we cannot here take up.
Suffice it to say, on the authority of careful commentators, that he
openly or covertly ridiculed all the supposedly supernatural phenomena
of his time.[53] Perhaps a search through the obscurer dramatists of the
period might reveal other evidences of skepticism. Such a search we
cannot make. It must, however, be pointed out that Thomas Heywood, in
_The late Lancashire Witches_[54] a play which is described at some
length in an earlier chapter, makes a character say:[55] "It seemes then
you are of opinion that there are witches. For mine own part I can
hardly be induc'd to think there is any such kinde of people."[56] The
speech is the more notable because Heywood's own belief in witchcraft,
as has been observed in another connection, seems beyond doubt.

The interest in witchcraft among literary men was not confined to the
dramatists. Three prose writers eminent in their time dealt with the
question. Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_[57] admits that "many
deny witches at all, or, if there be any, they can do no harm." But he
says that on the other side are grouped most "Lawyers, Divines,
Physitians, Philosophers." James Howell, famous letter-writer of the
mid-century, had a similar reverence for authority: "I say ... that he
who denies there are such busy Spirits and such poor passive Creatures
upon whom they work, which commonly are call'd Witches ... shews that he
himself hath a Spirit of Contradiction in him."[58] There are, he says,
laws against witches, laws by Parliament and laws in the Holy Codex.

Francis Osborne, a literary man whose reputation hardly survived his
century, but an essayist of great fame in his own time,[59] was a man
who made his fortune by sailing against rather than with the wind. It
was conventional to believe in witches and Osborne would not for any
consideration be conventional. He assumed the skeptical attitude,[60]
and perhaps was as influential as any one man in making that attitude
fashionable.

From these lesser lights of the literary world we may pass to notice the
attitude assumed by three men of influence in their own day, whose
reputations have hardly been dimmed by time, Bacon, Selden, and Hobbes.
Not that their views would be representative of their times, for each of
the three men thought in his own way, and all three were in many
respects in advance of their day. At some time in the reign of James I
Francis Bacon wrote his _Sylva Sylvarum_ and ra