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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 3

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Title: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 3

Author: Charles Mackay


        
Release date: April 1, 1997 [eBook #884]
                Most recently updated: July 30, 2012

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS — VOLUME 3 ***




Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer






MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS

Volume III

By Charles Mackay


Author Of The "Thames And Its Tributaries," "The Hope Of The World," Etc.


"Il est bon de connaitre les delires de l'esprit humain. Chaque peuple a
ses folies plus ou moins grossieres."

Millot


DETAILED CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

BOOK I.

INTRODUCTION

THE ALCHYMISTS; or, Searchers for the Philosopher's Stone and the Water
of Life

PART I.--History of Alchymy from the earliest periods to the
Fifteenth Century.--Pretended Antiquity of the
Art.--Geber.--Alfarabi.--Avicenna.--Albertus Magnus.--Thomas
Aquinas.--Artephius.--Alain de Lisle.--Arnold de Villeneuve.--Pietro
d'Apone.--Raymond Lulli.--Roger Bacon.--Pope John XXII.--Jean de
Meung.--Nicholas Flamel.--George Ripley.--Basil Valentine.--Bernard of
Treves.--Trithemius.--The Marechal de Rays.--Jacques Coeur.--Inferior
Adepts.

PART II.--Progress of the Infatuation during the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries.--Augurello.--Cornelius
Agrippa.--Paracelsus.--George Agricola.--Denys Zachaire.--Dr. Dee
and Edward Kelly.--The Cosmopolite.--Sendivogius.--The
Rosicrucians.--Michael Mayer.--Robert Fludd.--Jacob Bohmen.--John
Heydn.--Joseph Francis Borri.--Alchymical Writers of the
Seventeenth Century.--De Lisle.--Albert Aluys.--Count de St.
Germains.--Cagliostro.--Present State of the Science.

BOOK II. FORTUNE TELLING

BOOK III. THE MAGNETISERS




PHILOSOPHICAL DELUSIONS.

Dissatisfaction with his lot seems to be the characteristic of man in
all ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first
might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race; and has
tended, more than anything else, to raise us above the condition of
the brutes. But the same discontent which has been the source of all
improvement, has been the parent of no small progeny of follies and
absurdities; to trace these latter is the object of the present volume.
Vast as the subject appears, it is easily reducible within such limits
as will make it comprehensive without being wearisome, and render its
study both instructive and amusing.

Three causes especially have excited our discontent; and, by impelling
us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a
maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the
future--the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shows his
antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his
craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come. The first
has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death, or,
failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so prolong existence as
to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From this sprang the search,
so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitae, or water of
life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe
in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's
stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and
from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their
divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of
signs, portents, and omens.

In tracing the career of the erring philosophers, or the wilful cheats,
who have encouraged or preyed upon the credulity of mankind, it
will simplify and elucidate the subject, if we divide it into three
classes:--the first comprising alchymists, or those in general who have
devoted themselves to the discovering of the philosopher's stone and
the water of life; the second comprising astrologers, necromancers,
sorcerers, geomancers, and all those who pretended to discover futurity;
and the third consisting of the dealers in charms, amulets, philters,
universal-panacea mongers, touchers for the evil, seventh sons of a
seventh son, sympathetic powder compounders, homeopathists, animal
magnetizers, and all the motley tribe of quacks, empirics, and
charlatans.

But, in narrating the career of such men, it will be found that many
of them united several or all of the functions just mentioned; that the
alchymist was a fortune-teller, or a necromancer--that he pretended to
cure all maladies by touch or charm, and to work miracles of every kind.
In the dark and early ages of European history, this is more especially
the case. Even as we advance to more recent periods, we shall find great
difficulty in separating the characters. The alchymist seldom confined
himself strictly to his pretended science--the sorcerer and necromancer
to theirs, or the medical charlatan to his. Beginning with alchymy, some
confusion of these classes is unavoidable; but the ground will clear for
us as we advance.

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt
from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into
which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be
uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood
and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false
opinions that swayed his actions at that time, that he may wonder at
them, so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions
which governed the ages fled. He is but a superficial thinker who would
despise and refuse to hear of them merely because they are absurd. No
man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors,
either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as to
be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly and
credulity. And not only is such a study instructive: he who reads for
amusement only, will find no chapter in the annals of the human mind
more amusing than this. It opens out the whole realm of fiction--the
wild, the fantastic, and the wonderful, and all the immense variety of
things "that are not, and cannot be; but that have been imagined and
believed."




BOOK I.--THE ALCHYMISTS

OR, SEARCHERS FOR THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE AND THE WATER OF LIFE.

"Mercury (loquitur).--The mischief a secret any of them know, above
the consuming of coals and drawing of usquebaugh! Howsoever they may
pretend, under the specious names of Geber, Arnold, Lulli, or bombast of
Hohenheim, to commit miracles in art, and treason against nature! As if
the title of philosopher, that creature of glory, were to be fetched out
of a furnace! I am their crude, and their sublimate, their precipitate,
and their unctions; their male and their female, sometimes their
hermaphrodite--what they list to style me! They will calcine you a grave
matron, as it might be a mother of the maids, and spring up a young
virgin out of her ashes, as fresh as a phoenix; lay you an old courtier
on the coals, like a sausage or a bloat-herring, and, after they have
broiled him enough, blow a soul into him, with a pair of bellows! See!
they begin to muster again, and draw their forces out against me! The
genius of the place defend me!"--Ben Jonson's Masque "Mercury vindicated
from the Alchymists."




THE ALCHYMISTS.




PART I.--HISTORY OF ALCHYMY FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

PRETENDED ANTIQUITY OF THE ART.--GEBER.--ALFARABI.--AVICENNA.--ALBERTUS
MAGNUS.--THOMAS AQUINAS.--ARTEPHIUS.--ALAIN DE LISLE.--ARNOLD DE
VILLENEUVE.--PIETRO D'APONE.--RAYMOND LULLI.--ROGER BACON.--POPE
JOHN XXII.--JEAN DE MEUNG.--NICHOLAS FLAMEL.--GEORGE RIPLEY.--BASIL
VALENTINE.--BERNARD OF TREVES.--TRITHEMIUS.--THE MARECHAL DE
RAYS.--JACQUES COEUR.--INFERIOR ADEPTS.

For more than a thousand years the art of alchymy captivated many noble
spirits, and was believed in by millions. Its origin is involved in
obscurity. Some of its devotees have claimed for it an antiquity coeval
with the creation of man himself; others, again, would trace it no
further back than the time of Noah. Vincent de Beauvais argues, indeed,
that all the antediluvians must have possessed a knowledge of alchymy;
and particularly cites Noah as having been acquainted with the elixir
vitae, or he could not have lived to so prodigious an age, and have
begotten children when upwards of five hundred. Lenglet du Fresnoy, in
his "History of the Hermetic Philosophy," says, "Most of them pretended
that Shem, or Chem, the son of Noah, was an adept in the art, and
thought it highly probable that the words chemistry and alchymy were
both derived from his name." Others say, the art was derived from the
Egyptians, amongst whom it was first founded by Hermes Trismegistus.
Moses, who is looked upon as a first-rate alchymist, gained his
knowledge in Egypt; but he kept it all to himself, and would not
instruct the children of Israel in its mysteries. All the writers upon
alchymy triumphantly cite the story of the golden calf, in the 32nd
chapter of Exodus, to prove that this great lawgiver was an adept, and
could make or unmake gold at his pleasure. It is recorded, that Moses
was so wroth with the Israelites for their idolatry, "that he took the
calf which they had made, and burned it in the fire, and ground it to
powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel
drink of it." This, say the alchymists, he never could have done, had
he not been in possession of the philosopher's stone; by no other means
could he have made the powder of gold float upon the water. But we must
leave this knotty point for the consideration of the adepts in the art,
if any such there be, and come to more modern periods of its history.
The Jesuit, Father Martini, in his "Historia Sinica," says, it was
practised by the Chinese two thousand five hundred years before the
birth of Christ; but his assertion, being unsupported, is worth nothing.
It would appear, however, that pretenders to the art of making gold and
silver existed in Rome in the first centuries after the Christian era,
and that, when discovered, they were liable to punishment as knaves and
impostors. At Constantinople, in the fourth century, the transmutation
of metals was very generally believed in, and many of the Greek
ecclesiastics wrote treatises upon the subject. Their names are
preserved, and some notice of their works given, in the third volume of
Lenglet du Fresnoy's "History of the Hermetic Philosophy." Their notion
appears to have been, that all metals were composed of two substances;
the one, metallic earth; and the other, a red inflammable matter, which
they called sulphur. The pure union of these substances formed gold;
but other metals were mixed with and contaminated by various foreign
ingredients. The object of the philosopher's stone was to dissolve or
neutralize all these ingredients, by which iron, lead, copper, and all
metals would be transmuted into the original gold. Many learned and
clever men wasted their time, their health, and their energies, in this
vain pursuit; but for several centuries it took no great hold upon the
imagination of the people. The history of the delusion appears, in a
manner, lost from this time till the eighth century, when it appeared
amongst the Arabians. From this period it becomes easier to trace its
progress. A master then appeared, who was long looked upon as the father
of the science, and whose name is indissolubly connected with it.


GEBER.

Of this philosopher, who devoted his life to the study of alchymy, but
few particulars are known. He is thought to have lived in the year 730.
His true name was Abou Moussah Djafar, to which was added Al Soft, or
"The Wise," and he was born at Hauran, in Mesopotamia. ["Biographie
Universelle."] Some have thought he was a Greek, others a Spaniard, and
others, a prince of Hindostan: but, of all the mistakes which have been
made respecting him, the most ludicrous was that made by the French
translator of Sprenger's "History of Medicine," who thought, from
the sound of his name, that he was a German, and rendered it as the
"Donnateur," or Giver. No details of his life are known; but it
is asserted, that he wrote more than five hundred works upon the
philosopher's stone and the water of life. He was a great enthusiast in
his art, and compared the incredulous to little children shut up in a
narrow room, without windows or aperture, who, because they saw nothing
beyond, denied the existence of the great globe itself. He thought that
a preparation of gold would cure all maladies, not only in man, but in
the inferior animals and plants. He also imagined that all the metals
laboured under disease, with the exception of gold, which was the only
one in perfect health. He affirmed, that the secret of the philosopher's
stone had been more than once discovered; but that the ancient and wise
men who had hit upon it, would never, by word or writing, communicate
it to men, because of their unworthiness and incredulity. [His "sum of
perfection," or instructions to students to aid them in the laborious
search for the stone and elixir, has been translated into most of the
languages of Europe. An English translation, by a great enthusiast
in alchymy, one Richard Russell, was published in London in 1686.
The preface is dated eight years previously, from the house of the
alchymist, "at the Star, in Newmarket, in Wapping, near the Dock." His
design in undertaking the translation was, as he informs us, to expose
the false pretences of the many ignorant pretenders to the science who
abounded in his day.] But the life of Geber, though spent in the pursuit
of this vain chimera, was not altogether useless. He stumbled upon
discoveries which he did not seek, and science is indebted to him for
the first mention of corrosive sublimate, the red oxide of mercury,
nitric acid, and the nitrate of silver. [Article, Geber, "Biographie
Universelle."]

For more than two hundred years after the death of Geber, the Arabian
philosophers devoted themselves to the study of alchymy, joining with it
that of astrology. Of these the most celebrated was


ALFARABI.

Alfarabi flourished at the commencement of the tenth century, and
enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most learned men of his age.
He spent his life in travelling from country to country, that he might
gather the opinions of philosophers upon the great secrets of nature. No
danger dismayed him; no toil wearied him of the pursuit. Many sovereigns
endeavoured to retain him at their courts; but he refused to rest until
he had discovered the great object of his life--the art of preserving it
for centuries, and of making gold as much as he needed. This wandering
mode of life at last proved fatal to him. He had been on a visit to
Mecca, not so much for religious as for philosophical purposes,
when, returning through Syria, he stopped at the court of the Sultan
Seifeddoulet, who was renowned as the patron of learning. He presented
himself in his travelling attire, in the presence of that monarch and
his courtiers; and, without invitation, coolly sat himself down upon the
sofa, beside the Prince. The courtiers and wise men were indignant;
and the Sultan, who did not know the intruder, was at first inclined to
follow their example. He turned to one of his officers, and ordered him
to eject the presumptuous stranger from the room; but Alfarabi, without
moving, dared them to lay hands upon him; and, turning himself calmly
to the prince, remarked, that he did not know who was his guest, or he
would treat him with honour, not with violence. The Sultan, instead
of being still further incensed, as many potentates would have been,
admired his coolness; and, requesting him to sit still closer to him
on the sofa, entered into a long conversation with him upon science
and divine philosophy. All the court were charmed with the stranger.
Questions for discussion were propounded, on all of which he showed
superior knowledge. He convinced every one that ventured to dispute with
him; and spoke so eloquently upon the science of alchymy, that he was
at once recognised as only second to the great Geber himself. One of
the doctors present inquired whether a man who knew so many sciences was
acquainted with music? Alfarabi made no reply, but merely requested that
a lute should be brought him. The lute was brought; and he played such
ravishing and tender melodies, that all the court were melted into
tears. He then changed his theme, and played airs so sprightly, that
he set the grave philosophers, Sultan and all, dancing as fast as their
legs could carry them. He then sobered them again by a mournful strain,
and made them sob and sigh as if broken-hearted. The Sultan, highly
delighted with his powers, entreated him to stay, offering him every
inducement that wealth, power, and dignity could supply; but the
alchymist resolutely refused, it being decreed, he said, that he should
never repose till he had discovered the philosopher's stone. He set out
accordingly the same evening, and was murdered by some thieves in the
deserts of Syria. His biographers give no further particulars of his
life beyond mentioning, that he wrote several valuable treatises on his
art, all of which, however, have been lost. His death happened in the
year 954.


AVICENNA.

Avicenna, whose real name was Ebn Cinna, another great alchymist, was
born at Bokhara, in 980. His reputation as a physician and a man skilled
in all sciences was so great, that the Sultan Magdal Douleth resolved
to try his powers in the great science of government. He was accordingly
made Grand Vizier of that Prince, and ruled the state with some
advantage: but, in a science still more difficult, he failed completely.
He could not rule his own passions, but gave himself up to wine and
women, and led a life of shameless debauchery. Amid the multifarious
pursuits of business and pleasure, he nevertheless found time to write
seven treatises upon the philosopher's stone, which were for many ages
looked upon as of great value by pretenders to the art. It is rare that
an eminent physician, as Avicenna appears to have been, abandons himself
to sensual gratification; but so completely did he become enthralled in
the course of a few years, that he was dismissed from his high office,
and died shortly afterwards, of premature old age and a complication
of maladies, brought on by debauchery. His death took place in the year
1036. After his time, few philosophers of any note in Arabia are heard
of as devoting themselves to the study of alchymy; but it began shortly
afterwards to attract greater attention in Europe. Learned men in
France, England, Spain, and Italy expressed their belief in the
science, and many devoted their whole energies to it. In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries especially, it was extensively pursued, and some
of the brightest names of that age are connected with it. Among the most
eminent of them are


ALBERTUS MAGNUS and THOMAS AQUINA.

The first of these philosophers was born in the year 1193, of a noble
family at Lawingen, in the duchy of Neuburg, on the Danube. For the
first thirty years of his life, he appeared remarkably dull and stupid,
and it was feared by every one that no good could come of him. He
entered a Dominican monastery at an early age; but made so little
progress in his studies, that he was more than once upon the point
of abandoning them in despair; but he was endowed with extraordinary
perseverance. As he advanced to middle age, his mind expanded, and
he learned whatever he applied himself to with extreme facility. So
remarkable a change was not, in that age, to be accounted for but by a
miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched
with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his
incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat, almost
despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy
or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who
reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he had not made a
better choice. She, however, granted his request that he should become
the most excellent philosopher of the age; but set this drawback to his
pleasure, that he should relapse, when at the height of his fame, into
his former incapacity and stupidity. Albertus never took the trouble to
contradict the story, but prosecuted his studies with such unremitting
zeal that his reputation speedily spread over all Europe. In the year
1244, the celebrated Thomas Aquinas placed himself under his tuition.
Many extraordinary stories are told of the master and his pupil. While
they paid all due attention to other branches of science, they never
neglected the pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the elixir vitae.
Although they discovered neither, it was believed that Albert had seized
some portion of the secret of life, and found means to animate a brazen
statue, upon the formation of which, under proper conjunctions of the
planets, he had been occupied many years of his life. He and Thomas
Aquinas completed it together, endowed it with the faculty of speech,
and made it perform the functions of a domestic servant. In this
capacity it was exceedingly useful; but, through some defect in
the machinery, it chattered much more than was agreeable to either
philosopher. Various remedies were tried to cure it of its garrulity,
but in vain; and one day Thomas Aquinas was so enraged at the noise it
made, when he was in the midst of a mathematical problem, that he seized
a ponderous hammer and smashed it to pieces. [Naude, "Apologie des
Grands Hommes accuses de Magie;" chap. xviii.] He was sorry afterwards
for what he had done, and was reproved by his master for giving way
to his anger, so unbecoming in a philosopher. They made no attempt to
re-animate the statue.

Such stories as these show the spirit of the age. Every great man who
attempted to study the secrets of nature was thought a magician; and it
is not to be wondered at that, when philosophers themselves pretended to
discover an elixir for conferring immortality, or a red stone which was
to create boundless wealth, that popular opinion should have enhanced
upon their pretensions, and have endowed them with powers still more
miraculous. It was believed of Albertus Magnus that he could even change
the course of the seasons; a feat which the many thought less difficult
than the discovery of the grand elixir. Albertus was desirous of
obtaining a piece of ground on which to build a monastery, in the
neighbourhood of Cologne. The ground belonged to William, Count of
Holland and King of the Romans, who, for some reason or other, did not
wish to part with it. Albertus is reported to have gained it by the
following extraordinary method:--He invited the Prince, as he was
passing through Cologne, to a magnificent entertainment prepared for him
and all his court. The Prince accepted it, and repaired with a lordly
retinue to the residence of the sage. It was in the midst of winter; the
Rhine was frozen over, and the cold was so bitter that the knights could
not sit on horseback without running the risk of losing their toes by
the frost. Great, therefore, was their surprise, on arriving at Albert's
house, to find that the repast was spread in his garden, in which
the snow had drifted to the depth of several feet. The Earl, in high
dudgeon, remounted his steed; but Albert at last prevailed upon him
to take his seat at the table. He had no sooner done so, than the dark
clouds rolled away from the sky--a warm sun shone forth--the cold north
wind veered suddenly round, and blew a mild breeze from the south--the
snows melted away--the ice was unbound upon the streams, and the trees
put forth their green leaves and their fruit--flowers sprang up beneath
their feet, while larks, nightingales, blackbirds, cuckoos, thrushes,
and every sweet song-bird, sang hymns from every tree. The Earl and
his attendants wondered greatly; but they ate their dinner, and in
recompence for it, Albert got his piece of ground to build a convent
on. He had not, however, shown them all his power. Immediately that the
repast was over, he gave the word, and dark clouds obscured the sun--the
snow fell in large flakes--the singing-birds fell dead--the leaves
dropped from the trees, and the winds blew so cold, and howled so
mournfully, that the guests wrapped themselves up in their thick cloaks,
and retreated into the house to warm themselves at the blazing fire in
Albert's kitchen. [Lenglet, "Histoire de la Philosophie Hermetique." See
also, Godwin's "Lives of the Necromancers."]

Thomas Aquinas also could work wonders as well as his master. It is
related of him, that he lodged in a street at Cologne, where he was much
annoyed by the incessant clatter made by the horses' hoofs, as they were
led through it daily to exercise by their grooms. He had entreated
the latter to select some other spot where they might not disturb a
philosopher, but the grooms turned a deaf ear to all his solicitations.
In this emergency he had recourse to the aid of magic. He constructed
a small horse of bronze, upon which he inscribed certain cabalistic
characters, and buried it at midnight in the midst of the highway. The
next morning, a troop of grooms came riding along as usual; but the
horses, as they arrived at the spot where the magic horse was
buried, reared and plunged violently--their nostrils distended with
terror--their manes grew erect, and the perspiration ran down their
sides in streams. In vain the riders applied the spur--in vain they
coaxed or threatened, the animals would not pass the spot. On the
following day, their success was no better. They were at length
compelled to seek another spot for their exercise, and Thomas Aquinas
was left in peace. [Naude, "Apologie des Grands Hommes accuses de
Magie;" chap. xvii.]

Albertus Magnus was made Bishop of Ratisbon in 1259; but he occupied
the See only four years, when he resigned, on the ground that its
duties occupied too much of the time which he was anxious to devote
to philosophy. He died in Cologne in 1280, at the advanced age of
eighty-seven. The Dominican writers deny that he ever sought the
philosopher's stone, but his treatise upon minerals sufficiently proves
that he did.


ARTEPHIUS.

Artephius, a name noted in the annals of alchymy, was born in the early
part of the twelfth century. He wrote two famous treatises; the one upon
the philosopher's stone, and the other on the art of prolonging human
life. In the latter he vaunts his great qualifications for instructing
mankind on such a matter, as he was at that time in the thousand and
twenty-fifth year of his age! He had many disciples who believed in his
extreme age, and who attempted to prove that he was Apollonius of Tyana,
who lived soon after the advent of Jesus Christ, and the particulars
of whose life and pretended miracles have been so fully described by
Philostratus. He took good care never to contradict a story, which
so much increased the power he was desirous of wielding over his
fellow-mortals. On all convenient occasions, he boasted of it; and
having an excellent memory, a fertile imagination, and a thorough
knowledge of all existing history, he was never at a loss for an answer
when questioned as to the personal appearance, the manners, or the
character of the great men of antiquity. He also pretended to have
found the philosopher's stone; and said that, in search of it, he had
descended to hell, and seen the devil sitting on a throne of gold, with
a legion of imps and fiends around him. His works on alchymy have been
translated into French, and were published in Paris in 1609 or 1610.


ALAIN DE LISLE.

Contemporary with Albertus Magnus was Alain de Lisle, of Flanders,
who was named, from his great learning, the "universal doctor." He was
thought to possess a knowledge of all the sciences, and, like Artephius,
to have discovered the elixir vitae. He became one of the friars of
the abbey of Citeaux, and died in 1298, aged about one hundred and ten
years. It was said of him, that he was at the point of death when in his
fiftieth year; but that the fortunate discovery of the elixir enabled
him to add sixty years to his existence. He wrote a commentary on the
prophecies of Merlin.


ARNOLD DE VILLENEUVE.

This philosopher has left a much greater reputation. He was born in the
year 1245, and studied medicine with great success in the University of
Paris. He afterwards travelled for twenty years in Italy and Germany,
where he made acquaintance with Pietro d'Apone; a man of a character
akin to his own, and addicted to the same pursuits. As a physician, he
was thought, in his own lifetime, to be the most able the world had ever
seen. Like all the learned men of that day, he dabbled in astrology and
alchymy, and was thought to have made immense quantities of gold from
lead and copper. When Pietro d'Apone was arrested in Italy, and brought
to trial as a sorcerer, a similar accusation was made against Arnold;
but he managed to leave the country in time and escape the fate of his
unfortunate friend. He lost some credit by predicting the end of the
world, but afterwards regained it. The time of his death is not exactly
known; but it must have been prior to the year 1311, when Pope Clement
V. wrote a circular letter to all the clergy of Europe who lived under
his obedience, praying them to use their utmost efforts to discover the
famous treatise of Arnold on "The Practice of Medicine." The author had
promised, during his lifetime, to make a present of the work to the Holy
See, but died without fulfilling it.

In a very curious work by Monsieur Longeville Harcouet, entitled "The
History of the Persons who have lived several centuries, and then grown
young again," there is a receipt, said to have been given by Arnold de
Villeneuve, by means of which any one might prolong his life for a
few hundred years or so. In the first place, say Arnold and Monsieur
Harcouet, "the person intending so to prolong his life must rub himself
well, two or three times a week, with the juice or marrow of cassia
(moelle de la casse). Every night, upon going to bed, he must put upon
his heart a plaster, composed of a certain quantity of Oriental saffron,
red rose-leaves, sandal-wood, aloes, and amber, liquified in oil of
roses and the best white wax. In the morning, he must take it off, and
enclose it carefully in a leaden box till the next night, when it must
be again applied. If he be of a sanguine temperament, he shall take
sixteen chickens--if phlegmatic, twenty-five--and if melancholy, thirty,
which he shall put into a yard where the air and the water are pure.
Upon these he is to feed, eating one a day; but previously the chickens
are to be fattened by a peculiar method, which will impregnate their
flesh with the qualities that are to produce longevity in the eater.
Being deprived of all other nourishment till they are almost dying of
hunger, they are to be fed upon broth made of serpents and vinegar,
which broth is to be thickened with wheat and bran." Various ceremonies
are to be performed in the cooking of this mess, which those may see in
the book of M. Harcouet, who are at all interested in the matter; and
the chickens are to be fed upon it for two months. They are then fit for
table, and are to be washed down with moderate quantities of good white
wine or claret. This regimen is to be followed regularly every seven
years, and any one may live to be as old as Methuselah! It is right to
state, that M. Harcouet has but little authority for attributing this
precious composition to Arnold of Villeneuve. It is not to be found in
the collected works of that philosopher; but was first brought to light
by a M. Poirier, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, who
asserted that he had discovered it in MS. in the undoubted writing of
Arnold.


PIETRO D'APONE.

This unlucky sage was born at Apone, near Padua, in the year 1250. Like
his friend Arnold de Villeneuve, he was an eminent physician, and a
pretender to the arts of astrology and alchymy. He practised for many
years in Paris, and made great wealth by killing and curing, and telling
fortunes. In an evil day for him, he returned to his own country,
with the reputation of being a magician of the first order. It was
universally believed that he had drawn seven evil spirits from the
infernal regions, whom he kept enclosed in seven crystal vases, until
he required their services, when he sent them forth to the ends of the
earth to execute his pleasure. One spirit excelled in philosophy; a
second, in alchymy; a third, in astrology; a fourth, in physic; a fifth,
in poetry; a sixth, in music; and the seventh, in painting: and whenever
Pietro wished for information or instruction in any of these arts, he
had only to go to his crystal vase, and liberate the presiding spirit.
Immediately, all the secrets of the art were revealed to him; and he
might, if it pleased him, excel Homer in poetry, Apelles in painting,
or Pythagoras himself in philosophy. Although he could make gold out
of brass, it was said of him, that he was very sparing of his powers in
that respect, and kept himself constantly supplied with money by other
and less creditable means. Whenever he disbursed gold, he muttered a
certain charm, known only to himself; and next morning the gold was safe
again in his own possession. The trader to whom he gave it, might lock
it in his strong box, and have it guarded by a troop of soldiers; but
the charmed metal flew back to its old master. Even if it were buried
in the earth, or thrown into the sea, the dawn of the next morning would
behold it in the pockets of Pietro. Few people, in consequence, liked to
have dealings with such a personage, especially for gold. Some, bolder
than the rest, thought that his power did not extend over silver; but,
when they made the experiment, they found themselves mistaken. Bolts and
bars could not restrain it, and it sometimes became invisible in
their very hands, and was whisked through the air to the purse of the
magician. He necessarily acquired a very bad character; and, having
given utterance to some sentiments regarding religion which were the
very reverse of orthodox, he was summoned before the tribunals of the
Inquisition to answer for his crimes as a heretic and a sorcerer. He
loudly protested his innocence, even upon the rack, where he suffered
more torture than nature could support. He died in prison ere his trial
was concluded, but was afterwards found guilty. His bones were ordered
to be dug up, and publicly burned. He was also burned in effigy in the
streets of Padua.


RAYMOND LULLI.

While Arnold de Villeneuve and Pietro d'Apone flourished in France and
Italy, a more celebrated adept than either appeared in Spain. This
was Raymond Lulli, a name which stands in the first rank among the
alchymists. Unlike many of his predecessors, he made no pretensions
to astrology or necromancy; but, taking Geber for his model, studied
intently the nature and composition of metals, without reference to
charms, incantations, or any foolish ceremonies. It was not, however,
till late in life that he commenced his study of the art. His early and
middle age were spent in a different manner, and his whole history
is romantic in the extreme. He was born of an illustrious family, in
Majorca, in the year 1235. When that island was taken from the Saracens
by James I, King of Aragon, in 1230, the father of Raymond, who was
originally of Catalonia, settled there, and received a considerable
appointment from the Crown. Raymond married at an early age; and, being
fond of pleasure, he left the solitudes of his native isle, and passed
over with his bride into Spain. He was made Grand Seneschal at the court
of King James, and led a gay life for several years. Faithless to his
wife, he was always in the pursuit of some new beauty, till his heart
was fixed at last by the lovely, but unkind Ambrosia de Castello. This
lady, like her admirer, was married; but, unlike him, was faithful to
her vows, and treated all his solicitations with disdain. Raymond was so
enamoured, that repulse only increased his flame; he lingered all night
under her windows, wrote passionate verses in her praise, neglected his
affairs, and made himself the butt of all the courtiers. One day, while
watching under her lattice, he by chance caught sight of her bosom, as
her neckerchief was blown aside by the wind. The fit of inspiration
came over him, and he sat down and composed some tender stanzas upon the
subject, and sent them to the lady. The fair Ambrosia had never before
condescended to answer his letters; but she replied to this. She told
him, that she could never listen to his suit; that it was unbecoming in
a wise man to fix his thoughts, as he had done, on any other than
his God; and entreated him to devote himself to a religious life, and
conquer the unworthy passion which he had suffered to consume him. She,
however, offered, if he wished it, to show him the fair bosom which had
so captivated him. Raymond was delighted. He thought the latter part of
this epistle but ill corresponded with the former, and that Ambrosia, in
spite of the good advice she gave him, had, at last, relented, and would
make him as happy as he desired. He followed her about from place to
place, entreating her to fulfil her promise: but still Ambrosia was
cold, and implored him with tears to importune her no longer; for that
she never could be his, and never would, if she were free to-morrow.
"What means your letter, then?" said the despairing lover. "I will show
you!" replied Ambrosia, who immediately uncovered her bosom, and exposed
to the eyes of her horror-stricken admirer, a large cancer, which had
extended to both breasts. She saw that he was shocked; and, extending
her hand to him, she prayed him once more to lead a religious life, and
set his heart upon the Creator, and not upon the creature. He went home
an altered man. He threw up, on the morrow, his valuable appointment at
the court, separated from his wife, and took a farewell of his children,
after dividing one-half of his ample fortune among them. The other
half he shared among the poor. He then threw himself at the foot of a
crucifix, and devoted himself to the service of God, vowing, as the most
acceptable atonement for his errors, that he would employ the remainder
of his days in the task of converting the Mussulmans to the Christian
religion. In his dreams he saw Jesus Christ, who said to him, "Raymond!
Raymond! follow me!" The vision was three times repeated, and Raymond
was convinced that it was an intimation direct from Heaven. Having put
his affairs in order, he set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St.
James of Compostello, and afterwards lived for ten years in solitude
amid the mountains of Aranda. Here he learned the Arabic, to qualify
himself for his mission of converting the Mahometans. He also studied
various sciences, as taught in the works of the learned men of the
East, and first made acquaintance with the writings of Geber, which were
destined to exercise so much influence over his future life.

At the end of this probation, and when he had entered his fortieth year,
he emerged from his solitude into more active life. With some remains of
his fortune, which had accumulated during his retirement, he founded a
college for the study of Arabic, which was approved of by the Pope, with
many commendations upon his zeal and piety. At this time he narrowly
escaped assassination from an Arabian youth whom he had taken into
his service. Raymond had prayed to God, in some of his accesses of
fanaticism, that he might suffer martyrdom in his holy cause. His
servant had overheard him; and, being as great a fanatic as his master,
he resolved to gratify his wish, and punish him, at the same time, for
the curses which he incessantly launched against Mahomet and all who
believed in him, by stabbing him to the heart. He, therefore, aimed
a blow at his master, as he sat one day at table; but the instinct of
self-preservation being stronger than the desire of martyrdom, Raymond
grappled with his antagonist, and overthrew him. He scorned to take his
life himself; but handed him over to the authorities of the town, by
whom he was afterwards found dead in his prison.

After this adventure Raymond travelled to Paris, where he resided for
some time, and made the acquaintance of Arnold de Villeneuve. From him
he probably received some encouragement to search for the philosopher's
stone, as he began from that time forth to devote less of his attention
to religious matters, and more to the study of alchymy. Still he never
lost sight of the great object for which he lived--the conversion of the
Mahometans--and proceeded to Rome, to communicate personally with Pope
John XXI, on the best measures to be adopted for that end. The Pope gave
him encouragement in words, but failed to associate any other persons
with him in the enterprise which he meditated. Raymond, therefore,
set out for Tunis alone, and was kindly received by many Arabian
philosophers, who had heard of his fame as a professor of alchymy. If he
had stuck to alchymy while in their country, it would have been well for
him; but he began cursing Mahomet, and got himself into trouble. While
preaching the doctrines of Christianity in the great bazaar of Tunis, he
was arrested and thrown into prison. He was shortly afterwards brought
to trial, and sentenced to death. Some of his philosophic friends
interceded hard for him, and he was pardoned, upon condition that he
left Africa immediately, and never again set foot in it. If he was found
there again, no matter what his object might be, or whatever length
of time might intervene, his original sentence would be carried into
execution. Raymond was not at all solicitous of martyrdom when it came
to the point, whatever he might have been when there was no danger, and
he gladly accepted his life upon these conditions, and left Tunis with
the intention of proceeding to Rome. He afterwards changed his plan, and
established himself at Milan, where, for a length of time, he practised
alchymy, and some say astrology, with great success.

Most writers who believed in the secrets of alchymy, and who have
noticed the life of Raymond Lulli, assert, that while in Milan, he
received letters from Edward King of England, inviting him to settle in
his states. They add, that Lulli gladly accepted the invitation, and had
apartments assigned for his use in the Tower of London, where he refined
much gold; superintended the coinage of "rose-nobles;" and made gold out
of iron, quicksilver, lead, and pewter, to the amount of six millions.
The writers in the "Biographie Universelle," an excellent authority in
general, deny that Raymond was ever in England, and say, that in all
these stories of his wondrous powers as an alchymist, he has been
mistaken for another Raymond, a Jew, of Tarragona. Naude, in his
"Apologie," says, simply, "that six millions were given by Raymond Lulli
to King Edward, to make war against the Turks and other infidels:" not
that he transmuted so much metal into gold; but, as he afterwards adds,
that he advised Edward to lay a tax upon wool, which produced that
amount. To show that Raymond went to England, his admirers quote a work
attributed to him, "De Transmutatione Animae Metallorum," in which he
expressly says, that he was in England at the intercession of the King.
[Vidimus omnia ista dum ad Angliam transiimus, propter intercessionem
Domini Regis Edoardi illustrissimi.] The hermetic writers are not agreed
whether it was Edward I, or Edward II, who invited him over; but, by
fixing the date of his journey in 1312, they make it appear that it was
Edward II. Edmond Dickenson, in his work on the "Quintessences of the
Philosophers," says, that Raymond worked in Westminster Abbey, where, a
long time after his departure, there was found in the cell which he had
occupied, a great quantity of golden dust, of which the architects made
a great profit. In the biographical sketch of John Cremer, Abbot of
Westminster, given by Lenglet, it is said, that it was chiefly through
his instrumentality that Raymond came to England. Cremer had
been himself for thirty years occupied in the vain search for the
philosopher's stone, when he accidentally met Raymond in Italy, and
endeavoured to induce him to communicate his grand secret. Raymond told
him that he must find it for himself, as all great alchymists had done
before him. Cremer, on his return to England, spoke to King Edward in
high terms of the wonderful attainments of the philosopher, and a
letter of invitation was forthwith sent him. Robert Constantinus, in the
"Nomenclatore Scriptorum Medicorum," published in 1515, says, that after
a great deal of research, be found that Raymond Lulli resided for
some time in London, and that he actually made gold, by means of the
philosopher's stone, in the Tower; that he had seen the golden pieces of
his coinage, which were still named in England the nobles of Raymond,
or rose-nobles. Lulli himself appears to have boasted that he made gold;
for, in his well-known "Testamentum," he states, that he converted no
less than fifty thousand pounds weight of quicksilver, lead, and pewter
into that metal. [Converti una vice in aurum ad L millia pondo argenti
vivi, plumbi, et stanni.--Lullii Testamentum.] It seems highly probable
that the English King, believing in the extraordinary powers of the
alchymist, invited him to England to make test of them, and that he was
employed in refining gold and in coining. Camden, who is not credulous
in matters like these, affords his countenance to the story of his
coinage of nobles; and there is nothing at all wonderful in the fact
of a man famous for his knowledge of metals being employed in such a
capacity. Raymond was, at this time, an old man, in his seventy-seventh
year, and somewhat in his dotage. He was willing enough to have it
believed that he had discovered the grand secret, and supported the
rumour rather than contradicted it. He did not long remain in England;
but returned to Rome, to carry out the projects which were nearer to his
heart than the profession of alchymy. He had proposed them to several
successive Popes with little or no success. The first was a plan for
the introduction of the Oriental languages into all the monasteries
of Europe; the second, for the reduction into one of all the military
orders, that, being united, they might move more efficaciously against
the Saracens; and, the third, that the Sovereign Pontiff should
forbid the works of Averroes to be read in the schools, as being more
favourable to Mahometanism than to Christianity. The Pope did not
receive the old man with much cordiality; and, after remaining for
about two years in Rome, he proceeded once more to Africa, alone and
unprotected, to preach the Gospel of Jesus. He landed at Bona in 1314;
and so irritated the Mahometans by cursing their prophet, that they
stoned him, and left him for dead on the sea-shore. He was found some
hours afterwards by a party of Genoese merchants, who conveyed him on
board their vessel, and sailed towards Majorca. The unfortunate man
still breathed, but could not articulate. He lingered in this state for
some days, and expired just as the vessel arrived within sight of his
native shores. His body was conveyed with great pomp to the church of
St. Eulalia, at Palma, where a public funeral was instituted in his
honour. Miracles were afterwards said to have been worked at his tomb.

Thus ended the career of Raymond Lulli, one of the most extraordinary
men of his age; and, with the exception of his last boast about the
six millions of gold, the least inclined to quackery of any of the
professors of alchymy. His writings were very numerous, and include
nearly five hundred volumes, upon grammar, rhetoric, morals, theology,
politics, civil and canon law, physics, metaphysics, astronomy,
medicine, and chemistry.


ROGER BACON.

The powerful delusion of alchymy seized upon a mind still greater than
that of Raymond Lulli. Roger Bacon firmly believed in the philosopher's
stone, and spent much of his time in search of it. His example helped
to render all the learned men of the time more convinced of its
practicability, and more eager in the pursuit. He was born at Ilchester,
in the county of Somerset, in the year 1214. He studied for some time in
the university of Oxford, and afterwards in that of Paris, in which he
received the degree of doctor of divinity. Returning to England in 1240,
he became a monk of the order of St. Francis. He was by far the most
learned man of his age; and his acquirements were so much above the
comprehension of his contemporaries, that they could only account for
them by supposing that he was indebted for them to the devil. Voltaire
has not inaptly designated him "De l'or encroute de toutes les ordures
de son siecle;" but the crust of superstition that enveloped his
powerful mind, though it may have dimmed, could not obscure the
brightness of his genius. To him, and apparently to him only, among
all the inquiring spirits of the time, were known the properties of the
concave and convex lens. He also invented the magic-lantern; that pretty
plaything of modern days, which acquired for him a reputation that
embittered his life. In a history of alchymy, the name of this great man
cannot be omitted, although, unlike many others of whom we shall have
occasion to speak, he only made it secondary to other pursuits. The
love of universal knowledge that filled his mind, would not allow him to
neglect one branch of science, of which neither he nor the world could
yet see the absurdity. He made ample amends for his time lost in this
pursuit by his knowledge in physics and his acquaintance with astronomy.
The telescope, burning-glasses, and gunpowder, are discoveries which may
well carry his fame to the remotest time, and make the world blind to
the one spot of folly--the diagnosis of the age in which he lived,
and the circumstances by which he was surrounded. His treatise on
the "Admirable Power of Art and Nature in the Production of the
Philosopher's Stone" was translated into French by Girard de Tormes, and
published at Lyons in 1557. His "Mirror of Alchymy" was also published
in French in the same year, and in Paris in 1612, with some additions
from the works of Raymond Lulli. A complete list of all the published
treatises upon the subject may be seen in Lenglet du Fresnoy.


POPE JOHN XXII.

This Prelate is said to have been the friend and pupil of Arnold de
Villeneuve, by whom he was instructed in all the secrets of alchymy.
Tradition asserts of him, that he made great quantities of gold, and
died as rich as Croesus. He was born at Cahors, in the province of
Guienne, in the year 1244. He was a very eloquent preacher, and soon
reached high dignity in the Church. He wrote a work on the transmutation
of metals, and had a famous laboratory at Avignon. He issued two Bulls
against the numerous pretenders to the art, who had sprung up in every
part of Christendom; from which it might be inferred that he was himself
free from the delusion. The alchymists claim him, however, as one of the
most distinguished and successful professors of their art, and say
that his Bulls were not directed against the real adepts, but the false
pretenders. They lay particular stress upon these words in his Bull,
"Spondent, quas non exhibent, divitias, pauperes alchymistae." These, it
is clear, they say, relate only to poor alchymists, and therefore false
ones. He died in the year 1344, leaving in his coffers a sum of eighteen
millions of florins. Popular belief alleged that he had made, and not
amassed, this treasure; and alchymists complacently cite this as a proof
that the philosopher's stone was not such a chimera as the incredulous
pretended. They take it for granted that John really left this money,
and ask by what possible means he could have accumulated it. Replying
to their own question, they say triumphantly, "His book shows it was by
alchymy, the secrets of which he learned from Arnold de Villeneuve and
Raymond Lulli. But he was as prudent as all other hermetic philosophers.
Whoever would read his book to find out his secret, would employ all his
labour in vain; the Pope took good care not to divulge it." Unluckily
for their own credit, all these gold-makers are in the same predicament;
their great secret loses its worth most wonderfully in the telling, and
therefore they keep it snugly to themselves. Perhaps they thought that,
if everybody could transmute metals, gold would be so plentiful that it
would be no longer valuable, and that some new art would be requisite
to transmute it back again into steel and iron. If so, society is much
indebted to them for their forbearance.


JEAN DE MEUNG

All classes of men dabbled in the art at this time; the last mentioned
was a Pope, the one of whom we now speak was a poet. Jean de Meung, the
celebrated author of the "Roman de la Rose," was born in the year 1279
or 1280, and was a great personage at the courts of Louis X, Philip the
Long, Charles IV, and Philip de Valois. His famous poem of the "Roman
de la Rose," which treats of every subject in vogue at that day,
necessarily makes great mention of alchymy. Jean was a firm believer
in the art, and wrote, besides his, "Roman," two shorter poems, the one
entitled, "The Remonstrance of Nature to the wandering Alchymist," and
"The Reply of the Alchymist to Nature." Poetry and alchymy were his
delight, and priests and women were his abomination. A pleasant story is
related of him and the ladies of the court of Charles IV. He had written
the following libellous couplet upon the fair sex:--

     "Toutes etes, serez, ou futes
     De fait ou de volonte, putains,
     Et qui, tres bien vous chercherait
     Toutes putains, vous trouverait."

[These verses are but a coarser expression of the slanderous line of
Pope, that "every woman is at heart a rake."]

This naturally gave great offence; and being perceived one day, in the
King's antechamber, by some ladies who were waiting for an audience,
they resolved to punish him. To the number of ten or twelve, they armed
themselves with canes and rods; and surrounding the unlucky poet, called
upon the gentlemen present to strip him naked, that they might wreak
just vengeance upon him, and lash him through the streets of the town.
Some of the lords present were in no wise loth, and promised themselves
great sport from his punishment. But Jean de Meung was unmoved by their
threats, and stood up calmly in the midst of them, begging them to hear
him first, and then, if not satisfied, they might do as they liked with
him. Silence being restored, he stood upon a chair, and entered on his
defence. He acknowledged that he was the author of the obnoxious verses,
but denied that they bore reference to all womankind. He only meant to
speak of the vicious and abandoned, whereas those whom he saw around
him, were patterns of virtue, loveliness, and modesty. If, however, any
lady present thought herself aggrieved, he would consent to be stripped,
and she might lash him till her arms were wearied. It is added, that
by this means Jean escaped his flogging, and that the wrath of the
fair ones immediately subsided. The gentlemen present were, however, of
opinion, that if every lady in the room, whose character corresponded
with the verses, had taken him at his word, the poet would, in all
probability, have been beaten to death. All his life long he evinced a
great animosity towards the priesthood, and his famous poem abounds with
passages reflecting upon their avarice, cruelty, and immorality. At his
death he left a large box, filled with some weighty material, which he
bequeathed to the Cordeliers, as a peace-offering, for the abuse he had
lavished upon them. As his practice of alchymy was well-known, it was
thought the box was filled with gold and silver, and the Cordeliers
congratulated each other on their rich acquisition. When it came to be
opened, they found to their horror that it was filled only with slates,
scratched with hieroglyphic and cabalistic characters. Indignant at the
insult, they determined to refuse him Christian burial, on pretence
that he was a sorcerer. He was, however, honourably buried in Paris, the
whole court attending his funeral.


NICHOLAS FLAMEL.

The story of this alchymist, as handed down by tradition, and enshrined
in the pages of Lenglet du Fresnoy, is not a little marvellous. He was
born at Pontoise of a poor but respectable family, at the end of
the thirteenth, or beginning of the fourteenth, century. Having no
patrimony, he set out for Paris at an early age, to try his fortune as a
public scribe. He had received a good education, was well skilled in
the learned languages, and was an excellent penman. He soon procured
occupation as a letter-writer and copyist, and used to sit at the corner
of the Rue de Marivaux, and practise his calling: but he hardly made
profits enough to keep body and soul together. To mend his fortunes
he tried poetry; but this was a more wretched occupation still. As a
transcriber he had at least gained bread and cheese; but his rhymes were
not worth a crust. He then tried painting with as little success; and as
a last resource, began to search for the philosopher's stone, and tell
fortunes. This was a happier idea; he soon increased in substance, and
had wherewithal to live comfortably. He, therefore, took unto himself
his wife Petronella, and began to save money; but continued to all
outward appearance as poor and miserable as before. In the course of a
few years, he became desperately addicted to the study of alchymy, and
thought of nothing but the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and
the universal alkahest. In the year 1257, he bought by chance an old
book for two florins, which soon became the sole study and object of his
life. It was written with a steel instrument upon the bark of trees, and
contained twenty-one, or as he himself always expressed it, three times
seven, leaves. The writing was very elegant and in the Latin language.
Each seventh leaf contained a picture and no writing. On the first
of these was a serpent swallowing rods; on the second, a cross with a
serpent crucified; and on the third, the representation of a desert, in
the midst of which was a fountain with serpents crawling from side to
side. It purported to be written by no less a personage than "Abraham,
patriarch, Jew, prince, philosopher, priest, Levite, and astrologer;"
and invoked curses upon any one who should cast eyes upon it, without
being a sacrificer or a scribe. Nicholas Flamel never thought it
extraordinary that Abraham should have known Latin, and was convinced
that the characters on his book had been traced by the hands of that
great patriarch himself. He was at first afraid to read it, after he
became aware of the curse it contained; but he got over that difficulty
by recollecting that, although he was not a sacrificer, he had practised
as a scribe. As he read he was filled with admiration, and found that it
was a perfect treatise upon the transmutation of metals. All the process
was clearly explained; the vessels, the retorts, the mixtures, and the
proper times and seasons for the experiment. But as ill-luck would have
it, the possession of the philosopher's stone or prime agent in the work
was presupposed. This was a difficulty which was not to be got over.
It was like telling a starving man how to cook a beefsteak, instead of
giving him the money to buy one. But Nicholas did not despair; and set
about studying the hieroglyphics and allegorical representations with
which the book abounded. He soon convinced himself that it had been one
of the sacred books of the Jews, and that it was taken from the temple
of Jerusalem on its destruction by Titus. The process of reasoning by
which he arrived at this conclusion is not stated.

From some expression in the treatise, he learned that the allegorical
drawings on the fourth and fifth leaves, enshrined the secret of the
philosopher's stone, without which all the fine Latin of the directions
was utterly unavailing. He invited all the alchymists and learned men
of Paris to come and examine them, but they all departed as wise as they
came. Nobody could make anything either of Nicholas or his pictures; and
some even went so far as to say that his invaluable book was not worth
a farthing. This was not to be borne; and Nicholas resolved to discover
the great secret by himself, without troubling the philosophers. He
found on the first page, of the fourth leaf, the picture of Mercury,
attacked by an old man resembling Saturn or Time. The latter had an
hourglass on his head, and in his hand a scythe, with which he aimed
a blow at Mercury's feet. The reverse of the leaf represented a flower
growing on a mountain top, shaken rudely by the wind, with a blue stalk,
red and white blossoms, and leaves of pure gold. Around it were a great
number of dragons and griffins. On the first page of the fifth leaf
was a fine garden, in the midst of which was a rose tree in full bloom,
supported against the trunk of a gigantic oak. At the foot of this there
bubbled up a fountain of milk-white water, which forming a small stream,
flowed through the garden, and was afterwards lost in the sands. On
the second page was a King, with a sword in his hand, superintending
a number of soldiers, who, in execution of his orders, were killing a
great multitude of young children, spurning the prayers and tears of
their mothers, who tried to save them from destruction. The blood of the
children was carefully collected by another party of soldiers, and put
into a large vessel, in which two allegorical figures of the Sun and
Moon were bathing themselves.

For twenty-one years poor Nicholas wearied himself with the study
of these pictures, but still he could make nothing of them. His wife
Petronella at last persuaded him to find out some learned Rabbi; but
there was no Rabbi in Paris learned enough to be of any service to him.
The Jews met but small encouragement to fix their abode in France,
and all the chiefs of that people were located in Spain. To Spain
accordingly Nicholas Flamel repaired. He left his book in Paris for
fear, perhaps, that he might be robbed of it on the road; and telling
his neighbours that he was going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St.
James of Compostello, he trudged on foot towards Madrid in search of a
Rabbi. He was absent two years in that country, and made himself known
to a great number of Jews, descendants of those who had been expelled
from France in the reign of Philip Augustus. The believers in the
philosopher's stone give the following account of his adventures:--They
say that at Leon he made the acquaintance of a converted Jew, named
Cauches, a very learned physician, to whom he explained the title and
the nature of his little book. The Doctor was transported with joy
as soon as he heard it named, and immediately resolved to accompany
Nicholas to Paris, that he might have a sight of it. The two set out
together; the Doctor on the way entertaining his companion with the
history of his book, which, if the genuine book he thought it to be,
from the description he had heard of it, was in the handwriting of
Abraham himself, and had been in the possession of personages no less
distinguished than Moses, Joshua, Solomon, and Esdras. It contained
all the secrets of alchymy and of many other sciences, and was the
most valuable book that had ever existed in this world. The Doctor was
himself no mean adept, and Nicholas profited greatly by his discourse,
as in the garb of poor pilgrims they wended their way to Paris,
convinced of their power to turn every old shovel in that capital into
pure gold. But, unfortunately, when they reached Orleans, the Doctor was
taken dangerously ill. Nicholas watched by his bedside, and acted the
double part of a physician and nurse to him; but he died after a few
days, lamenting with his last breath that he had not lived long enough
to see the precious volume. Nicholas rendered the last honours to
his body; and with a sorrowful heart, and not one sous in his pocket,
proceeded home to his wife Petronella. He immediately recommenced
the study of his pictures; but for two whole years he was as far from
understanding them as ever. At last, in the third year, a glimmer of
light stole over his understanding. He recalled some expression of his
friend, the Doctor, which had hitherto escaped his memory, and he found
that all his previous experiments had been conducted on a wrong basis.
He recommenced them now with renewed energy, and at the end of the year
had the satisfaction to see all his toils rewarded. On the 13th January
1382, says Lenglet, he made a projection on mercury, and had some very
excellent silver. On the 25th April following, he converted a large
quantity of mercury into gold, and the great secret was his.

Nicholas was now about eighty years of age, and still a hale and stout
old man. His friends say that, by the simultaneous discovery of the
elixir of life, he found means to keep death at a distance for another
quarter of a century; and that he died in 1415, at the age of 116. In
this interval he had made immense quantities of gold, though to all
outward appearance he was as poor as a mouse. At an early period of his
changed fortune, he had, like a worthy man, taken counsel with his
old wife Petronella, as to the best use he could make of his wealth.
Petronella replied, that as unfortunately they had no children, the best
thing he could do, was to build hospitals and endow churches. Nicholas
thought so too, especially when he began to find that his elixir could
not keep off death, and that the grim foe was making rapid advances upon
him. He richly endowed the church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, near
the Rue de Marivaux, where he had all his life resided, besides seven
others in different parts of the kingdom. He also endowed fourteen
hospitals, and built three chapels.

The fame of his great wealth and his munificent benefactions soon
spread over all the country, and he was visited, among others, by the
celebrated Doctors of that day, Jean Gerson, Jean de Courtecuisse, and
Pierre d'Ailli. They found him in his humble apartment, meanly clad, and
eating porridge out of an earthen vessel; and with regard to his secret,
as impenetrable as all his predecessors in alchymy. His fame reached
the ears of the King, Charles VI, who sent M. de Cramoisi, the Master
of Requests, to find out whether Nicholas had indeed discovered the
philosopher's stone. But M. de Cramoisi took nothing by his visit; all
his attempts to sound the alchymist were unavailing, and he returned to
his royal master no wiser than he came. It was in this year, 1414, that
he lost his faithful Petronella. He did not long survive her; but died
in the following year, and was buried with great pomp by the grateful
priests of St. Jacques de la Boucherie.

The great wealth of Nicholas Flamel is undoubted, as the records of
several churches and hospitals in France can testify. That he practised
alchymy is equally certain, as he left behind several works upon the
subject.

Those who knew him well, and who were incredulous about the
philosopher's stone, give a very satisfactory solution of the secret of
his wealth. They say that he was always a miser and a usurer; that his
journey to Spain was undertaken with very different motives from those
pretended by the alchymists; that, in fact, he went to collect debts
due from Jews in that country to their brethren in Paris, and that he
charged a commission of fully cent. per cent. in consideration of the
difficulty of collecting and the dangers of the road; that when he
possessed thousands, he lived upon almost nothing; and was the general
money-lender, at enormous profits, of all the dissipated young men at
the French court.

Among the works written by Nicholas Flamel on the subject of alchymy, is
"The Philosophic Summary," a poem, reprinted in 1735, as an appendix
to the third volume of the "Roman de la Rose." He also wrote three
treatises upon natural philosophy, and an alchymic allegory, entitled
"Le Desir desire." Specimens of his writing, and a fac-simile of the
drawings in his book of Abraham, may be seen in Salmon's "Bibliotheque
des Philosophes Chimiques." The writer of the article, "Flamel," in the
"Biographie Universelle," says that, for a hundred years after the death
of Flamel, many of the adepts believed that he was still alive, and that
he would live for upwards of six hundred years. The house he formerly
occupied, at the corner of the Rue de Marivaux, has been often taken by
credulous speculators, and ransacked from top to bottom, in the hopes
that gold might be found. A report was current in Paris, not long
previous to the year 1816, that some lodgers had found in the cellars
several jars filled with a dark-coloured ponderous matter. Upon the
strength of the rumour, a believer in all the wondrous tales told of
Nicholas Flamel bought the house, and nearly pulled it to pieces in
ransacking the walls and wainscotting for hidden gold. He got nothing
for his pains, however, and had a heavy bill to pay to restore his
dilapidations.


GEORGE RIPLEY.

While alchymy was thus cultivated on the continent of Europe, it was not
neglected in the isles of Britain. Since the time of Roger Bacon, it had
fascinated the imagination of many ardent men in England. In the year
1404, an act of parliament was passed, declaring the making of gold
and silver to be felony. Great alarm was felt at that time lest any
alchymist should succeed in his projects, and perhaps bring ruin upon
the state, by furnishing boundless wealth to some designing tyrant, who
would make use of it to enslave his country. This alarm appears to have
soon subsided; for, in the year 1455, King Henry VI, by advice of his
council and parliament, granted four successive patents and commissions
to several knights, citizens of London, chemists, monks, mass-priests,
and others, to find out the philosopher's stone and elixir, "to the
great benefit," said the patent, "of the realm, and the enabling of the
King to pay all the debts of the Crown in real gold and silver." Prinn,
in his "Aurum Reginae," observes, as a note to this passage, that the
King's reason for granting this patent to ecclesiastics was, that they
were such good artists in transubstantiating bread and wine in the
Eucharist, and therefore the more likely to be able to effect the
transmutation of baser metals into better. No gold, of course, was ever
made; and, next year, the King, doubting very much of the practicability
of the thing, took further advice, and appointed a commission of ten
learned men, and persons of eminence, to judge and certify to him
whether the transmutation of metals were a thing practicable or no. It
does not appear whether the commission ever made any report upon the
subject.

In the succeeding reign, an alchymist appeared who pretended to have
discovered the secret. This was George Ripley, the canon of Bridlington,
in Yorkshire. He studied for twenty years in the universities of Italy,
and was a great favourite with Pope Innocent VIII, who made him one of
his domestic chaplains, and master of the ceremonies in his household.
Returning to England in 1477, he dedicated to King Edward IV. his famous
work, "The Compound of Alchymy; or, the Twelve Gates leading to the
Discovery of the Philosopher's Stone." These gates he described to
be calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction,
congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation,
multiplication, and projection! to which he might have added
botheration, the most important process of all. He was very rich, and
allowed it to be believed that he could make gold out of iron. Fuller,
in his "Worthies of England," says that an English gentleman of good
credit reported that, in his travels abroad, he saw a record in the
island of Malta, which declared that Ripley gave yearly to the knights
of that island, and of Rhodes, the enormous sum of one hundred thousand
pounds sterling, to enable them to carry on the war against the
Turks. In his old age, he became an anchorite near Boston, and wrote
twenty-five volumes upon the subject of alchymy, the most important of
which is the "Duodecim Portarum," already mentioned. Before he died, he
seems to have acknowledged that he had misspent his life in this vain
study, and requested that all men, when they met with any of his books,
would burn them, or afford them no credit, as they had been written
merely from his opinion, and not from proof; and that subsequent trial
had made manifest to him that they were false and vain. [Fuller's
"Worthies of England."]


BASIL VALENTINE.

Germany also produced many famous alchymists in the fifteenth century,
the chief of whom are Basil Valentine, Bernard of Treves, and the Abbot
Trithemius. Basil Valentine was born at Mayence, and was made prior of
St. Peter's, at Erfurt, about the year 1414. It was known, during his
life, that he diligently sought the philosopher's stone, and that he had
written some works upon the process of transmutation. They were thought,
for many years, to be lost; but were, after his death, discovered
enclosed in the stone work of one of the pillars in the Abbey. They were
twenty-one in number, and are fully set forth in the third volume of
Lenglet's "History of the Hermetic Philosophy." The alchymists asserted,
that Heaven itself conspired to bring to light these extraordinary
works; and that the pillar in which they were enclosed was miraculously
shattered by a thunderbolt; and that, as soon as the manuscripts were
liberated, the pillar closed up again of its own accord!


BERNARD of TREVES.

The life of this philosopher is a remarkable instance of talent and
perseverance misapplied. In the search of his chimera nothing could
daunt him. Repeated disappointment never diminished his hopes; and, from
the age of fourteen to that of eighty-five, he was incessantly employed
among the drugs and furnaces of his laboratory, wasting his life with
the view of prolonging it, and reducing himself to beggary in the hopes
of growing rich.

He was born at either Treves or Padua, in the year 1406. His father is
said by some to have been a physician in the latter city; and by others,
to have been Count of the Marches of Treves, and one of the most wealthy
nobles of his country. At all events, whether noble or physician, he
was a rich man, and left his son a magnificent estate. At the age of
fourteen he first became enamoured of the science of alchymy, and read
the Arabian authors in their own language. He himself has left a
most interesting record of his labours and wanderings, from which the
following particulars are chiefly extracted:--The first book which fell
into his hands, was that of the Arabian philosopher, Rhazes, from
the reading of which he imagined that he had discovered the means
of augmenting gold a hundred fold. For four years he worked in his
laboratory, with the book of Rhazes continually before him. At the end
of that time, he found that he had spent no less than eight hundred
crowns upon his experiment, and had got nothing but fire and smoke for
his pains. He now began to lose confidence in Rhazes, and turned to the
works of Geber. He studied him assiduously for two years; and, being
young, rich, and credulous, was beset by all the chymists of the town,
who kindly assisted him in spending his money. He did not lose his faith
in Geber, or patience with his hungry assistants, until he had lost two
thousand crowns--a very considerable sum in those days.

Among all the crowd of pretended men of science who surrounded him,
there was but one as enthusiastic and as disinterested as himself. With
this man, who was a monk of the order of St. Francis, he contracted
an intimate friendship, and spent nearly all his time. Some obscure
treatises of Rupecissa and Sacrobosco having fallen into their hands,
they were persuaded, from reading them, that highly rectified spirits
of wine was the universal alkahest, or dissolvent, which would aid them
greatly in the process of transmutation. They rectified the alcohol
thirty times, till they made it so strong as to burst the vessels which
contained it. After they had worked three years, and spent three hundred
crowns in the liquor, they discovered that they were on the wrong track.
They next tried alum and copperas; but the great secret still escaped
them. They afterwards imagined that there was a marvellous virtue in
all excrement, especially the human, and actually employed more than two
years in experimentalizing upon it, with mercury, salt, and molten lead!
Again the adepts flocked around him from far and near, to aid him with
their counsels. He received them all hospitably, and divided his wealth
among them so generously and unhesitatingly, that they gave him the name
of the "good Trevisan," by which he is still often mentioned in works
that treat on alchymy. For twelve years he led this life, making
experiments every day upon some new substance, and praying to God night
and morning that he might discover the secret of transmutation.

In this interval he lost his friend the monk, and was joined by a
magistrate of the city of Treves, as ardent as himself in the search.
His new acquaintance imagined that the ocean was the mother of gold,
and that sea-salt would change lead or iron into the precious metals.
Bernard resolved to try; and, transporting his laboratory to a house
on the coast of the Baltic, he worked upon salt for more than a year,
melting it, sublimating it, crystalizing it, and occasionally drinking
it, for the sake of other experiments. Still the strange enthusiast was
not wholly discouraged, and his failure in one trial only made him the
more anxious to attempt another.

He was now approaching the age of fifty, and had as yet seen nothing of
the world. He, therefore, determined to travel through Germany, Italy,
France, and Spain. Wherever he stopped he made inquiries whether there
were any alchymists in the neighbourhood. He invariably sought them out;
and, if they were poor, relieved, and, if affluent, encouraged them. At
Citeaux he became acquainted with one Geoffrey Leuvier, a monk of that
place, who persuaded him that the essence of egg-shells was a valuable
ingredient. He tried, therefore, what could be done; and was only
prevented from wasting a year or two on the experiment by the opinions
of an attorney, at Berghem, in Flanders, who said that the great secret
resided in vinegar and copperas. He was not convinced of the absurdity
of this idea until he had nearly poisoned himself. He resided in France
for about five years, when, hearing accidentally that one Master Henry,
confessor to the Emperor Frederic III, had discovered the philosopher's
stone, he set out for Germany to pay him a visit. He had, as usual,
surrounded himself with a set of hungry dependants, several of whom
determined to accompany him. He had not heart to refuse them, and he
arrived at Vienna with five of them. Bernard sent a polite invitation
to the confessor, and gave him a sumptuous entertainment, at which
were present nearly all the alchymists of Vienna. Master Henry frankly
confessed that he had not discovered the philosopher's stone, but that
he had all his life been employed in searching for it, and would so
continue, till he found it;--or died. This was a man after Bernard's
own heart, and they vowed with each other an eternal friendship. It was
resolved, at supper, that each alchymist present should contribute a
certain sum towards raising forty-two marks of gold, which, in five
days, it was confidently asserted by Master Henry, would increase, in
his furnace, five fold. Bernard, being the richest man, contributed the
lion's share, ten marks of gold, Master Henry five, and the others one
or two a piece, except the dependants of Bernard, who were obliged to
borrow their quota from their patron. The grand experiment was duly
made; the golden marks were put into a crucible, with a quantity of
salt, copperas, aquafortis, egg-shells, mercury, lead, and dung. The
alchymists watched this precious mess with intense interest, expecting
that it would agglomerate into one lump of pure gold. At the end of
three weeks they gave up the trial, upon some excuse that the crucible
was not strong enough, or that some necessary ingredient was wanting.
Whether any thief had put his hands into the crucible is not known, but
it is certain that the gold found therein at the close of the experiment
was worth only sixteen marks, instead of the forty-two, which were put
there at the beginning.

Bernard, though he made no gold at Vienna, made away with a very
considerable quantity. He felt the loss so acutely, that he vowed to
think no more of the philosopher's stone. This wise resolution he kept
for two months; but he was miserable. He was in the condition of the
gambler, who cannot resist the fascination of the game while he has a
coin remaining, but plays on with the hope of retrieving former losses,
till hope forsakes him, and he can live no longer. He returned once
more to his beloved crucibles, and resolved to prosecute his journey
in search of a philosopher who had discovered the secret, and would
communicate it to so zealous and persevering an adept as himself. From
Vienna he travelled to Rome, and from Rome to Madrid. Taking ship at
Gibraltar, he proceeded to Messina; from Messina to Cyprus; from
Cyprus to Greece; from Greece to Constantinople; and thence into Egypt,
Palestine, and Persia. These wanderings occupied him about eight years.
From Persia he made his way back to Messina, and from thence into
France. He afterwards passed over into England, still in search of his
great chimera; and this occupied four years more of his life. He was now
growing both old and poor; for he was sixty-two years of age, and had
been obliged to sell a great portion of his patrimony to provide for his
expenses. His journey to Persia had cost upwards of thirteen thousand
crowns, about one-half of which had been fairly melted in his
all-devouring furnaces: the other half was lavished upon the sycophants
that he made it his business to search out in every town he stopped at.

On his return to Treves he found, to his sorrow, that, if not an actual
beggar, he was not much better. His relatives looked upon him as a
madman, and refused even to see him. Too proud to ask for favours from
any one, and still confident that, some day or other, he would be the
possessor of unbounded wealth, he made up his mind to retire to the
island of Rhodes, where he might, in the mean time, hide his poverty
from the eyes of all the world. Here he might have lived unknown and
happy; but, as ill luck would have it, he fell in with a monk as mad as
himself upon the subject of transmutation. They were, however, both
so poor that they could not afford to buy the proper materials to work
with. They kept up each other's spirits by learned discourses on the
Hermetic Philosophy, and in the reading of all the great authors who had
written upon the subject. Thus did they nurse their folly, as the good
wife of Tam O'Shanter did her wrath, "to keep it warm." After Bernard
had resided about a year in Rhodes, a merchant, who knew his family,
advanced him the sum of eight thousand florins, upon the security of the
last-remaining acres of his formerly large estate. Once more provided
with funds, he recommenced his labours with all the zeal and enthusiasm
of a young man. For three years he hardly stepped out of his laboratory:
he ate there, and slept there, and did not even give himself time to
wash his hands and clean his beard, so intense was his application. It
is melancholy to think that such wonderful perseverance should have been
wasted in so vain a pursuit, and that energies so unconquerable should
have had no worthier field to strive in. Even when he had fumed away his
last coin, and had nothing left in prospective to keep his old age
from starvation, hope never forsook him. He still dreamed of ultimate
success, and sat down a greyheaded man of eighty, to read over all the
authors on the hermetic mysteries, from Geber to his own day, lest he
should have misunderstood some process, which it was not yet too late
to recommence. The alchymists say, that he succeeded at last, and
discovered the secret of transmutation in his eighty-second year. They
add, that he lived three years afterwards to enjoy his wealth. He lived,
it is true, to this great age, and made a valuable discovery--more
valuable than gold or gems. He learned, as he himself informs us, just
before he had attained his eighty-third year, that the great secret of
philosophy was contentment with our lot. Happy would it have been for
him if he had discovered it sooner, and before he became decrepit, a
beggar, and an exile!

He died at Rhodes, in the year 1490, and all the alchymists of Europe
sang elegies over him, and sounded his praise as the "good Trevisan."
He wrote several treatises upon his chimera, the chief of which are,
the "Book of Chemistry," the "Verbum dimissum," and an essay "De Natura
Ovi."


TRITHEMIUS.

The name of this eminent man has become famous in the annals of alchymy,
although he did but little to gain so questionable an honour. He was
born in the year 1462, at the village of Trittheim, in the electorate
of Treves. His father was John Heidenberg, a vine-grower, in easy
circumstances, who, dying when his son was but seven years old, left
him to the care of his mother. The latter married again very shortly
afterwards, and neglected the poor boy, the offspring of her first
marriage. At the age of fifteen he did not even know his letters,
and was, besides, half starved, and otherwise ill-treated by his
step-father; but the love of knowledge germinated in the breast of the
unfortunate youth, and he learned to read at the house of a neighbour.
His father-in-law set him to work in the vineyards, and thus occupied
all his days; but the nights were his own. He often stole out unheeded,
when all the household were fast asleep, poring over his studies in the
fields, by the light of the moon; and thus taught himself Latin and the
rudiments of Greek. He was subjected to so much ill-usage at home,
in consequence of this love of study, that he determined to leave it.
Demanding the patrimony which his father had left him, he proceeded to
Treves; and, assuming the name of Trithemius, from that of his native
village of Trittheim, lived there for some months, under the tuition of
eminent masters, by whom he was prepared for the university. At the
age of twenty, he took it into his head that he should like to see his
mother once more; and he set out on foot from the distant university for
that purpose. On his arrival near Spannheim, late in the evening of a
gloomy winter's day, it came on to snow so thickly, that he could not
proceed onwards to the town. He, therefore, took refuge for the night
in a neighbouring monastery; but the storm continued several days, the
roads became impassable, and the hospitable monks would not hear of his
departure. He was so pleased with them and their manner of life, that he
suddenly resolved to fix his abode among them, and renounce the world.
They were no less pleased with him, and gladly received him as a
brother. In the course of two years, although still so young, he
was unanimously elected their Abbot. The financial affairs of the
establishment had been greatly neglected, the walls of the building were
falling into ruin, and everything was in disorder. Trithemius, by his
good management and regularity, introduced a reform in every branch of
expenditure. The monastery was repaired, and a yearly surplus, instead
of a deficiency, rewarded him for his pains. He did not like to see the
monks idle, or occupied solely between prayers for their business, and
chess for their relaxation. He, therefore, set them to work to copy the
writings of eminent authors. They laboured so assiduously, that, in the
course of a few years, their library, which had contained only about
forty volumes, was enriched with several hundred valuable manuscripts,
comprising many of the classical Latin authors, besides the works of
the early fathers, and the principal historians and philosophers of
more modern date. He retained the dignity of Abbot of Spannheim for
twenty-one years, when the monks, tired of the severe discipline he
maintained, revolted against him, and chose another abbot in his place.
He was afterwards made Abbot of St. James, in Wurtzburg, where he died
in 1516.

During his learned leisure at Spannheim, he wrote several works upon
the occult sciences, the chief of which are an essay on geomancy, or
divination by means of lines and circles on the ground; another upon
sorcery; a third upon alchymy; and a fourth upon the government of the
world by its presiding angels, which was translated into English, and
published by the famous William Lilly in 1647.

It has been alleged by the believers in the possibility of
transmutation, that the prosperity of the abbey of Spannheim, while
under his superintendence, was owing more to the philosopher's stone
than to wise economy. Trithemius, in common with many other learned men,
has been accused of magic; and a marvellous story is told of his having
raised from the grave the form of Mary of Burgundy, at the intercession
of her widowed husband, the Emperor Maximilian. His work on
steganographia, or cabalistic writing, was denounced to the Count
Palatine, Frederic II, as magical and devilish; and it was by him taken
from the shelves of his library and thrown into the fire. Trithemius is
said to be the first writer who makes mention of the wonderful story
of the devil and Dr. Faustus, the truth of which he firmly believed. He
also recounts the freaks of a spirit, named Hudekin, by whom he was at
times tormented. [Biographie Universelle]


THE MARECHAL DE RAYS.

One of the greatest encouragers of alchymy in the fifteenth century
was Gilles de Laval, Lord of Rays and a Marshal of France. His name and
deeds are little known; but in the annals of crime and folly, they might
claim the highest and worst pro-eminence. Fiction has never invented
anything wilder or more horrible than his career; and were not the
details but too well authenticated by legal and other documents which
admit no doubt, the lover of romance might easily imagine they were
drawn to please him from the stores of the prolific brain, and not from
the page of history.

He was born about the year 1420, of one of the noblest families of
Brittany. His father dying when Gilles had attained his twentieth year,
he came into uncontrolled possession, at that early age, of a fortune
which the monarchs of France might have envied him. He was a near
kinsman of the Montmorencys, the Roncys, and the Craons; possessed
fifteen princely domains, and had an annual revenue of about three
hundred thousand livres. Besides this, he was handsome, learned, and
brave. He distinguished himself greatly in the wars of Charles VII, and
was rewarded by that monarch with the dignity of a marshal of France.
But he was extravagant and magnificent in his style of living, and
accustomed from his earliest years to the gratification of every wish
and passion; and this, at last, led him from vice to vice, and from
crime to crime, till a blacker name than his is not to be found in any
record of human iniquity.

In his castle of Champtoce, he lived with all the splendour of an
Eastern Caliph. He kept up a troop of two hundred horsemen to accompany
him wherever he went; and his excursions for the purposes of hawking and
hunting were the wonder of all the country around, so magnificent were
the caparisons of his steeds and the dresses of his retainers. Day and
night, his castle was open all the year round to comers of every degree.
He made it a rule to regale even the poorest beggar with wine and
hippocrass. Every day an ox was roasted whole in his spacious kitchens,
besides sheep, pigs, and poultry sufficient to feed five hundred
persons. He was equally magnificent in his devotions. His private chapel
at Champtoce was the most beautiful in France, and far surpassed any
of those in the richly-endowed cathedrals of Notre Dame in Paris, of
Amiens, of Beauvais, or of Rouen. It was hung with cloth of gold and
rich velvet. All the chandeliers were of pure gold, curiously inlaid
with silver. The great crucifix over the altar was of solid silver, and
the chalices and incense-burners were of pure gold. He had, besides, a
fine organ, which he caused to be carried from one castle to another, on
the shoulders of six men, whenever he changed his residence. He kept up
a choir of twenty-five young children of both sexes, who were instructed
in singing by the first musicians of the day. The master of his chapel
he called a bishop, who had under him his deans, archdeacons, and
vicars, each receiving great salaries; the bishop four hundred crowns a
year, and the rest in proportion.

He also maintained a whole troop of players, including ten dancing-girls
and as many ballad-singers, besides morris-dancers, jugglers, and
mountebanks of every description. The theatre on which they performed
was fitted up without any regard to expense; and they played mysteries,
or danced the morris-dance, every evening, for the amusement of
himself and household, and such strangers as were sharing his prodigal
hospitality.

At the age of twenty-three, he married Catherine, the wealthy heiress of
the house of Touars, for whom he refurnished his castle at an expense
of a hundred thousand crowns. His marriage was the signal for new
extravagance, and he launched out more madly than ever he had done
before; sending for fine singers or celebrated dancers from foreign
countries to amuse him and his spouse, and instituting tilts and
tournaments in his great court-yard almost every week for all the
knights and nobles of the province of Brittany. The Duke of Brittany's
court was not half so splendid as that of the Marechal de Rays. His
utter disregard of wealth was so well known that he was made to pay
three times its value for everything he purchased. His castle was filled
with needy parasites and panderers to his pleasures, amongst whom he
lavished rewards with an unsparing hand. But the ordinary round of
sensual gratification ceased at last to afford him delight: he was
observed to be more abstemious in the pleasures of the table, and to
neglect the beauteous dancing-girls who used formerly to occupy so much
of his attention. He was sometimes gloomy and reserved; and there was
an unnatural wildness in his eye which gave indications of incipient
madness. Still, his discourse was as reasonable as ever; his urbanity
to the guests that flocked from far and near to Champtoce suffered no
diminution; and learned priests, when they conversed with him, thought
to themselves that few of the nobles of France were so well-informed
as Gilles de Laval. But dark rumours spread gradually over the country;
murder, and, if possible, still more atrocious deeds were hinted at;
and it was remarked that many young children, of both sexes, suddenly
disappeared, and were never afterwards heard of. One or two had been
traced to the castle of Champtoce, and had never been seen to leave it;
but no one dared to accuse openly so powerful a man as the Marechal de
Rays. Whenever the subject of the lost children was mentioned in his
presence, he manifested the greatest astonishment at the mystery which
involved their fate, and indignation against those who might be guilty
of kidnapping them. Still the world was not wholly deceived; his name
became as formidable to young children as that of the devouring ogre in
fairy tales; and they were taught to go miles round, rather than pass
under the turrets of Champtoce.

In the course of a very few years, the reckless extravagance of the
Marshal drained him of all his funds, and he was obliged to put up some
of his estates for sale. The Duke of Brittany entered into a treaty
with him for the valuable seignory of Ingrande; but the heirs of Gilles
implored the interference of Charles VII. to stay the sale. Charles
immediately issued an edict, which was confirmed by the Provincial
Parliament of Brittany, forbidding him to alienate his paternal estates.
Gilles had no alternative but to submit. He had nothing to support his
extravagance but his allowance as a Marshal of France, which did not
cover the one-tenth of his expenses. A man of his habits and character
could not retrench his wasteful expenditure and live reasonably;
he could not dismiss without a pang his horsemen, his jesters, his
morris-dancers, his choristers, and his parasites, or confine his
hospitality to those who really needed it. Notwithstanding his
diminished resources, he resolved to live as he had lived before, and
turn alchymist, that he might make gold out of iron, and be still the
wealthiest and most magnificent among the nobles of Brittany.

In pursuance of this determination he sent to Paris, Italy, Germany, and
Spain, inviting all the adepts in the science to visit him at Champtoce.
The messengers he despatched on this mission were two of his most needy
and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville.
The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable
pleasures, he had intrusted with the education of his motherless
daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission, that he might
marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself if he
liked it better. This man entered into the new plans of his master with
great zeal, and introduced to him one Prelati, an alchymist of Padua,
and a physician of Poitou, who was addicted to the same pursuits. The
Marshal caused a splendid laboratory to be fitted up for them, and the
three commenced the search for the philosopher's stone. They were soon
afterwards joined by another pretended philosopher, named Anthony of
Palermo, who aided in their operations for upwards of a year. They all
fared sumptuously at the Marshal's expense, draining him of the ready
money he possessed, and leading him on from day to day with the hope
that they would succeed in the object of their search. From time to time
new aspirants from the remotest parts of Europe arrived at his castle,
and for months he had upwards of twenty alchymists at work--trying to
transmute copper into gold, and wasting the gold, which was still his
own, in drugs and elixirs.

But the Lord of Rays was not a man to abide patiently their lingering
processes. Pleased with their comfortable quarters, they jogged on from
day to day, and would have done so for years, had they been permitted.
But he suddenly dismissed them all, with the exception of the Italian
Prelati, and the physician of Poitou. These he retained to aid him to
discover the secret of the philosopher's stone by a bolder method. The
Poitousan had persuaded him that the devil was the great depositary of
that and all other secrets, and that he would raise him before Gilles,
who might enter into any contract he pleased with him. Gilles expressed
his readiness, and promised to give the devil anything but his soul, or
do any deed that the arch-enemy might impose upon him. Attended solely
by the physician, he proceeded at midnight to a wild-looking place in
a neighbouring forest; the physician drew a magic circle around them
on the sward, and muttered for half an hour an invocation to the Evil
Spirit to arise at his bidding, and disclose the secrets of alchymy.
Gilles looked on with intense interest, and expected every moment to see
the earth open, and deliver to his gaze the great enemy of mankind. At
last the eyes of the physician became fixed, his hair stood on end, and
he spoke, as if addressing the fiend. But Gilles saw nothing except
his companion. At last the physician fell down on the sward as if
insensible. Gilles looked calmly on to see the end. After a few minutes
the physician arose, and asked him if he had not seen how angry the
devil looked? Gilles replied, that he had seen nothing; upon which his
companion informed him that Beelzebub had appeared in the form of a wild
leopard, growled at him savagely, and said nothing; and that the reason
why the Marshal had neither seen nor heard him, was that he hesitated
in his own mind as to devoting himself entirely to the service. De Rays
owned that he had indeed misgivings, and inquired what was to be done to
make the devil speak out, and unfold his secret? The physician replied,
that some person must go to Spain and Africa to collect certain herbs
which only grew in those countries, and offered to go himself, if De
Rays would provide the necessary funds. De Rays at once consented; and
the physician set out on the following day with all the gold that his
dupe could spare him. The Marshal never saw his face again.

But the eager Lord of Champtoce could not rest. Gold was necessary
for his pleasures; and unless, by supernatural aid, he had no means of
procuring many further supplies. The physician was hardly twenty leagues
on his journey, before Gilles resolved to make another effort to force
the devil to divulge the art of gold making. He went out alone for
that purpose, but all his conjurations were of no effect. Beelzebub was
obstinate, and would not appear. Determined to conquer him if he could,
he unbosomed himself to the Italian alchymist, Prelati. The latter
offered to undertake the business, upon condition that De Rays did not
interfere in the conjurations, and consented besides to furnish him with
all the charms and talismans that might be required. He was further to
open a vein in his arm, and sign with his blood a contract that he would
work the devil's will in all things, and offer up to him a sacrifice of
the heart, lungs, hands, eyes, and blood of a young child. The grasping
monomaniac made no hesitation; but agreed at once to the disgusting
terms proposed to him. On the following night, Prelati went out alone;
and after having been absent for three or four hours, returned to
Gilles, who sat anxiously awaiting him. Prelati then informed him that
he had seen the devil in the shape of a handsome youth of twenty. He
further said, that the devil desired to be called Barron in all future
invocations; and had shown him a great number of ingots of pure gold,
buried under a large oak in the neighbouring forest, all of which, and
as many more as he desired, should become the property of the Marechal
de Rays if he remained firm, and broke no condition of the contract.
Prelati further showed him a small casket of black dust, which would
turn iron into gold; but as the process was very troublesome, he advised
that they should be contented with the ingots they found under the
oak tree, and which would more than supply all the wants that the most
extravagant imagination could desire. They were not, however, to attempt
to look for the gold till a period of seven times seven weeks, or
they would find nothing but slates and stones for their pains. Gilles
expressed the utmost chagrin and disappointment, and at once said that
he could not wait for so long a period; if the devil were not more
prompt, Prelati might tell him, that the Marechal de Rays was not to
be trifled with, and would decline all further communication with him.
Prelati at last persuaded him to wait seven times seven days. They then
went at midnight with picks and shovels to dig up the ground under the
oak, where they found nothing to reward them but a great quantity of
slates, marked with hieroglyphics. It was now Prelati's turn to be
angry; and he loudly swore that the devil was nothing but a liar and
a cheat. The Marshal joined cordially in the opinion, but was easily
persuaded by the cunning Italian to make one more trial. He promised
at the same time that he would endeavour, on the following night, to
discover the reason why the devil had broken his word. He went out alone
accordingly, and on his return informed his patron that he had seen
Barron, who was exceedingly angry that they had not waited the proper
time ere they looked for the ingots. Barron had also said, that the
Marechal de Rays could hardly expect any favours from him, at a time
when he must know that he had been meditating a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, to make atonement for his sins. The Italian had doubtless surmised
this, from some incautious expression of his patron, for De Rays frankly
confessed that there were times when, sick of the world and all its
pomps and vanities, he thought of devoting himself to the service of
God.

In this manner the Italian lured on from month to month his credulous
and guilty patron, extracting from him all the valuables he possessed,
and only waiting a favourable opportunity to decamp with his plunder.
But the day of retribution was at hand for both. Young girls and boys
continued to disappear in the most mysterious manner; and the rumours
against the owner of Champtoce grew so loud and distinct, that the
Church was compelled to interfere. Representations were made by the
Bishop of Nantes to the Duke of Brittany, that it would be a public
scandal if the accusations against the Marechal de Rays were not
inquired into. He was arrested accordingly in his own castle, along with
his accomplice Prelati, and thrown into a dungeon at Nantes to await his
trial.

The judges appointed to try him were the Bishop of Nantes Chancellor
of Brittany, the Vicar of the Inquisition in France, and the celebrated
Pierre l'Hopital, the President of the Provincial Parliament. The
offences laid to his charge were sorcery, sodomy, and murder. Gilles, on
the first day of his trial, conducted himself with the utmost insolence.
He braved the judges on the judgment seat, calling them simoniacs and
persons of impure life, and said he would rather be hanged by the neck
like a dog without trial, than plead either guilty or not guilty to such
contemptible miscreants. But his confidence forsook him as the trial
proceeded, and he was found guilty on the clearest evidence of all the
crimes laid to his charge. It was proved that he took insane pleasure
in stabbing the victims of his lust, and in observing the quivering of
their flesh, and the fading lustre of their eyes as they expired. The
confession of Prelati first made the judges acquainted with this horrid
madness, and Gilles himself confirmed it before his death. Nearly a
hundred children of the villagers around his two castles of Champtoce
and Machecoue, had been missed within three years the greater part,
if not all, of whom were immolated to the lust or the cupidity of this
monster. He imagined that he thus made the devil his friend, and that
his recompence would be the secret of the philosopher's stone.

Gilles and Prelati were both condemned to be burned alive. At the place
of execution they assumed the air of penitence and religion. Gilles
tenderly embraced Prelati, saying, "Farewell, friend Francis! In this
world we shall never meet again; but let us place our hopes in God; we
shall see each other in Paradise." Out of consideration for his
high rank and connections, the punishment of the Marshal was so far
mitigated, that he was not burned alive like Prelati. He was first
strangled, and then thrown into the flames: his body, when half
consumed, was given over to his relatives for interment; while that of
the Italian was burned to ashes, and then scattered in the winds. [For
full details of this extraordinary trial, see "Lobineau's Nouvelle
Histoire de Bretagne;" and D'Argentre's work on the same subject.]


JACQUES COEUR.

This remarkable pretender to the secret of the philosopher's stone, was
contemporary with the last mentioned. He was a great personage at the
court of Charles VII, and in the events of his reign played a prominent
part. From a very humble origin he rose to the highest honours of the
state, and amassed enormous wealth, by peculation and the plunder of the
country which he should have served. It was to hide his delinquencies
in this respect, and to divert attention from the real source of his
riches, that he boasted of having discovered the art of transmuting the
inferior metals into gold and silver.

His father was a goldsmith in the city of Bourges; but so reduced in
circumstances towards the latter years of his life, that he was unable
to pay the necessary fees to procure his son's admission into the guild.
Young Jacques became, however, a workman in the Royal Mint of Bourges,
in 1428, and behaved himself so well, and showed so much knowledge of
metallurgy, that he attained rapid promotion in that establishment. He
had also the good fortune to make the acquaintance of the fair Agnes
Sorel, by whom he was patronized and much esteemed. Jacques had now
three things in his favour--ability, perseverance, and the countenance
of the King's mistress. Many a man succeeds with but one of these to
help him forward: and it would have been strange indeed, if Jacques
Coeur, who had them all, should have languished in obscurity. While
still a young man he was made Master of the Mint, in which he had been
a journeyman, and installed at the same time into the vacant office of
Grand Treasurer of the royal household.

He possessed an extensive knowledge of finance, and turned it
wonderfully to his own advantage as soon as he became intrusted with
extensive funds. He speculated in articles of the first necessity, and
made himself very unpopular by buying up grain, honey, wines, and other
produce, till there was a scarcity, when he sold it again at enormous
profit. Strong in the royal favour, he did not hesitate to oppress the
poor by continual acts of forestalling and monopoly. As there is no
enemy so bitter as the estranged friend, so of all the tyrants and
tramplers upon the poor, there is none so fierce and reckless as the
upstart that sprang from their ranks. The offensive pride of Jacques
Coeur to his inferiors was the theme of indignant reproach in his own
city, and his cringing humility to those above him was as much an object
of contempt to the aristocrats into whose society he thrust himself. But
Jacques did not care for the former, and to the latter he was blind. He
continued his career till he became the richest man in France, and so
useful to the King that no important enterprise was set on foot until he
had been consulted. He was sent in 1446 on an embassy to Genoa, and
in the following year to Pope Nicholas V. In both these missions he
acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his sovereign, and was rewarded
with a lucrative appointment, in addition to those which he already
held.

In the year 1449, the English in Normandy, deprived of their great
general, the Duke of Bedford, broke the truce with the French King, and
took possession of a small town belonging to the Duke of Brittany. This
was the signal for the recommencemerit of a war, in which the French
regained possession of nearly the whole province. The money for this war
was advanced, for the most part, by Jacques Coeur. When Rouen yielded
to the French, and Charles made his triumphal entry into that city,
accompanied by Dunois and his most famous generals, Jacques was among
the most brilliant of his cortege. His chariot and horses vied with
those of the King in the magnificence of their trappings; and his
enemies said of him that he publicly boasted that he alone had driven
out the English, and that the valour of the troops would would have been
nothing without his gold.

Dunois appears, also, to have been partly of the same opinion. Without
disparaging the courage of the army, he acknowledged the utility of
the able financier, by whose means they had been fed and paid, and
constantly afforded him his powerful protection.

When peace returned, Jacques again devoted himself to commerce, and
fitted up several galleys to trade with the Genoese. He also bought
large estates in various parts of France; the chief of which were the
baronies of St. Fargeau, Meneton, Salone, Maubranche, Meaune, St. Gerant
de Vaux, and St. Aon de Boissy; the earldoms or counties of La Palisse,
Champignelle, Beaumont, and Villeneuve la Genet, and the marquisate
of Toucy. He also procured for his son, Jean Coeur, who had chosen the
Church for his profession, a post no less distinguished than that of
Archbishop of Bourges.

Everybody said that so much wealth could not have been honestly
acquired; and both rich and poor longed for the day that should humble
the pride of the man, whom the one class regarded as an upstart and the
other as an oppressor. Jacques was somewhat alarmed at the rumours that
were afloat respecting him, and of dark hints that he had debased the
coin of the realm and forged the King's seal to an important document,
by which he had defrauded the state of very considerable sums. To
silence these rumours, he invited many alchymists from foreign countries
to reside with him, and circulated a counter-rumour, that he had
discovered the secret of the philosopher's stone. He also built a
magnificent house in his native city, over the entrance of which
he caused to be sculptured the emblems of that science. Some time
afterwards, he built another, no less splendid, at Montpellier, which
he inscribed in a similar manner. He also wrote a treatise upon the
hermetic philosophy, in which he pretended that he knew the secret of
transmuting metals.

But all these attempts to disguise his numerous acts of peculation
proved unavailing; and he was arrested in 1452, and brought to trial on
several charges. Upon one only, which the malice of his enemies invented
to ruin him, was he acquitted; which was, that he had been accessory
to the death, by poison, of his kind patroness, Agnes Sorel. Upon the
others, he was found guilty; and sentenced to be banished the kingdom,
and to pay the enormous fine of four hundred thousand crowns. It was
proved that he had forged the King's seal; that, in his capacity of
Master of the Mint of Bourges, he had debased, to a very great extent,
the gold and silver coin of the realm; and that he had not hesitated
to supply the Turks with arms and money to enable them to carry on war
against their Christian neighbours, for which service he had received
the most munificent recompences. Charles VII. was deeply grieved at
his condemnation, and believed to the last that he was innocent. By his
means the fine was reduced within a sum which Jacques Coeur could pay.
After remaining for some time in prison, he was liberated, and left
France with a large sum of money, part of which, it was alleged, was
secretly paid him by Charles out of the produce of his confiscated
estates. He retired to Cyprus, where he died about 1460, the richest and
most conspicuous personage of the island.

The writers upon alchymy all claim Jacques Coeur as a member of
their fraternity, and treat as false and libellous the more rational
explanation of his wealth which the records of his trial afford. Pierre
Borel, in his "Antiquites Gauloises," maintains the opinion that Jacques
was an honest man, and that he made his gold out of lead and copper by
means of the philosopher's stone. The alchymic adepts in general were
of the same opinion; but they found it difficult to persuade even his
contemporaries of the fact. Posterity is still less likely to believe
it.


INFERIOR ADEPTS OF THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.

Many other pretenders to the secrets of the philosopher's stone
appeared in every country in Europe, during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The possibility of transmutation was so generally admitted,
that every chemist was more or less an alchymist. Germany, Holland,
Italy, Spain, Poland, France, and England produced thousands of obscure
adepts, who supported themselves, in the pursuit of their chimera, by
the more profitable resources of astrology and divination. The monarchs
of Europe were no less persuaded than their subjects of the possibility
of discovering the philosopher's stone. Henry VI. and Edward IV.
of England encouraged alchymy. In Germany, the Emperors Maximilian,
Rodolph, and Frederic II. devoted much of their attention to it; and
every inferior potentate within their dominions imitated their example.
It was a common practice in Germany, among the nobles and petty
sovereigns, to invite an alchymist to take up his residence among them,
that they might confine him in a dungeon till he made gold enough to
pay millions for his ransom. Many poor wretches suffered perpetual
imprisonment in consequence. A similar fate appears to have been
intended by Edward II. for Raymond Lulli, who, upon the pretence that he
was thereby honoured, was accommodated with apartments in the Tower of
London. He found out in time the trick that was about to be played him,
and managed to make his escape, some of his biographers say, by jumping
into the Thames, and swimming to a vessel that lay waiting to receive him.
In the sixteenth century, the same system was pursued, as will be shown
more fully in the life of Seton the Cosmopolite, in the succeeding
chapter.

The following is a catalogue of the chief authors upon alchymy, who
flourished during this epoch, and whose lives and adventures are either
unknown or are unworthy of more detailed notice. John Dowston, an
Englishman, lived in 1315, and wrote two treatises on the philosopher's
stone. Richard, or, as some call him, Robert, also an Englishman, lived
in 1330, and wrote a work entitled "Correctorium Alchymiae," which was
much esteemed till the time of Paracelsus. In the same year lived Peter
of Lombardy, who wrote what he called a "Complete Treatise upon the
Hermetic Science," an abridgement of which was afterwards published by
Lacini, a monk of Calabria. In 1330 the most famous alchymist of Paris
was one Odomare, whose work "De Practica Magistri" was, for a long time,
a hand-book among the brethren of the science. John de Rupecissa,
a French monk of the order of St. Francis, flourished in 1357,
and pretended to be a prophet as well as an alchymist. Some of his
prophecies were so disagreeable to Pope Innocent VI, that the Pontiff
determined to put a stop to them, by locking up the prophet in the
dungeons of the Vatican. It is generally believed that he died there,
though there is no evidence of the fact. His chief works are the "Book
of Light," the "Five Essences," the "Heaven of Philosophers," and his
grand work "De Confectione Lapidis." He was not thought a shining light
among the adepts. Ortholani was another pretender, of whom nothing is
known, but that he exercised the arts of alchymy and astrology at Paris,
shortly before the time of Nicholas Flamel. His work on the practice of
alchymy was written in that city in 1358. Isaac of Holland wrote, it
is supposed, about this time; and his son also devoted himself to the
science. Nothing worth repeating is known of their lives. Boerhaave
speaks with commendation of many passages in their works, and Paracelsus
esteemed them highly: the chief are "De Triplici Ordine Elixiris et
Lapidis Theoria," printed at Berne in 1608; and "Mineralia Opera, seu
de Lapide Philosophico," printed at Middleburg in 1600. They also wrote
eight other works upon the same subject. Koffstky, a Pole, wrote an
alchymical treatise, entitled "The Tincture of Minerals," about the
year 1488. In this list of authors a royal name must not be forgotten.
Charles VI. of France, one of the most credulous princes of the day,
whose court absolutely swarmed with alchymists, conjurers, astrologers,
and quacks of every description, made several attempts to discover
the philosopher's stone, and thought he knew so much about it, that
he determined to enlighten the world with a treatise. It is called the
"Royal Work of Charles VI. of France, and the Treasure of Philosophy."
It is said to be the original from which Nicholas Flamel took the idea
of his "Desir Desire." Lenglet du Fresnoy says it is very allegorical,
and utterly incomprehensible. For a more complete list of the hermetic
philosophers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the reader is
referred to the third volume of Lenglet's History already quoted.




PART II.--PROGRESS OF THE INFATUATION DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.

AUGURELLO.--CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.--PARACELSUS.--GEORGE
AGRICOLA.--DENYS ZACHAIRE.--DR. DEE AND EDWARD KELLY.--THE
COSMOPOLITE.--SENDIVOGIUS.--THE ROSICRUCIANS.--MICHAEL MAYER.--ROBERT
FLUDD.--JACOB BOHMEN.--JOHN HEYDN.--JOSEPH FRANCIS BORRI.--ALCHYMICAL
WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--DE LISLE.--ALBERT ALUYS.--COUNT DE
ST. GERMAINS.--CAGLIOSTRO.--PRESENT STATE OF THE SCIENCE.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the search for the
philosopher's stone was continued by thousands of the enthusiastic and
the credulous; but a great change was introduced during this period.
The eminent men who devoted themselves to the study, totally changed
its aspect, and referred to the possession of their wondrous stone and
elixir, not only the conversion of the base into the precious metals,
but the solution of all the difficulties of other sciences. They
pretended that by its means man would be brought into closer communion
with his Maker; that disease and sorrow would be banished from the
world; and that "the millions of spiritual beings who walk the earth
unseen" would be rendered visible, and become the friends, companions,
and instructors of mankind. In the seventeenth century more especially,
these poetical and fantastic doctrines excited the notice of Europe;
and from Germany, where they had been first disseminated by Rosencreutz,
spread into France and England, and ran away with the sound judgment of
many clever, but too enthusiastic, searchers for the truth. Paracelsus,
Dee, and many others of less note, were captivated by the grace and
beauty of the new mythology, which was arising to adorn the literature
of Europe. Most of the alchymists of the sixteenth century, although
ignorant of the Rosicrucians as a sect, were, in some degree, tinctured
with their fanciful tenets: but before we speak more fully of these
poetical visionaries, it will be necessary to resume the history of the
hermetic folly where we left off in the former chapter, and trace the
gradual change that stole over the dreams of the adepts. It will be seen
that the infatuation increased rather than diminished as the world grew
older.

AUGURELLO.

Among the alchymists who were born in the fifteenth, and distinguished
themselves in the sixteenth century, the first, in point of date,
is John Aurelio Augurello. He was born at Rimini in 1441, and became
Professor of the belles lettres at Venice and Trevisa. He was early
convinced of the truth of the hermetic science, and used to pray to God
that he might be happy enough to discover the philosopher's stone.
He was continually surrounded by the paraphernalia of chemistry, and
expended all his wealth in the purchase of drugs and metals. He was also
a poet, but of less merit than pretensions. His "Chrysopeia," in which
lie pretended to teach the art of making gold, he dedicated to Pope
Leo X, in the hope that the Pontiff would reward him handsomely for the
compliment; but the Pope was too good a judge of poetry to be pleased
with the worse than mediocrity of his poem, and too good a philosopher
to approve of the strange doctrines which it inculcated: he was,
therefore, far from gratified at the dedication. It is said, that when
Augurello applied to him for a reward, the Pope, with great ceremony
and much apparent kindness and cordiality, drew an empty purse from his
pocket, and presented it to the alchymist, saying, that since he was
able to make gold, the most appropriate present that could be made
him, was a purse to put it in. This scurvy reward was all that the poor
alchymist ever got either for his poetry or his alchymy. He died in a
state of extreme poverty, in the eighty-third year of his age.

CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.

This alchymist has left a more distinguished reputation. The most
extraordinary tales were told and believed of his powers. He could turn
iron into gold by his mere word. All the spirits of the air, and
demons of the earth, were under his command, and bound to obey him in
everything. He could raise from the dead the forms of the great men of
other days, and make them appear "in their habit as they lived," to the
gaze of the curious who had courage enough to abide their presence.

He was born at Cologne in 1486, and began, at an early age, the study of
chemistry and philosophy. By some means or other which have never been
very clearly explained, he managed to impress his contemporaries with a
great idea of his wonderful attainments. At the early age of twenty, so
great was his reputation as an alchymist, that the principal adepts of
Paris wrote to Cologne, inviting him to settle in France, and aid them
with his experience in discovering the philosopher's stone. Honours
poured upon him in thick succession; and he was highly esteemed by all
the learned men of his time. Melancthon speaks of him with respect
and commendation. Erasmus also bears testimony in his favour; and the
general voice of his age proclaimed him a light of literature and an
ornament to philosophy. Some men, by dint of excessive egotism, manage
to persuade their contemporaries that they are very great men indeed:
they publish their acquirements so loudly in people's ears, and keep up
their own praises so incessantly, that the world's applause is actually
taken by storm. Such seems to have been the case with Agrippa. He
called himself a sublime theologian, an excellent jurisconsult, an able
physician, a great philosopher, and a successful alchymist. The world,
at last, took him at his word; and thought that a man who talked so
big, must have some merit to recommend him--that it was, indeed, a great
trumpet which sounded so obstreperous a blast. He was made secretary to
the Emperor Maximilian, who conferred upon him the title of Chevalier,
and gave him the honorary command of a regiment. He afterwards became
Professor of Hebrew and the belles lettres, at the University of Dole,
in France; but quarrelling with the Franciscan monks upon some knotty
point of divinity, he was obliged to quit the town. He took refuge in
London, where he taught Hebrew and cast nativities, for about a year.
From London he proceeded to Pavia, and gave lectures upon the writings,
real or supposed, of Hermes Trismegistus; and might have lived there in
peace and honour, had he not again quarrelled with the clergy. By their
means his position became so disagreeable, that he was glad to accept
an offer made him by the magistracy of Metz, to become their Syndic and
Advocate-General. Here, again, his love of disputation made him enemies:
the theological wiseacres of that city asserted, that St. Anne had three
husbands, in which opinion they were confirmed by the popular belief of
the day. Agrippa needlessly ran foul of this opinion, or prejudice as he
called it, and thereby lost much of his influence. Another dispute, more
creditable to his character, occurred soon after, and sank him for ever
in the estimation of the Metzians. Humanely taking the part of a young
girl who was accused of witchcraft, his enemies asserted, that he was
himself a sorcerer, and raised such a storm over his head, that he was
forced to fly the city. After this, he became physician to Louisa de
Savoy, mother of King Francis I. This lady was curious to know the
future, and required her physician to cast her nativity. Agrippa
replied, that he would not encourage such idle curiosity. The result
was, he lost her confidence, and was forthwith dismissed. If it had been
through his belief in the worthlessness of astrology, that he had made
his answer, we might admire his honest and fearless independence; but,
when it is known that, at the very same time, he was in the constant
habit of divination and fortunetelling; and that he was predicting
splendid success, in all his undertakings, to the Constable of Bourbon,
we can only wonder at his thus estranging a powerful friend through mere
petulance and perversity.

He was, about this time, invited both by Henry VIII. of England,
and Margaret of Austria, Governess of the Low Countries, to fix his
residence in their dominions. He chose the service of the latter, by
whose influence he was made historiographer to the Emperor Charles V.
Unfortunately for Agrippa, he never had stability enough to remain
long in one position, and offended his patrons by his restlessness and
presumption. After the death of Margaret, he was imprisoned at Brussels,
on a charge of sorcery. He was released after a year; and, quitting
the country, experienced many vicissitudes. He died in great poverty in
1534, aged forty-eight years.

While in the service of Margaret of Austria, he resided principally
at Louvain, in which city he wrote his famous work on the Vanity and
Nothingness of human Knowledge. He also wrote, to please his Royal
Mistress, a treatise upon the Superiority of the Female Sex, which he
dedicated to her, in token of his gratitude for the favours she had
heaped upon him. The reputation he left behind him in these provinces
was anything but favourable. A great number of the marvellous tales that
are told of him, relate to this period of his life. It was said, that
the gold which he paid to the traders with whom he dealt, always looked
remarkably bright, but invariably turned into pieces of slate and stone
in the course of four-and-twenty hours. Of this spurious gold he was
believed to have made large quantities by the aid of the devil, who, it
would appear from this, had but a very superficial knowledge of alchymy,
and much less than the Marechal de Rays gave him credit for. The
Jesuit Delrio, in his book on Magic and Sorcery, relates a still more
extraordinary story of him. One day, Agrippa left his house, at Louvain;
and, intending to be absent for some time, gave the key of his study
to his wife, with strict orders that no one should enter it during his
absence. The lady herself, strange as it may appear, had no curiosity to
pry into her husband's secrets, and never once thought of entering the
forbidden room: but a young student, who had been accommodated with an
attic in the philosopher's house, burned with a fierce desire to
examine the study; hoping, perchance, that he might purloin some book or
implement which would instruct him in the art of transmuting metals. The
youth, being handsome, eloquent, and, above all, highly complimentary to
the charms of the lady, she was persuaded, without much difficulty, to
lend him the key, but gave him strict orders not to remove anything. The
student promised implicit obedience, and entered Agrippa's study. The
first object that caught his attention, was a large grimoire, or book
of spells, which lay open on the philosopher's desk. He sat himself down
immediately, and began to read. At the first word he uttered, he fancied
he heard a knock at the door. He listened; but all was silent. Thinking
that his imagination had deceived him, he read on, when immediately a
louder knock was heard, which so terrified him, that he started to his
feet. He tried to say, "come in;" but his tongue refused its office, and
he could not articulate a sound. He fixed his eyes upon the door, which,
slowly opening, disclosed a stranger of majestic form, but scowling
features, who demanded sternly, why he was summoned? "I did not
summon you," said the trembling student. "You did!" said the stranger,
advancing, angrily; "and the demons are not to be invoked in vain."
The student could make no reply; and the demon, enraged that one of the
uninitiated should have summoned him out of mere presumption, seized
him by the throat and strangled him. When Agrippa returned, a few days
afterwards, he found his house beset with devils. Some of them were
sitting on the chimneypots, kicking up their legs in the air; while
others were playing at leapfrog, on the very edge of the parapet. His
study was so filled with them that he found it difficult to make his
way to his desk. When, at last, he had elbowed his way through them, he
found his book open, and the student lying dead upon the floor. He saw
immediately how the mischief had been done; and, dismissing all the
inferior imps, asked the principal demon how he could have been so rash
as to kill the young man. The demon replied, that he had been needlessly
invoked by an insulting youth, and could do no less than kill him for
his presumption. Agrippa reprimanded him severely, and ordered him
immediately to reanimate the dead body, and walk about with it in the
market-place for the whole of the afternoon. The demon did so: the
student revived; and, putting his arm through that of his unearthly
murderer, walked very lovingly with him, in sight of all the people. At
sunset, the body fell down again, cold and lifeless as before, and was
carried by the crowd to the hospital, it being the general opinion
that he had expired in a fit of apoplexy. His conductor immediately
disappeared. When the body was examined, marks of strangulation were
found on the neck, and prints of the long claws of the demon on various
parts of it. These appearances, together with a story, which soon
obtained currency, that the companion of the young man had vanished in
a cloud of flame and smoke, opened people's eyes to the truth. The
magistrates of Louvain instituted inquiries; and the result was, that
Agrippa was obliged to quit the town.

Other authors besides Delrio relate similar stories of this philosopher.
The world in those days was always willing enough to believe in tales of
magic and sorcery; and when, as in Agrippa's case, the alleged magician
gave himself out for such, and claimed credit for the wonders he worked,
it is not surprising that the age should have allowed his pretensions.
It was dangerous boasting, which sometimes led to the stake or the
gallows, and therefore was thought to be not without foundation. Paulus
Jovius, in his "Eulogia Doctorum Virorum," says, that the devil, in the
shape of a large black dog, attended Agrippa wherever he went. Thomas
Nash, in his adventures of Jack Wilton, relates, that at the request of
Lord Surrey, Erasmus, and some other learned men, Agrippa called up from
the grave many of the great philosophers of antiquity; among others,
Tully, whom he caused to re-deliver his celebrated oration for Roscius.
He also showed Lord Surrey, when in Germany, an exact resemblance in
a glass of his mistress the fair Geraldine. She was represented on her
couch weeping for the absence of her lover. Lord Surrey made a note of
the exact time at which he saw this vision, and ascertained afterwards
that his mistress was actually so employed at the very minute. To Thomas
Lord Cromwell, Agrippa represented King Henry VIII. hunting in Windsor
Park, with the principal lords of his court; and to please the Emperor
Charles V. he summoned King David and King Solomon from the tomb.

Naude, in his "Apology for the Great Men who have been falsely suspected
of Magic," takes a great deal of pains to clear Agrippa from the
imputations cast upon him by Delrio, Paulus Jovius, and other such
ignorant and prejudiced scribblers. Such stories demanded refutation in
the days of Naude, but they may now be safely left to decay in their own
absurdity. That they should have attached, however, to the memory of a
man, who claimed the power of making iron obey him when he told it to
become gold, and who wrote such a work as that upon magic, which goes by
his name, is not at all surprising.

PARACELSUS.

This philosopher, called by Naude, "the zenith and rising sun of all the
alchymists," was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, in the year 1493.
His true name was Hohenheim; to which, as he himself informs us,
were prefixed the baptismal names of Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes
Paracelsus. The last of these he chose for his common designation while
he was yet a boy; and rendered it, before he died, one of the most
famous in the annals of his time. His father, who was a physician,
educated his son for the same pursuit. The latter was an apt scholar,
and made great progress. By chance the work of Isaac Hollandus fell into
his hands, and from that time he became smitten with the mania of
the philosopher's stone. All his thoughts henceforth were devoted to
metallurgy; and he travelled into Sweden that he might visit the mines
of that country, and examine the ores while they yet lay in the bowels
of the earth. He also visited Trithemius at the monastery of Spannheim,
and obtained instructions from him in the science of alchymy. Continuing
his travels, he proceeded through Prussia and Austria into Turkey,
Egypt, and Tatary, and thence returning to Constantinople, learned, as
he boasted, the art of transmutation, and became possessed of the
elixir vitae. He then established himself as a physician in his native
Switzerland at Zurich, and commenced writing works upon alchymy and
medicine, which immediately fixed the attention of Europe. Their great
obscurity was no impediment to their fame; for the less the author
was understood, the more the demonologists, fanatics, and
philosopher's-stone-hunters seemed to appreciate him. His fame as a
physician kept pace with that which he enjoyed as an alchymist, owing
to his having effected some happy cures by means of mercury and opium;
drugs unceremoniously condemned by his professional brethren. In the
year 1526, he was chosen Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy in
the University of Basle, where his lectures attracted vast numbers of
students. He denounced the writings of all former physicians as tending
to mislead; and publicly burned the works of Galen and Avicenna, as
quacks and impostors. He exclaimed, in presence of the admiring and
half-bewildered crowd, who assembled to witness the ceremony, that there
was more knowledge in his shoestrings than in the writings of these
physicians. Continuing in the same strain, he said all the universities
in the world were full of ignorant quacks; but that he, Paracelsus, over
flowed with wisdom. "You will all follow my new system," said he, with
furious gesticulations, "Avicenna, Galen, Rhazis, Montagnana, Meme--you
will all follow me, ye professors of Paris, Montpellier, Germany,
Cologne, and Vienna! and all ye that dwell on the Rhine and the
Danube--ye that inhabit the isles of the sea; and ye also, Italians,
Dalmatians, Athenians, Arabians, Jews--ye will all follow my doctrines,
for I am the monarch of medicine!"

But he did not long enjoy the esteem of the good citizens of Basle. It
is said that he indulged in wine so freely, as not unfrequently to be
seen in the streets in a state of intoxication. This was ruinous for a
physician, and his good fame decreased rapidly. His ill fame increased
in still greater proportion, especially when he assumed the airs of a
sorcerer. He boasted of the legions of spirits at his command; and
of one especially, which he kept imprisoned in the hilt of his sword.
Wetterus, who lived twenty-seven months in his service, relates that
he often threatened to invoke a whole army of demons, and show him
the great authority which he could exercise over them. He let it be
believed, that the spirit in his sword had custody of the elixir of
life, by means of which he could make any one live to be as old as the
antediluvians. He also boasted that he had a spirit at his command,
called "Azoth," whom he kept imprisoned in a jewel; and in many of the
old portraits he is represented with a jewel, inscribed with the word
"Azoth," in his hand.

If a sober prophet has little honour in his own country, a drunken one
has still less. Paracelsus found it at last convenient to quit Basle,
and establish himself at Strasbourg. The immediate cause of this change
of residence was as follows:--A citizen lay at the point of death, and
was given over by all the physicians of the town. As a last resource
Paracelsus was called in, to whom the sick man promised a magnificent
recompence, if by his means he were cured. Paracelsus gave him two small
pills, which the man took and rapidly recovered. When he was quite well,
Paracelsus sent for his fee; but the citizen had no great opinion of the
value of a cure which had been so speedily effected. He had no notion
of paying a handful of gold for two pills, although they had saved his
life, and he refused to pay more than the usual fee for a single visit.
Paracelsus brought an action against him, and lost it. This result so
exasperated him, that he left Basle in high dudgeon. He resumed his
wandering life, and travelled in Germany and Hungary, supporting himself
as he went on the credulity and infatuation of all classes of society.
He cast nativities--told fortunes--aided those who had money to throw
away upon the experiment, to find the philosopher's stone--prescribed
remedies for cows and pigs, and aided in the recovery of stolen
goods. After residing successively at Nuremburg, Augsburg, Vienna, and
Mindelheim, he retired in the year 1541 to Saltzbourg, and died in a
state of abject poverty in the hospital of that town.

If this strange charlatan found hundreds of admirers during his life,
he found thousands after his death. A sect of Paracelsists sprang up
in France and Germany, to perpetuate the extravagant doctrines of their
founder upon all the sciences, and upon alchymy in particular. The chief
leaders were Bodenstein and Dorneus. The following is a summary of his
doctrine, founded upon supposed existence of the philosopher's stone; it
is worth preserving from its very absurdity, and altogether unparalleled
in the history of philosophy:--

First of all, he maintained that the contemplation of the perfection of
the Deity sufficed to procure all wisdom and knowledge; that the Bible
was the key to the theory of all diseases, and that it was necessary to
search into the Apocalypse to know the signification of magic medicine.
The man who blindly obeyed the will of God, and who succeeded in
identifying himself with the celestial intelligences, possessed the
philosopher's stone--he could cure all diseases, and prolong life to as
many centuries as he pleased; it being by the very same means that Adam
and the antediluvian patriarchs prolonged theirs. Life was an emanation
from the stars--the sun governed the heart, and the moon the brain.
Jupiter governed the liver, Saturn the gall, Mercury the lungs, Mars the
bile, and Venus the loins. In the stomach of every human being there
dwelt a demon, or intelligence, that was a sort of alchymist in his way,
and mixed, in their due proportions, in his crucible, the various
aliments that were sent into that grand laboratory the belly.[See the
article "Paracelsus," by the learned Renaudin, in the "Biographie
Universelle."] He was proud of the title of magician, and boasted that
he kept up a regular correspondence with Galen from hell; and that he
often summoned Avicenna from the same regions to dispute with him on the
false notions he had promulgated respecting alchymy, and especially
regarding potable gold and the elixir of life. He imagined that gold
could cure ossification of the heart, and, in fact, all diseases, if it
were gold which had been transmuted from an inferior metal by means of
the philosopher's stone, and if it were applied under certain
conjunctions of the planets. The mere list of the works in which he
advances these frantic imaginings, which he called a doctrine, would
occupy several pages.

GEORGE AGRICOLA.

This alchymist was born in the province of Misnia, in 1494. His real
name was Bauer, meaning a husbandman, which, in accordance with the
common fashion of his age, he Latinized into Agricola. From his early
youth, he delighted in the visions of the hermetic science. Ere he was
sixteen, he longed for the great elixir which was to make him live for
seven hundred years, and for the stone which was to procure him wealth
to cheer him in his multiplicity of days. He published a small treatise
upon the subject at Cologne, in 1531, which obtained him the patronage
of the celebrated Maurice, Duke of Saxony. After practising for some
years as a physician at Joachimsthal, in Bohemia, he was employed by
Maurice as superintendent of the silver mines of Chemnitz. He led a
happy life among the miners, making various experiments in alchymy
while deep in the bowels of the earth. He acquired a great knowledge
of metals, and gradually got rid of his extravagant notions about
the philosopher's stone. The miners had no faith in alchymy; and they
converted him to their way of thinking, not only in that but in other
respects. From their legends, he became firmly convinced that the bowels
of the earth were inhabited by good and evil spirits, and that firedamp
and other explosions sprang from no other causes than the mischievous
propensities of the latter. He died in the year 1555, leaving behind him
the reputation of a very able and intelligent man.

DENIS ZACHAIRE.

Autobiography, written by a wise man who was once a fool, is not
only the most instructive, but the most delightful of reading. Denis
Zachaire, an alchymist of the sixteenth century, has performed this
task, and left a record of his folly and infatuation in pursuit of the
philosopher's stone, which well repays perusal. He was born in the
year 1510, of an ancient family in Guienne, and was early sent to the
university of Bordeaux, under the care of a tutor to direct his studies.
Unfortunately, his tutor was a searcher for the grand elixir, and
soon rendered his pupil as mad as himself upon the subject. With this
introduction, we will allow Denis Zachaire to speak for himself, and
continue his narrative in his own words:--

"I received from home," says he, "the sum of two hundred crowns for the
expenses of myself and master; but before the end of the year, all our
money went away in the smoke of our furnaces. My master, at the same
time, died of a fever, brought on by the parching heat of our
laboratory, from which he seldom or never stirred, and which was
scarcely less hot than the arsenal of Venice. His death was the more
unfortunate for me, as my parents took the opportunity of reducing my
allowance, and sending me only sufficient for my board and lodging,
instead of the sum I required to continue my operations in alchymy.

"To meet this difficulty and get out of leading-strings, I returned home
at the age of twenty-five, and mortgaged part of my property for four
hundred crowns. This sum was necessary to perform an operation of the
science, which had been communicated to me by an Italian at Toulouse,
and who, as he said, had proved its efficacy. I retained this man in my
service, that we might see the end of the experiment. I then, by means
of strong distillations, tried to calcinate gold and silver; but all my
labour was in vain. The weight of the gold I drew out of my furnace was
diminished by one-half since I put it in, and my four hundred crowns
were very soon reduced to two hundred and thirty. I gave twenty of these
to my Italian, in order that he might travel to Milan, where the author
of the receipt resided, and ask him the explanation of some passages
which we thought obscure. I remained at Toulouse all the winter, in the
hope of his return; but I might have remained there till this day if I
had waited for him, for I never saw his face again.

"In the succeeding summer there was a great plague, which forced me
to quit the town. I did not, however, lose sight of my work. I went to
Cahors, where I remained six months, and made the acquaintance of an old
man, who was commonly known to the people as 'the Philosopher;' a name
which, in country places, is often bestowed upon people whose only merit
is, that they are less ignorant than their neighbours. I showed him my
collection of alchymical receipts, and asked his opinion upon them. He
picked out ten or twelve of them, merely saying that they were better
than the others. When the plague ceased, I returned to Toulouse, and
recommenced my experiments in search of the stone. I worked to such
effect that my four hundred crowns were reduced to one hundred and
seventy.

"That I might continue my work on a safer method, I made acquaintance,
in 1537, with a certain Abbe, who resided in the neighbourhood. He
was smitten with the same mania as myself, and told me that one of
his friends, who had followed to Rome in the retinue of the Cardinal
d'Armagnac, had sent him from that city a new receipt, which could not
fail to transmute iron and copper, but which would cost two hundred
crowns. I provided half this money, and the Abbe the rest; and we began
to operate at our joint expense. As we required spirits of wine for our
experiment, I bought a tun of excellent vin de Gaillac. I extracted the
spirit, and rectified it several times. We took a quantity of this,
into which we put four marks of silver, and one of gold, that had been
undergoing the process of calcination for a month. We put this mixture
cleverly into a sort of horn-shaped vessel, with another to serve as
a retort; and placed the whole apparatus upon our furnace, to produce
congelation. This experiment lasted a year; but, not to remain idle,
we amused ourselves with many other less important operations. We drew
quite as much profit from these as from our great work.

"The whole of the year 1537 passed over without producing any change
whatever: in fact, we might have waited till doomsday for the
congelation of our spirits of wine. However, we made a projection with
it upon some heated quicksilver; but all was in vain. Judge of our
chagrin, especially of that of the Abbe, who had already boasted to all
the monks of his monastery, that they had only to bring the large pump
which stood in a corner of the cloister, and he would convert it into
gold; but this ill luck did not prevent us from persevering. I once more
mortgaged my paternal lands for four hundred crowns, the whole of which
I determined to devote to a renewal of my search for the great secret.
The Abbe contributed the same sum; and, with these eight hundred crowns,
I proceeded to Paris, a city more abounding with alchymists than any
other in the world, resolved never to leave it until I had either found
the philosopher's stone, or spent all my money. This journey gave the
greatest offence to all my relations and friends, who, imagining that
I was fitted to be a great lawyer, were anxious that I should establish
myself in that profession. For the sake of quietness, I pretended, at
last, that such was my object.

"After travelling for fifteen days, I arrived in Paris, on the 9th
of January 1539. I remained for a month, almost unknown; but I had no
sooner begun to frequent the amateurs of the science, and visited the
shops of the furnace-makers, than I had the acquaintance of more than a
hundred operative alchymists, each of whom had a different theory and
a different mode of working. Some of them preferred cementation; others
sought the universal alkahest, or dissolvent; and some of them boasted
the great efficacy of the essence of emery. Some of them endeavoured to
extract mercury from other metals to fix it afterwards; and, in order
that each of us should be thoroughly acquainted with the proceedings
of the others, we agreed to meet somewhere every night, and report
progress. We met sometimes at the house of one, and sometimes in the
garret of another; not only on week days, but on Sundays, and the great
festivals of the Church. 'Ah!' one used to say, 'if I had the means
of recommencing this experiment, I should do something.' 'Yes,' said
another, 'if my crucible had not cracked, I should have succeeded before
now:' while a third exclaimed, with a sigh, 'If I had but had a round
copper vessel of sufficient strength, I would have fixed mercury with
silver.' There was not one among them who had not some excuse for his
failure; but I was deaf to all their speeches. I did not want to part
with my money to any of them, remembering how often I had been the dupe
of such promises.

"A Greek at last presented himself; and with him I worked a long
time uselessly upon nails, made of cinabar, or vermilion. I was also
acquainted with a foreign gentleman newly arrived in Paris, and often
accompanied him to the shops of the goldsmiths, to sell pieces of gold
and silver, the produce, as he said, of his experiments. I stuck closely
to him for a long time, in the hope that he would impart his secret. He
refused for a long time, but acceded, at last, on my earnest entreaty,
and I found that it was nothing more than an ingenious trick. I did not
fail to inform my friend, the Abbe, whom I had left at Toulouse, of
all my adventures; and sent him, among other matters, a relation of the
trick by which this gentleman pretended to turn lead into gold. The Abbe
still imagined that I should succeed at last, and advised me to remain
another year in Paris, where I had made so good a beginning. I remained
there three years; but, notwithstanding all my efforts, I had no more
success than I had had elsewhere.

"I had just got to the end of my money, when I received a letter from
the Abbe, telling me to leave everything, and join him immediately at
Toulouse. I went accordingly, and found that he had received letters
from the King of Navarre (grandfather of Henry IV). This Prince was a
great lover of philosophy, full of curiosity, and had written to the
Abbe, that I should visit him at Pau; and that he would give me three
or four thousand crowns, if I would communicate the secret I had learned
from the foreign gentleman. The Abbe's ears were so tickled with the
four thousand crowns, that he let me have no peace, night or day, until
he had fairly seen me on the road to Pau. I arrived at that place in
the month of May 1542. I worked away, and succeeded, according to the
receipt I had obtained. When I had finished, to the satisfaction of the
King, he gave me the reward that I expected. Although he was willing
enough to do me further service, he was dissuaded from it by the lords
of his court; even by many of those who had been most anxious that
I should come. He sent me then about my business, with many thanks;
saying, that if there was anything in his kingdom which he could give
me--such as the produce of confiscations, or the like--he should be
most happy. I thought I might stay long enough for these prospective
confiscations, and never get them at last; and I therefore determined to
go back to my friend, the Abbe.

"I learned, that on the road between Pau and Toulouse, there resided a
monk, who was very skilful in all matters of natural philosophy. On my
return, I paid him a visit. He pitied me very much, and advised me, with
much warmth and kindness of expression, not to amuse myself any longer
with such experiments as these, which were all false and sophistical;
but that I should read the good books of the old philosophers, where I
might not only find the true matter of the science of alchymy, but learn
also the exact order of operations which ought to be followed. I very
much approved of this wise advice; but, before I acted upon it, I
went back to my Abbe, of Toulouse, to give him an account of the eight
hundred crowns, which we had had in common; and, at the same time, share
with him such reward as I had received from the King of Navarre. If he
was little satisfied with the relation of my adventures since our first
separation, he appeared still less satisfied when I told him I had
formed a resolution to renounce the search for the philosopher's stone.
The reason was, that he thought me a good artist. Of our eight hundred
crowns, there remained but one hundred and seventy-six. When I quitted
the Abbe, I went to my own house, with the intention of remaining there,
till I had read all the old philosophers, and of then proceeding to
Paris.

"I arrived in Paris on the day after All Saints, of the year 1546, and
devoted another year to the assiduous study of great authors. Among
others, the 'Turba Philosophorum' of the 'Good Trevisan,' 'The
Remonstance of Nature to the wandering Alchymist,' by Jean de Meung; and
several others of the best books: but, as I had no right' principles, I
did not well know what course to follow.

"At last I left my solitude; not to see my former acquaintances, the
adepts and operators, but to frequent the society of true philosophers.
Among them I fell into still greater uncertainties; being, in fact,
completely bewildered by the variety of operations which they showed me.
Spurred on, nevertheless, by a sort of frenzy or inspiration, I threw
myself into the works of Raymond Lulli and of Arnold de Villeneuve. The
reading of these, and the reflections I made upon them, occupied me for
another year, when I finally determined on the course I should adopt.
I was obliged to wait, however, until I had mortgaged another very
considerable portion of my patrimony. This business was not settled
until the beginning of Lent, 1549, when I commenced my operations. I
laid in a stock of all that was necessary, and began to work the
day after Easter. It was not, however, without some disquietude and
opposition from my friends who came about me; one asking me what I was
going to do, and whether I had not already spent money enough upon such
follies. Another assured me that, if I bought so much charcoal, I should
strengthen the suspicion already existing, that I was a coiner of base
money. Another advised me to purchase some place in the magistracy, as
I was already a Doctor of Laws. My relations spoke in terms still more
annoying to me, and even threatened that, if I continued to make such
a fool of myself, they would send a posse of police-officers into my
house, and break all my furnaces and crucibles into atoms. I was wearied
almost to death by this continued persecution; but I found comfort in
my work and in the progress of my experiment, to which I was very
attentive, and which went on bravely from day to day. About this time,
there was a dreadful plague in Paris, which interrupted all intercourse
between man and man, and left me as much to myself as I could desire. I
soon had the satisfaction to remark the progress and succession of the
three colours which, according to the philosophers, always prognosticate
the approaching perfection of the work. I observed them distinctly, one
after the other; and next year, being Easter Sunday, 1550, I made the
great trial. Some common quicksilver, which I put into a small crucible
on the fire, was, in less than an hour, converted into very good gold.
You may judge how great was my joy, but I took care not to boast of it.
I returned thanks to God for the favour he had shown me, and prayed that
I might only be permitted to make such use of it as would redound to his
glory.

"On the following day, I went towards Toulouse to find the Abbe,
in accordance with a mutual promise that we should communicate our
discoveries to each other. On my way, I called in to see the sage monk
who had assisted me with his counsels; but I had the sorrow to learn
that they were both dead. After this, I would not return to my own home,
but retired to another place, to await one of my relations whom I had
left in charge of my estate. I gave him orders to sell all that belonged
to me, as well movable as immovable--to pay my debts with the proceeds,
and divide all the rest among those in any way related to me who might
stand in need of it, in order that they might enjoy some share of the
good fortune which had befallen me. There was a great deal of talk
in the neighbourhood about my precipitate retreat; the wisest of my
acquaintance imagining that, broken down and ruined by my mad expenses,
I sold my little remaining property that I might go and hide my shame in
distant countries.

"My relative already spoken of rejoined me on the 1st of July, after
having performed all the business I had intrusted him with. We took
our departure together, to seek a land of liberty. We first retired to
Lausanne, in Switzerland, when, after remaining there for some time,
we resolved to pass the remainder of our days in some of the most
celebrated cities of Germany, living quietly and without splendour."

Thus ends the story of Denis Zachaire, as written by himself. He has not
been so candid at its conclusion as at its commencement, and has left
the world in doubt as to his real motives for pretending that he had
discovered the philosopher's stone. It seems probable that the sentence
he puts into the months of his wisest acquaintances was the true reason
of his retreat; that he was, in fact, reduced to poverty, and hid his
shame in foreign countries. Nothing further is known of his life, and
his real name has never yet been discovered. He wrote a work on alchymy,
entitled "The true Natural Philosophy of Metals."

DR. DEE and EDWARD KELLY.

John Dee and Edward Kelly claim to be mentioned together, having been
so long associated in the same pursuits, and undergone so many strange
vicissitudes in each other's society. Dee was altogether a wonderful
man, and had he lived in an age when folly and superstition were less
rife, he would, with the same powers which he enjoyed, have left behind
him a bright and enduring reputation. He was born in London, in the year
1527, and very early manifested a love for study. At the age of fifteen
he was sent to Cambridge, and delighted so much in his books, that he
passed regularly eighteen hours every day among them. Of the other
six, he devoted four to sleep and two for refreshment. Such intense
application did not injure his health, and could not fail to make
him one of the first scholars of his time. Unfortunately, however, he
quitted the mathematics and the pursuits of true philosophy to indulge
in the unprofitable reveries of the occult sciences. He studied alchymy,
astrology, and magic, and thereby rendered himself obnoxious to the
authorities at Cambridge. To avoid persecution, he was at last obliged
to retire to the university of Louvain; the rumours of sorcery that
were current respecting him rendering his longer stay in England not
altogether without danger. He found at Louvain many kindred spirits who
had known Cornelius Agrippa while he resided among them, and by whom he
was constantly entertained with the wondrous deeds of that great master
of the hermetic mysteries. From their conversation he received much
encouragement to continue the search for the philosopher's stone, which
soon began to occupy nearly all his thoughts.

He did not long remain on the Continent, but returned to England in
1551, being at that time in the twenty-fourth year of his age. By the
influence of his friend, Sir John Cheek, he was kindly received at the
court of King Edward VI, and rewarded (it is difficult to say for what)
with a pension of one hundred crowns. He continued for several years
to practise in London as an astrologer; casting nativities, telling
fortunes, and pointing out lucky and unlucky days. During the reign of
Queen Mary he got into trouble, being suspected of heresy, and charged
with attempting Mary's life by means of enchantments. He was tried for
the latter offence, and acquitted; but was retained in prison on the
former charge, and left to the tender mercies of Bishop Bonner. He had
a very narrow escape from being burned in Smithfield, but he, somehow
or other, contrived to persuade that fierce bigot that his orthodoxy was
unimpeachable, and was set at liberty in 1555.

On the accession of Elizabeth, a brighter day dawned upon him. During
her retirement at Woodstock, her servants appear to have consulted him
as to the time of Mary's death, which Circumstance, no doubt, first gave
rise to the serious charge for which he was brought to trial. They now
came to consult him more openly as to the fortunes of their mistress;
and Robert Dudley, the celebrated Earl of Leicester, was sent by command
of the Queen herself to know the most auspicious day for her coronation.
So great was the favour he enjoyed that, some years afterwards,
Elizabeth condescended to pay him a visit at his house in Mortlake,
to view his museum of curiosities, and, when he was ill, sent her own
physician to attend upon him.

Astrology was the means whereby he lived, and he continued to practise
it with great assiduity; but his heart was in alchymy. The philosopher's
stone and the elixir of life haunted his daily thoughts and his nightly
dreams. The Talmudic mysteries, which he had also deeply studied,
impressed him with the belief, that he might hold converse with spirits
and angels, and learn from them all the mysteries of the universe.
Holding the same idea as the then obscure sect of the Rosicrucians,
some of whom he had perhaps encountered in his travels in Germany, he
imagined that, by means of the philosopher's stone, he could summon
these kindly spirits at his will. By dint of continually brooding
upon the subject, his imagination became so diseased, that he at last
persuaded himself that an angel appeared to him, and promised to be his
friend and companion as long as he lived. He relates that, one day, in
November 1582, while he was engaged in fervent prayer, the window of his
museum looking towards the west suddenly glowed with a dazzling light,
in the midst of which, in all his glory, stood the great angel Uriel.
Awe and wonder rendered him speechless; but the angel smiling graciously
upon him, gave him a crystal, of a convex form, and told him that,
whenever he wished to hold converse with the beings of another sphere,
he had only to gaze intently upon it, and they would appear in the
crystal and unveil to him all the secrets of futurity. [The "crystal"
alluded to appears to have been a black stone, or piece of polished
coal. The following account of it is given in the Supplement to
Granger's "Biographical History."--"The black stone into which Dee used
to call his spirits was in the collection of the Earls of Peterborough,
from whence it came to Lady Elizabeth Germaine. It was next the property
of the late Duke of Argyle, and is now Mr. Walpole's. It appears upon
examination to be nothing more than a polished piece of cannel coal; but
this is what Butler means when he says, 'Kelly did all his feats
upon The devil's looking-glass--a stone.'"] This saying, the angel
disappeared. Dee found from experience of the crystal that it was
necessary that all the faculties of the soul should be concentrated upon
it, otherwise the spirits did not appear. He also found that he could
never recollect the conversations he had with the angels. He therefore
determined to communicate the secret to another person, who might
converse with the spirits while he (Dee) sat in another part of the
room, and took down in writing the revelations which they made.

He had at this time in his service, as his assistant, one Edward Kelly,
who, like himself, was crazy upon the subject of the philosopher's
stone. There was this difference, however, between them, that, while
Dee was more of an enthusiast than an impostor, Kelly was more of an
impostor than an enthusiast. In early life he was a notary, and had the
misfortune to lose both his ears for forgery. This mutilation, degrading
enough in any man, was destructive to a philosopher; Kelly, therefore,
lest his wisdom should suffer in the world's opinion, wore a black
skull-cap, which, fitting close to his head, and descending over both
his cheeks, not only concealed his loss, but gave him a very solemn and
oracular appearance. So well did he keep his secret, that even Dee, with
whom he lived so many years, appears never to have discovered it. Kelly,
with this character, was just the man to carry on any piece of roguery
for his own advantage, or to nurture the delusions of his master for the
same purpose. No sooner did Dee inform him of the visit he had received
from the glorious Uriel, than Kelly expressed such a fervour of belief
that Dee's heart glowed with delight. He set about consulting his
crystal forthwith, and on the 2nd of December 1581, the spirits
appeared, and held a very extraordinary discourse with Kelly, which
Dee took down in writing. The curious reader may see this farrago
of nonsense among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. The later
consultations were published in a folio volume, in 1659, by Dr. Meric
Casaubon, under the title of "A True and Faithful Relation of what
passed between Dr. John Dee and some Spirits; tending, had it succeeded,
to a general Alteration of most States and Kingdoms in the World."
[Lilly, the astrologer, in his Life written by himself, frequently tells
of prophecies delivered by the angels in a manner similar to the angels
of Dr. Dee. He says, "The prophecies were not given vocally by the
angels, but by inspection of the crystal in types and figures, or by
apparition the circular way; where, at some distance, the angels appear,
representing by forms, shapes, and creatures what is demanded. It
is very rare, yea, even in our days," quoth that wiseacre, "for any
operator or master to hear the angels speak articulately: when they do
speak, it is like the Irish, much in the throat!"]

The fame of these wondrous colloquies soon spread over the country, and
even reached the Continent. Dee, at the same time, pretended to be in
possession of the elixir vitae, which he stated he had found among the
ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, in Somersetshire. People flocked from far
and near to his house at Mortlake to have their nativities cast, in
preference to visiting astrologers of less renown. They also longed
to see a man who, according to his own account, would never die.
Altogether, he carried on a very profitable trade, but spent so much
in drugs and metals to work out some peculiar process of transmutation,
that he never became rich.

About this time there came into England a wealthy polish nobleman, named
Albert Laski, Count Palatine of Siradz. His object was principally, he
said, to visit the court of Queen Elizabeth, the fame of whose glory and
magnificence had reached him in distant Poland. Elizabeth received this
flattering stranger with the most splendid hospitality, and appointed
her favourite Leicester to show him all that was worth seeing in
England. He visited all the curiosities of London and Westminster, and
from thence proceeded to Oxford and Cambridge, that he might converse
with some of the great scholars whose writings shed lustre upon the land
of their birth. He was very much disappointed at not finding Dr. Dee
among them, and told the Earl of Leicester that he would not have gone
to Oxford if he had known that Dee was not there. The Earl promised to
introduce him to the great alchymist on their return to London, and the
Pole was satisfied. A few days afterwards, the Earl and Laski being in
the antechamber of the Queen, awaiting an audience of her Majesty, Dr.
Dee arrived on the same errand, and was introduced to the Pole. [Albert
Laski, son of Jaroslav, was Palatine of Siradz, and afterwards of
Sendomir, and chiefly contributed to the election of Henry of Valois,
the Third of France, to the throne of Poland, and was one of the
delegates who went to France in order to announce to the new monarch his
elevation to the sovereignty of Poland. After the deposition of Henry,
Albert Laski voted for Maximilian of Austria. In 1585 he visited
England, when Queen Elizabeth received him with great distinction. The
honours which were shown him during his visit to Oxford, by the especial
command of the Queen, were equal to those rendered to sovereign princes.
His extraordinary prodigality rendered his enormous wealth insufficient
to defray his expenses, and he therefore became a zealous adept
in alchymy, and took from England to Poland with him two known
alchymists.--Count Valerian Krasinski's "Historical Sketch of the
Reformation in Poland."] An interesting conversation ensued, which ended
by the stranger inviting himself to dine with the astrologer at his
house at Mortlake. Dee returned home in some tribulation, for he found
he had not money enough, without pawning his plate, to entertain Count
Laski and his retinue in a manner becoming their dignity. In this
emergency he sent off an express to the Earl of Leicester, stating
frankly the embarrassment he laboured under, and praying his good
offices in representing the matter to her Majesty. Elizabeth immediately
sent him a present of twenty pounds.

On the appointed day, Count Laski came, attended by a numerous retinue,
and expressed such open and warm admiration of the wonderful attainments
of his host, that Dee turned over, in his own mind, how he could bind
irretrievably to his interests a man who seemed so well inclined to
become his friend. Long acquaintance with Kelly had imbued him with
all the roguery of that personage; and he resolved to make the Pole pay
dearly for his dinner. He found out, before many days, that he possessed
great estates in his own country, as well as great influence; but that
an extravagant disposition had reduced him to temporary embarrassment.
He also discovered, that he was a firm believer in the philosopher's
stone and the water of life. He was, therefore, just the man upon whom
an adventurer might fasten himself. Kelly thought so too; and both of
them set to work, to weave a web, in the meshes of which they might
firmly entangle the rich and credulous stranger. They went very
cautiously about it; first throwing out obscure hints of the stone and
the elixir; and, finally, of the spirits, by means of whom they could
turn over the pages of the Book of Futurity, and read the awful secrets
inscribed therein. Laski eagerly implored that he might be admitted to
one of their mysterious interviews with Uriel and the angels; but they
knew human nature too well to accede at once to the request. To the
Count's entreaties they only replied by hints of the difficulty or
impropriety of summoning the spirits in the presence of a stranger; or
of one who might, perchance, have no other motive than the gratification
of a vain curiosity: but they only meant to whet the edge of his
appetite by this delay, and would have been sorry indeed if the Count
had been discouraged. To show how exclusively the thoughts both of Dee
and Kelly were fixed upon their dupe, at this time, it is only necessary
to read the introduction to their first interview with the spirits,
related in the volume of Dr. Casaubon. The entry made by Dee, under the
date of the 25th of May 1583, says, that when the spirit appeared to
them, "I, [John Dee], and E. K. [Edward Kelly], sat together, conversing
of that noble Polonian Albertus Laski, his great honour here with us
obtained, and of his great liking among all sorts of the people." No
doubt they were discussing how they might make the most of the "noble
Polonian," and concocting the fine story with which they afterwards
excited his curiosity, and drew him firmly within their toils.
"Suddenly," says Dee, as they were thus employed, "there seemed to come
out of the oratory, a spiritual creature, like a pretty girl, of seven
or nine years of age, attired on her head, with her hair rolled up
before, and hanging down behind; with a gown of silk, of changeable red
and green, and with a train. She seemed to play up and down, and seemed
to go in and out behind the books; and, as she seemed to go between
them, the books displaced themselves, and made way for her."

With such tales as these they lured on the Pole from day to day; and
at last persuaded him to be a witness of their mysteries. Whether they
played off any optical delusions upon him; or whether, by the force of a
strong imagination, he deluded himself, does not appear; but certain it
is, that he became a complete tool in their hands, and consented to do
whatever they wished him. Kelly, at these interviews, placed himself at
a certain distance from the wondrous crystal, and gazed intently upon
it; while Dee took his place in corner, ready to set down the prophecies
as they were uttered by the spirits. In this manner they prophesied
to the Pole, that he should become the fortunate possessor of the
philosopher's stone; that he should live for centuries, and be chosen
King of Poland; in which capacity he should gain many great victories
over the Saracens, and make his name illustrious over all the earth. For
this pose it was necessary, however, that Laski should leave England,
and take them with him, together with their wives and families; that he
should treat them all sumptuously, and allow them to want for nothing.
Laski at once consented; and very shortly afterwards they were all on
the road to Poland.

It took them upwards of four months to reach the Count's estates, in the
neighbourhood of Cracow. In the mean time, they led a pleasant life, and
spent money with an unsparing hand. When once established in the Count's
palace, they commenced the great hermetic operation of transmuting iron
into gold. Laski provided them with all necessary materials, and aided
them himself with his knowledge of alchymy: but, somehow or other,
the experiment always failed at the very moment that it ought to have
succeeded; and they were obliged to recommence operations on a grander
scale. But the hopes of Laski were not easily extinguished. Already, in
idea, the possessor of countless millions, he was not to be cast down
for fear of present expenses. He thus continued from day to day, and
from month to month, till he was, at last, obliged to sell a portion of
his deeply-mortgaged estates, to find aliment for the hungry crucibles
of Dee and Kelly, and the no less hungry stomachs of their wives and
families. It was not till ruin stared him in the face, that he awoke
from his dream of infatuation--too happy, even then, to find that he had
escaped utter beggary. Thus restored to his senses, his first thought
was how to rid himself of his expensive visiters. Not wishing to
quarrel with them, he proposed that they should proceed to Prague, well
furnished with letters of recommendation to the Emperor Rudolph. Our
alchymists too plainly saw that nothing more was to be made of the
almost destitute Count Laski. Without hesitation, therefore, they
accepted the proposal, and set out forthwith to the Imperial residence.
They had no difficulty, on their arrival at Prague, in obtaining an
audience of the Emperor. They found him willing enough to believe
that such a thing as the philosopher's stone existed, and flattered
themselves that they had made a favourable impression upon him; but,
from some cause or other--perhaps the look of low cunning and quackery
upon the face of Kelly--the Emperor conceived no very high opinion of
their abilities. He allowed them, however, to remain for some months at
Prague, feeding themselves upon the hope that he would employ them: but
the more he saw of them, the less he liked them; and, when the Pope's
Nuncio represented to him, that he ought not to countenance such heretic
magicians, he gave orders that they should quit his dominions within
four-and-twenty hours. It was fortunate for them that so little time
was given them; for, had they remained six hours longer, the Nuncio had
received orders to procure a perpetual dungeon, or the stake, for them.

Not knowing well where to direct their steps, they resolved to return to
Cracow, where they had still a few friends; but, by this time, the funds
they had drawn from Laski were almost exhausted; and they were many days
obliged to go dinnerless and supperless. They had great difficulty to
keep their poverty a secret from the world; but they managed to bear
privation without murmuring, from a conviction that if the fact were
known, it would militate very much against their pretensions. Nobody
would believe that they were possessors of the philosopher's stone, if
it were once suspected that they did not know how to procure bread for
their subsistence. They still gained a little by casting nativities, and
kept starvation at arm's length, till a new dupe, rich enough for their
purposes, dropped into their toils, in the shape of a royal personage.
Having procured an introduction to Stephen, King of Poland,
they predicted to him, that the Emperor Rudolph would shortly be
assassinated, and that the Germans would look to Poland for his
successor. As this prediction was not precise enough to satisfy the
King, they tried their crystal again; and a spirit appeared, who told
them that the new sovereign of Germany would be Stephen of Poland.
Stephen was credulous enough to believe them, and was once present when
Kelly held his mystic conversations with the shadows of his crystal.
He also appears to have furnished them with money to carry on their
experiments in alchymy: but he grew tired, at last, of their broken
promises, and their constant drains upon his pocket; and was on the
point of discarding them with disgrace, when they met with another
dupe, to whom they eagerly transferred their services. This was Count
Rosenberg, a nobleman of large estates, at Trebona, in Bohemia. So
comfortable did they find themselves in the palace of this munificent
patron, that they remained nearly four years with him, faring
sumptuously, and having an almost unlimited command of his money. The
Count was more ambitious than avaricious: he had wealth enough, and did
not care for the philosopher's stone on account of the gold, but of
the length of days it would bring him. They had their predictions,
accordingly, all ready framed to suit his character. They prophesied
that he should be chosen King of Poland; and promised, moreover, that
he should live for five hundred years to enjoy his dignity; provided
always, that he found them sufficient money to carry on their
experiments.

But now, while fortune smiled upon them; while they revelled in the
rewards of successful villany, retributive justice came upon them in a
shape they had not anticipated. Jealousy and mistrust sprang up between
the two confederates, and led to such violent and frequent quarrels,
that Dee was in constant fear of exposure. Kelly imagined himself a much
greater personage than Dee; measuring, most likely, by the standard of
impudent roguery; and was displeased that on all occasions, and from all
persons, Dee received the greater share of honour and consideration. He
often threatened to leave Dee to shift for himself; and the latter, who
had degenerated into the mere tool of his more daring associate, was
distressed beyond measure at the prospect of his desertion. His mind was
so deeply imbued with superstition, that he believed the rhapsodies
of Kelly to be, in a great measure, derived from his intercourse with
angels; and he knew not where, in the whole world, to look for a man
of depth and wisdom enough to succeed him. As their quarrels every day
became more and more frequent, Dee wrote letters to Queen Elizabeth,
to secure a favourable reception on his return to England; whither he
intended to proceed, if Kelly forsook him. He also sent her a round
piece of silver, which he pretended he had made of a portion of brass
cut out of a warming-pan. He afterwards sent her the warming-pan also,
that she might convince herself that the piece of silver corresponded
exactly with the hole which was cut into the brass. While thus preparing
for the worst, his chief desire was to remain in Bohemia with Count
Rosenberg, who treated him well, and reposed much confidence in him.
Neither had Kelly any great objection to remain; but a new passion
had taken possession of his breast, and he was laying deep schemes to
gratify it. His own wife was ill-favoured and ill-natured; Dee's was
comely and agreeable: and he longed to make an exchange of partners,
without exciting the jealousy or shocking the morality of Dee. This was
a difficult matter; but, to a man like Kelly, who was as deficient in
rectitude and right feeling as he was full of impudence and ingenuity,
the difficulty was not insurmountable. He had also deeply studied the
character and the foibles of Dee; and he took his measures accordingly.
The next time they consulted the spirits, Kelly pretended to be shocked
at their language, and refused to tell Dee what they had said. Dee
insisted, and was informed that they were henceforth to have their wives
in common. Dee, a little startled, inquired whether the spirits might
not mean that they were to live in common harmony and good-will? Kelly
tried again, with apparent reluctance, and said the spirits insisted
upon the literal interpretation. The poor fanatic, Dee, resigned himself
to their will; but it suited Kelly's purpose to appear coy a little
longer. He declared that the spirits must be spirits, not of good, but
of evil; and refused to consult them any more. He thereupon took his
departure, saying that he would never return.

Dee, thus left to himself, was in sore trouble and distress of mind.
He knew not on whom to fix as the successor to Kelly for consulting the
spirits; but at last chose his son Arthur, a boy of eight years of age.
He consecrated him to this service with great ceremony, and impressed
upon the child's mind the dignified and awful nature of the duties
he was called upon to perform; but the poor boy had neither the
imagination, the faith, nor the artifice of Kelly. He looked intently
upon the crystal, as he was told; but could see nothing and hear
nothing. At last, when his eyes ached, he said he could see a vague
indistinct shadow; but nothing more. Dee was in despair. The deception
had been carried on so long, that he was never so happy as when he
fancied he was holding converse with superior beings; and he cursed the
day that had put estrangement between him and his dear friend Kelly.
This was exactly what Kelly had foreseen; and, when he thought
the Doctor had grieved sufficiently for his absence, he returned
unexpectedly, and entered the room where the little Arthur was in vain
endeavouring to distinguish something in the crystal. Dee, in entering
this circumstance in his journal, ascribes this sudden return to a
"miraculous fortune," and a "divine fate;" and goes on to record that
Kelly immediately saw the spirits, which had remained invisible to
little Arthur. One of these spirits reiterated the previous command,
that they should have their wives in common. Kelly bowed his head, and
submitted; and Dee, in all humility, consented to the arrangement.

This was the extreme depth of the wretched man's degradation. In this
manner they continued to live for three or four months, when, new
quarrels breaking out, they separated once more. This time their
separation was final. Kelly, taking the elixir which he had found in
Glastonbury Abbey, proceeded to Prague, forgetful of the abrupt mode in
which he had previously been expelled from that city. Almost immediately
after his arrival, he was seized by order of the Emperor Rudolph, and
thrown into prison. He was released after some months' confinement, and
continued for five years to lead a vagabond life in Germany, telling
fortunes at one place, and pretending to make gold at another. He was a
second time thrown into prison, on a charge of heresy and sorcery; and
he then resolved, if ever he obtained his liberty, to return to England.
He soon discovered that there was no prospect of this, and that his
imprisonment was likely to be for life. He twisted his bed-clothes into
a rope, one stormy night in February 1595, and let himself down from the
window of his dungeon, situated at the top of a very high tower. Being a
corpulent man, the rope gave way, and he was precipitated to the ground.
He broke two of his ribs, and both his legs; and was otherwise so much
injured, that he expired a few days afterwards.

Dee, for a while, had more prosperous fortune. The warming-pan he had
sent to Queen Elizabeth was not without effect. He was rewarded, soon
after Kelly had left him, with an invitation to return to England. His
pride, which had been sorely humbled, sprang up again to its pristine
dimensions; and he set out for Bohemia with a train of attendants
becoming an ambassador. How he procured the money does not appear,
unless from the liberality of the rich Bohemian Rosenberg, or perhaps
from his plunder. He travelled with three coaches for himself and
family, and three waggons to carry his baggage. Each coach had four
horses, and the whole train was protected by a guard of four and twenty
soldiers. This statement may be doubted; but it is on the authority of
Dee himself, who made it on oath before the commissioners appointed by
Elizabeth to inquire into his circumstances. On his arrival in England
he had an audience of the Queen, who received him kindly as far as words
went, and gave orders that he should not be molested in his pursuits of
chemistry and philosophy. A man who boasted of the power to turn baser
metals into gold, could not, thought Elizabeth, be in want of money; and
she, therefore, gave him no more substantial marks of her approbation
than her countenance and protection.

Thrown thus unexpectedly upon his own resources, Dee began in earnest
the search for the philosopher's stone. He worked incessantly among
his furnaces, retorts, and crucibles, and almost poisoned himself with
deleterious fumes. He also consulted his miraculous crystal; but the
spirits appeared not to him. He tried one Bartholomew to supply the
place of the invaluable Kelly; but he being a man of some little
probity, and of no imagination at all, the spirits would not hold any
communication with him. Dee then tried another pretender to philosophy,
of the name of Hickman; but had no better fortune. The crystal had
lost its power since the departure of its great high-priest. From this
quarter then Dee could get no information on the stone or elixir of the
alchymists, and all his efforts to discover them by other means were not
only fruitless but expensive. He was soon reduced to great distress, and
wrote piteous letters to the Queen, praying relief. He represented that,
after he left England with Count Laski, the mob had pillaged his house
at Mortlake, accusing him of being a necromancer and a wizard; and
had broken all his furniture, burned his library, consisting of four
thousand rare volumes, and destroyed all the philosophical instruments
and curiosities in his museum. For this damage he claimed compensation;
and furthermore stated, that, as he had come to England by the Queen's
command, she ought to pay the expenses of his journey. Elizabeth sent
him small sums of money at various times; but, Dee still continuing
his complaints, a commission was appointed to inquire into his
circumstances. He finally obtained a small appointment as Chancellor of
St. Paul's cathedral, which he exchanged, in 1595, for the wardenship
of the college at Manchester. He remained in this capacity till 1602
or 1603, when, his strength and intellect beginning to fail him, he was
compelled to resign. He retired to his old dwelling at Mortlake, in a
state not far removed from actual want, supporting himself as a common
fortune-teller, and being often obliged to sell or pawn his books to
procure a dinner. James I. was often applied to on his behalf, but he
refused to do anything for him. It may be said to the discredit of this
King, that the only reward he would grant the indefatigable Stowe, in
his days of old age and want, was the royal permission to beg; but no
one will blame him for neglecting such a quack as John Dee. He died in
1608, in the eighty-first year of his age, and was buried at Mortlake.

THE COSMOPOLITE.

Many disputes have arisen as to the real name of the alchymist who wrote
several works under the above designation. The general opinion is
that he was a Scotsman, named Seton; and that by a fate very common to
alchymists, who boasted too loudly of their powers of transmutation,
he ended his days miserably in a dungeon, into which he was thrown by a
German potentate until he made a million of gold to pay his ransom. By
some he has been confounded with Michael Sendivog, or Sendivogius, a
Pole, a professor of the same art, who made a great noise in Europe at
the commencement of the seventeenth century. Lenglet du Fresnoy, who is
in general well-informed with respect to the alchymists, inclines to
the belief that these personages were distinct; and gives the following
particulars of the Cosmopolite, extracted from George Morhoff, in his
"Epistola ad Langelottum," and other writers.

About the year 1600, one Jacob Haussen, a Dutch pilot, was shipwrecked
on the coast of Scotland. A gentleman, named Alexander Seton, put off
in a boat, and saved him from drowning, and afterwards entertained him
hospitably for many weeks at his house on the shore. Haussen saw that
he was addicted to the pursuits of chemistry, but no conversation on
the subject passed between them at the time. About a year and a half
afterwards, Haussen being then at home at Enkhuysen, in Holland,
received a visit from his former host. He endeavoured to repay the
kindness that had been shown him; and so great a friendship arose
between them, that Seton, on his departure, offered to make him
acquainted with the great secret of the philosopher's stone. In his
presence the Scotsman transmuted a great quantity of base metal into
pure gold, and gave it him as a mark of his esteem. Seton then took
leave of his friend, and travelled into Germany. At Dresden he made
no secret of his wonderful powers; having, it is said, performed
transmutation successfully before a great assemblage of the learned men
of that city. The circumstance coming to the ears of the Duke or Elector
of Saxony, he gave orders for the arrest of the alchymist. He caused him
to be imprisoned in a high tower, and set a guard of forty men to watch
that he did not escape, and that no strangers were admitted to his
presence. The unfortunate Seton received several visits from the
Elector, who used every art of persuasion to make him divulge his
secret. Seton obstinately refused either to communicate his secret,
or to make any gold for the tyrant; on which he was stretched upon the
rack, to see if the argument of torture would render him more tractable.
The result was still the same,--neither hope of reward nor fear of
anguish could shake him. For several months he remained in prison,
subjected alternately to a sedative and a violent regimen, till his
health broke, and he wasted away almost to a skeleton.

There happened at that time to be in Dresden a learned Pole, named
Michael Sendivogius, who had wasted a good deal of his time and
substance in the unprofitable pursuits of alchymy. He was touched with
pity for the hard fate, and admiration for the intrepidity of Seton; and
determined, if possible, to aid him in escaping from the clutch of his
oppressor. He requested the Elector's permission to see the alchymist,
and obtained it with some difficulty. He found him in a state of great
wretchedness,--shut up from the light of day in a noisome dungeon,
and with no better couch or fare than those allotted to the worst
of criminals. Seton listened eagerly to the proposal of escape, and
promised the generous Pole that he would make him richer than an Eastern
monarch if by his means he were liberated. Sendivogius immediately
commenced operations. He sold some property which he possessed near
Cracow, and with the proceeds led a merry life at Dresden. He gave the
most elegant suppers, to which he regularly invited the officers of the
guard, and especially those who did duty at the prison of the alchymist.
He insinuated himself at last into their confidence, and obtained free
ingress to his friend as often as he pleased; pretending that he was
using his utmost endeavours to conquer his obstinacy and worm his secret
out of him. When their project was ripe, a day was fixed upon for the
grand attempt; and Sendivogius was ready with a postchariot to convey
him with all speed into Poland. By drugging some wine which he presented
to the guards of the prison, he rendered them so drowsy that he easily
found means to scale a wall unobserved, with Seton, and effect his
escape. Seton's wife was in the chariot awaiting him, having safely in
her possession a small packet of a black powder, which was, in fact,
the philosopher's stone, or ingredient for the transmutation of iron and
copper into gold. They all arrived in safety at Cracow; but the frame of
Seton was so wasted by torture of body and starvation, to say nothing
of the anguish of mind he had endured, that he did not long survive.
He died in Cracow in 1603 or 1604, and was buried under the cathedral
church of that city. Such is the story related of the author of the
various works which bear the name of the Cosmopolite. A list of them
may be found in the third volume of the "History of the Hermetic
Philosophy."

SENDIVOGIUS.

On the death of Seton, Sendivogius married his widow, hoping to
learn from her some of the secrets of her deceased lord in the art of
transmutation. The ounce of black powder stood him, however, in better
service; for the alchymists say that, by its means, he converted great
quantities of quicksilver into the purest gold. It is also said that he
performed this experiment successfully before the Emperor Rudolph II, at
Prague; and that the Emperor, to commemorate the circumstance, caused
a marble tablet to be affixed to the wall of the room in which it was
performed, bearing this inscription, "Faciat hoc quispiam alius, quod
fecit Sendivogius Polonus." M. Desnoyers, secretary to the Princess Mary
of Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, writing from Warsaw in 1651, says that he
saw this tablet, which existed at that time, and was often visited by
the curious.

The after-life of Sendivogius is related in a Latin memoir of him by one
Brodowski, his steward; and is inserted by Pierre Borel in his "Treasure
of Gaulish Antiquities." The Emperor Rudolph, according to this
authority, was so well pleased with his success, that he made him one of
his counsellors of state, and invited him to fill a station in the royal
household and inhabit the palace. But Sendivogius loved his liberty,
and refused to become a courtier. He preferred to reside on his own
patrimonial estate of Gravarna, where, for many years, he exercised a
princely hospitality. His philosophic powder, which, his steward says,
was red, and not black, he kept in a little box of gold; and with
one grain of it he could make five hundred ducats, or a thousand
rix-dollars. He generally made his projection upon quicksilver. When he
travelled, he gave this box to his steward, who hung it round his neck
by a gold chain next his skin. But the greatest part of the powder he
used to hide in a secret place cut into the step of his chariot. He
thought that, if attacked at any time by robbers, they would not search
such a place as that. When h

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