1823.] Symbola Aurea Mensa, S^c, 427 



verunty nisi ponder a." A great number of Arabian philosophers 

 are mentioned, and a story quoted from the " Aurora Resurgens" 

 of a Christian captive receiving from his Saracen master his 

 freedom, and a portion of the stone. This was capable not only 

 of transmuting metals, but of healing. " Give the powder (says 

 the adept) to a leper ; let him go to bed, and cover himself with 

 a counterpane, or sudary {sudario), and he shall be cured." It 

 seems not improbable that some powerful mercurial, or rather 

 antimonial remedy, was occasionally administered under this 

 mysterious veil. Maier allows throughout this chapter that 

 many soi-disant speculators in the art were no better than 

 imposters. He professes to give some account of the points 

 " in quibus omnes chemici conveniunt.'* All metals they univer- 

 sally believe to be generated beneath the earth from fumes 

 (which are hot and dry), and vapours which are cold and moist. 

 The rest of his argument seems to amount to this, that these four 

 elements uniting in different proportions to form every known 

 metallic substance, it is possible for art so to readjust those 

 proportions as to convert the baser metals into the more perfect. 

 *' Ask (be continues) whether iron be not converted into copper 

 at Goslar and elsewhere,* iron into steel, and lead into mercury P 



Book VI. The German School, led by Albertus Magnus, the 

 account of whose life contains but httle interesting. Maier 

 rejects the traditionary tales of gold found in a human scull, and 

 the vine with golden tendrils, and the golden-toothed Silesian 

 boy. It is singular that he does not contrive to find allegories in 

 them. Albert is followed by Bernhard, of Treves, w^hose herme- 

 tic philosophy is " in manibus omnium et admiratione" and 

 Basil Valentine, whose works " doctorum indoctorumque manibus 

 quotidie terantur^ The fame of the latter has survived that 

 of the former. t 



Valentine is followed by Alanus de Insulis, better known to 

 English antiquaries as the Expositor of the Prophecies attri- 

 buted to Merlin. A " Liber Chemige " is quoted as his produc- 

 tion, and great merit is ascribed to him for applying to the pur- 

 poses of chemical digestion and evaporation the heat of a dung- 

 hill. It seems to have been an object with the artists to obtain^ 

 a continued and equable heat, lower than that of the furnace, 

 and not supported by any visible fire. R. Lullius for this pur- 

 pose used a mixture of horse-dung and quickhme. Maier is 

 loud in the praise of this philosophical bath, and even minute in 

 his directions for the choice of its principal ingredient. He 

 shortly after dwells much on the ignis philosopkicus, which is 



* This transmutation obtained belief so late as a century after our author's day, even 

 from the elder Geoifroy. — (See Le Pluche's History of the Heavens, vol. ii. p. 70.) 



■j- See the article Antimony in most of the larger Chemical Systems. His " Currus 

 Triumphalis Antimonii," and " Last Will and Testament," were translated into En- 

 glish towards the end of the 17 th century. 



