LILLY, William (1602-1681), an astrologer somewhat famous iu his day, was born in 1602, at Diseworth in Leicestershire, his family having been settled as yeomen in the place for “many ages.” He received a tolerably good classical education at the school of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, but he naively tells us what may perhaps have some significance iu reference to his after career, that his master “never taught logic.” In his eighteenth year, in consequence of his father having fallen into great poverty, he went to London, and was employed in a sort of menial situation in attendance on an old citizen and his wife, with whom he so managed to ingratiate himself that his master, at his death in 1627, left him an annuity of £20; and, Lilly having soon afterwards married the widow, she, dying in 1633, left him property to the value of about £1000. Having now a good deal of leisure on his hands, he began to dabble in astrology, reading all the books on the subject he could fall in with, and occasionally trying his hand at unravelling mysteries by means of his art. The years 1642 and 1643 were devoted to a careful revision of all his previous reading, and in particular having lighted on Valentine Naibod’s Commentary on Alchabitius, he “seriously studied him and found him to be the profoundest author he ever met with.” Him he “traversed over day and night,” and so “advanced his judgment and knowledge” to the utmost height he ever arrived at. He characterizes him as “a most rational author and the sharpest expositor of Ptolemy that hath yet appeared.” About the same time he tells us that he “did carefully take notice of every grand action betwixt king and parliament, and did first then incline to believe that as all sublunary affairs depend on superior ...