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neither, for he had his rut and I do believe the love of Ann Pakeman withall; moreover since that I had used his unguent I had come to learn the sensation of magic: There is a taste and savour in the air when that it is in use, a smell and a brightness. I only mentioned this but the once and that to Matthew Boys and Hugh Bishop, only to find that they them-selves never felt such a thing at all; and that was the strangest thing of all to me.
    In the meantime I did not cease to think about many things: how to construe or compose or make a new method for ringing that should be different from any before designed. How that I should make Catherine Alsop look on me with favour. How (and to this end I have made notes in another place) to work towards producing a book of changes and all the peals rang set down therein (the which is a matter closely mewed up with Imprimis); this mayhap I must have another write the book, for I have no great opinion of my prose. But to print it, when that I have mine own workshop (although that lieth some years in the future), to publish such a book and bring knowledge of the art to all those who would learn (littera scripta manet) 1 .
    So might Hermes Trismegistus in the ancient past have contemplated the dissemination of his alchemical art; so that now we see such as Roger Southwell using this same art, the art of ^gypt, whence come the Gypsies, for happiness, the which is surely the aim of every man.
    Another Roger there was once, Roger Bacon, and he had in his study a brazen Head that would tell a man true things an he asked it; and a man named Michael Scot, that both could fly, men say; and they say this too of Saint Adhelm, once Abbot of Malmesburie, but he was a papist.
    Also I observed my master, when that mine own tasks and duties allowed; choleric he ever was, of a fiery humour, and yet since that Roger first paid court to his daughter all that did seem quenched in him. Though I myself heard her say to him that she did indeed love Roger, still did he bear the semblance of a man unbelieving; but why he should seem so shrunken and old I never did know. However he retained his serpent’s tongue, but it was less of a venomous thing than lately.
    6 upright and tenacious (Odyssey)
    7 the written word is permanent
    Further persecution by the usurper; an old Knight, instiled Sir Henry Vane, is imprisoned on Isle of Wight for a book he published, only one of many sent to prison.
    Rec’d a letter from my brother Francis at Oxford, who states that his friend Richard Duckworth (A ringer of distinction, says Francis; but Francis thinks any man that can ring a plain course of Granser Bob is a very great Ringer) has made many notes for a book on the art, the which I found greatly strange because of mine own inclination in this matter. I determined to write back appraising Francis of this and mayhap one day to meet this Richard Duckworth; though while that I am a prentice printer in London and he a nascent Sir-John in Oxford such a meeting will be nigh impossible; unless like unto a magus I could fly thither.
    I do think that a book is a small miracle: in it is distilled wisdom of a man who is dead, or whom he that reads shall never know; but also it is of its self a wondrous thing; for as with changes, there exists an infinitum of faces of type, each shewing forth his own pattern and making his own music, if this be not too extravagant a fancy: what mysteries lie within the capabilities of bold type, or italic type; Roman, Gothic, Dutch and German; It was this, I do believe, which took my fancy as a mere Infant, for I do remember my Mother telling me that even before that I went to school and could read, I wished for naught better than to look upon my Father’s books; and when she most carefully shewed a page to me I would stare transfixed at nothing more than a line of type: I was a very helluo liberorum . 8
    My Father being a man of the cloth I am sure had hoped this to be an early manifestation of a