ALCHYMY[22].
The science, if it deserves to be distinguished by the name of Alchymy, or the transmutation of metals into gold, has doubtless been an imposition, which, striking on the feeblest part of the human mind, has so frequently been successful in carrying on its delusions.
The Corrina of Dryden (Mrs. Thomas) during her life, has recorded one of these delusions ofAlchymy. From the circumstances, it is very probable the sage was not less deceived than his patroness. An infatuated lover of this delusive art met one who pretended to have the power of transmuting lead to gold; that is, in their language, theimperfectmetals to theperfectone. This Hermetic philosopher required only the materials and time, to perform his golden operations. He was taken to the country residence of his patroness, a long laboratory was built, and that his labours might not be impeded by any disturbance, no one was permitted to enter into it. His door was contrived to turn on a pivot; so that, unseen and unseeing, his meals were conveyed to him without distracting the sublime contemplations of the sage.
During a residence of two years he never condescended to speak but two or three times in the year to his infatuated patroness. When she was admitted into the laboratory, she saw with pleasing astonishment, stills, immense cauldrons, long flues, and three or four Vulcanian fires, blazing at different corners of this magical mine: nor did she behold with less reverence the venerable figure of the dusty philosopher. Pale and emaciated with daily operations and nightly vigils, he revealed to her, in unintelligible jargon, his progress; and having sometimes condescended to explain the mysteries of the Arcana, she beheld or seemed to behold, streams of fluid, and heaps of solid ore, scattered around the laboratory. Sometimes he required a new still, and sometimes vast quantities of lead. She began now to lower her imagination to thestandard of reason. Two years had now elapsed, vast quantities of lead had gone in, and nothing but lead had come out. She disclosed her sentiments to the philosopher; he candidly confessed he was himself surprised at his tardy processes; but that now he would exert himself to the utmost, and that he would venture to perform a laborious operation, which hitherto he had hoped not to have been necessitated to employ. His patroness retired, and the golden visions of expectation resumed all their lustre.
One day as they sat at dinner, a terrible shriek, and one crack followed by another loud as the report of cannon, assailed their ears. They hastened to the laboratory; two of the greatest stills had burst, and one part of the laboratory and the house were in flames. We are told that after another adventure of this kind, this victim to Alchymy, after ruining another patron, in despair swallowed poison.
Even more recently we have a history of an Alchymist in the life of Romney, the painter. This Alchymist, after bestowing much time and money on preparations for the grand projection, and being near the decisive hour, was induced, by the too earnest request of his wife, to quit his furnace one evening, to attend some of her company at the tea-table. While the projector was attending the ladies, his furnace blew up! In consequence of this event, he conceived such an antipathy against his wife, that he could not endure the idea of living with her again.
Henry IV. was so reduced by his extravagancies, that Evelyn observes in his Numismata, he endeavoured to recruit his empty coffers by an Alchymical speculation. Therecordof this singular proposition, contains “the most solemn and serious account of the feasibility and virtues of thephilosopher’s stone, encouraging the search after it, and dispensing with all statutes and prohibitions to the contrary.” Thisrecordwas very probably communicated (says an ingenious antiquary) by Mr. Selden to his beloved friend Ben Jonson, when he was writing his comedy of the Alchymist.
After this patent was published, many promised to answer the King’s expectations so effectually (adds the same writer) that the next year he published another patent; wherein he tells his subjects, that thehappy hourwas drawing nigh, and by means of theSTONE, which he should be master of, he would pay all the debts of the nation inreal goldand silver. The persons picked out for his new operations were as remarkable as the patent itself, being a most “miscellaneous rabble” of friars, grocers, mercers, and fishmongers!
This patent was likewise grantedauthoritate parliamenti.
Prynne, who has given this patent in hisAurum Reginæ, p. 135, concludes with this sarcastic observation:—“A project never so seasonable and necessary as now!” And this we repeat, and our successors will no doubt imitate us!
Alchymists were formerly calledmultipliers; as appears from a statute of Henry IV. repealedin the preceding record. The statute being extremely short, we shall give it for the reader’s satisfaction.
“None from henceforth shall use to multiply gold or silver, or use thecraft of multiplication; and if any the same do, he shall incur the pain of felony.”
Every philosophical mind must be convinced that Alchymy is not an art, which some have fancifully traced to theremotest times; it may rather be regarded, when opposed to such a distance of time, as a modern imposture. Cæsar commanded the treatises of Alchymy to be burnt throughout the Roman dominions—Cæsar, who is not less to be admired as a philosopher than as a monarch.
Mr. Gibbon has the following succinct passage relative to Alchymy: “The ancient books of Alchymy, so liberally ascribed to Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or abuse of chemistry. In that immense register, where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts and the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the transmutation of metals; and the persecution of Dioclesian is the first authentic event in the history of Alchymy. The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science over the globe. Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, it was studied in China as in Europe, with equal eagerness and equal success. The darkness of the middle ages ensured a favourable reception to every tale of wonder; and the revival of learning gave newvigour to hope, and suggested more specious arts to deception. Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of Alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.”
Elias Ashmole writes in his diary—“May 13, 1653. My father Backhouse (an Astrologer who had adopted him for his son—a common practice with these men) lying sick in Fleet Ditch, over against St. Dunstan’s church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of the clock told me inSyllablesthe true matter of thePhilosopher’s Stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy.” By this we learn that a miserable wretch knew the art ofmaking gold, yet always lived a beggar; and that Ashmole really imagined he was in possession of theSyllables of a secret! he has however built a curious monument of the learned follies of the last century, in his “Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum.” Though Ashmole is rather the historian of this vain science than an adept, it may amuse literary leisure to turn over his quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several English Alchymists, to which he has subjoined his Commentary. It affords a curious specimen of Rosicrucian Mysteries; and Ashmole relates stories, which vie for the miraculous, with the wildest fancies of Arabian invention. Of the Philosopher’s Stone, he says, he knows enough to hold his tongue, but not enough to speak. This Stone has not only the power of transmuting any imperfect earthy matter into itsutmost degree of perfection, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into stones, &c. but it has still more occult virtues, when the arcana have been entered into, by the choice fathers of hermetic mysteries. The vegetable stone has power over the natures of man, beast, fowls, fishes, and all kinds of trees and plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit at any time. The magical stone discovers any person wherever he is concealed; while the angelical stone gives the apparitions of angels, and a power of conversing with them. These great mysteries are supported by occasional facts, and illustrated by prints of the most divine and incomprehensible designs, which we would hope were intelligible to the initiated. It may be worth shewing, however, how liable even the latter were to blunder on these Mysterious Hieroglyphics. Ashmole, in one of his chemical works, prefixed a frontispiece, which, in several compartments, exhibited Phœbus on a lion, and opposite to him a lady, who represented Diana, with the moon in one hand and an arrow in the other, sitting on a crab; Mercury on a tripod, with the scheme of the heavens in one hand, and his caduceus in the other. They were intended to express the materials of the Stone, and the season for the process. Upon the altar is the bust of a man, his head covered by an astrological scheme dropped from the clouds; and on the altar are these words,Mercuriophilus Anglicus,i. e.the English lover of hermetic philosophy. There is a tree and a little creature gnawing the root, a pillar adorned with musical and mathematical instruments,and another with military ensigns. This strange composition created great inquiry among the chemical sages. Deep mysteries were conjectured to be veiled by it. Verses were written in the highest strain of the Rosicrucian language.Ashmoleconfessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was theash, and the creature was amole. One pillar tells his love of music and freemasonry, and the other his military preferment and astrological studies! He afterwards regretted that no one added a second volume to his work, from which he himself had been hindered, for the honour of the family of Hermes, and “to shew the world what excellent men we had once of our nation, famous for this kind of philosophy, and masters of so transcendant a secret.”
Modern chemistry is not without ahope, not to say acertainty, of verifying the golden visions of the Alchymists. Dr. Gertänner, of Gottingen, has lately adventured the following prophecy: “In thenineteenth centurythe transmutation of metals will be generally known and practised. Every chemist and every artist willmake gold; kitchen materials will be of silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than any thing else toprolong life, poisoned at present by the oxyds of copper, lead, and iron, which we daily swallow with our food[23].” This sublime chemist, though he does not venture to predict that universalElixir[24], which is to prolonglife at pleasure, yet approximates to it. A chemical friend observed, that “the metals seem to becompositebodies, which nature is perpetually preparing; and it may be reserved for the future researches of Science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious operations.”
We find the word Alchymy occurring, for the first time, inJulius Firmicus Maternus, an author who lived under Constantine the Great, who in hisMathesis, iii. 35, speaking of the influence of the heavenly bodies, affirms, “that if the Moon be in the house of Saturn, at the time a child is born, he shall be skilled in Alchymy.”
The great objects or ends pursued by Alchymy, are, 1st, To make gold; which is attempted by separation, maturation; and by transmutation, which is to be effected by means of the Philosopher’s stone. With a view to this end, Alchymy, in some writers, is also calledποιητκη,poetice, andχρυσοποιητικη,chryso poetice,i. e.the art of making gold; and hence also, by a similar derivation, the artists themselves are called gold-makers.
2d. An universal medicine, adequate to all diseases.
3d. An universal dissolvent or alkahest. (SeeAlkahest.)
4. An universal ferment, or a matter, which being applied to any seed, shall increase its fecundity to infinity. If, for example, it be appliedto gold, it shall change the gold into the philosopher’s stone of gold,—if to silver, into the philosopher’s stone of silver,—and if to a tree, the result is, the philosopher’s stone of the tree; which transmutes every thing it is applied to, into trees.
The origin and antiquity of Alchymy have been much controverted. If we may credit legend and tradition, it must be as old as the flood; nay, Adam himself, is represented by the Alchymist, as an adept. A great part, not only of the heathen mythology, but of the Jewish and Christian Revelations, are supposed to refer to it. ThusSuidaswill have the fable of the Philosopher’s Stone, to be alluded to in the fable of the Argonauts; and others find it in the book ofMoses, &c. But if the æra of the art be examined by the monument of history, it will lose much of this fancied antiquity. The learned Dane, Borrichius, has taken immense pains to prove that it was not unknown to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Crounguis, on the contrary, with equal address, undertakes to show its novelty. Still not one of the ancient poets, philosophers, or physicians, from the time of Homer till four hundred years after the birth of Christ, mention any thing about it.
The first author who speaks of making gold, is Zosimus the Pomopolite, who lived about the beginning of the fifth century, and who has a treatise express upon it, called, “the divine art of making gold and silver,” in manuscript, and is, as formerly, in the King of France’s library. The next is Æneas Gazeus, another Greek writer, towards the close of the same century, in whomwe find the following passage:—“Such as are skilled in the ways of nature, can take silver and tin, and changing their nature, can turn them into gold.” The same writer tells us, that he was “wont to call himselfχρυσοχοος, gold melter, andχημευτης, chemist.” Hence we may conclude, that a notion of some such art as Alchymy was in being at that age; but as neither of these artists inform us how long it had been previously known, their testimony will not carry us back beyond the age in which they lived.
In fact, we find no earlier or plainer traces of the universal medicine mentioned any where else; nor among the physicians and naturalists, from Moses to Geber the Arab, who is supposed to have lived in the seventh century. In that author’s work, entitled the “Philosopher’s Stone,” mention is made of a medicine that cures all leprous diseases. This passage, some authors suppose, to have given the first hint of the matter; though Geber himself, perhaps, meant no such thing; for by attending to the Arabic style and diction of this author, which abounds in allegory, it is highly probable, that by man he means gold; and by leprous, or other diseases, the other metals; which, with relation to gold, are all impure.
The manner in which Suidas accounts for this total silence of old authors with regard to Alchymy, is, that Dioclesian procured all the books of the ancient Egyptians to be burnt; and that it was in these that the great mysteries of chymistry were contained. Corringius calls this statement in question, and asks how Suidas, who lived butfive hundred years before us, should know what happened eight hundred years before him? To which Borrichius answers, that he had learnt it of Eudemus, Helladius, Zosimus, Pamphilius, &c. as Suidas himself relates.
Kercher asserts, that the theory of the Philosopher’s Stone, is delivered at large in the table of Hermes, and that the ancient Egyptians were not ignorant of the art, but declined to prosecute it. They did not appear to transmute gold; they had ways of separating it from all kinds of bodies, from the very mud of the Nile, and stones of all kinds: but, he adds, these secrets were never written down, or made public, but confined to the royal family, and handed down traditionally from father to son.
The chief point advanced by Borrichius, and in which he seems to lay the principal stress, is, the attempt of Caligula, mentioned by Pliny, for procuring gold from Orpiment, (Hist. Nat. 1. xxxiii. c. 4.) But this, it may be observed, makes very little for that author’s pretensions; there being no transmutations, no hint of any Philosopher’s Stone, but only a little gold was extracted or separated from the mineral.
The principal authors on Alchymy are, Geber, Friar Bacon, Sully, John and Isaac Hallandus, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Van Zuchter, and Sendirogius.