gave him some uneasiness. But usually, with regard to both topics, his
doubts do not go beyond a cautious hint of scepticism tinged with humour.
He was fundamentally a religious man, and where he touches on the great
issues of life, and the relation of man to his Maker, it is in a tone of
deep solemnity. But he loves to discourse in a learned fashion
on the influence of the stars. 'Charles the 2d,' he says, 'fell with few or
no prognosticks or omens praeceeding his death, unlesse we recur to the
comet of 1680, which is remote, or to the strange fisches mentioned, supra
page 72, or the vision of blew bonnets, page 74,[27] but these are all
conjecturall: vide, supra Holwell's prophecies in his Catastrophe Mundi,'
and so on. In 1683 'we were allarumed with ane strange conjunction was to
befall in it of 2 planets, Saturn and Jupiter in Leo.... Our winter was
rather like a spring for mildnes. If it be to be ascrybed to this
conjunction I know not.' In the case of comets there was less room for
scepticism. In December 1680, 'a formidable comet appeared at Edinburgh.'
In discoursing on this comet he remarks that Dr. Bainbridge observed the
comet of 1618 'to be verticall to London, and to passe over it in the
morning, so it gave England and Scotland in their civill wars a sad wype
with its taill. They seldom shine in wain, though they proceed from
exhalations and other natural causes.'

[26] Mr. Andrew Lang has pointed out to me that Lauder's remarks on the
identity of the popular legends in France and Scotland (_Journal_,
p. 83) are a very early instance of this observation, now
recognised to be generally applicable.

[27] P. 74, i.e. of his MS. For the vision of blue bonnets, compare
H.O., p. 142, and Wodrow's _History_, iv. 180.

[Sidenote: H.N. 198.]