778. Here the 'ascension of spirits' refers to the rising of gases or vapours from certain substances; and the 'matters that lie all fix adown' are the materials that lie at the bottom in a fixed (i. e. in a solid) state. There were four substances in particular which were technically termed 'spirits'; viz. sulphur, sal ammoniac, quicksilver, and arsenic, or (as some said) orpiment. See Theatrum Chemicum, iii. 81, 129; ii. 430; iii. 276.
782. Here a = in; being short for an, a variant of on, used in the old sense of 'in.' The expression signifies, literally, in the way to (or of) twenty devils; see note to A. 3713.
790. bole armoniak. The latter word should rather be Armeniak, i. e. Armenian, but we have armoniak again below, in l. 798; see note to that line.
'Bole, a kind of fine, compact, or earthy clay, often highly coloured with iron, and varying in shades of colour from white to yellowish,
reddish, blueish, and brownish. Fr. bol, Lat. bolus, Gk. βῶλος, a clod or lump of earth'; Webster's Dict., ed. Goodrich and Porter. Cotgrave has—'Bol, m. the astringent and medicinable red earth or minerall called Bolearmenie ... Bol Oriental, et Bol Armenien Oriental, Oriental Bolearmenie; the best and truest kind of Bolearmenie, ministred with good effect against all poisons, and in pestilent diseases; and more red than the ordinary one, which should rather be tearmed Sinopian red earth than Bolearmeny.' And see Bole in the New E. Dict.
Mr. Paget Toynbee has lately shewn (in The Academy, Sept. 16, 1893) that verdegrees is from the O. Fr. verd de Grece, lit. 'green of Greece.' Cotgrave has the curious form verderis, which probably represents the Latin viride aeris, the green of brass. This term (viride aeris) is the common one in the old Latin treatises on alchemy. See the chapter in Albertus Magnus—'Quomodo viride aeris fit, et quomodo rubificatur, et super omnia valet ad artem istam'; Theatrum Chemicum, ii. 436. It is the bibasic acetate of copper.
792, 794. Perhaps Chaucer had read the following lines:
'Par alambics et descensoires,
Cucurbites, distillatoires.'
Les Remonstrances de Nature, par J. de Meung, ll. 39,40.