busy and prattling. But when well affected, Mercury gives
his subjects a strong, vigorous, active mind, searching and exhaustive,
a retentive memory, a natural thirst for knowledge.[13] The persons
signified by Mercury are astrologers, philosophers, mathematicians,
politicians, merchants, travellers, teachers, poets, artificers, men of
science, and all ingenious, clever men. When he is ill affected,
however, he represents pettifoggers, cunning vile persons, thieves,
messengers, footmen, and servants, etc.

The moon comes last in planetary sequence, as nearest to the earth. She
is regarded by astrologers as a cold, moist, watery, phlegmatic planet,
variable to an extreme, and, like the sun, partaking of good or evil
according as she is aspected favourably or the reverse. Her natives are
of good stature, fair, and pale, moon-faced, with grey eyes, short arms,
thick hands and feet, smooth, corpulent and phlegmatic body. When she is
in watery signs, the native has freckles on the face, or, says Lilly,
'he or she is blub-cheeked, not a handsome body, but a muddling
creature.' Unless the moon is very well aspected, she ever signifies an
ordinary vulgar person. She signifies sailors (not as Mars does, the
fighting-men of war-ships, but nautical folk generally) and all persons
connected with water or any kind of fluid; also all who are engaged in
inferior and common offices.

We may note, in passing, that to each planet a special metal is
assigned, as also particular colours. Chaucer, in the Chanones Yemannes'
Tale, succinctly describes the distribution of the metals among the
planets:--

Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe;
Mars iren, Mercurie silver we clepe:
Saturnus led, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus coper, by my [the Chanones Yemannes'] faderkin.

The colours are thus assigned:--to Saturn, black; to Jupiter, mixed red
and green; to Mars, red; to the sun, yellow or yellow-purple; to Venus,
white or purple; to Mercury, azure blue; to the moon, a colour spotted
with white and other mixed colours.

Again, the planets were supposed to have special influence on the seven
ages of human life. The infant, 'mewling and puking in the nurse's
arms,' was very appropriately dedicated to the moist moon; the whining
schoolboy (did schoolboys whine in the days of good Queen Bess?) was
less appropriately assigned to Mercury, the patron of those who eagerly
seek after knowledge: then very naturally, the lover sighing like
f