rpose of examining it; but learning that his
wife had been buried that day, she would not enter the house, but
requested him to show her his famous magic glass, and describe its
properties, which he accordingly did 'to her Majesty's great contentment
and delight.' In 1583, during his absence on the Continent, the
populace, who execrated him as 'a caller of divels,' broke into his
house and destroyed a great part of his furniture, collections, and
library. On his return to his home in 1589, he succeeded in regaining
about three-fourths of his books; but these were gradually dispersed in
consequence of the pecuniary difficulties he was in during the latter
years of his life. Lilly states that 'he died very poor, enforced many
times to sell some book or other to buy his dinner with.' An autograph
catalogue of both his printed and manuscript books, dated September 6,
1583, is preserved among the Harleian manuscripts in the British
Museum.[17] His private diary, and a catalogue of his manuscripts, were
edited in 1842 for the Camden Society by Mr. J.O. Halliwell, F.R.S.,
from the original manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum and Trinity
College, Cambridge. Another portion of his diary, preserved in the
Bodleian Library, was edited by Mr. J.E. Baily, F.S.A., and printed
(twenty copies only) at London in 1880. In 1556 Dee presented to Queen
Mary 'A Supplication for the recovery and preservation of ancient
Writers and Monuments.' In this interesting document he laments the
spoil and destruction of so many and so notable libraries through the
subverting of religious houses, and suggests that a commission should be
appointed with power to demand that all possessors of manuscripts
throughout the realm should send their books to be copied for the
Queen's library, so that it might 'in a very few years most plentifully
be furnished, and that without one penny charge to the Queen, or doing
injury to any creature.' He himself undertook to procure copies of the
famous manuscripts at the Vatican, St. Mark's, Venice, Bologna,
Florence, Vienna, etc.

[Illustration: DR. DEE. From the Ashmolean portrait as engraved by
Schencker.]

Dee wrote a large number of works, but comparatively few of them have
been printed. No fewer than seventy-nine are enumerated in Coopers'
_Athenae Cantabrigienses_. A catalogue of his writings, printed and
unprinted, is given in his _Compendious Rehearsal_. Many of his
manuscripts came into the possession of Elias