mole's notes is in Ashmol. MS. 580. Another copy with manuscript notes is in Addit. MS. 3190. Aubrey, in his biographical jottings, has this memorandum: ‘Meredith Lloyd sayes that John Dee's printed booke of Spirits is not above the third part of what was writt, which were in Sir Rob. Cotton's library; many whereof were much perished by being buryed, and Sir Rob. Cotton bought the field to digge after it.’ The ‘Actions with Spirits,’ as Dee calls them, began on 22 Dec. 1581. They are minutely described in five books of ‘Mysteries’ hitherto unprinted (Sloane MS. 3188). There is an appendix in which the history is continued to 23 May 1583, and as the sixth book, printed by Casaubon, commences with the 28th of the same month, it is evident that the entire history of what passed between Dee and Kelly is still in existence. The first five parts are in the Ashmolean MS. 1790. The Addit. MS. 3677, art. 1, contains a transcript of Dee's conferences with angels from 22 Dec. 1581 to May 1583. See also Addit. MSS. 663, art. 10; 2575, 3189, 3191. These conferences are such a tissue of blasphemy and absurdity that they might suggest insanity, which, however, there is no other ground to suspect. Robert Hooke tried to explain them on the theory that they embodied a cipher for political secrets (Hooke, Posthumous Works, 1705, p. 206). 25. ‘The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, and the Catalogue of his Library of Manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and Trinity College Library, Cambridge. Edited by James Orchard Halliwell, F.R.S.,’ London, printed for the Camden Society, 1842, 4to. This diary was very carelessly edited. The Manchester portion of it, from 1595 to 1601, taken from Dee's autograph manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, was accurately printed (twenty copies only) at London, 1880, 4to, under the editorial supervision of John Eglinton Bailey, F.S.A.
At the bottom of Dee's own pedigree there is a small full-length portrait of him in a furred gown. In the Ashmolean Museum is his portrait, taken at the age of sixty-seven. A copy of this, engraved by Clamp, is in Lilly's ‘Life and Times,’ and another, engraved by Schencker, in Lysons's ‘Environs.’ A portrait of Dee on wood is at the end of Billingsley's Euclid.
[The principal authorities are the Libri Mysteriorum in Sloane MS. 3188; Dee's Compendious Rehearsal; his Private Diary; the True and Faithful Relation, edited by Meric Casaubon, of what passed between Dee and some Spirits; the Latin Life by Dr. Thomas Smith, in his Vitæ quorundam Eruditissimorum et Illustrium Virorum (London, 1707, 4to), and elaborate articles in Biog. Brit. (Kippis) and Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, ii. 497, 556. Consult also Addit. MS. 5867, p. 23; Adelung's Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit, No. 68 (vii. 1–80); Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), pp. 610, 647, 656, 661, 843, 844, 1107, 1156, 1609, 1717, 1738; Ayscough's Cat. of MSS.; Bibliographer, i. 72; Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. li. 626; Brayley and Britton's Surrey, iii. 470; Cotton. MSS.; D'Israeli's Amenities of Literature (1841), iii. 189; Ellis's Letters of Eminent Literary Men, p. 87; Foxe's Acts and Monuments (Townsend), vii. 77, 85, 349 n., 638, 641, 642, 681, 734, 756, 783, 784; Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers, p. 373; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 1824, i. 323; Halliwell's Letters illustrative of the Progress of Science, pp. 13, 20, 30; Hibbert-Ware's Hist. of the Foundations in Manchester, i. 129, 135; Historical MSS. Commission, Rep. i. 132, iv. 594, 595, 598, v. 383, vii. 632, viii. 20; Lansd. MSS.; Lives of Ashmole and Lilly, p. 146; Lysons's Environs, i. 376–85, iv. 602, 603, vi. 53; Mackay's Memoirs of Popular Delusions, 1869, i. 152; Manning and Bray's Surrey, iii. 304; Niceron's Mémoires, i. 349; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. i. 142, 187, 216, 284, ii. 151, x. 444, 2nd ser. iii. 292, 3rd ser. iv. 108, 155, 160, 4th ser. i. 391, iv. 69, ix. 533, x. 176, 5th ser. ii. 86, 136, 218, 376, xi. 401, 422, 7th ser. 127, 192; Sloane MSS.; Calendars of State Papers, Dom. (1581–90), 114, 354 (Addenda, 1580–1625), 187, 212, 277; Strype's Works (general index); Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Taylor's Romantic Biog. i. 379; Williams's Radnorshire, p. 164; Wilson's Merchant Taylors' School, pp. 1165–76; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss) i. 639, 640; Fasti, i. 143.]
DEERING, GEORGE CHARLES (1695?–1749), botanist, was born in Saxony, educated at Hamburg and Leyden, and came to London in 1713 as secretary to Baron Schach, envoy extraordinary to Queen Anne from Czar Peter. He remained in this country as a tutor till November 1718, then he married, and three days afterwards returned to the continent, where he took his degree at Rheims, 13 Dec. 1718, according to his diploma now in the British Museum; he is also stated to have taken a degree at Leyden. Thence he proceeded to Paris, studying anatomy and botany under Bernard de Jussieu. In August 1719 he came back to England, and having a strong bias towards the study of botany, he became a member of the society established by Dillenius and Professor John Martyn, which existed from 1721 to 1726.
In 1736, having lost his wife while living in London, he thought to improve his position by removing to Nottingham, with a letter of recommendation from Sloane. Two years after his removal he published a list of Nottingham plants which he had observed in the neighbourhood, and in some of the cryptogams he had been aided by his countryman
