8 INTRODUCTION. 



into virgin gold, was never discovered, and the 

 " art of making gold," as it was termed, visually 

 ended in reducing its professors to rags. Its 

 vanity and certain results are well told in the 

 following shrewd lines by the poet Spenser : 



" To lose good days, that might be better spent ; 

 To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; 

 To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; 

 To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 

 To fret their souls with crosses and with cares ; 

 To eat their hearts, with comfortless despairs : 

 Unhappy wights ! born to disastrous end, 

 That do their lives in tedious tendance spend." 



It was a striking example of that unquench- 

 able hope, which will hope against hope, that 

 the idea of an Elixir conferring immortality 

 could ever have long occupied the attention of 

 men styling themselves philosophers. The 

 origin of this remarkable error admits of being 

 traced, like that of so many errors, to an exag- 

 geration of original circumstances. A celebrated 

 physician of ancient time, by name Actuarius, 

 makes mention in his works of a certain famous 

 medicine which would preserve the body in 

 health to the end of life. Geber, the alchemist, 

 then asserted that he positively possessed a 

 medicine capable of curing every disease, how- 

 ever desperate, and of renewing " man's strength 

 like the eagles." Succeeding alchemists then 

 declared that they possessed the Elixir of Im- 

 mortal Life. It was a natural effect in some 

 respects, that the growing science of making gold 

 should have the consequence o extending the 

 desires of men to search for a draught which, 

 when their exhaustless riches were supplied, 

 would enable the possessor to satiate himself 



