“Our poor friend the Abbé hath been to the Conciergerie [where his friends may visit him. They are to ask for] a remission of his sentence soon.
“[The Lord Castlewood] has had the affair of the plate made up and departs for England.
“Is not this a dull letter?...”—Bk. III. Chap. 8.
This letter shows very clearly that the Argyle steganogram is one which it is almost impossible to solve without the key, unless the matter to which it relates is known beforehand[341]—a difficulty to which Bacon’s correspondent was not exposed, for he knew well what the subject of Bacon’s communication would be. Here, then, we should have found ourselves left in utter darkness were it not for a ray of light afforded by Chap. XI. There we are told that something, in connection with saltpetre and sulphur, produces an explosion,[342] and we know that this something is charcoal. Since Chap. XI. is concerned with the composition and effects of this mixture, what more probable than that Chaps. IX. and X. should deal with its ingredients separately—or at least with saltpetre and charcoal, for sulphur was so simple and common a drug that Bacon was not likely to dwell upon it? Now, towards the end of Chap. X. Bacon speaks without disguise of charcoal under the name of the wood from which it is made,[343] and mentions the two trees, hazel and willow, which give the best. He significantly adds that when charcoal is added to proper proportions of certain other substances, something noteworthy happens (si vero partes virgulti coryli aut salicis multarum justâ rerum serie apte ordinaveris, unionem naturalem servabunt: et hoc non tradas oblivioni, quia valet ad multa). Since, then, charcoal is one of the subjects of these two chapters, it becomes all the more probable that saltpetre forms another. Bacon was writing but a few years after its discovery, and nothing could be more natural than that the great alchemist should bestow his attention upon the preparation of the new salt. This hypothesis explains simply and completely the most remarkable feature of Chaps. IX. and X.—the series of common and well-known alchemical terms and phrases, referring undoubtedly to the preparation of either saltpetre or gold, which are scattered and hidden among incoherent maunderings about chalk and cheese, philosophic eggs and Tagus sand, Adam’s bones and aperient medicine. But how could the preparation of gold lead up to the recipe for an explosive with which Chap. XI. ends? There is no connection whatever between gold and gunpowder, while the connection between saltpetre and gunpowder is of the closest possible kind. Before giving a recipe for gunpowder it was absolutely necessary for Bacon to describe the method of refining the lately discovered saltpetre, without which his recipe would have been worthless; and he took advantage of the close similarity between the alchemical preparation of gold and the refining of saltpetre to conceal the real import of his tract. By the title of the last three chapters—“On the Method of Making the Philosopher’s Stone”—and by constantly harping on gold, he endeavoured to distract and deceive his ordinary readers, leading them to believe that he was writing about gold when he was really treating on saltpetre.
The unnamed substance saltpetre, then, is the principal subject of Chaps. IX. and X., and our course is clear. We must treat these chapters as we should treat Col. Esmond’s letter were the brackets omitted[344]-we must make shift to insert them. We must bracket together the phrases and sentences relating to the real subject of these chapters, the familiar alchemical expressions relating to saltpetre. On doing so we shall find a connected and rational method of refining the salt.
In the following reproduction of Chaps. IX. and X. I have used the Esmond brackets, but I have not thought it necessary to reprint all the padding which connects them. All omissions, however, are shown by dots. No word of the bracketed phrases has been changed, altered, added, or suppressed, nor has the order of the words been altered. Nothing has been done but to indicate by brackets the misleading interpolations.
Cap. IX.
De modo faciendi ovum philosophorum.
Dico igitur tibi quod volo ordinari quæ superius narravi exponere, et ideo volo ovum philosophorum et partes philosophici ovi investigare, nam hoc est initium ad alia. [Calcem[345] igitur diligenter] aquis alkali et aliis aquis acutis [purifica], et variis contritionibus cum salibus confrica[346] et pluribus assationibus concrema, [ut fiat terra pura penitus liberata ab aliis elementis[347]], quam tibi pro meæ longitudinis statura dignam duco. Intellige si potes, quia proculdubio erit compostum ex elementis, et ideo est pars lapidis qui non est lapis,[348] et est in quolibet homine et in quolibet loco hominis.... Deinde oleum ad modum crocei casei et viscosi accipias,[349] primo ictu insecabile, cujus tota virtus ignea dividatur et separetur per distillationem; [dissolvatur[350] autem in aqua] acuta temporatæ acuitatis [cum igne levi,[351] ut decoquatur quatenus separetur pinguedo sua[352]], sicut pinguedo in carnibus.... Melius est tamen ut decoquatur in aquis temporatis in acuitate [donec purgatur et dealbetur]. Aqua vero salutaris exaltatio fit ex igne secco vel humido; et [iteretur distillatio] ut effectum bonitatis recipiat sufficienter [donec rectificetur: rectificationis novissima signa sunt candor et crystallina serenitas[353]]; et cum cætera[354] nigrescunt ab igne hoc albescit, mundatur, serenitate nitescit et splendore mirabili. [Ex hac aqua] et terra sua argentum vivum generatur, quod est sicut argentum vivum in mineralibus, et quando incandidit hoc modo [materia congelatur. Lapis vero Aristotelis, qui non est lapis, ponitur in pyramide in loco calido[355]].