"But many artificers have been too swift,
With hasty credence to fume away their thrift."

Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy.

"Empoisoning themselves, and losing of their sights,
With odours and smokes, and waking up by nights."

Ripley's Compound of Alchemy.

Vitality of Elizabethan Superstition. — Alchemy. - The Alchemist of Edward IV.'s Reign. Alchemists in Monasteries - Itinerant. - Tricks of Impostors. Oriental Grandeur of Terms.. - Arabic Words. - Alchemist Books. - Receipts. — Mysterious Jargon. · -Two Ways of making Gold. - Generation of Metals. - Ben Jonson. Theory of Alchemy explained. — Refutation by Boerhaave's Experiments. History of Alchemy.- Egypt and Arabia. Roger Bacon.- Valentinus. — Pope John.- Paracelsus, the Arch-Alchemist. Chaucer.- Ashmole. Kelly. — Lully. — Dr. Dee's Adventures. - Friend of Elizabeth.- Conferences with Spirits. Kelly his Speculator.-Visits Bohemia. - Dies Poor.Dee's Enigmas and Receipts.— Rosicrucian Rhapsodies.

It throws a mysterious shadow over the age of Shakspere when we remember that his greatest contemporaries were believers in witchcraft and alchemy.

They believed, that is to say, that it was possible for man to discover a means of turning baser metals into gold,

and they believed that there were people who had sold themselves to the Devil, in order to obtain power to injure their enemies or their rivals. The imagination of the age was lively-its faith strong. God seemed nearer to the earth in those days than now, and the power of evil too. In all sciences there were dark corners, such as are in a room at twilight, which seemed to them doorways leading from the known to the unknown, and joining earth both to hell and heaven. Men were more humble when they felt that lightnings were lurking behind every cloud, and doomed spirits were howling beneath all feet. They felt in the presence of great beings, whom they loved and feared; and the universe was not as yet mapped out, allotted, ransacked, disenchanted, and exhausted, as every public lecturer and sciolist seems now to think it.

Of alchemy, as one of the strangest and least excusable of human delusions, we treat somewhat largely.

The old monkish writers of Edward IV.'s reign are full of allusions to the class of men known as alchemists: they describe them with bleared eyes, lean cheeks, threadbare clothes, and fingers stained and black with corrosives.

They were known at a glance in a crowd as multipliers, and laughed at for multiplying broken glasses, and losing silver in a foolish search for gold. These enthusiasts spoke of Geber and Avicenna, though they had angels' visions,

PROMISES TO PAY.

75

and were the companions of kings, were derided in the street by any Jack or Jill happy and merry, though the hair was growing through their hood, refusing to make even a bellows for such men without receiving ready money. They were known to dabble in blood, and to use wine, and soot, and salts, and powders, and to boast of the elixir and the quintessence, but never to wax a doit the richer. The mob formed their opinions quickly, and they were right. The alchemist had always discovered the stone, but wanted 207. to bring it to light.

These alchemists promised great things: they would enable the King to win France or bring home the Holy Cross; but were much haunted by sergeants and men who had lent them 107., and were glad to get a noble. When, at last, they were pulled to Newgate or Ludgate, their pockets were found stuffed, not with coins, but with Paris balls and St. Martin's signets; and when their dupes and creditors assailed them with complaints, they used to declare they had been robbed of their elixir, and that, with help, they could soon make fine gold of tin.*

Some of these impostors crept into convents, under favour of the abbot or spiritual lord, promising, to use their own jargon, "to produce a royal medicine one upon

* Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum, p. 17.; Norton's Ordinal.

twelve." The monks would then bring them cups and spoons, and soon reduce themselves to threadbare cowls, and to the true poverty which the laws of the order inculcate. The old poet represents a gang of these blear-eyed cheats drinking the wine and laughing at their cheats.

"The monks say they have many a pound.

Would God, saith one, that some were mine.

Hey ho! care away, let the cup go round.

There were others, who were itinerant quacks, going in

threadbare gowns from town to town.

Another writer

(1557) laments his broken pots and burnt furnace, and curses the knavish groom that fell asleep and let his magic fire go out. In the midst of his dreams the enthusiast is prest for Calais and the French war, and in a rage snatches up a hatchet and breaks his glasses into

shivers.

The same writer, whose poem is full of humour, describes a Prior of Bath who had discovered the Stone *, the Medicine, and the Elixir; and when the abbey was suppressed, hid them in a wall, whence they were stolen. This seems to have led to his partial loss of reason, for

* Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum, p. 300..

MONEY BREEDING.

77

Charnock (the writer) met him afterwards, quite blind and led by a boy through the country. Pursuing the rule of his art, the old man made the young man his heir no alchemist being allowed to die without disclosing the secret to some favourite pupil, lest the science should perish and come to a perpetual end.*

Shrewd, money-breeding men laughed at the art of multiplication, with its cant of subliming, amalgaming, engluting, imbibing, incorporating, cementing; and all its mystical utensils-discensories, sublimatories, viols, crosslets, cucurbits, stillatories, and furnaces for calcinations.

The alchemist's tricks of hollow coals full of gold, and their repeated failures, were as well known then as they are now. The world laughed at the beggarly garb and the plausible mendicancy of men who affected to have the riches of the Indies at their beck; but were met by the argument that such a disguise was requisite to conceal the elect few from the envy of a greedy nation. In country places, however, they still persuaded credulous yeomen to trust them with money to multiply with, but generally fled, leaving a few broken bottles in its place. There was always some hitch in the alchemist's scheme; an Ave Maria that had not been repeated, or a mali

* Charnock's Breviary of Philosophy.