1823.] Si/mbola Aurea Mensa, S^c, 429 



Encyclopaedia which I know of the philosophy and natural 

 history of that period. It seems to have been laid under contri^ 

 bution pretty largely, if not altogether copied, in a work better 

 known to our own black letter students, " Bartholomceus de pro- 

 puetatibus rerum.'^ I have now before me what a bibliographer 

 would term a venerable and perfect copy of Vincent's S. N. 

 (Cologne, 1494.) The sixth and seventh books contain much 

 alchemical matter, chiefly extracted from Avicenna, and a work 

 termed Alchemiste. From this latter, the passage quoted by 

 Maier as Vincent's own is taken, and it occurs in the 31st chap- 

 ter of the 6th book.* 



Vocatur (says the alchemist of the great secret) Elixir, et 

 dicitur Lapis, non Lapis. Lapis quia teritur : Non Lapis quia 

 funditur et currit in igne absque evaporatione sicut aurum. Nee 

 est alia rescui j^roprietas ilia conveniat. Can he mean that there 

 is but one substance which fulfils these two conditions of being 

 levigable, and fusible iviihout evaporation ? Vincent himself is 

 not, however, answerable for this bold assertion. He seems to 

 have been here as elsewhere merely a transcriber and compiler 

 of others. Nicolas Flarnel, well known for his chemical hiero- 

 glyphics, follows ; and the catalogue is terminated by the notice 

 of some authors living in Maier's own day. One of these, Dio- 

 nysius Zacharius, is vehemently defended against some nameless 

 writer who had attacked him and his Alchemy. The defence is 

 accompanied by a singular concession, " that the alchemist did 

 not succeed once in a thousand times; " and that there was, there^ 

 fore, but too much ground for the arguments by which the 

 unskilful endeavoured to deter their friends from the pursuit of 

 the art, and to depreciate its professors. 



The next character mentioned as an alchemist affords a sin- 

 gular instance of Maier's blindness or deception. Fermlius, 

 the physician, does not appear to have meddled with alchemy ; 

 but in a treatise '^ de abditis rerum causis," he states that 

 having read in Hippocrates " esse aliquid divini (jo^eiov) in mor- 

 bis)" he had applied himself to its discovery. Maier decides 

 peremptoril}^, that the *' divini alicjuid" must be the philoso- 

 pher's stone, and the diseases those of metals (as he afterwards 

 terms lead aurum leprosum). He abuses accordingly those who 

 could not penetrate, or who blamed, the obscurity of Fernel's 

 work. He now proceeds to give a short statistical account of 

 France (apparently from B. de la Vigenere), enlarging particu- 

 larly on the revenues of the Gallican church as a proof of the 

 riches and piety of their early kings. The book ends, as usual, 

 with a syllogistic contest. 



Book VIII. Contains the Italian School, headed by the cer- 

 tainly better known to the learned world as a theologian than an 



* Maier refers for it to the 1st book, where I cannot at the moment find it. 



