Читать книгу The Discovery of Witchcraft. Facts, Fiction & Conspiracy Theories Behind the Medieval Witch Hunt онлайн

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There is not the slightest evidence of a copy of the 1584 edition having been prepared for the press, beyond the new title-page, and on two occasions the translation of Latin, that Scot had not—as he had done in similar instances—translated. The Latin-named ingredients on p. 184 are Englished, and I have thus been enabled to give them in my notings with the more probability that they are correct. The second instance is, as stated in my margin, on p. 416. Two or three press errors are corrected, one of them not a certain emendation, and all within the competency of an ordinary compositor or reader; but no others, not even that of “increase” for “incense”, p. 446, while fresh errors, indicative of a careless “reader”, are made.

What has been thus said as to the character of this second reprint, goes to prove that it was a publisher’s venture based upon the demand for the book, and, therefore, for gain, and one which he carried out spite of its having been burnt, and placed among the “prohibited books”. In like manner, and for the like purpose, and as before, without entry in the Stationers’ Registers, there was brought out the third, and so-called folio edition of 1665, though the sheets are in sixes. All but the title-page, which, curiously enough, was again re-written, though still bearing, like the second, the words, “By Reginald Scot Esquire”; it is a careless reprint of that second, with all its errors, and new ones superadded. But as a novelty and inducement to buy, nine chapters, commencing the fifteenth book, and a second book of the “Discourse on Devils and Spirits”, were added by an anonymous author. Who this anonymity was, I have uselessly spent some little time in inquiring, time that might have been better employed, even had I found him. But it goes to prove that these additions were merely made for novelty’s sake, and its glamour and gain, in that the writer was a believer in, and not improbably, from his minute directions, as well as from his reticence, a practiser of witchcraft, or of what he thought to be witchcraft. He also, and I give this as one possible clue, was a strong believer in the perishable Astral spirit of a man, as well as of Astral spirits in general, and much of his “Discourse” is taken up with remarks on these.