"The sun itself is dark
And silent as the moon
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."

[Footnote 1: Take, as an instance, the children of Mr. Throgmorton, of
Warbois, for bewitching whom, Mother Samuels, her husband, and
daughter, suffered in 1593. No veteran professors "in the art of
ingeniously tormenting" could have administered the question with more
consummate skill than these little incarnate fiends, till the poor old
woman was actually induced, from their confident asseverations and
plausible counterfeiting, to believe at last that she had been a witch
all her life without knowing it. She made a confession, following the
story which they had prompted, on their assurances that it was the
only means to restore them, and then was hanged upon that confession,
to which she adhered on the scaffold. Few tracts present a more vivid
picture of manners than that in which the account of this case of
witchcraft is contained. It is perhaps the rarest of the English
tracts relating to witchcraft, and is entitled "The most strange and
admirable Discoverie of the three Witches of Warboys, arraigned,
convicted, and executed at the last Assizes at Huntingdon, for the
bewitching of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton, Esquire, and
divers other persons with sundrie Devilish and grievous torments. And
also for the bewitching to Death of the Lady Crumwell, the like hath
not been heard of in this age. London, Printed by the Widdowe Orwin
for Thomas Man and John Winnington, and are to be sold in Paternoster
Rowe at the Signe of the Talbot." 1593, 4to. My copy was Brand's, and
formed Lot 8224 in his Sale Catalogue.]

We find the illustrious author of the Novum Organon sacrificing to
courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the