Page images
PDF
EPUB

SECTION XXXIX.

OF FOOLISH ALCHEMISTS.

Ars est sine arte, cujus principium est mentiri, medium laborare et finis mendicare.

Lo here's the fool whose cogitation,
Will prove all metals' transmutation *;
Producing gold from worthless lead,
O! could he but transmute his head;
The labour might repay his pains,
Storing his empty skull with brains.

The professor of Alchemy very shrewdly pretends, first to make gold, second to discover an universal medicine or panacea, and third, an universal dissolvent, or alkahest; the success which has attended these endeavours I leave to the discovery of others, as my province alone, consists in proving him by his labours, in every respect, entitled to the rank of fool; which is accomplished with little difficulty, when it is remembered, that if the alchemist produces gold, it is at a greater expense than the ore is intrinsically worth, while his panacea and dissolvent are yet in embryo, notwithstanding all the study, labour and expense bestowed upon the research.

O'er crucible he hangs delighted,
In hopes to find his toil requited;
Building fine castles in the air,
When gold shall recompense his care;
And give to his delighted view,
The treasures of the fam'd Peru *.

Thus freely having wealth expended,
He finds when all his labour's ended;
That time and gold alike are lost,
Since dross repays him for his cost;
'Spite of experience still he's bent,
To try some vain experiment.

* Many fools have been led astray by the fascinating hope of making gold, and, among the rest, Mrs. Thomas, the authoress, and intimate friend of Pope, better known by the appellation of Corinna, is not to be forgotten; who was, for a long time, persuaded to place dependence on an Alchemist, who asserted his skill to be such, as to have attained to the summit of this extraordinary science; yet, let it not be supposed, that the lady was made the depository of all these wonders gratis; on the contrary, she paid dearly for peeping, having in return for the advance of her palpable coin, nothing but the mere shadow expectancy, which terminated as it began, in nothing; to this lady, as well as to all fools who yield to this madness, we may use the old Italian proverb: Non fidatevi al alchemista povero, ô al medico ammalato.

Thus coining for himself new troubles,
He sets afloat such airy bubbles,

As boys, from pipes, with suds will make, sir,
Which float a second, and then break, sir.
So, fool*, be wise, to reason list,

Shun dross for sense-thou Alchemist.

Although I may not be exactly correct, in jumbling Astrology with Alchemy, yet their relationship on the score of probability and possibility is such, that I cannot refrain from speaking under this section, of the renowned black art, concerning which, Voltaire, in his satirical poem of the Pucelle D'Orleans, gives these lines,

De plus grand clerc en sorcellerie,

Savant dans l'art en Egypte sacré,
Dans ce grand art cultivé chez les mages,
Chez les Hebreux, chez les antique sages;
De nos savans dans nos jours ignoré,

Jours malheureux! tout a dégénéré.

A very remarkable instance of this study is recorded in the person of Cornelius Agrippa, whose dog, on account of some antics which he had taught the animal to play,. was supposed to be his familiar spirit; but the author of Magia Adamica, took infinite pains to vindicate both the master and the dog from this vile aspersion, and Cornelius himself, on account of the vulgar prejudices which prevailed against him, was subjected to the most rigorous persecutions, insomuch, that he in the end found out his

L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

The silly man, whose labour is but vain,
And still will persevere to understand;
Is like a fool, who sows his golden grain,
Expecting crop, tho' from the barren sand.

THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis, Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.

folly, and wrote a treatise on the Vanity of all Human Science. But this popular odium is not to be wondered at, when we recollect, that the period of ignorance and superstition denominated every thing, and every body, above mortality, which possessed knowledge superior to the vulgar comprehension: thus we find that most of the gods of the ancients, from being originally proficients in different arts and sciences, were, after their demise, exalted to the rank of immortals. Friar Bacon, in the reign of Edward I. was supposed to be in league with the devil; Robert Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln, in the time of Henry III. was, on account of his learning, deemed a conjurer, and degraded by Pope Innocent IV. and Galileo, the astronomer, for venturing to affirm that the sun was a fixed body, and that the earth moved, endured captivity for a series of years in the Inquisition; but speaking of the Occult Sciences, we may say of its student, that

He had been long t'wards mathematics,
Optics, philosophy, and statics;
Magic, horoscopie, astrologie,
And was old dog at phisiologie;
But, as a dog that turns the spit,
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet;
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,

His own weight brings him down again.

Nor ought we to conclude this note, without applying the words of our immortal bard, who thus expresseth himself in King Lear. "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are in sick fortune (often the surfeits of our behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by spherical predominance: drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an inforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa major; so that it follows, I ain rough and lecherous. I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing."

« PreviousContinue »