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 the happy hour was drawing nigh, and by means of the STONE, which he should be master of, he would pay all the debts of the nation in real gold and 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 granted authoritate parliamenti.
Prynne, who has given this patent in his Aurum 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 called multipliers; as appears from a statute of Henry IV. repealed in the preceding record.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 the craft 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 the remotest 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 new vigour 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 in Syllables the true matter of the Philosopher’s Stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy.” By this we learn that a miserable wretch knew the art of making gold, yet always lived a beggar; and that Ashmole really imagined he was in possession of the Syllables 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 its utmost 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. Ashmole confessed he meant nothing more than a kind of pun on his own name, for the tree was the ash, and the creature was a mole. 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 a hope, not to say a certainty, of verifying the golden visions of the Alchymists. Dr. Gertänner, of Gottingen, has lately adventured the following prophecy: “In the nineteenth century the transmutation of metals will be generally known and practised. Every chemist and every artist will make gold; kitchen materials will be of silver, and even gold, which will contribute more than any thing else to prolong 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 universal Elixir[[24]], which is to prolong life at pleasure, yet approximates to it. A chemical friend observed, that “the metals seem to be composite bodies, 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.”