Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Chapter 4b - The Alchymists



Inferior Adepts of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Many other pretenders to the secrets of the philosopher's stone
appeared in every country in Europe, during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. The possibility of transmutation was so
generally admitted, that every chemist was more or less an
alchymist. Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Poland, France, and
England produced thousands of obscure adepts, who supported
themselves, in the pursuit of their chimera, by the more
profitable resources of astrology and divination. The monarchs of
Europe were no less persuaded than their subjects of the
possibility of discovering the philosopher's stone. Henry VI and
Edward IV of England encouraged alchymy. In Germany, the Emperors
Maximilian, Rodolph, and Frederic II devoted much of their
attention to it; and every inferior potentate within their
dominions imitated their example. It was a common practice in
Germany, among the nobles and petty sovereigns, to invite an
alchymist to take up his residence among them, that they might
confine him in a dungeon till he made gold enough to pay millions
for his ransom. Many poor wretches suffered perpetual imprisonment
in consequence. A similar fate appears to have been intended by
Edward II for Raymond Lulli, who, upon the pretence that he was
thereby honoured, was accommodated with apartments in the Tower of
London. He found out in time the trick that was about to be played
him, and managed to make his escape, some of his biographers say,
by jumping into the Thames, and swimming to a vessel that lay
waiting to receive him. In the sixteenth century, the same system
was pursued, as will be shewn more fully in the life of Seton the
Cosmopolite.

The following is a catalogue of the chief authors upon alchymy,
who flourished during this epoch, and whose lives and adventures
are either unknown or are unworthy of more detailed notice. John
Dowston, an Englishman, lived in 1315, and wrote two treatises on
the philosopher's stone. Richard, or, as some call him, Robert,
also an Englishman, lived in 1330, and wrote a work entitled
Correctorium Alchymiæ, which was much esteemed till the time of
Paracelsus. In the same year lived Peter of Lombardy, who wrote
what he called a Complete Treatise upon the Hermetic Science, an
abridgement of which was afterwards published by Lacini, a monk of
Calabria. In 1330 the most famous alchymist of Paris was one
Odomare, whose work De Practica Magistri was, for a long time, a
hand-book among the brethren of the science. John de Rupecissa, a
French monk of the order of St. Francis, flourished in 1357, and
pretended to be a prophet as well as an alchymist. Some of his
prophecies were so disagreeable to Pope Innocent VI, that the
pontiff determined to put a stop to them, by locking up the
prophet in the dungeons of the Vatican. It is generally believed
that he died there, though there is no evidence of the fact. His
chief works are the Book of Light, the Five Essences, the Heaven
of Philosophers, and his grand work De Confectione Lapidis. He was
not thought a shining light among the adepts. Ortholani was
another pretender, of whom nothing is known, but that he exercised
the arts of alchymy and astrology at Paris, shortly before the
time of Nicholas Flamel. His work on the practice of alchymy was
written in that city in 1358. Isaac of Holland wrote, it is
supposed, about this time; and his son also devoted himself to the
science. Nothing worth repeating is known of their lives.
Boerhaave speaks with commendation of many passages in their
works, and Paracelsus esteemed them highly: the chief are De
Triplici Ordine Elixiris et Lapidis Theoria, printed at Berne in
1608; and Mineralia Opera, seu de Lapide Philosophico, printed at
Middleburg in 1600. They also wrote eight other works upon the
same subject. Koffstky, a Pole, wrote an alchymical treatise,
entitled The Tincture of Minerals, about the year 1488. In this
list of authors a royal name must not be forgotten. Charles VI of
France, one of the most credulous princes of the day, whose court
absolutely swarmed with alchymists, conjurers, astrologers, and
quacks of every description, made several attempts to discover the
philosopher's stone, and thought he knew so much about it, that he
determined to enlighten the world with a treatise. It is called
the Royal Work of Charles VI of France, and the Treasure of
Philosophy. It is said to be the original from which Nicholas
Flamel took the idea of his Désir désiré. Lenglet du Fresnoy says
it is very allegorical, and utterly incomprehensible. For a more
complete list of the hermetic philosophers of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, the reader is referred to the third volume of
Lenglet's History already quoted.


Progress of the Infatuation During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries—Present State of the Science

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the search for the
philosopher's stone was continued by thousands of the enthusiastic
and the credulous; but a great change was introduced during this
period. The eminent men who devoted themselves to the study
totally changed its aspect, and referred to the possession of
their wondrous stone and elixir, not only the conversion of the
base into the precious metals, but the solution of all the
difficulties of other sciences. They pretended that by its means
man would be brought into closer communion with his Maker; that
disease and sorrow would be banished from the world; and that "the
millions of spiritual beings who walk the earth unseen" would be
rendered visible, and become the friends, companions, and
instructors of mankind. In the seventeenth century more
especially, these poetical and fantastic doctrines excited the
notice of Europe; and from Germany, where they had been first
disseminated by Rosencreutz, spread into France and England, and
ran away with the sound judgment of many clever, but too
enthusiastic, searchers for the truth. Paracelsus, Dee, and many
others of less note, were captivated by the grace and beauty of
the new mythology, which was arising to adorn the literature of
Europe. Most of the alchymists of the sixteenth century, although
ignorant of the Rosicrucians as a sect, were, in some degree,
tinctured with their fanciful tenets: but before we speak more
fully of these poetical visionaries, it will be necessary to
resume the history of the hermetic folly where we left off in the
former chapter, and trace the gradual change that stole over the
dreams of the adepts. It will be seen that the infatuation
increased rather than diminished as the world grew older.


Augurello

Among the alchymists who were born in the fifteenth, and
distinguished themselves in the sixteenth century, the first in
point of date is John Aurelio Augurello. He was born at Rimini in
1441, and became professor of the belles lettres at Venice and
Trevisa. He was early convinced of the truth of the hermetic
science, and used to pray to God that he might be happy enough to
discover the philosopher's stone. He was continually surrounded by
the paraphernalia of chemistry, and expended all his wealth in the
purchase of drugs and metals. He was also a poet, but of less
merit than pretensions. His Chrysopeia, in which he pretended to
teach the art of making gold, he dedicated to Pope Leo X, in the
hope that the pontiff would reward him handsomely for the
compliment; but the pope was too good a judge of poetry to be
pleased with the worse than mediocrity of his poem, and too good a
philosopher to approve of the strange doctrines which it
inculcated; he was, therefore, far from gratified at the
dedication. It is said, that when Augurello applied to him for a
reward, the pope, with great ceremony and much apparent kindness
and cordiality, drew an empty purse from his pocket, and presented
it to the alchymist, saying, that since he was able to make gold,
the most appropriate present that could be made him, was a purse
to put it in. This scurvy reward was all that the poor alchymist
ever got either for his poetry or his alchymy. He died in a state
of extreme poverty, in the eighty-third year of his age.


Cornelius Agrippa

This alchymist has left a more distinguished reputation. The most
extraordinary tales were told and believed of his powers. He could
turn iron into gold by his mere word. All the spirits of the air
and demons of the earth were under his command, and bound to obey
him in every thing. He could raise from the dead the forms of the
great men of other days, and make them appear "in their habit as
they lived," to the gaze of the curious who had courage enough to
abide their presence.

He was born at Cologne in 1486, and began, at an early age, the
study of chemistry and philosophy. By some means or other which
have never been very clearly explained, he managed to impress his
contemporaries with a great idea of his wonderful attainments. At
the early age of twenty, so great was his reputation as an
alchymist, that the principal adepts of Paris wrote to Cologne,
inviting him to settle in France, and aid them with his experience
in discovering the philosopher's stone. Honours poured upon him in
thick succession; and he was highly esteemed by all the learned
men of his time. Melancthon speaks of him with respect and
commendation. Erasmus also bears testimony in his favour; and the
general voice of his age proclaimed him a light of literature and
an ornament to philosophy. Some men, by dint of excessive egotism,
manage to persuade their contemporaries that they are very great
men indeed: they publish their acquirements so loudly in people's
ears, and keep up their own praises so incessantly, that the
world's applause is actually taken by storm. Such seems to have
been the case with Agrippa. He called himself a sublime
theologian, an excellent jurisconsult, an able physician, a great
philosopher, and a successful alchymist. The world, at last, took
him at his word; and thought that a man who talked so big, must
have some merit to recommend him,—that it was, indeed, a great
trumpet which sounded so obstreperous a blast. He was made
secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, who conferred upon him the
title of chevalier, and gave him the honorary command of a
regiment. He afterwards became professor of Hebrew and the belles
lettres at the University of Dôle, in France; but quarrelling with
the Franciscan monks upon some knotty point of divinity, he was
obliged to quit the town. He took refuge in London, where he
taught Hebrew and cast nativities, for about a year. From London
he proceeded to Pavia, and gave lectures upon the writings, real
or supposed, of Hermes Trismegistus; and might have lived there in
peace and honour, had he not again quarrelled with the clergy. By
their means his position became so disagreeable, that he was glad
to accept an offer made him by the magistracy of Metz, to become
their syndic and advocate-general. Here, again, his love of
disputation made him enemies: the theological wiseacres of that
city asserted, that St. Anne had three husbands, in which opinion
they were confirmed by the popular belief of the day. Agrippa
needlessly ran foul of this opinion, or prejudice as he called it,
and thereby lost much of his influence. Another dispute, more
creditable to his character, occurred soon after, and sank him for
ever in the estimation of the Metzians. Humanely taking the part
of a young girl who was accused of witchcraft, his enemies
asserted, that he was himself a sorcerer, and raised such a storm
over his head, that he was forced to fly the city. After this, he
became physician to Louisa de Savoy, mother of King Francis I.
This lady was curious to know the future, and required her
physician to cast her nativity. Agrippa replied, that he would not
encourage such idle curiosity. The result was, he lost her
confidence, and was forthwith dismissed. If it had been through
his belief in the worthlessness of astrology, that he had made his
answer, we might admire his honest and fearless independence; but
when it is known that, at the very same time, he was in the
constant habit of divination and fortune-telling; and that he was
predicting splendid success, in all his undertakings, to the
Constable of Bourbon, we can only wonder at his thus estranging a
powerful friend through mere petulance and perversity.

He was about this time invited both by Henry VIII of England, and
Margaret of Austria, governess of the Low Countries, to fix his
residence in their dominions. He chose the service of the latter,
by whose influence he was made historiographer to the Emperor
Charles V. Unfortunately for Agrippa, he never had stability
enough to remain long in one position, and offended his patrons by
his restlessness and presumption. After the death of Margaret he
was imprisoned at Brussels, on a charge of sorcery. He was
released after a year; and, quitting the country, experienced many
vicissitudes. He died in great poverty in 1534, aged forty-eight
years.

While in the service of Margaret of Austria, he resided
principally at Louvain, in which city he wrote his famous work on
the Vanity and Nothingness of Human Knowledge. He also wrote, to
please his Royal Mistress, a treatise upon the Superiority of the
Female Sex, which be dedicated to her, in token of his gratitude
for the favours she had heaped upon him. The reputation he left
behind him in these provinces was anything but favourable. A great
number of the marvellous tales that are told of him relate to this
period of his life. It was said, that the gold which he paid to
the traders with whom he dealt, always looked remarkably bright,
but invariably turned into pieces of slate and stone in the course
of four-and-twenty hours. Of this spurious gold he was believed to
have made large quantities by the aid of the devil, who, it would
appear from this, had but a very superficial knowledge of alchymy,
and much less than the Maréchal de Rays gave him credit for. The
Jesuit Delrio, in his book on magic and sorcery, relates a still
more extraordinary story of him. One day, Agrippa left his house,
at Louvain, and, intending to be absent for some time, gave the
key of his study to his wife, with strict orders that no one
should enter it during his absence. The lady herself, strange as
it may appear, had no curiosity to pry into her husband's secrets,
and never once thought of entering the forbidden room; but a young
student, who had been accommodated with an attic in the
philosopher's house, burned with a fierce desire to examine the
study; hoping, perchance, that he might purloin some book or
implement which would instruct him in the art of transmuting
metals. The youth, being handsome, eloquent, and, above all,
highly complimentary to the charms of the lady, she was persuaded,
without much difficulty to lend him the key, but gave him strict
orders not to remove any thing. The student promised implicit
obedience, and entered Agrippa's study. The first object that
caught his attention, was a large grimoire, or book of spells,
which lay open on the philosopher's desk. He sat himself down
immediately and began to read. At the first word he uttered, he
fancied he heard a knock at the door. He listened, but all was
silent. Thinking that his imagination had deceived him, he read
on, when immediately a louder knock was heard, which so terrified
him, that he started to his feet. He tried to say, "Come in," but
his tongue refused its office, and he could not articulate a
sound. He fixed his eyes upon the door, which, slowly opening,
disclosed a stranger of majestic form, but scowling features, who
demanded sternly, why he was summoned? "I did not summon you,"
said the trembling student. "You did!" said the stranger,
advancing, angrily; "and the demons are not to be invoked in
vain." The student could make no reply; and the demon, enraged
that one of the uninitiated should have summoned him out of mere
presumption, seized him by the throat and strangled him. When
Agrippa returned, a few days afterwards, he found his house beset
with devils. Some of them were sitting on the chimney-pots,
kicking up their legs in the air; while others were playing at
leapfrog, on the very edge of the parapet. His study was so filled
with them, that he found it difficult to make his way to his desk.
When, at last, he had elbowed his way through them, he found his
book open, and the student lying dead upon the floor. He saw
immediately how the mischief had been done; and, dismissing all
the inferior imps, asked the principal demon how he could have
been so rash as to kill the young man. The demon replied, that he
had been needlessly invoked by an insulting youth, and could do no
less than kill him for his presumption. Agrippa reprimanded him
severely, and ordered him immediately to reanimate the dead body,
and walk about with it in the market-place for the whole of the
afternoon. The demon did so: the student revived; and, putting his
arm through that of his unearthly murderer, walked very lovingly
with him in sight of all the people. At sunset, the body fell down
again, cold and lifeless as before, and was carried by the crowd
to the hospital, it being the general opinion that he had expired
in a fit of apoplexy. His conductor immediately disappeared. When
the body was examined, marks of strangulation were found on the
neck, and prints of the long claws of the demon on various parts
of it. These appearances, together with a story, which soon
obtained currency, that the companion of the young man had
vanished in a cloud of flame and smoke, opened people's eyes to
the truth. The magistrates of Louvain instituted inquiries, and
the result was, that Agrippa was obliged to quit the town.

Other authors besides Delrio relate similar stories of this
philosopher. The world in those days was always willing enough to
believe in tales of magic and sorcery; and when, as in Agrippa's
case, the alleged magician gave himself out for such, and claimed
credit for the wonders he worked, it is not surprising that the
age should have allowed his pretensions. It was dangerous
boasting, which sometimes led to the stake or the gallows, and
therefore was thought to be not without foundation. Paulus Jovius,
in his Eulogia Doctorum Virorum, says, that the devil, in the
shape of a large black dog, attended Agrippa wherever he went.
Thomas Nash, in his Adventures of Jack Wilton, relates, that, at
the request of Lord Surrey, Erasmus, and some other learned men,
Agrippa called up from the grave many of the great philosophers of
antiquity; among others, Tully, whom he caused to re-deliver his
celebrated oration for Roscius. He also shewed Lord Surrey, when
in Germany, an exact resemblance in a glass of his mistress, the
fair Geraldine. She was represented on her couch weeping for the
absence of her lover. Lord Surrey made a note of the exact time at
which he saw this vision, and ascertained afterwards that his
mistress was actually so employed at the very minute. To Thomas
Lord Cromwell, Agrippa represented King Henry VIII hunting in
Windsor Park, with the principal lords of his court; and to please
the Emperor Charles V he summoned King David and King Solomon from
the tomb.

Naudé, in his "Apology for the great Men who have been falsely
suspected of Magic," takes a great deal of pains to clear Agrippa
from the imputations cast upon him by Delrio, Paulus Jovius, and
other such ignorant and prejudiced scribblers. Such stories
demanded refutation in the days of Naudé, but they may now be
safely left to decay in their own absurdity. That they should have
attached, however, to the memory of a man who claimed the power of
making iron obey him when he told it to become gold, and who wrote
such a work as that upon magic, which goes by his name, is not at
all surprising.


Paracelsus

This philosopher, called by Naudé, "the zenith and rising sun of
all the alchymists," was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, in the
year 1493. His true name was Hohenheim; to which, as he himself
informs us, were prefixed the baptismal names of Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombastes Paracelsus. The last of these he chose for
his common designation while he was yet a boy; and rendered it,
before he died, one of the most famous in the annals of his time.
His father, who was a physician, educated his son for the same
pursuit. The latter was an apt scholar, and made great progress.
By chance the work of Isaac Hollandus fell into his hands, and
from that time he became smitten with the mania of the
philosopher's stone. All his thoughts henceforth were devoted to
metallurgy; and he travelled into Sweden that he might visit the
mines of that country, and examine the ores while they yet lay in
the bowels of the earth. He also visited Trithemius at the
monastery of Spannheim, and obtained instructions from him in the
science of alchymy. Continuing his travels, he proceeded through
Prussia and Austria into Turkey, Egypt, and Tartary, and thence
returning to Constantinople, learned, as he boasted, the art of
transmutation, and became possessed of the elixir vitæ. He then
established himself as a physician in his native Switzerland at
Zurich, and commenced writing works upon alchymy and medicine,
which immediately fixed the attention of Europe. Their great
obscurity was no impediment to their fame; for the less the author
was understood, the more the demonologists, fanatics, and
philosopher's-stone hunters seemed to appreciate him. His fame as
a physician kept pace with that which he enjoyed as an alchymist,
owing to his having effected some happy cures by means of mercury
and opium,—drugs unceremoniously condemned by his professional
brethren. In the year 1526, he was chosen professor of physics and
natural philosophy in the University of Basle, where his lectures
attracted vast numbers of students. He denounced the writings of
all former physicians as tending to mislead; and publicly burned
the works of Galen and Avicenna, as quacks and impostors. He
exclaimed, in presence of the admiring and half-bewildered crowd,
who assembled to witness the ceremony, that there was more
knowledge in his shoe-strings than in the writings of these
physicians. Continuing in the same strain, he said all the
Universities in the world were full of ignorant quacks; but that
he, Paracelsus, over-flowed with wisdom. "You will all follow my
new system," said he, with furious gesticulations, "Avicenna,
Galen, Rhazis, Montagnana, Memé,—you will all follow me, ye
professors of Paris, Montpellier, Germany, Cologne, and Vienna!
and all ye that dwell on the Rhine and the Danube,—ye that inhabit
the isles of the sea; and ye also, Italians, Dalmatians,
Athenians, Arabians, Jews,—ye will all follow my doctrines, for I
am the monarch of medicine!"

But he did not long enjoy the esteem of the good citizens of
Basle. It is said that he indulged in wine so freely, as not
unfrequently to be seen in the streets in a state of intoxication.
This was ruinous for a physician, and his good fame decreased
rapidly. His ill fame increased in still greater proportion,
especially when he assumed the airs of a sorcerer. He boasted of
the legions of spirits at his command; and of one especially,
which he kept imprisoned in the hilt of his sword. Wetterus, who
lived twenty-seven months in his service, relates that he often
threatened to invoke a whole army of demons, and shew him the
great authority which he could exercise over them. He let it be
believed that the spirit in his sword had custody of the elixir of
life, by means of which he could make any one live to be as old as
the antediluvians. He also boasted that he had a spirit at his
command, called "Azoth," whom he kept imprisoned in a jewel; and
in many of the old portraits he is represented with a jewel,
inscribed with the word "Azoth, in his hand."

If a sober prophet has little honour in his own country, a drunken
one has still less. Paracelsus found it at last convenient to quit
Basle, and establish himself at Strasbourg. The immediate cause of
this change of residence was as follows. A citizen lay at the
point of death, and was given over by all the physicians of the
town. As a last resource Paracelsus was called in, to whom the
sick man promised a magnificent recompense, if, by his means, he
were cured. Paracelsus gave him two small pills, which the man
took, and rapidly recovered. When he was quite well, Paracelsus
sent for his fee; but the citizen had no great opinion of the
value of a cure which had been so speedily effected. He had no
notion of paying a handful of gold for two pills, although they
had saved his life, and he refused to pay more than the usual fee
for a single visit. Paracelsus brought an action against him, and
lost it. This result so exasperated him, that he left Basle in
high dudgeon. He resumed his wandering life, and travelled in
Germany and Hungary, supporting himself as he went on the
credulity and infatuation of all classes of society. He cast
nativities—told fortunes—aided those who had money to throw away
upon the experiment, to find the philosopher's stone—prescribed
remedies for cows and pigs, and aided in the recovery of stolen
goods. After residing successively at Nuremburg, Augsburg, Vienna,
and Mindelheim, he retired in the year 1541 to Saltzbourg, and
died in a state of abject poverty in the hospital of that town.

If this strange charlatan found hundreds of admirers during his
life, he found thousands after his death. A sect of Paracelsists
sprang up in France and Germany, to perpetuate the extravagant
doctrines of their founder upon all the sciences, and upon alchymy
in particular. The chief leaders were Bodenstein and Dorneus. The
following is a summary of his doctrine, founded upon supposed
existence of the philosopher's stone; it is worth preserving from
its very absurdity, and altogether unparalleled in the history of
philosophy. First of all, he maintained that the contemplation of
the perfection of the Deity sufficed to procure all wisdom and
knowledge; that the Bible was the key to the theory of all
diseases, and that it was necessary to search into the Apocalypse
to know the signification of magic medicine. The man who blindly
obeyed the will of God, and who succeeded in identifying himself
with the celestial intelligences, possessed the philosopher's
stone—he could cure all diseases, and prolong life to as many
centuries as he pleased; it being by the very same means that Adam
and the antediluvian patriarchs prolonged theirs. Life was an
emanation from the stars—the sun governed the heart, and the moon
the brain. Jupiter governed the liver, Saturn the gall, Mercury
the lungs, Mars the bile, and Venus the loins. In the stomach of
every human being there dwelt a demon, or intelligence, that was a
sort of alchymist in his way, and mixed, in their due proportions,
in his crucible, the various aliments that were sent into that
grand laboratory, the belly.30* He was proud of the title of
magician, and boasted that he kept up a regular correspondence
with Galen from hell; and that he often summoned Avicenna from the
same regions to dispute with him on the false notions he had
promulgated respecting alchymy, and especially regarding potable
gold and the elixir of life. He imagined that gold could cure
ossification of the heart, and, in fact, all diseases, if it were
gold which had been transmuted from an inferior metal by means of
the philosopher's stone, and if it were applied under certain
conjunctions of the planets. The mere list of the works in which
he advances these frantic imaginings, which he called a doctrine,
would occupy several pages.


George Agricola

This alchymist was born in the province of Misnia, in 1494. His
real name was Bauer, meaning a husbandman, which, in accordance
with the common fashion of his age, he latinised into Agricola.
From his early youth, he delighted in the visions of the hermetic
science. Ere he was sixteen, he longed for the great elixir which
was to make him live for seven hundred years, and for the stone
which was to procure him wealth to cheer him in his multiplicity
of days. He published a small treatise upon the subject at
Cologne, in 1531, which obtained him the patronage of the
celebrated Maurice duke of Saxony. After practising for some years
as a physician at Joachimsthal, in Bohemia, he was employed by
Maurice as superintendent of the silver mines of Chemnitz. He led
a happy life among the miners, making various experiments in
alchymy while deep in the bowels of the earth. He acquired a great
knowledge of metals, and gradually got rid of his extravagant
notions about the philosopher's stone. The miners had no faith in
alchymy; and they converted him to their way of thinking, not only
in that but in other respects. From their legends, he became
firmly convinced that the bowels of the earth were inhabited by
good and evil spirits, and that firedamp and other explosions
sprang from no other causes than the mischievous propensities of
the latter. He died in the year 1555, leaving behind him the
reputation of a very able and intelligent man.


Denis Zachaire

Autobiography, written by a wise man who was once a fool, is not
only the most instructive, but the most delightful of reading.
Denis Zachaire, an alchymist of the sixteenth century, has
performed this task, and left a record of his folly and
infatuation in pursuit of the philosopher's stone, which well
repays perusal. He was born in the year 1510, of an ancient family
in Guienne, and was early sent to the university of Bordeaux,
under the care of a tutor to direct his studies. Unfortunately,
his tutor was a searcher for the grand elixir, and soon rendered
his pupil as mad as himself upon the subject. With this
introduction, we will allow Denis Zachaire to speak for himself,
and continue his narrative in his own words: "I received from
home," says he, "the sum of two hundred crowns for the expenses of
myself and master; but before the end of the year, all our money
went away in the smoke of our furnaces. My master, at the same
time, died of a fever, brought on by the parching heat of our
laboratory, from which he seldom or never stirred, and which was
scarcely less hot than the arsenal of Venice. His death was the
more unfortunate for me, as my parents took the opportunity of
reducing my allowance, and sending me only sufficient for my board
and lodging, instead of the sum I required to continue my
operations in alchymy.

"To meet this difficulty and get out of leading-strings, I
returned home at the age of twenty-five, and mortgaged part of my
property for four hundred crowns. This sum was necessary to
perform an operation of the science, which had been communicated
to me by an Italian at Toulouse, and who, as he said, had proved
its efficacy. I retained this man in my service, that we might see
the end of the experiment. I then, by means of strong
distillations, tried to calcinate gold and silver; but all my
labour was in vain. The weight of the gold I drew out of my
furnace was diminished by one-half since I put it in, and my four
hundred crowns were very soon reduced to two hundred and thirty. I
gave twenty of these to my Italian, in order that he might travel
to Milan, where the author of the receipt resided, and ask him the
explanation of some passages which we thought obscure. I remained
at Toulouse all the winter, in the hope of his return; but I might
have remained there till this day if I had waited for him, for I
never saw his face again.

"In the succeeding summer there was a great plague, which forced
me to quit the town. I did not, however, lose sight of my work. I
went to Cahors, where I remained six months, and made the
acquaintance of an old man, who was commonly known to the people
as 'the Philosopher;' a name which, in country places, is often
bestowed upon people whose only merit is, that they are less
ignorant than their neighbours. I shewed him my collection of
alchymical receipts, and asked his opinion upon them. He picked
out ten or twelve of them, merely saying that they were better
than the others. When the plague ceased, I returned to Toulouse,
and recommenced my experiments in search of the stone. I worked to
such effect that my four hundred crowns were reduced to one
hundred and seventy.

"That I might continue my work on a safer method, I made
acquaintance, in 1537, with a certain abbé who resided in the
neighbourhood. He was smitten with the same mania as myself, and
told me that one of his friends, who had followed to Rome in the
retinue of the Cardinal d'Armagnac, had sent him from that city a
new receipt which could not fail to transmute iron and copper, but
which would cost two hundred crowns. I provided half this money,
and the abbé the rest; and we began to operate at our joint
expense. As we required spirits of wine for our experiment, I
bought a tun of excellent vin de Gaillac. I extracted the spirit,
and rectified it several times. We took a quantity of this, into
which we put four marks of silver and one of gold that had been
undergoing the process of calcination for a month. We put this
mixture cleverly into a sort of horn-shaped vessel, with another
to serve as a retort; and placed the whole apparatus upon our
furnace, to produce congelation. This experiment lasted a year;
but, not to remain idle, we amused ourselves with many other less
important operations. We drew quite as much profit from these as
from our great work.

The whole of the year 1537 passed over without producing any
change whatever; in fact, we might have waited till doomsday for
the congelation of our spirits of wine. However, we made a
projection with it upon some heated quicksilver; but all was in
vain. Judge of our chagrin, especially of that of the abbé, who
had already boasted to all the monks of his monastery, that they
had only to bring the large pump which stood in a corner of the
cloister, and he would convert it into gold; but this ill luck did
not prevent us from persevering. I once more mortgaged my paternal
lands for four hundred crowns, the whole of which I determined to
devote to a renewal of my search for the great secret. The abbé
contributed the same sum; and, with these eight hundred crowns I
proceeded to Paris, a city more abounding with alchymists than any
other in the world, resolved never to leave it until I had either
found the philosopher's stone or spent all my money. This journey
gave the greatest offence to all my relations and friends, who,
imagining that I was fitted to be a great lawyer, were anxious
that I should establish myself in that profession. For the sake of
quietness, I pretended, at last, that such was my object.

"After travelling for fifteen days, I arrived in Paris, on the 9th
of January 1539. I remained for a month almost unknown; but I had
no sooner begun to frequent the amateurs of the science, and
visited the shops of the furnace-makers, than I had the
acquaintance of more than a hundred operative alchymists, each of
whom had a different theory and a different mode of working. Some
of them preferred cementation; others sought the universal
alkahest or dissolvent; and some of them boasted the great
efficacy of the essence of emery. Some of them endeavoured to
extract mercury from other metals, to fix it afterwards; and, in
order that each of us should be thoroughly acquainted with the
proceedings of the others, we agreed to meet somewhere every night
and report progress. We met sometimes at the house of one, and
sometimes in the garret of another; not only on week days, but on
Sundays and the great festivals of the Church. 'Ah!' one used to
say, 'if I had the means of recommencing this experiment, I should
do something.' 'Yes,' said another, 'if my crucible had not
cracked, I should have succeeded before now;' while a third
exclaimed, with a sigh, 'If I had but had a round copper vessel of
sufficient strength, I would have fixed mercury with silver.'
There was not one among them who had not some excuse for his
failure; but I was deaf to all their speeches. I did not want to
part with my money to any of them, remembering how often I had
been the dupe of such promises.

"A Greek at last presented himself; and with him I worked a long
time uselessly upon nails made of cinnabar or vermilion. I was
also acquainted with a foreign gentleman newly arrived in Paris,
and often accompanied him to the shops of the goldsmiths, to sell
pieces of gold and silver, the produce, as he said, of his
experiments. I stuck closely to him for a long time, in the hope
that he would impart his secret. He refused for a long time, but
acceded at last on my earnest entreaty, and I found that it was
nothing more than an ingenious trick. I did not fail to inform my
friend, the abbé, whom I had left at Toulouse, of all my
adventures; and sent him, among other matters, a relation of the
trick by which this gentleman pretended to turn lead into gold.
The abbé still imagined that I should succeed at last, and advised
me to remain another year in Paris, where I had made so good a
beginning. I remained there three years; but, notwithstanding all
my efforts, I had no more success than I had had elsewhere.

"I had just got to the end of my money, when I received a letter
from the abbé, telling me to leave every thing, and join him
immediately at Toulouse. I went accordingly, and found that he had
received letters from the King of Navarre (grandfather of Henry
IV). This prince was a great lover of philosophy, full of
curiosity, and had written to the abbé, that I should visit him at
Pau; and that he would give me three or four thousand crowns if I
would communicate the secret I had learned from the foreign
gentleman. The abbé's ears were so tickled with the four thousand
crowns, that he let me have no peace night or day until he had
fairly seen me on the road to Pau. I arrived at that place in the
month of May 1542. I worked away, and succeeded, according to the
receipt I had obtained. When I had finished to the satisfaction of
the king, he gave me the reward that I expected. Although he was
willing enough to do me further service, he was dissuaded from it
by the lords of his court; even by many of those who had been most
anxious that I should come. He sent me then about my business,
with many thanks; saying, that if there was any thing in his
kingdom which he could give me—such as the produce of
confiscations or the like—he should be most happy. I thought I
might stay long enough for these prospective confiscations, and
never get them at last; and I therefore determined to go back to
my friend the abbé.

"I learned that, on the road between Pau and Toulouse, there
resided a monk, who was very skilful in all matters of natural
philosophy. On my return, I paid him a visit. He pitied me very
much, and advised me, with much warmth and kindness of expression,
not to amuse myself any longer with such experiments as these,
which were all false and sophistical; but that I should read the
good books of the old philosophers, where I might not only find
the true matter of the science of alchymy, but learn also the
exact order of operations which ought to be followed. I very much
approved of this wise advice; but before I acted upon it, I went
back to my abbé of Toulouse, to give him an account of the eight
hundred crowns which we had had in common, and, at the same time,
share with him such reward as I had received from the king of
Navarre. If he was little satisfied with the relation of my
adventures since our first separation, he appeared still less
satisfied when I told him I had formed a resolution to renounce
the search for the philosopher's stone. The reason was, that he
thought me a good artist. Of our eight hundred crowns, there
remained but one hundred and seventy-six. When I quitted the abbé,
I went to my own house with the intention of remaining there, till
I had read all the old philosophers, and of then proceeding to
Paris.

"I arrived in Paris on the day after All Saints, of the year 1546,
and devoted another year to the assiduous study of great authors.
Among others, the Turba Philosophorum of the Good Trevisan, The
Remonstrance of Nature to the wandering Alchymist, by Jean de
Meung, and several others of the best books: but, as I had no
right principles, I did not well know what course to follow.

"At last I left my solitude, not to see my former acquaintances,
the adepts and operators, but to frequent the society of true
philosophers. Among them I fell into still greater uncertainties;
being, in fact, completely bewildered by the variety of operations
which they showed me. Spurred on, nevertheless, by a sort of
frenzy or inspiration, I threw myself into the works of Raymond
Lulli and of Arnold de Villeneuve. The reading of these, and the
reflections I made upon them, occupied me for another year, when I
finally determined on the course I should adopt. I was obliged to
wait, however, until I had mortgaged another very considerable
portion of my patrimony. This business was not settled until the
beginning of Lent, 1549, when I commenced my operations. I laid in
a stock of all that was necessary, and began to work the day after
Easter. It was not, however, without some disquietude and
opposition from my friends who came about me; one asking me what I
was going to do, and whether I had not already spent money enough
upon such follies? Another assured me that, if I bought so much
charcoal, I should strengthen the suspicion already existing, that
I was a coiner of base money. Another advised me to purchase some
place in the magistracy, as I was already a Doctor of Laws. My
relations spoke in terms still more annoying to me, and even
threatened that, if I continued to make such a fool of myself,
they would send a posse of police-officers into my house, and
break all my furnaces and crucibles into atoms. I was wearied
almost to death by this continued persecution; but I found comfort
in my work and in the progress of my experiment, to which I was
very attentive, and which went on bravely from day to day. About
this time, there was a dreadful plague in Paris, which interrupted
all intercourse between man and man, and left me as much to myself
as I could desire. I soon had the satisfaction to remark the
progress and succession of the three colours which, according to
the philosophers, always prognosticate the approaching perfection
of the work. I observed them distinctly, one after the other; and
next year, being Easter Sunday, 1550, I made the great trial. Some
common quicksilver, which I put into a small crucible on the fire,
was, in less than an hour, converted into very good gold. You may
judge how great was my joy, but I took care not to boast of it. I
returned thanks to God for the favour he had shewn me, and prayed
that I might only be permitted to make such use of it as would
redound to his glory.

"On the following day, I went towards Toulouse to find the abbé,
in accordance with a mutual promise that we should communicate our
discoveries to each other. On my way, I called in to see the sage
monk who had assisted me with his counsels; but I had the sorrow
to learn that they were both dead. After this, I would not return
to my own home, but retired to another place, to await one of my
relations whom I had left in charge of my estate. I gave him
orders to sell all that belonged to me, as well movable as
immovable—to pay my debts with the proceeds, and divide all the
rest among those in any way related to me who might stand in need
of it, in order that they might enjoy some share of the good
fortune which had befallen me. There was a great deal of talk in
the neighbourhood about my precipitate retreat; the wisest of my
acquaintance imagining that, broken down and ruined by my mad
expenses, I sold my little remaining property, that I might go and
hide my shame in distant countries.

"My relative already spoken of rejoined me on the 1st of July,
after having performed all the business I had intrusted him with.
We took our departure together, to seek a land of liberty. We
first retired to Lausanne, in Switzerland, when, after remaining
there for some time, we resolved to pass the remainder of our days
in some of the most celebrated cities of Germany, living quietly
and without splendour."

Thus ends the story of Denis Zachaire, as written by himself. He
has not been so candid at its conclusion as at its commencement,
and has left the world in doubt as to his real motives for
pretending that he had discovered the philosopher's stone. It
seems probable that the sentence he puts into the mouths of his
wisest acquaintances was the true reason of his retreat; that he
was, in fact, reduced to poverty, and hid his shame in foreign
countries. Nothing further is known of his life, and his real name
has never yet been discovered. He wrote a work on alchymy,
entitled The true Natural Philosophy of Metals.


Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly

John Dee and Edward Kelly claim to be mentioned together, having
been so long associated in the same pursuits, and undergone so
many strange vicissitudes in each other's society. Dee was
altogether a wonderful man, and had he lived in an age when folly
and superstition were less rife, he would, with the same powers
which he enjoyed, have left behind him a bright and enduring
reputation. He was born in London, in the year 1527, and very
early manifested a love for study. At the age of fifteen he was
sent to Cambridge, and delighted so much in his books, that he
passed regularly eighteen hours every day among them. Of the other
six, he devoted four to sleep and two for refreshment. Such
intense application did not injure his health, and could not fail
to make him one of the first scholars of his time. Unfortunately,
however, he quitted the mathematics and the pursuits of true
philosophy to indulge in the unprofitable reveries of the occult
sciences. He studied alchymy, astrology, and magic, and thereby
rendered himself obnoxious to the authorities at Cambridge. To
avoid persecution, he was at last obliged to retire to the
university of Louvain; the rumours of sorcery that were current
respecting him rendering his longer stay in England not altogether
without danger. He found at Louvain many kindred spirits who had
known Cornelius Agrippa while he resided among them, and by whom
he was constantly entertained with the wondrous deeds of that
great master of the hermetic mysteries. From their conversation he
received much encouragement to continue the search for the
philosopher's stone, which soon began to occupy nearly all his
thoughts.

He did not long remain on the Continent, but returned to England
in 1551, being at that time in the twenty-fourth year of his age.
By the influence of his friend, Sir John Cheek, he was kindly
received at the court of King Edward VI, and rewarded (it is
difficult to say for what) with a pension of one hundred crowns.
He continued for several years to practise in London as an
astrologer; casting nativities, telling fortunes, and pointing out
lucky and unlucky days. During the reign of Queen Mary he got into
trouble, being suspected of heresy, and charged with attempting
Mary's life by means of enchantments. He was tried for the latter
offence, and acquitted; but was retained in prison on the former
charge, and left to the tender mercies of Bishop Bonner. He had a
very narrow escape from being burned in Smithfield, but he somehow
or other contrived to persuade that fierce bigot that his
orthodoxy was unimpeachable, and was set at liberty in 1555.

On the accession of Elizabeth, a brighter day dawned upon him.
During her retirement at Woodstock, her servants appear to have
consulted him as to the time of Mary's death, which circumstance
no doubt first gave rise to the serious charge for which he was
brought to trial. They now came to consult him more openly as to
the fortunes of their mistress; and Robert Dudley, the celebrated
Earl of Leicester, was sent by command of the Queen herself to
know the most auspicious day for her coronation. So great was the
favour he enjoyed, that, some years afterwards, Elizabeth
condescended to pay him a visit at his house in Mortlake, to view
his museum of curiosities, and, when he was ill, sent her own
physician to attend upon him.

Astrology was the means whereby he lived, and he continued to
practise it with great assiduity; but his heart was in alchymy.
The philosopher's stone and the elixir of life haunted his daily
thoughts and his nightly dreams. The Talmudic mysteries, which he
had also deeply studied, impressed him with the belief, that he
might hold converse with spirits and angels, and learn from them
all the mysteries of the universe. Holding the same idea as the
then obscure sect of the Rosicrucians, some of whom he had perhaps
encountered in his travels in Germany, he imagined that, by means
of the philosopher's stone, he could summon these kindly spirits
at his will. By dint of continually brooding upon the subject, his
imagination became so diseased, that he at last persuaded himself
that an angel appeared to him, and promised to be his friend and
companion as long as he lived. He relates that, one day, in
November 1582, while he was engaged in fervent prayer, the window
of his museum looking towards the west suddenly glowed with a
dazzling light, in the midst of which, in all his glory, stood the
great angel Uriel. Awe and wonder rendered him speechless; but the
angel smiling graciously upon him, gave him a crystal, of a convex
form, and told him that whenever he wished to hold converse with
the beings of another sphere, he had only to gaze intently upon
it, and they would appear in the crystal, and unveil to him all
the secrets of futurity.31* Thus saying, the angel disappeared.
Dee found from experience of the crystal that it was necessary
that all the faculties of the soul should be concentrated upon it,
otherwise the spirits did not appear. He also found that he could
never recollect the conversations he had with the angels. He
therefore determined to communicate the secret to another person,
who might converse with the spirits while he (Dee) sat in another
part of the room, and took down in writing the revelations which
they made.

He had at this time in his service, as his assistant, one Edward
Kelly, who, like himself, was crazy upon the subject of the
philosopher's stone. There was this difference, however, between
them, that, while Dee was more of an enthusiast than an impostor,
Kelly was more of an impostor than an enthusiast. In early life he
was a notary, and had the misfortune to lose both his ears for
forgery. This mutilation, degrading enough in any man, was
destructive to a philosopher; Kelly, therefore, lest his wisdom
should suffer in the world's opinion, wore a black skull-cap,
which, fitting close to his head, and descending over both his
cheeks, not only concealed his loss, but gave him a very solemn
and oracular appearance. So well did he keep his secret, that even
Dee, with whom he lived so many years, appears never to have
discovered it. Kelly, with this character, was just the man to
carry on any piece of roguery for his own advantage, or to nurture
the delusions of his master for the same purpose. No sooner did
Dee inform him of the visit he had received from the glorious
Uriel, than Kelly expressed such a fervour of belief that Dee's
heart glowed with delight. He set about consulting his crystal
forthwith, and on the 2nd of December 1581, the spirits appeared,
and held a very extraordinary discourse with Kelly, which Dee took
down in writing. The curious reader may see this farrago of
nonsense among the Harleian Mss. in the British Museum. The later
consultations were published in a folio volume, in 1659, by Dr.
Meric Casaubon, under the title of A true and faithful Relation of
what passed between Dr. John Dee and some Spirits; tending, had it
succeeded, to a general Alteration of most States and Kingdoms in
the World.32*

The fame of these wondrous colloquies soon spread over the
country, and even reached the Continent. Dee, at the same time,
pretended to be in possession of the elixir vitæ, which he stated
he had found among the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, in
Somersetshire. People flocked from far and near to his house at
Mortlake to have their nativities cast, in preference to visiting
astrologers of less renown. They also longed to see a man who,
according to his own account, would never die. Altogether, he
carried on a very profitable trade, but spent so much in drugs and
metals to work out some peculiar process of transmutation, that he
never became rich.

About this time there came into England a wealthy polish nobleman,
named Albert Laski, Count Palatine of Siradz. His object was
principally, he said, to visit the court of Queen Elizabeth, the
fame of whose glory and magnificence had reached him in distant
Poland. Elizabeth received this flattering stranger with the most
splendid hospitality, and appointed her favourite Leicester to
shew him all that was worth seeing in England. He visited all the
curiosities of London and Westminster, and from thence proceeded
to Oxford and Cambridge, that he might converse with some of the
great scholars whose writings shed lustre upon the land of their
birth. He was very much disappointed at not finding Dr. Dee among
them, and told the Earl of Leicester that he would not have gone
to Oxford if he had known that Dee was not there. The earl
promised to introduce him to the great alchymist on their return
to London, and the Pole was satisfied. A few days afterwards, the
earl and Laski being in the antechamber of the Queen, awaiting an
audience of her majesty, Dr. Dee arrived on the same errand, and
was introduced to the Pole.33* An interesting conversation ensued,
which ended by the stranger inviting himself to dine with the
astrologer at his house at Mortlake. Dee returned home in some
tribulation, for he found he had not money enough, without pawning
his plate, to entertain Count Laski and his retinue in a manner
becoming their dignity. In this emergency he sent off an express
to the Earl of Leicester, stating frankly the embarrassment he
laboured under, and praying his good offices in representing the
matter to her majesty. Elizabeth immediately sent him a present of
twenty pounds.

On the appointed day, Count Laski came, attended by a numerous
retinue, and expressed such open and warm admiration of the
wonderful attainments of his host, that Dee turned over in his own
mind how he could bind irretrievably to his interests a man who
seemed so well inclined to become his friend. Long acquaintance
with Kelly had imbued him with all the roguery of that personage;
and he resolved to make the Pole pay dearly for his dinner. He
found out before many days that he possessed great estates in his
own country, as well as great influence, but that an extravagant
disposition had reduced him to temporary embarrassment. He also
discovered that he was a firm believer in the philosopher's stone
and the water of life. He was therefore just the man upon whom an
adventurer might fasten himself. Kelly thought so too; and both of
them set to work to weave a web in the meshes of which they might
firmly entangle the rich and credulous stranger. They went very
cautiously about it; first throwing out obscure hints of the stone
and the elixir; and finally of the spirits, by means of whom they
could turn over the pages of the book of futurity, and read the
awful secrets inscribed therein. Laski eagerly implored that he
might be admitted to one of their mysterious interviews with Uriel
and the angels; but they knew human nature too well to accede at
once to the request. To the count's entreaties they only replied
by hints of the difficulty or impropriety of summoning the spirits
in the presence of a stranger; or of one who might, perchance,
have no other motive than the gratification of a vain curiosity:
but they only meant to whet the edge of his appetite by this
delay, and would have been sorry indeed if the count had been
discouraged. To shew how exclusively the thoughts both of Dee and
Kelly were fixed upon their dupe at this time, it is only
necessary to read the introduction to their first interview with
the spirits, related in the volume of Dr. Casaubon. The entry made
by Dee, under the date of the 25th of May, 1583, says, that when
the spirit appeared to them, "I [John Dee] and E. K. [Edward
Kelly] sat together, conversing of that noble Polonian Albertus
Laski, his great honour here with us obtained, and of his great
liking among all sorts of the people." No doubt they were
discussing how they might make the most of the "noble Polonian,"
and concocting the fine story with which they afterwards excited
his curiosity, and drew him firmly within their toils. "Suddenly,"
says Dee, as they were thus employed, "there seemed to come out of
the oratory a spiritual creature, like a pretty girl of seven or
nine years of age, attired on her head, with her hair rolled up
before, and hanging down behind; with a gown of silk, of
changeable red and green, and with a train. She seemed to play up
and down, and seemed to go in and out behind the books; and as she
seemed to go between them, the books displaced themselves, and
made way for her."

With such tales as these they lured on the Pole from day to day,
and at last persuaded him to be a witness of their mysteries.
Whether they played off any optical delusions upon him, or
whether, by the force of a strong imagination, he deluded himself,
does not appear, but certain it is that he became a complete tool
in their hands, and consented to do whatever they wished him.
Kelly, at these interviews, placed himself at a certain distance
from the wondrous crystal, and gazed intently upon it, while Dee
took his place in a corner, ready to set down the prophecies as
they were uttered by the spirits. In this manner they prophesied
to the Pole that he should become the fortunate possessor of the
philosopher's stone; that he should live for centuries, and be
chosen King of Poland, in which capacity he should gain many great
victories over the Saracens, and make his name illustrious over
all the earth. For this purpose it was necessary, however, that
Laski should leave England, and take them with him, together with
their wives and families; that he should treat them all
sumptuously, and allow them to want for nothing. Laski at once
consented; and very shortly afterwards they were all on the road
to Poland.

It took them upwards of four months to reach the count's estates
in the neighbourhood of Cracow. In the mean time, they led a
pleasant life, and spent money with an unsparing hand. When once
established in the count's palace, they commenced the great
hermetic operation of transmuting iron into gold. Laski provided
them with all necessary materials, and aided them himself with his
knowledge of alchymy: but, somehow or other, the experiment always
failed at the very moment that it ought to have succeeded, and
they were obliged to recommence operations on a grander scale. But
the hopes of Laski were not easily extinguished. Already, in idea,
the possessor of countless millions, he was not to be cast down
for fear of present expenses. He thus continued from day to day,
and from month to month, till he was at last obliged to sell a
portion of his deeply-mortgaged estates to find aliment for the
hungry crucibles of Dee and Kelly, and the no less hungry stomachs
of their wives and families. It was not till ruin stared him in
the face that he awoke from his dream of infatuation, too happy,
even then, to find that he had escaped utter beggary. Thus
restored to his senses, his first thought was how to rid himself
of his expensive visiters. Not wishing to quarrel with them, he
proposed that they should proceed to Prague, well furnished with
letters of recommendation to the Emperor Rudolph. Our alchymists
too plainly saw that nothing more was to be made of the almost
destitute Count Laski. Without hesitation, therefore, they
accepted the proposal, and set out forthwith to the imperial
residence. They had no difficulty, on their arrival at Prague, in
obtaining an audience of the emperor. They found him willing
enough to believe that such a thing as the philosopher's stone
existed, and flattered themselves that they had made a favourable
impression upon him; but, from some cause or other—perhaps the
look of low cunning and quackery upon the face of Kelly—the
Emperor conceived no very high opinion of their abilities. He
allowed them, however, to remain for some months at Prague,
feeding themselves upon the hope that he would employ them: but
the more he saw of them, the less he liked them; and, when the
pope's nuncio represented to him that he ought not to countenance
such heretic magicians, he gave orders that they should quit his
dominions within four-and-twenty hours. It was fortunate for them
that so little time was given them; for, had they remained six
hours longer, the nuncio had received orders to procure a
perpetual dungeon, or the stake for them.

Not knowing well whither to direct their steps, they resolved to
return to Cracow, where they had still a few friends; but, by this
time, the funds they had drawn from Laski were almost exhausted,
and they were many days obliged to go dinnerless and supperless.
They had great difficulty to keep their poverty a secret from the
world; but they managed to bear privation without murmuring, from
a conviction that if the fact were known, it would militate very
much against their pretensions. Nobody would believe that they
were possessors of the philosopher's stone, if it were once
suspected that they did not know how to procure bread for their
subsistence. They still gained a little by casting nativities, and
kept starvation at arm's length, till a new dupe, rich enough for
their purposes, dropped into their toils, in the shape of a royal
personage. Having procured an introduction to Stephen king of
Poland, they predicted to him that the Emperor Rudolph would
shortly be assassinated, and that the Germans would look to Poland
for his successor. As this prediction was not precise enough to
satisfy the king, they tried their crystal again, and a spirit
appeared who told them that the new sovereign of Germany would be
Stephen of Poland. Stephen was credulous enough to believe them,
and was once present when Kelly held his mystic conversations with
the shadows of his crystal. He also appears to have furnished them
with money to carry on their experiments in alchymy; but he grew
tired, at last, of their broken promises and their constant drains
upon his pocket, and was on the point of discarding them with
disgrace, when they met with another dupe, to whom they eagerly
transferred their services. This was Count Rosenberg, a nobleman
of large estates at Trebona in Bohemia. So comfortable did they
find themselves in the palace of this munificent patron, that they
remained nearly four years with him, faring sumptuously, and
having an almost unlimited command of his money. The count was
more ambitious than avaricious: he had wealth enough, and did not
care for the philosopher's stone on account of the gold, but of
the length of days it would bring him. They had their predictions,
accordingly, all ready framed to suit his character. They
prophesied that he should be chosen king of Poland; and promised,
moreover, that he should live for five hundred years to enjoy his
dignity, provided always, that he found them sufficient money to
carry on their experiments.

But now, while fortune smiled upon them, while they revelled in
the rewards of successful villany, retributive justice came upon
them in a shape they had not anticipated. Jealousy and mistrust
sprang up between the two confederates, and led to such violent
and frequent quarrels, that Dee was in constant fear of exposure.
Kelly imagined himself a much greater personage than Dee;
measuring, most likely, by the standard of impudent roguery; and
was displeased that on all occasions, and from all persons, Dee
received the greater share of honour and consideration. He often
threatened to leave Dee to shift for himself; and the latter, who
had degenerated into the mere tool of his more daring associate,
was distressed beyond measure at the prospect of his desertion.
His mind was so deeply imbued with superstition, that he believed
the rhapsodies of Kelly to be, in a great measure, derived from
his intercourse with angels; and he knew not where, in the whole
world, to look for a man of depth and wisdom enough to succeed
him. As their quarrels every day became more and more frequent,
Dee wrote letters to Queen Elizabeth to secure a favourable
reception on his return to England, whither he intended to proceed
if Kelly forsook him. He also sent her a round piece of silver,
which he pretended he had made of a portion of brass cut out of a
warming-pan. He afterwards sent her the warming-pan also, that she
might convince herself that the piece of silver corresponded
exactly with the hole which was cut into the brass. While thus
preparing for the worst, his chief desire was to remain in Bohemia
with Count Rosenberg, who treated him well, and reposed much
confidence in him. Neither had Kelly any great objection to
remain; but a new passion had taken possession of his breast, and
he was laying deep schemes to gratify it. His own wife was
ill-favoured and ill-natured; Dee's was comely and agreeable; and
he longed to make an exchange of partners without exciting the
jealousy or shocking the morality of Dee. This was a difficult
matter; but to a man like Kelly, who was as deficient in rectitude
and right feeling as he was full of impudence and ingenuity, the
difficulty was not insurmountable. He had also deeply studied the
character and the foibles of Dee; and he took his measures
accordingly. The next time they consulted the spirits, Kelly
pretended to be shocked at their language, and refused to tell Dee
what they had said. Dee insisted, and was informed that they were
henceforth to have their wives in common. Dee, a little startled,
inquired whether the spirits might not mean that they were to live
in common harmony and good-will? Kelly tried again, with apparent
reluctance, and said the spirits insisted upon the literal
interpretation. The poor fanatic Dee resigned himself to their
will; but it suited Kelly's purpose to appear coy a little longer.
He declared that the spirits must be spirits not of good, but of
evil; and refused to consult them any more. He thereupon took his
departure, saying that he would never return.

Dee, thus left to himself, was in sore trouble and distress of
mind. He knew not on whom to fix as the successor to Kelly for
consulting the spirits; but at last chose his son Arthur, a boy of
eight years of age. He consecrated him to this service with great
ceremony, and impressed upon the child's mind the dignified and
awful nature of the duties he was called upon to perform; but the
poor boy had neither the imagination, the faith, nor the artifice
of Kelly. He looked intently upon the crystal as he was told; but
could see nothing and hear nothing. At last, when his eyes ached,
he said he could see a vague indistinct shadow, but nothing more.
Dee was in despair. The deception had been carried on so long,
that he was never so happy as when he fancied he was holding
converse with superior beings; and he cursed the day that had put
estrangement between him and his dear friend Kelly. This was
exactly what Kelly had foreseen; and, when he thought the doctor
had grieved sufficiently for his absence, he returned
unexpectedly, and entered the room where the little Arthur was in
vain endeavouring to distinguish something in the crystal. Dee, in
entering this circumstance in his journal, ascribes this sudden
return to a "miraculous fortune" and a "divine fate;" and goes on
to record that Kelly immediately saw the spirits which had
remained invisible to little Arthur. One of these spirits
reiterated the previous command, that they should have their wives
in common. Kelly bowed his head and submitted; and Dee, in all
humility, consented to the arrangement.

This was the extreme depth of the wretched man's degradation. In
this manner they continued to live for three or four months, when,
new quarrels breaking out, they separated once more. This time
their separation was final. Kelly, taking the elixir which he had
found in Glastonbury Abbey, proceeded to Prague, forgetful of the
abrupt mode in which he had previously been expelled from that
city. Almost immediately after his arrival, he was seized by order
of the Emperor Rudolph, and thrown into prison. He was released
after some months' confinement, and continued for five years to
lead a vagabond life in Germany, telling fortunes at one place,
and pretending to make gold at another. He was a second time
thrown into prison, on a charge of heresy and sorcery; and he then
resolved, if ever he obtained his liberty, to return to England.
He soon discovered that there was no prospect of this, and that
his imprisonment was likely to be for life. He twisted his
bed-clothes into a rope, one stormy night in February 1595, and
let himself down from the window of his dungeon, situated at the
top of a very high tower. Being a corpulent man, the rope gave
way, and he was precipitated to the ground. He broke two of his
ribs and both his legs; and was otherwise so much injured, that he
expired a few days afterwards.

Dee, for a while, had more prosperous fortune. The warming-pan he
had sent to Queen Elizabeth was not without effect. He was
rewarded soon after Kelly had left him with an invitation to
return to England. His pride, which had been sorely humbled,
sprang up again to its pristine dimensions; and he set out from
Bohemia with a train of attendants becoming an ambassador. How he
procured the money does not appear, unless from the liberality of
the rich Bohemian Rosenberg, or perhaps from his plunder. He
travelled with three coaches for himself and family, and three
wagons to carry his baggage. Each coach had four horses, and the
whole train was protected by a guard of four and twenty soldiers.
This statement may be doubted; but it is on the authority of Dee
himself, who made it on oath before the commissioners appointed by
Elizabeth to inquire into his circumstances. On his arrival in
England he had an audience of the queen, who received him kindly
as far as words went, and gave orders that he should not be
molested in his pursuits of chemistry and philosophy. A man who
boasted of the power to turn baser metals into gold, could not,
thought Elizabeth, be in want of money; and she, therefore, gave
him no more substantial marks of her approbation than her
countenance and protection.

Thrown thus unexpectedly upon his own resources, Dee began in
earnest the search for the philosopher's stone. He worked
incessantly among his furnaces, retorts, and crucibles, and almost
poisoned himself with deleterious fumes. He also consulted his
miraculous crystal; but the spirits appeared not to him. He tried
one Bartholomew to supply the place of the invaluable Kelly; but
he being a man of some little probity, and of no imagination at
all, the spirits would not hold any communication with him. Dee
then tried another pretender to philosophy, of the name of
Hickman; but had no better fortune. The crystal had lost its power
since the departure of its great high priest. From this quarter,
then, Dee could get no information on the stone or elixir of the
alchymists, and all his efforts to discover them by other means
were not only fruitless but expensive. He was soon reduced to
great distress, and wrote piteous letters to the queen praying
relief. He represented that, after he left England with Count
Laski, the mob had pillaged his house at Mortlake, accusing him of
being a necromancer and a wizard; and had broken all his
furniture, burned his library, consisting of four thousand rare
volumes, and destroyed all the philosophical instruments and
curiosities in his museum. For this damage he claimed
compensation; and furthermore stated, that, as he had come to
England by the queen's command, she ought to pay the expenses of
his journey. Elizabeth sent him small sums of money at various
times; but Dee still continuing his complaints, a commission was
appointed to inquire into his circumstances. He finally obtained a
small appointment as Chancellor of St. Paul's cathedral, which he
exchanged, in 1595, for the wardenship of the college at
Manchester. He remained in this capacity till 1602 or 1603, when,
his strength and intellect beginning to fail him, he was compelled
to resign. He retired to his old dwelling at Mortlake, in a state
not far removed from actual want, supporting himself as a common
fortune-teller, and being often obliged to sell or pawn his books
to procure a dinner. James I was often applied to on his behalf,
but he refused to do anything for him. It may be said to the
discredit of this king, that the only reward he would grant the
indefatigable Stowe, in his days of old age and want, was the
royal permission to beg; but no one will blame him for neglecting
such a quack as John Dee. He died in 1608, in the eighty-first
year of his age, and was buried at Mortlake.


The Cosmopolite

Many disputes have arisen as to the real name of the alchymist who
wrote several works under the above designation. The general
opinion is that he was a Scotsman named Seton; and that by a fate
very common to alchymists who boasted too loudly of their powers
of transmutation, he ended his days miserably in a dungeon, into
which he was thrown by a German potentate until he made a million
of gold to pay his ransom. By some he has been confounded with
Michael Sendivog, or Sendivogius, a Pole, a professor of the same
art, who made a great noise in Europe at the commencement of the
seventeenth century. Lenglet du Fresnoy, who is in general well
informed with respect to the alchymists, inclines to the belief
that these personages were distinct; and gives the following
particulars of the Cosmopolite, extracted from George Morhoff, in
his Epistola ad Langelottum, and other writers.

About the year 1600, one Jacob Haussen, a Dutch pilot, was
shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland. A gentleman, named Alexander
Seton, put off in a boat, and saved him from drowning, and
afterwards entertained him hospitably for many weeks at his house
on the shore. Haussen saw that he was addicted to the pursuits of
chemistry, but no conversation on the subject passed between them
at the time. About a year and a half afterwards, Haussen being
then at home at Enkhuysen, in Holland, received a visit from his
former host. He endeavoured to repay the kindness that had been
shewn him; and so great a friendship arose between them that
Seton, on his departure, offered to make him acquainted with the
great secret of the philosopher's stone. In his presence the
Scotsman transmuted a great quantity of base metal into pure gold,
and gave it him as a mark of his esteem. Seton then took leave of
his friend, and travelled into Germany. At Dresden he made no
secret of his wonderful powers, having, it is said, performed
transmutation successfully before a great assemblage of the
learned men of that city. The circumstance coming to the ears of
the Duke or Elector of Saxony, he gave orders for the arrest of
the alchymist. He caused him to be imprisoned in a high tower, and
set a guard of forty men to watch that he did not escape, and that
no strangers were admitted to his presence. The unfortunate Seton
received several visits from the elector, who used every art of
persuasion to make him divulge his secret. Seton obstinately
refused either to communicate his secret, or to make any gold for
the tyrant; on which he was stretched upon the rack, to see if the
argument of torture would render him more tractable. The result
was still the same; neither hope of reward nor fear of anguish
could shake him. For several months he remained in prison,
subjected alternately to a sedative and a violent regimen, till
his health broke, and he wasted away almost to a skeleton.

There happened at that time to be in Dresden a learned Pole, named
Michael Sendivogius, who had wasted a good deal of his time and
substance in the unprofitable pursuits of alchymy. He was touched
with pity for the hard fate, and admiration for the intrepidity of
Seton; and determined, if possible, to aid him in escaping from
the clutch of his oppressor. He requested the elector's permission
to see the alchymist, and obtained it with some difficulty. He
found him in a state of great wretchedness, shut up from the light
of day in a noisome dungeon, and with no better couch or fare than
those allotted to the worst of criminals. Seton listened eagerly
to the proposal of escape, and promised the generous Pole that he
would make him richer than an eastern monarch if by his means he
were liberated. Sendivogius immediately commenced operations. He
sold some property which he possessed near Cracow, and with the
proceeds led a merry life at Dresden. He gave the most elegant
suppers, to which he regularly invited the officers of the guard,
and especially those who did duty at the prison of the alchymist.
He insinuated himself at last into their confidence, and obtained
free ingress to his friend as often as he pleased; pretending that
he was using his utmost endeavours to conquer his obstinacy and
worm his secret out of him. When their project was ripe, a day was
fixed upon for the grand attempt; and Sendivogius was ready with a
post-chariot to convey him with all speed into Poland. By drugging
some wine which he presented to the guards of the prison, he
rendered them so drowsy that he easily found means to scale a wall
unobserved, with Seton, and effect his escape. Seton's wife was in
the chariot awaiting him, having safely in her possession a small
packet of a black powder, which was, in fact, the philosopher's
stone, or ingredient for the transmutation of iron and copper into
gold. They all arrived in safety at Cracow; but the frame of Seton
was so wasted by torture of body and starvation, to say nothing of
the anguish of mind he had endured, that he did not long survive.
He died in Cracow, in 1603 or 1604, and was buried under the
cathedral church of that city. Such is the story related of the
author of the various works which bear the name of the
Cosmopolite. A list of them may be found in the third volume of
the History of the Hermetic Philosophy.


Sendivogius

On the death of Seton, Sendivogius married his widow, hoping to
learn from her some of the secrets of her deceased lord in the art
of transmutation. The ounce of black powder stood him, however, in
better service; for the alchymists say, that by its means, he
converted great quantities of quicksilver into the purest gold. It
is also said that he performed this experiment successfully before
the Emperor Rudolph II, at Prague; and that the emperor, to
commemorate the circumstance, caused a marble tablet to be affixed
to the wall of the room in which it was performed, bearing this
inscription, "Faciat hoc quispiam alius, quod fecit Sendivogius
Polonus." M. Desnoyers, secretary to the Princess Mary of Gonzaga,
Queen of Poland, writing from Warsaw in 1651, says that he saw
this tablet, which existed at that time, and was often visited by
the curious.

The after-life of Sendivogius is related in a Latin memoir of him
by one Brodowski, his steward; and is inserted by Pierre Borel in
his Treasure of Gaulish Antiquities. The Emperor Rudolph,
according to this authority, was so well pleased with his success,
that he made him one of his councillors of state, and invited him
to fill a station in the royal household and inhabit the palace.
But Sendivogius loved his liberty, and refused to become a
courtier. He preferred to reside on his own patrimonial estate of
Gravarna, where, for many years, he exercised a princely
hospitality. His philosophic powder, which, his steward says, was
red, and not black, he kept in a little box of gold; and with one
grain of it he could make five hundred ducats, or a thousand
rix-dollars. He generally made his projection upon quicksilver.
When he travelled, he gave this box to his steward, who hung it
round his neck by a gold chain next his skin. But the greatest
part of the powder he used to hide in a secret place cut into the
step of his chariot. He thought that, if attacked at any time by
robbers, they would not search such a place as that. When he
anticipated any danger, he would dress himself in his valet's
clothes, and, mounting the coach-box, put the valet inside. He was
induced to take these precautions, because it was no secret that
he possessed the philosopher's stone; and many unprincipled
adventurers were on the watch for an opportunity to plunder him. A
German Prince, whose name Brodowski has not thought fit to
chronicle, served him a scurvy trick, which ever afterwards put
him on his guard. This prince went on his knees to Sendivogius,
and entreated him in the most pressing terms to satisfy his
curiosity, by converting some quicksilver into gold before him.
Sendivogius, wearied by his importunity, consented, upon a promise
of inviolable secrecy. After his departure, the prince called a
German alchymist, named Muhlenfels, who resided in his house, and
told him all that had been done. Muhlenfels entreated that he
might have a dozen mounted horsemen at his command, that he might
instantly ride after the philosopher, and either rob him of all
his powder or force from him the secret of making it. The prince
desired nothing better; Muhlenfels, being provided with twelve men
well mounted and armed, pursued Sendivogius in hot haste. He came
up with him at a lonely inn by the road-side, just as he was
sitting down to dinner. He at first endeavoured to persuade him to
divulge the secret; but, finding this of no avail, he caused his
accomplices to strip the unfortunate Sendivogius and tie him naked
to one of the pillars of the house. He then took from him his
golden box, containing a small quantity of the powder; a
manuscript book on the philosopher's stone; a golden medal with
its chain, presented to him by the Emperor Rudolph; and a rich
cap, ornamented with diamonds, of the value of one hundred
thousand rix-dollars. With this booty he decamped, leaving
Sendivogius still naked and firmly bound to the pillar. His
servants had been treated in a similar manner; but the people of
the inn released them all as soon as the robbers were out of
sight.

Sendivogius proceeded to Prague, and made his complaint to the
emperor. An express was instantly sent off to the prince, with
orders that he should deliver up Muhlenfels and all his plunder.
The prince, fearful of the emperor's wrath, caused three large
gallows to be erected in his court-yard; on the highest of which
he hanged Muhlenfels, with another thief on each side of him. He
thus propitiated the emperor, and got rid of an ugly witness
against himself. He sent back, at the same time, the bejewelled
hat, the medal and chain, and the treatise upon the philosopher's
stone, which had been stolen from Sendivogius. As regarded the
powder, he said he had not seen it, and knew nothing about it.

This adventure made Sendivogius more prudent; he would no longer
perform the process of transmutation before any strangers, however
highly recommended. He pretended also to be very poor; and
sometimes lay in bed for weeks together, that people might believe
he was suffering from some dangerous malady, and could not
therefore by any possibility be the owner of the philosopher's
stone. He would occasionally coin false money, and pass it off as
gold; preferring to be esteemed a cheat rather than a successful
alchymist.

Many other extraordinary tales are told of this personage by his
steward Brodowski, but they are not worth repeating. He died in
1636, aged upwards of eighty, and was buried in his own chapel at
Gravarna. Several works upon alchymy have been published under his
name.


The Rosicrucians

It was during the time of the last-mentioned author that the sect
of the Rosicrucians first began to create a sensation in Europe.
The influence which they exercised upon opinion during their brief
career, and the permanent impression which they have left upon
European literature, claim for them especial notice. Before their
time, alchymy was but a grovelling delusion; and theirs is the
merit of having spiritualised and refined it. They also enlarged
its sphere, and supposed the possession of the philosopher's stone
to be, not only the means of wealth, but of health and happiness,
and the instrument by which man could command the services of
superior beings, control the elements to his will, defy the
obstructions of time and space, and acquire the most intimate
knowledge of all the secrets of the universe. Wild and visionary
as they were, they were not without their uses; if it were only
for having purged the superstitions of Europe of the dark and
disgusting forms with which the monks had peopled it, and
substituted, in their stead, a race of mild, graceful, and
beneficent beings.

They are said to have derived their name from Christian
Rosencreutz, or "Rose-cross," a German philosopher, who travelled
in the Holy Land towards the close of the fourteenth century.
While dangerously ill at a place called Damcar, he was visited by
some learned Arabs, who claimed him as their brother in science,
and unfolded to him, by inspiration, all the secrets of his past
life, both of thought and of action. They restored him to health
by means of the philosopher's stone, and afterwards instructed him
in all their mysteries. He returned to Europe in 1401, being then
only twenty-three years of age; and drew a chosen number of his
friends around him, whom he initiated into the new science, and
bound by solemn oaths to keep it secret for a century. He is said
to have lived eighty-three years after this period, and to have
died in 1484.

Many have denied the existence of such a personage as Rosencreutz,
and have fixed the origin of this sect at a much later epoch. The
first dawning of it, they say, is to be found in the theories of
Paracelsus, and the dreams of Dr. Dee, who, without intending it,
became the actual, though never the recognised founders of the
Rosicrucian philosophy. It is now difficult, and indeed
impossible, to determine whether Dee and Paracelsus obtained their
ideas from the then obscure and unknown Rosicrucians, or whether
the Rosicrucians did but follow and improve upon them. Certain it
is, that their existence was never suspected till the year 1605,
when they began to excite attention in Germany. No sooner were
their doctrines promulgated, than all the visionaries,
Paracelsists, and alchymists, flocked around their standard, and
vaunted Rosencreutz as the new regenerator of the human race.
Michael Mayer, a celebrated physician of that day, and who had
impaired his health and wasted his fortune in searching for the
philosopher's stone, drew up a report of the tenets and ordinances
of the new fraternity, which was published at Cologne, in the year
1615. They asserted, in the first place, "that the meditations of
their founders surpassed everything that had ever been imagined
since the creation of the world, without even excepting the
revelations of the Deity; that they were destined to accomplish
the general peace and regeneration of man before the end of the
world arrived; that they possessed all wisdom and piety in a
supreme degree; that they possessed all the graces of nature, and
could distribute them among the rest of mankind according to their
pleasure; that they were subject to neither hunger, nor thirst,
nor disease, nor old age, nor to any other inconvenience of
nature; that they knew by inspiration, and at the first glance,
every one who was worthy to be admitted into their society; that
they had the same knowledge then which they would have possessed
if they had lived from the beginning of the world, and had been
always acquiring it; that they had a volume in which they could
read all that ever was or ever would be written in other books
till the end of time; that they could force to, and retain in
their service the most powerful spirits and demons; that, by the
virtue of their songs, they could attract pearls and precious
stones from the depths of the sea or the bowels of the earth; that
God had covered them with a thick cloud, by means of which they
could shelter themselves from the malignity of their enemies, and
that they could thus render themselves invisible from all eyes;
that the eight first brethren of the 'Rose-cross' had power to
cure all maladies; that, by means of the fraternity, the triple
diadem of the pope would be reduced into dust; that they only
admitted two sacraments, with the ceremonies of the primitive
Church, renewed by them; that they recognised the Fourth Monarchy
and the Emperor of the Romans as their chief and the chief of all
Christians; that they would provide him with more gold, their
treasures being inexhaustible, than the King of Spain had ever
drawn from the golden regions of Eastern and Western Ind." This
was their confession of faith. Their rules of conduct were six in
number, and as follow:

First. That, in their travels, they should gratuitously cure all diseases.

Secondly. That they should always dress in conformity to the fashion of the
country in which they resided.

Thirdly. That they should, once every year, meet together in the place
appointed by the fraternity, or send in writing an available excuse.

Fourthly. That every brother, whenever he felt inclined to die, should
choose a person worthy to succeed him.

Fifthly. That the words "Rose-cross" should be the marks by which they
should recognise each other.

Sixthly. That their fraternity should be kept secret for six times twenty
years.

They asserted that these laws had been found inscribed in a golden
book in the tomb of Rosencreutz, and that the six times twenty
years from his death expired in 1604. They were consequently
called upon, from that time forth, to promulgate their doctrine
for the welfare of mankind.34*

For eight years these enthusiasts made converts in Germany; but
they excited little or no attention in other parts of Europe. At
last they made their appearance in Paris, and threw all the
learned, all the credulous, and all the lovers of the marvellous
into commotion. In the beginning of March 1623, the good folks of
that city, when they arose one morning, were surprised to find all
their walls placarded with the following singular manifesto:

"We, the deputies of the principal College of the Brethren of the
Rose-cross, have taken up our abode, visible and invisible, in
this city, by the grace of the Most High, towards whom are turned
the hearts of the just. We shew and teach without books or signs,
and speak all sorts of languages in the countries where we dwell,
to draw mankind, our fellows, from error and from death.

For a long time this strange placard was the sole topic of
conversation in all public places. Some few wondered, but the
greater number only laughed at it. In the course of a few weeks
two books were published, which raised the first alarm respecting
this mysterious society, whose dwelling-place no one knew, and no
members of which had ever been seen. The first was called a
history of The frightful Compacts entered into between the Devil
and the pretended 'Invisibles;' with their damnable Instructions,
the deplorable Ruin of their Disciples, and their miserable End."
The other was called an "Examination of the new and unknown Cabala
of the Brethren of the Rose-cross, who have lately inhabited the
City of Paris; with the History of their Manners, the Wonders
worked by them, and many other particulars.

These books sold rapidly. Every one was anxious to know something
of this dreadful and secret brotherhood. The badauds of Paris were
so alarmed that they daily expected to see the arch-enemy walking
in propria persona among them. It was said in these volumes that
the Rosicrucian society consisted of six-and-thirty persons in
all, who had renounced their baptism and hope of resurrection.
That it was not by means of good angels, as they pretended, that
they worked their prodigies; but that it was the devil who gave
them power to transport themselves from one end of the world to
the other with the rapidity of thought; to speak all languages; to
have their purses always full of money, however much they might
spend; to be invisible, and penetrate into the most secret places,
in spite of fastenings of bolts and bars; and to be able to tell
the past and future. These thirty-six brethren were divided into
bands or companies: six of them only had been sent on the mission
to Paris, six to Italy, six to Spain, six to Germany, four to
Sweden, and two into Switzerland; two into Flanders, two into
Lorraine, and two into Franche Comté. It was generally believed
that the missionaries to France resided somewhere in the Marais du
Temple. That quarter of Paris soon acquired a bad name; and people
were afraid to take houses in it, lest they should be turned out
by the six invisibles of the Rose-cross. It was believed by the
populace, and by many others whose education should have taught
them better, that persons of a mysterious aspect used to visit the
inns and hotels of Paris, and eat of the best meats and drink of
the best wines, and then suddenly melt away into thin air when the
landlord came with the reckoning. That gentle maidens, who went to
bed alone, often awoke in the night and found men in bed with
them, of shape more beautiful than the Grecian Apollo, who
immediately became invisible when an alarm was raised. It was also
said that many persons found large heaps of pure gold in their
houses, without knowing from whence they came. All Paris was in
alarm. No man thought himself secure of his goods, no maiden of
her virginity, or wife of her chastity, while these Rosicrucians
were abroad. In the midst of the commotion, a second placard was
issued to the following effect:

"If any one desires to see the brethren of the Rose-cross from
curiosity only, he will never communicate with us. But if his will
really induces him to inscribe his name in the register of our
brotherhood, we, who can judge of the thoughts of all men, will
convince him of the truth of our promises. For this reason we do
not publish to the world the place of our abode. Thought alone, in
unison with the sincere will of those who desire to know us, is
sufficient to make us known to them, and them to us."

Though the existence of such a society as that of the Rose-cross
was problematical, it was quite evident that somebody or other was
concerned in the promulgation of these placards, which were stuck
up on every wall in Paris. The police endeavoured in vain to find
out the offenders, and their want of success only served to
increase the perplexity of the public. The Church very soon took
up the question; and the Abbé Gaultier, a Jesuit, wrote a book to
prove that, by their enmity to the pope, they could be no other
than disciples of Luther, sent to promulgate his heresy. Their
very name, he added, proved that they were heretics; a cross
surmounted by a rose being the heraldic device of the arch-heretic
Luther. One Garasse said they were a confraternity of drunken
impostors; and that their name was derived from the garland of
roses, in the form of a cross, hung over the tables of taverns in
Germany as the emblem of secrecy, and from whence was derived the
common saying, when one man communicated a secret to another, that
it was said "under the rose." Others interpreted the letters F. R.
C. to mean, not Brethren of the Rose-cross, but Fratres Roris
Cocti, or Brothers of Boiled Dew; and explained this appellation
by alleging that they collected large quantities of morning dew,
and boiled it, in order to extract a very valuable ingredient in
the composition of the philosopher's stone and the water of life.

The fraternity thus attacked defended themselves as well as they
were able. They denied that they used magic of any kind, or that
they consulted the devil. They said they were all happy; that they
had lived more than a century, and expected to live many centuries
more; and that the intimate knowledge which they possessed of all
nature was communicated to them by God himself as a reward for
their piety and utter devotion to his service. Those were in error
who derived their name from a cross of roses, or called them
drunkards. To set the world right on the first point, they
reiterated that they derived their name from Christian
Rosencreutz, their founder; and, to answer the latter charge, they
repeated that they knew not what thirst was, and had higher
pleasures than those of the palate. They did not desire to meddle
with the politics or religion of any man or set of men, although
they could not help denying the supremacy of the pope, and looking
upon him as a tyrant. Many slanders, they said, had been repeated
respecting them; the most unjust of which was, that they indulged
in carnal appetites, and, under the cloak of their invisibility,
crept into the chambers of beautiful maidens. They asserted, on
the contrary, that the first vow they took on entering the society
was a vow of chastity, and that any one among them who
transgressed in that particular would immediately lose all the
advantages he enjoyed, and be exposed once more to hunger, woe,
disease, and death, like other men. So strongly did they feel on
the subject of chastity, that they attributed the fall of Adam
solely to his want of this virtue. Besides defending themselves in
this manner, they entered into a further confession of their
faith. They discarded for ever all the old tales of sorcery and
witchcraft, and communion with the devil. They said there were no
such horrid, unnatural, and disgusting beings as the incubi and
succubi, and the innumerable grotesque imps that men had believed
in for so many ages. Man was not surrounded with enemies like
these, but with myriads of beautiful and beneficent beings, all
anxious to do him service. The air was peopled with sylphs, the
water with undines or naiads, the bowels of the earth with gnomes,
and the fire with salamanders. All these beings were the friends
of man, and desired nothing so much as that men should purge
themselves of all uncleanness, and thus be enabled to see and
converse with them. They possessed great power, and were
unrestrained by the barriers of space or the obstructions of
matter. But man was in one particular their superior. He had an
immortal soul, and they had not. They might, however, become
sharers in man's immortality, if they could inspire one of that
race with the passion of love towards them. Hence it was the
constant endeavour of the female spirits to captivate the
admiration of men; and of the male gnomes, sylphs, salamanders,
and undines, to be beloved by a woman. The object of this passion,
in returning their love, imparted a portion of that celestial
fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equal
to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run,
entered together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits,
they said, watched constantly over mankind by night and day.
Dreams, omens, and presentiments were all their works, and the
means by which they gave warning of the approach of danger. But
though so well inclined to befriend man for their own sakes, the
want of a soul rendered them at times capricious and revengeful;
they took offence on slight causes, and heaped injuries instead of
benefits on the heads of those who extinguished the light of
reason that was in them by gluttony, debauchery, and other
appetites of the body.

The excitement produced in Paris by the placards of the
brotherhood and the attacks of the clergy wore itself away after a
few months. The stories circulated about them became at last too
absurd even for that age of absurdity, and men began to laugh once
more at those invisible gentlemen and their fantastic doctrines.
Gabriel Naudé at that conjuncture brought out his Avis à la France
sur les Frères de la Rose-croix, in which he very successfully
exposed the folly of the new sect. This work, though not well
written, was well timed. It quite extinguished the Rosicrucians of
France; and after that year little more was heard of them.
Swindlers in different parts of the country assumed the name at
times to cloak their depredations; and now and then one of them
was caught and hanged for his too great ingenuity in enticing
pearls and precious stones from the pockets of other people into
his own, or for passing off lumps of gilded brass for pure gold,
made by the agency of the philosopher's stone. With these
exceptions, oblivion shrouded them.

The doctrine was not confined to a sphere so narrow as France
alone; it still flourished in Germany, and drew many converts in
England. The latter countries produced two great masters, in the
persons of Jacob Böhmen and Robert Fludd—pretended philosophers,
of whom it is difficult to say which was the more absurd and
extravagant. It would appear that the sect was divided into two
classes—the brothers Roseæ Crucis, who devoted themselves to the
wonders of this sublunary sphere; and the brothers Aureæ Crucis,
who were wholly occupied in the contemplation of things divine.
Fludd belonged to the first class, and Böhmen to the second. Fludd
may be called the father of the English Rosicrucians, and as such
merits a conspicuous niche in the temple of Folly.

He was born in the year 1574, at Milgate, in Kent; and was the son
of Sir Thomas Fludd, Treasurer of War to Queen Elizabeth. He was
originally intended for the army; but he was too fond of study,
and of a disposition too quiet and retiring, to shine in that
sphere. His father would not therefore press him to adopt a course
of life for which he was unsuited, and encouraged him in the study
of medicine, for which he early manifested a partiality. At the
age of twenty-five he proceeded to the continent; and being fond
of the abstruse, the marvellous, and the incomprehensible, he
became an ardent disciple of the school of Paracelsus, whom he
looked upon as the regenerator not only of medicine, but of
philosophy. He remained six years in Italy, France, and Germany,
storing his mind with fantastic notions, and seeking the society
of enthusiasts and visionaries. On his return to England in 1605,
he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University
of Oxford, and began to practice as a physician in London.

He soon made himself conspicuous. He latinised his name from
Robert Fludd into Robertus à Fluctibus, and began the promulgation
of many strange doctrines. He avowed his belief in the
philosopher's stone, the water of life, and the universal
alkahest; and maintained that there were but two principles of all
things,—which were, condensation, the boreal or northern virtue;
and rarefaction, the southern or austral virtue. A number of
demons, he said, ruled over the human frame, whom he arranged in
their places in a rhomboid. Every disease had its peculiar demon
who produced it, which demon could only be combated by the aid of
the demon whose place was directly opposite to his in the
rhomboidal figure. Of his medical notions we shall have further
occasion to speak in another part of this book, when we consider
him in his character as one of the first founders of the magnetic
delusion, and its offshoot, animal magnetism, which has created so
much sensation in our own day.

As if the doctrines already mentioned were not wild enough, he
joined the Rosicrucians as soon as they began to make a sensation
in Europe, and succeeded in raising himself to high consideration
among them. The fraternity having been violently attacked by
several German authors, and among others by Libavius, Fludd
volunteered a reply, and published, in 1616, his defence of the
Rosicrucian philosophy, under the title of the Apologia
compendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea-cruce suspicionis et infamiæ
maculis aspersam abluens. This work immediately procured him great
renown upon the Continent, and he was henceforth looked upon as
one of the high-priests of the sect. Of so much importance was he
considered, that Keppler and Gassendi thought it necessary to
refute him; and the latter wrote a complete examination of his
doctrine. Mersenne also, the friend of Descartes, and who had
defended that philosopher when accused of having joined the
Rosicrucians, attacked Dr. à Fluctibus, as he preferred to be
called, and shewed the absurdity of the brothers of the Rose-cross
in general, and of Dr. à Fluctibus in particular. Fluctibus wrote
a long reply, in which he called Mersenne an ignorant calumniator,
and reiterated that alchymy was a profitable science, and the
Rosicrucians worthy to be the regenerators of the world. This book
was published at Frankfort, and was entitled Summum Bonum, quod
est Magiæ, Cabalæ, Alchimiae, Fratrum Roseæ-Crucis verorum, et
adversus Mersenium Calumniatorem. Besides this, he wrote several
other works upon alchymy, a second answer to Libavius upon the
Rosicrucians, and many medical works. He died in London in 1637.

After his time there was some diminution of the sect in England.
They excited but little attention, and made no effort to bring
themselves into notice. Occasionally, some obscure and almost
incomprehensible work made its appearance, to shew the world that
the folly was not extinguished. Eugenius Philalethes, a noted
alchymist, who has veiled his real name under this assumed one,
translated The Fame and Confession of the Brethren of the Rosie
Cross, which was published in London in 1652. A few years
afterwards, another enthusiast, named John Heydon, wrote two works
on the subject: the one entitled The Wise Man's Crown, or the
Glory of the Rosie Cross; and the other, The Holy Guide, leading
the way to unite Art and Nature with the Rosie Crosse uncovered.
Neither of these attracted much notice. A third book was somewhat
more successful: it was called A New Method of Rosicrucian Physic;
by John Heydon, the servant of God and the Secretary of Nature. A
few extracts will shew the ideas of the English Rosicrucians about
this period. Its author was an attorney, "practising (to use his
own words) at Westminster Hall all term times as long as he lived,
and in the vacations devoting himself to alchymical and
Rosicrucian meditation." In his preface, called by him an Apologue
for an Epilogue, he enlightens the public upon the true history
and tenets of his sect. Moses, Elias, and Ezekiel were, he says,
the most ancient masters of the Rosicrucian philosophy. Those few
then existing in England and the rest of Europe, were as the eyes
and ears of the great king of the universe, seeing and hearing all
things; seraphically illuminated; companions of the holy company
of unbodied souls and immortal angels; turning themselves,
Proteus-like, into any shape, and having the power of working
miracles. The most pious and abstracted brethren could slack the
plague in cities, silence the violent winds and tempests, calm the
rage of the sea and rivers, walk in the air, frustrate the
malicious aspect of witches, cure all diseases, and turn all
metals into gold. He had known in his time two famous brethren of
the Rosie Cross, named Walfourd and Williams, who had worked
miracles in his sight, and taught him many excellent predictions
of astrology and earthquakes. "I desired one of these to tell me,"
says he, "whether my complexion were capable of the society of my
good genius. 'When I see you again,' said he, (which was when he
pleased to come to me, for I knew not where to go to him), 'I will
tell you.' When I saw him afterwards, he said, 'You should pray to
God; for a good and holy man can offer no greater or more
acceptable service to God than the oblation of himself—his soul.'
He said, also, that the good genii were the benign eyes of God,
running to and fro in the world, and with love and pity beholding
the innocent endeavours of harmless and single-hearted men, ever
ready to do them good and to help them."

Heydon held devoutly true that dogma of the Rosicrucians which
said that neither eating nor drinking was necessary to men. He
maintained that any one might exist in the same manher as that
singular people dwelling near the source of the Ganges, of whom
mention was made in the travels of his namesake, Sir Christopher
Heydon, who had no mouths, and therefore could not eat, but lived
by the breath of their nostrils; except when they took a far
journey, and then they mended their diet with the smell of
flowers. He said that in really pure air "there was a fine foreign
fatness," with which it was sprinkled by the sunbeams, and which
was quite sufficient for the nourishment of the generality of
mankind. Those who had enormous appetites he had no objection to
see take animal food, since they could not do without it; but he
obstinately insisted that there was no necessity why they should
eat it. If they put a plaster of nicely-cooked meat upon their
epigastrium, it would be sufficient for the wants of the most
robust and voracious! They would by that means let in no diseases,
as they did at the broad and common gate, the mouth, as any one
might see by example of drink; for, all the while a man sat in
water, he was never athirst. He had known, he said, many
Rosicrucians, who, by applying wine in this manner, had fasted for
years together. In fact, quoth Heydon, we may easily fast all our
life, though it be three hundred years, without any kind of meat,
and so cut off all danger of disease.

This "sage philosopher" further informed his wondering
contemporaries that the chiefs of the doctrine always carried
about with them to their place of meeting their symbol, called the
R.C. which was an ebony cross, flourished and decked with roses of
gold; the cross typifying Christ's sufferings upon the cross for
our sins, and the roses of gold the glory and beauty of his
Resurrection. This symbol was carried alternately to Mecca, Mount
Calvary, Mount Sinai, Haran, and to three other places, which must
have been in mid-air, called Cascle, Apamia, and Chaulateau
Virissa Caunuch, where the Rosicrucian brethren met when they
pleased, and made resolution of all their actions. They always
took their pleasures in one of these places, where they resolved
all questions of whatsoever had been done, was done, or should be
done, in the world, from the beginning to the end thereof. "And
these," he concludes, "are the men called Rosicrucians!"

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, more rational ideas
took possession of the sect, which still continued to boast of a
few members. They appear to have considered that contentment was
the true philosopher's stone, and to have abandoned the insane
search for a mere phantom of the imagination. Addison, in The
Spectator,35* gives an account of his conversation with a
Rosicrucian; from which it may be inferred that the sect had grown
wiser in their deeds, though in their talk they were as foolish as
ever. "I was once," says he, "engaged in discourse with a
Rosicrucian about the great secret. He talked of the secret as of
a spirit which lived within an emerald, and converted every thing
that was near it to the highest perfection that it was capable of.
'It gives a lustre,' says he, 'to the sun, and water to the
diamond. It irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with all the
properties of gold. It heightens smoke into flame, flame into
light, and light into glory.' He further added 'that a single ray
of it dissipates pain and care and melancholy from the person on
whom it falls. In short,' says he, 'its presence naturally changes
every place into a kind of heaven.' After he had gone on for some
time in this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural
and moral ideas together into the same discourse, and that his
great secret was nothing else but content."