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The Conjuror’s Magazine, 1: 9 (April 1792) pp.391-2.

From LIVES OF EMINENT MAGICIANS, &c.

HENRY CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.

HENRY Cornelius Agrippa was born at Cologne, in 1486. The prodigious compass of his knowledge astonished everyone who conversed with him. He carefully informed himself of every science, and of course was profound in the Rosycrucian and Alchymical arcanas. He was celebrated throughout Europe, most of the Courts of which he visited. The history of his life, as recorded by Bayle, is curious and interesting:—Sometimes, in all the pride of literature, he was disputing in schools and universities; at other times in Courts and Camps; then in the shops of projecting mechanics, and in the laboratories of hermetic philosophers. The prejudices of the times in which he lived often brought him into trouble, and he was sometimes cited before the civil tribunal for a sorcerer, and his poor dog was even dreaded as an evil demon. He was here in England in 1510; and in 1529 received an invitation from Henry VIII to settle here, which he thought proper to decline. He died in 1535. The most celebrated of his works, which are in Latin, is his Treatise of Occult Philosophy, a rare work, the greatest part of which is, and will be given in this Magazine, by our ingenious and valuable correspondent B.