BEING DUTIFUL CHRISTIAN secretaries we record how Sir Kenelme Digby meditated very much in that he had a most candent mind such as would rake across India, and composed numerous books regarding dark science, and by the help of sympathetic powder which he rubbed on whatever instrument had caused some wound he would cure that injury. Also, he was quite diplomatic while commanding sailors of the Navy during which time he annihilated both Venetians and French. Also, we have heard how during a masked ball the Queen Mother Marie de Medicis so improperly advanced on him that he fled and escaped to Italy. He was gigantic, altogether handsome, and employed graceful elocution which made those knowing him insist he had dropped to earth from the clouds: Lapis lapsus ex caelis. Being counted a Royalist he loitered around prison at Southwark, there strangely diverting himself with formulae which enabled him to transmute many valuable stones—emeralds, sapphires, rubies and the like out of common flint. But also toward the end he came to resemble some hermit with his beard unshorn, and grew faint with debt, wearing a high-crowned hat and a desperate long cloak and would converse in six tongues. That such a life be well or poorly spent exceeds our quarter, being resolved to keep account for men of notable disposition with promiscuous curiosity.
CONCERNING THE ILLUSTRIOUS Jean de Meung, we have inspected twelve-score musty documents establishing how he issued from a noble family, practiced the arts of astrology and chymistry together with poetics, gracing the court of Philippe le Bel. That he was interred at the Jacobin Church we have no doubt, nor that to these monks he bequeathed a granite cyst, begging their forbearance till the service of his death be concluded—a request they declined to honor, impatiently raising the lid to find not what they expected but a somber library of slates scratched with indecipherable geometries which antiquarians interpret as a disillusioned parable of our Savior’s promise to unify mankind, since for this miracle no date was ordered. Now who shall look on the glass of divinity or tell the hours when to rain? We have most thoughtfully read this masterpiece of Jean de Meung, titled by the alchymist Romaunt de la Rose, in particular those verses 16,914 through 16,997 that withhold from humanity’s intemperate gaze inestimable directions toward fulfillment. Very many will ask the end of hermetic subterfuge. Excellence, we respond, is not cheaply sold.
WE COULD WITH Pineda in Monarchia Ecclesiastica attribute to 1,040 ancient authors our fountainhead, and so retrieve neglected matter like those magicians which draw up birds or little dogs out of smoke. Arnold do Villa Nova, Ficinus, Reuchlin, Lull, Picus di Mirandola—neither disbelief nor obloquy diminishes the grandeur of their art, as centuries of verdigris do but superficially tarnish Palestinian bronze. Lustrous disquisitions leaven our bleak and perilous extremity.
HAVE WE NOT forty-two works by Hermes which are both exigent and useful? Thirty-six encompass the vast philosophy of Egypt while six pertain to medicine. Concerning Muslims, Albusarius relates how wisely they have preserved with occult translation the magisteries of Chaldea. Anagogic teachers out of the past enlighten us. We might take to bed by candlelight a Spanish Jew, Isaac de Moiros, Synesius and Theophilus and Abugazel that were African, Alphidius and Rhasis and Rosinus and Hamuel that were Arab, Pontanus that was Fleming, Hortulain that was Scottish—some say English—Gui de Montanor that was French, Pierre Bon de Ferrare from Italy. To an impetuous river of compelling logic all contributed. Still, what is the worth of scholarship, given moral inferiority? Does not every age and place make up a world for itself? Now why so? Because the fruits of elements diverge according to place and time. What good has balsam to provinces remote from Arabia? What value to Leipzig has Rhazes, Arnaldus to Swabia? Enough! Like Asiatic sultans that would go hawking after butterflies with sparrows, we misappropriate the hour.
MEISTER BOERHAVE SPEAKS on some adept whose name is long forgot that brought up suroxydized muriate of quicksilver, promising to catalogue the fusibility of mineral. Many assert this to be Abou Moussah Djafar al Sofi, born to a genteel family of Haman in Mesopotamia. Others allege he was native to Thous in Persia. Scholiasts would with Xerxes flog the Hellespont to submission. We, as conscientious archivists, disdain such strident music, restricting ourselves to the simple nobility of fact.
WE TAKE NOTE of a solid gold mortar unexpectedly disclosed when the ancient quarter at Kufa was demolished and Al-Azdi’s work-shop stood revealed. We think this artifact must symbolize inimitable abundance. Yet what was once good does not remain so perpetually. Decadent, surfeited, men reach out to brittle and cursory ideas like pilgrims that linger to fondle glass leopards in Musselman bazaars.
LET AMANUENSES BRED to the exercise of pedantic study register how Mohammed-Ebd-Secharjah Aboubekr Arrasi after three decades squandered on musical composition exchanged frivolous pleasure for recondite medicine and philosophy. His treatise on mineral elevation he presented to Emir Almansour, Prince of Khorassan, who generously replied with a gift of one thousand gold dinars and the request that he provide a demonstration for the Court. We find parchments affirming that this attempt was undertaken without success. No precious minerals resulted. Then the Emir attacked the alchymist—belaboring him, striking him brutally so that he went blind. Nevertheless he lived to be one hundred and died impoverished after writing two hundred and twenty-six illuminating manuscripts. What is alchymistry but an incomplete volume without words? What is it if not a mystic rose—a petal of the cosmic flower?
WE ASK OURSELVES what of that Musselman pedagogue and chymist Jabir ibn Hayyan with his exploration of acids and varnishes.
