarfs to a man of Lilliput. We have to bear in mind always that excellent remark of La Cruy^re, "Celui qui ne est celui est prdvoit rien, souvent dupe ; qui prdvoit trop, toujours malheureux." This is true of all prophets, and especially true of Coleridge. But, another thing there is that helps to diminish Coleridge in the general estimation. He has not completed work enough, in well set and fixed form, for posterity to be quite able to render him adequate, that is to say, resplendent justice. His unex- ampled conversational gifts have somewhat barred the way to a due appreciation of his equally unexampled literary potenti- alities. His conversational aptitudes have perished in the moment of their triumphant display. Being without record in this respect, he sufters precisely as the greatest actor does. Tr'umphs of the table and the salon are like the triumphs of the stage, we can only revive them in spirit, on the basis of some felicitously appreciative sentence, chance embalmed in print, that some competent contemporary has ejaculated. 1, for instance, know the overwhelming power of Kean only through my mother, and the burning phrases left behind by Byron and Coleridge. But the next generation can have no cognizance of him beyond those phrases. It is for this precise reason 1 indite so long a note as this on Coleridge, out of the pure respect 1 bear X PREFACE. necessarily connected with virtue : for that Herod pre-announced, as it were, that the Gentile magi, Judaea, and the world were about to recognize Christ for King, and so he desired to make away with him. In this way he played the part of prophet to the whole human race. Caiaphas, he thinks, was not conscious of what he said ; in the mania of a desire to kill, his lips prophesied that it was right that one should die to save the whole world. " Let his blood be upon us and upon our children," is a foreboding instinct of the same description. In the council of " the Pharisees (John xi.