1823.] Si/mhola Aure(& Menscey S^c. 245 



flour and leaven, cheese of milk and rennet, &c. and one whole 

 house of its several parts/' Nathing (he concludes), save incre- 

 dulity or ignorance, can see a difficulty here. 



Book IV. Romans. — The earliest alchemical authority our 

 author is able to find among the Romans is one Morienus, whom 

 he states to have lived-.about A. D. 800. He argues, however, 

 that the Romans must have been acquainted with the Hermetic 

 art from their knowledge of the mythology and philosophy of the 

 Greeks, and from the extent of their pubhc revenues. He 

 employs much erudition to little purpose, and quotes as alchemi- 

 cal the well-known enigmatic epitaph jE/la, Laelia, Crispisj said 

 to have been found with a perpetual lamp, and a second in 

 which occur the following lines : 



Hie elenienta brevi clausit digesta labore, 

 Vase sub hoc modico Maximus Olybius. 



Both are probably forgeries of the 15th century. Virgil 

 wrote alchemy. The golden bough of the sibyl, and indeed the 

 whole descent of iEneas to the shades, is an allegory of this 

 kind: he wisely omits all notice of the bard's ^^ porta emittet 

 ebiirna.^' He notices the tradition that Virgil was a necro- 

 mancer, a fancy at least as old as the 12th century. This section 

 concludes like the former with a logical disputation. The argu- 

 ments, as we have seen, are either mere verbal equivoques^ or 

 barefaced assertions, that the metals have been decomposed and 

 recomposed by sundry alchemical worthies. 



Thus Maier concludes his review of the supposed Chrysopoetic 

 science of the earlier and classical ages. It is unnecessary to 

 add, that the whole can be considered at the present day only 

 as a tissue of fiction, or at best of gratuitous assumption and 

 gross misconception. 



Among all that his labour and erudition have brought together, 

 there is not a single real authority (if we except the very 

 obscure passage in Philostratus) on which we can ground even 

 a suspicion that alchemy was studied or heard of at any timd 

 previous to the utter declension of art and literature in the 

 eighth and ninth centuries. 



Yet that Maier and many others did sincerely believe much 

 at least of what they affirmed concerning the history, as Avell as 

 the reality of their art, can scarcely be doubted, nor is it, per- 

 haps, difficult to trace the causes which tended to produce and 

 to confirm these hallucinations. 



The 16th century was no more the age of critical than of phi- 

 losophical accuracy, and forgeries of all kinds were, therefore, 

 received with less of question and examination. Add to this, 

 that the mind of the adept already habituated to a symbolical 

 language, chiefly borrowed from the heathen mythology, was the 

 more easily led to assume, that the whole of that mythology was 

 little more than the involucrum of chemical science. It will be 



