A few profane Cavaliers might make his
name the burthen of their _malignant_ rhymes--a few of the more
scrupulous among the _Saints_ might keep aloof in sanctified
abhorrence of the 'Stygian sophister'--but the great majority of
the people lent a willing and reverential ear to his prophecies
and prognostications. Nothing was too high or too low--too
mighty or too insignificant, for the grasp of his genius. The
stars, his informants, were as communicative on the most trivial
as on the most important subjects. If a scheme was set on foot
to rescue the king, or to retrieve a stray trinket--to restore
the royal authority, or to make a frail damsel an honest
woman--to cure the nation of anarchy, or a lap-dog of a surfeit,
William Lilly was the oracle to be consulted. His _almanacks_
were spelled over in the tavern and quoted in the senate; they
nerved the arm of the soldier, and rounded the periods of the
orator. The fashionable beauty, dashing along in her calash from
St. James's or the Mall, and the prim, starched dame, from
Watling-street or Bucklersbury, with a staid foot-boy, in a
plush jerkin, plodding behind her--the reigning toast among 'the
men of wit about town,' and the leading groaner in a tabernacle
concert--glided alternately into the study of the trusty wizard,
and poured into his attentive ear strange tales of love, or
trade, or treason.
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