k in Fleet-street, over against St. Dunstan's
church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of
the clock, told me in _syllables_ the true matter of the _philosopher's
stone_, which he bequeathed to me as a _legacy_." By this we learn that
a miserable wretch knew the art of _making gold_, yet always lived a
beggar; and that Ashmole really imagined he was in possession of the
_syllables of a secret_! He has, however, built a curious monument of
the learned follies of the last age, in his "Theatrum Chemicum
Britannicum." Though Ashmole is rather the historian of this vain
science than an adept, it may amuse literary leisure to turn over this
quarto volume, in which he has collected the works of several English
alchymists, subjoining his commentary. It affords a curious specimen of
Rosicrucian mysteries; and Ashmole relates several miraculous stories.
Of the philosopher's stone, he says he knows enough to hold his tongue,
but not enough to speak. This stone has not only the power of
transmuting any imperfect earthy matter into its utmost degree of
perfection, and can convert the basest metals into gold, flints into
stone, &c.; but it has still more occult virtues, when the arcana have
been entered into by the choice fathers of hermetic mysteries. The
vegetable stone has power over the natures of man, beast, fowls, fishes,
and all kinds of trees and plants, to make them flourish and bear fruit
at any time. The magical stone discovers any person wherever he is
concealed; while the angelical stone gives the apparitions of angels,
and a power of conversing with them. These great mysteries are supported
by occasional facts, and illustrated by prints of the most divine and
incomprehensible designs, which we would hope were intelligible to the
initiated. It may be worth showing, however, how liable even the latter
were to blunder on these mysterious hieroglyphics. Ashmole, in one of
his chemical works, prefixed a frontispiece, which, in several
compartments, exhibited Phoebus on a lion, and opposite to him a lady,
who represented Diana, with the moon in one hand and an arrow in the
other, sitting on a crab; Mercury on a tripod, with the scheme of the
heavens in one hand, and his caduccus in the other. These were intended
to express the materials of the stone, and the season for the process.
Upon the altar is the bust of a man, his head covered by an astrological
scheme dropped from the clouds; and on the altar