VARIOUS HONEST SCHOLARS have certified to the fly-trap skill and crafty jugglement at laudable science of Arnold di Villa Nova. John André, Jurisconsult, once observed this mountebank in Rome sub-ducting gold from iron bars. Nevertheless, facts vary at the circumference, presumptions collapse, perimeters dissolve. Vapors darken the alembic. Alain de l’Isle distilled the Magisterium, we hear, but we hear also that brute savages in thatch huts beyond the Western Sea have netted the wily Scolopendra! Well, from the credulous we do not withhold credulity, placing much value on firm belief. Is not theriac prescribed for melodious dreams? May not the flesh of winged dragons alleviate bloody flux? Or catechitic instruction by demons—is not that preferable to ignorance?
TOWARD EVERY UNCOMMON triumph do we wax fulsome with praise. O yea! High homage therefore to Ramon Lull that did persuade King Edward on how to lubricate his crusade, thus acquiring as work-shop a drafty chamber of the fabulous Tower. What next? Presto! Twenty-three English tons of quicksilver turned sombresault into gold as pliant as that which informs a Jacobus! Aye! And medals were coined from this bounteous slag-heap by Edward’s order whose purity exceeds description, which men have labeled Rose Nobles. Was not this marvelous? We exclaim at such merit yet ask how Rose Nobles be weighed, if currencies be but simulacra and durable shades of life.
TRULY, MUCH HOMAGE do we render this numinous philosopher that has built a Machine of concentric disks which revolve about an Axis in order to convert Mahometans. Upon its rim sixteen chambers interlock and each proclaims his message: Philosophy, Virtue, Justice, Dominion, Humility, Magnitude, and the rest, whereby innumerable combinations are secured. So did Hermes Trismegistus construct the city of Adocentyn whose light-house sequentially flashed the hues of regnant planets! Moralists malign presumptuous apostles by claiming they engage their souls with error at every turn. Ourselves, we draw no tangent.
MORE AND MORE do we meet with Doctor Illuminatus who presumes to indulge every court from Aragon to Extremadura—debating and tossing the crust of matter while he likens earth’s form to a melon. Granted. Yet he argues that should Spanish mines hold adequate mercury he might harvest the Mediterranean bed for ingenite gold! So goes he promenading through every court in Iberia save that of good sense. Discoursing much or little, how redoubtable we find the shifting face of Man.
WE HEAR IT alleged that from the jaws of some putrid corpse Philippus Theophrastus contrived to draw six gold particles which he judged must be the consequence of mineral virtue in that fragrant citizen—since how else could such wealth accumulate? Well, thaumaturgic considerations absorb our wit, causing us to shout and grow baffled and run through circles. Accordingly we suspect our Doctor misled himself. By turbith or unction do virulent diseases react against quicksilver whose essence gravitates to the mouth where it amalgamates with spittle, there to maturate unless it can be expelled—save that when a patient expires the essence will condense, moldering or festering throughout the carcass until purified and redeemed by liquefied atoms of degeneration after which it coagulates toward the likeness of gold. We have seen how by similar intent violets might spring from ashes, or stars that shine unequally must have their purpose, because nature resembles a chiming clock within which all subordinate wheels contribute their motion.
BEHOLD THE CAUDACITY of man’s estate! Pray for Theophrastus, disillusioned and sour, traveling home to his native village of Einsiedeln in the lofty canton of Appenzell, exchanging a troubled passage for eremetic contemplation. Ingratitude accompanied him and marked ascendencies while he wandered—yea! Poverty, neglect and ridicule trafficked at his heels like three mangy skulking mongrels. Therefore did he return bitterly to the ancient church that presided over his birth whose walls now loomed transparent, so much had he achieved with thirty-eight years. But in regard to that woeful journey we have heard enough, albeit little of what his parents were, which we think odd since precedents do not close where they began. Still, some say nobility lies more in the heart than birth. Concerning friends, we make out less, while of himself next to nothing. As for women, he kept no warm relationship, though of enemies a plenitude—thieves, derelicts and frauds, assassins, liars, buggers, cheats. And the wisdom of Avicenna he fed to the flames on a holiday, avowing that monumental rubbish merited its plume of smoke—to which we chant Amen!
AT SALZBURG EXPIRED our contradictory Philippus who was quack or psychikos—we know not which—in the Kaygasse, it is said, where he had engaged a chamber. He wrote how robbers at night creep in to steal if they cannot be seen, so creeps in cunning Death while medicine sits at its obscurity to steal away life, which is a man’s greatest treasure. So the private way of God went to work to draw out his life, and we think he recognized that
