"ZADKIEL."

Evening Star, Issue 3556, 16 July 1874, Page 2 (Supplement)

"ZADKIEL."

A month ago, Commander Richard James Morrison, of the R >yal Navy, known in his day among his intimates as a Hebrew scholar as well as a mathematician and astronomer, d.ed quite unexpectedly. At the time of his death he could have been very little short of eighty years of age. With all his unquestionable ability—and he was a man who had collected together, during the course of his long life, a curious store of old-world learning—he was chiefly remarkable for his devotion, during fifty years and up wards, to thestudy of the pseudo-science of astrology. Every year since 1830—that is, for a period of forty-four years cousecu lively—he had, uuder the tolerably notorious' signature of Zadkiel Tao- ze, wrought out his little sixpenny pamphlet, known far and wide among the credulous as “ Zadkiel’s Almanack.” It sold annually by teas or thou* sands, running up sometimes to an imprint of 100,000 and 200, UOO copies, and it secured to him for more than a lifetime of a whole generation a modera e competence. Apart from “Zadkiel’s Almanack,” Captain Morrison was known among modern believers in astrology—for it is idle to blink the fact that there are such people —as the author of the “ Handbook of Astrology,” of the “Grammar of Astrologj,” of Lilly’s “ Introduction to Astrology,” and of “ The Horoscope.” He wrote, besides these, for several years in succession, the “ Astronomical Ephemeris,” a remarkable little book entitled “ Astronomy in a Nutshell,” and a daring treatise, embellished with ten large geometrical engravings—a treatise setting the whole Newtonian scheme of the heavens openly at defiance—a nine-shilling octavo flagrantly entitled “ Tue Solar System as it is and not as it is Represented.” Captain Morrison, otherwise “Zadkiel, ” passed through' the world with the reputation, among the many, of a charlatan, but among a select few of a clever and accomplished man, whose preference for odd studies amounted to something very like a distinct hallucination. * leven years ago “ Zadkiel,” then Lieutenant Morrison, R.N., brought an action in the Court of Queen’s Bench against Admiral Sir Edward Belcher for having libelled him by denouncing him as an impostor. The case was tried before the present Lord Chief Justice, Mr Serjeant Ballantine being the counsel for the defendant, and the late Mr Serjeant (afterwards Mr Justice) ■'hee the counsel for the plaintiff. According to the ‘ Times’ ’ report of the proceedings, “ various persons of rank’ appeared In the witness-box and gave evidence, all of them on behalf of the plaintiff, among them the late Lord Lytton, the Lari of Wilton, Lady Harry Vane, and Lady Egerton of Tatton. After a careful summing-up of this evidence by Mr Alexander Cockburn, the verdict found was “ for the plaintiff,” the Court of Queen’s Bench, in other words, formally deciding that Captain Morrison, otherwise “Zadkiel,” was not an impostor.—Home Paper.