1823.] Symbola AurecB Mensa, S^c, 433 



theatres, and as having a most pernicious effect on public morals. 

 Personally he complains that they never introduce a German 

 character but as a stammering and barbarous drunkard ; and 

 that they describe the Emperor as a petty king (Regulum). But 

 his chief invectives are levelled against Matthew Gvvin,^' who 

 was censor of the Apothecaries' Company, but was oftener to 

 be found in the tavern than the laboratory. Gvvin, among other 

 obloquiesy had affirmed that the Saxon nobles were impoverished 

 by their pursuit of alchemy. Maier of course treats this as a 

 villanous falsehood. He proceeds to retort the charge of 

 national drunkenness, contending that the vice is more common, 

 and its effects more publicly disgusting in England. He next 

 answers at some length to Camden's assertion, that the nobles 

 of England were more dignified and independent than those of 

 Germany ; then defends the Lutheran church, and attacks what 

 appear to him the incongruities of our reformed worship and 

 ecclesiastical customs. He objects especially to the touching 

 for the king's evil, and maintains that the alledged cures were 

 the work partly of imagination, and partly of the alchemical 

 power oj gold. He ends by reprobating a part of our criminal 

 law, and our pronunciation of the Latin, and even of our own 

 language. Maier's account of his visit to England is corrobo- 

 rated by Ashmole. " He came (says that eminent mercuriophi- 

 list) out of Germany to Uve in England purposely that he might 

 so understand our English tongue as to translate Norton's Ordi- 

 nall into Latin verse, which most judiciously and learnedly he 

 did ; yet (to our shame be it spoken) his entertainment was too 

 coarse for so deserving a scholar." From the logical discussions 

 which, as usual, close the book, we learn that it was agreed, 

 both by the advocates and adversaries of the science ; 1. That 

 nature did transform the imperfect metals into the perfect , taking 

 for that operation more than a thousand years. 2. That all metals 

 are composed of volatile particles (Fumi). 3. That both parties 

 admitted the itifluence of the stars, the alchemist only contending 

 that they were never adverse to the making or using the tincture. 

 Roger Bacon is made to affirm that each metal contains its 

 peculiar mercury mixed vvitli o, corruptitjle sulphur^ which latter 

 may be separated by the application of the Jixedy tingedy and 

 penetrating mercury, i. e. the tincture. Gold itself (he proceeds) 

 is mercury entirely freed from this sulphur, as may he concluded 

 from its weight, splendour, and other accidents. The learned 

 who have denied the existence of the philosopher's stone are 

 briefly dismissed with the cx)nclusive argument, that " whatso- 

 ever they may know of other arts, they know nothing of this.*' 



Books Xl. and XII. relate to the Hungarian and Sarmatian 

 Schools led by Melchior Cibinensis, and an anonymous writer.f 



* President of Gresham College, and a learned physician.— (See Cbajn^er's ^iograph. 

 Dictionary.) ^ .;4-. Ui 



•f- Anonymus Sarmata. ' *•'' « '^ ^ ^' li &fi J i < - . 



l^ew Series, v o i* . v i . 2 P 



