Guy Mannering | Page 5

the intervention, as it were,
of some malevolent being, and who was at last to come off victorious
from the fearful struggle. In short, something was meditated upon a
plan resembling the imaginative tale of Sintram and his Companions,
by Mons. le Baron de la Motte Fouque, although, if it then existed, the
author had not seen it.
The scheme projected may be traced in the three or four first chapters
of the work; but farther consideration induced the author to lay his
purpose aside. It appeared, on mature consideration, that astrology,
though its influence was once received and admitted by Bacon himself,
does not now retain influence over the general mind sufficient even to
constitute the mainspring of a romance. Besides, it occurred that to do
justice to such a subject would have required not only more talent than
the Author could be conscious of possessing, but also involved
doctrines and discussions of a nature too serious for his purpose and for
the character of the narrative. In changing his plan, however, which
was done in the course of printing, the early sheets retained the vestiges
of the original tenor of the story, although they now hang upon it as an
unnecessary and unnatural incumbrance. The cause of such vestiges
occurring is now explained and apologised for.
It is here worthy of observation that, while the astrological doctrines
have fallen into general contempt, and been supplanted by superstitions
of a more gross and far less beautiful character, they have, even in
modern days, retained some votaries.
One of the most remarkable believers in that forgotten and despised
science was a late eminent professor of the art of legerdemain. One
would have thought that a person of this description ought, from his
knowledge of the thousand ways in which human eyes could be
deceived, to have been less than others subject to the fantasies of
superstition. Perhaps the habitual use of those abstruse calculations by
which, in a manner surprising to the artist himself, many tricks upon
cards, etc., are performed, induced this gentleman to study the
combination of the stars and planets, with the expectation of obtaining
prophetic communications.

He constructed a scheme of his own nativity, calculated according to
such rules of art as he could collect from the best astrological authors.
The result of the past he found agreeable to what had hitherto befallen
him, but in the important prospect of the future a singular difficulty
occurred. There were two years during the course of which he could by
no means obtain any exact knowledge whether the subject of the
scheme would be dead or alive. Anxious concerning so remarkable a
circumstance, he gave the scheme to a brother astrologer, who was also
baffled in the same manner. At one period he found the native, or
subject, was certainly alive; at another that he was unquestionably dead;
but a space of two years extended between these two terms, during
which he could find no certainty as to his death or existence.
The astrologer marked the remarkable circumstance in his diary, and
continued his exhibitions in various parts of the empire until the period
was about to expire during which his existence had been warranted as
actually ascertained. At last, while he was exhibiting to a numerous
audience his usual tricks of legerdemain, the hands whose activity had
so often baffled the closest observer suddenly lost their power, the
cards dropped from them, and he sunk down a disabled paralytic. In
this state the artist languished for two years, when he was at length
removed by death. It is said that the diary of this modern astrologer will
soon be given to the public.
The fact, if truly reported, is one of those singular coincidences which
occasionally appear, differing so widely from ordinary calculation, yet
without which irregularities human life would not present to mortals,
looking into futurity, the abyss of impenetrable darkness which it is the
pleasure of the Creator it should offer to them. Were everything to
happen in the ordinary train of events, the future would be subject to
the rules of arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary
events and wonderful runs of luck defy the calculations of mankind and
throw impenetrable darkness on future contingencies.
To the above anecdote, another, still more recent, may be here added.
The author was lately honoured with a letter from a gentleman deeply
skilled in these mysteries, who kindly undertook to calculate the

nativity of the writer of Guy Mannering, who might be supposed to be
friendly to the divine art which he professed. But it was impossible to
supply data for the construction of a horoscope, had the native been
otherwise desirous of it, since all those who could supply the minutiae
of day, hour, and minute