The Sun. — 1870-03-21 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  Rosicrusians. By Hargrave Jennings. One VolIllustrated. J. C. Rotten. Curious as many of Mr. Hotten's works have been, the volume now under notice is, among thou all, perhaps the most remarkable. It is certainly the most r, markable in the evident sincerity with which the writer of it puts forth his lucubrations. `l,t° work purports to describe the Bites and Mysteries of the Rosicrusians. It dilates in incidental chapters, moreover, on the ancient Fire Worshippers and Serpent Worshippers. Besides this it offers explanations of the mystic Symbols represented in the monuments and talismans of the Primeval Philosophers. The author of this very singular compilation, we have already had occasion to speak of, in these columns, in reference to an earlier volume of his en 'The Indian Religions, or Results of the Mysterious Buddhism." Recondite studies of this character appear to possess for him a peculiar fascination. He has certainly devoted an enormous amount of labour to the task of putting on record these present memorials of his in regard to the Rose-Cross, or otherwise of the Rosicrusiaus. And the work, now that he hill 3 completed it, has quite as certainly been issued from the press in as attractive a form as Mr. Hargrave Jennings himself, we should imagine, could reasonably have desired. The very binding of the volume is emblazoned with the symbol of the Rosy CrossGold, and blue, and scarlet are the blazonries on the outer lining of this strangely elaborated History of the Rosicrusians. The letterpress, which extends over 339 pages—the volume being subdivided into thirty-two dhapters—is illustrated, says the title-page, with nearly three hundred engravings. These engravings, however, it should be added, are mostly very minute and simplydesigned woodcuts, many of them being repeated in a manner that has proved to us, as we have turned over the pages, not only very surprising, but very bewildering also. Three queries, propounded in 1630 by Gassendus, the writer of this book echoes in one of the mottoes inscribed upon his title- page—" Cur, inter alia nomina, appeletur Fratres? cur Crucis ? cur Reim-Crucis ?" And these inquiries he undertakes to answer. .A ppropriat;ely t nough, Mr. Jennings set 3 forth upon his work of elucidation by recounting, in the first instance, that astounding narrative referred to on Thursday, the 13th of May, 1712, iu the 379th number of Addison and Steele's, " Spectator "-the account of " Rosicrusius's Sepulchre," as told by Dr. Plot, the antiquary and archrealogist, in his (shall we say veracious?) History of Staffordshire. According to that amazing narrative, a yokel or countryman was at the close of a certain summer's day (so " certain" that there is no record whatever of the date) digging a trench in a field in a valley (where the field, where e; en the valley no one knows) when with the point of his pickaxe, he hip upon--this discovery ! Never was such a find ! It was better than "striking ile"—for an archmalogist I The s% hole incident reads like a reminiscence of " Aladdin and the Wonderful 'Lamp." Dr. Piot relates it as having occurred on an English evening. But, reading the tale as he has told it, it is far more like an Arabian Night's Entertainment. Just exactly as in Aladdin, there is the discovery of an immense stone with an iron ring in ir.. So ponderous is the stone that it is with considerable difficulty, and after much contrivance, that the bumpkin (this wonderful bumpkin !) is able to lift it up on one side as upon a hinge. Again, exactly as in Aladdin, there is laid bare to view, under this stone, a winding staircase descending into the ve:y bowels of the earth. Going down—just like Aladdin—the countryman comes, after an astonishingly protracted descent, to a mysterious region, where he finds burning—a Wonderful Lamp. What occurs, thereupon, the reader will find recounted very impress:vely indeed by Mr. 11. Jennings in the second chapter of this ela' orate memorial of his upon the Rosicrusians. Unluckily the reference to Rosicru:ius's Sepuleltze, already mentioned as occurring iu No. 379 of " he Spectator,'' has affixed to it the initial letter, or Roman numeral X, which was one among the signatures of the unhappy Essayist, and Suicide, and reputed Forger, Eustace Budgell. What was Pope's couplet on him iu the immortal "Dunciad ?" " Let Budgell charge all Grub street on a quill, And write whate'er he please—except my will !" Whate'er he please ?—this essay, signed X, for example, in No. 379 of " The Spectator 1" However —as a very imposing, and certainly a very picturesque exordium to his volume, Mr. Jennings has adopted Eustace Budgell's, otherwise Dr. Plot's, otherwise the Staffordshire countryman's extraordinary narrative of the discovery in the seventeenth century of the Sepulchre, and the ever-burning lamp of Rosicruiius. Having startled his reader into attention,by recounting this marvellous tale anew, hepursues his mystical theme through all its astonishing involutions with painstaking and laborious research. To all enamoured of this class of subjects, we may assuredly commend the book as having for them a weird and enthralling attraction.. The Labarum, the badge of -the Templar, the mark of the Triune, the hinge-point of the wheel of Ezechiel, the Vesica Piscis, the talisman of the Jaina Kings, the famous Beauseant or Temple banner, the combined X P standard of Constantine, the Egyptian Scarabeus the trigonometrical effect of the Great Pyramid, the Persian talisman, the double ]ithoi, the gnostic amulet, the hook of Saturn, the Collar of Esses, the orb or mound, the winged disc, the monogram of the Saviour—these and a. multitude of other mystical devices are sown broadcast all through the letterpress description. By the painstaking production of this singular book, Mr. Hargrave Jennings has done good service to those who are in search of very out-of-the-way information in regard to the world-famous brotherhood of the Rosicrusians. He has, in a word, added yet another to that vast cairn of erudition ,first systematised by the late Isaac Disraeli, under the name style, and title of the Curiosities of Literature.  Ti  nu; treme  Citem,  4lne en.p( 21i to  D'" tjt. 1),•}1o;