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I became so anxious to know what particular matter he was busy with, that I had to call upon him to satisfy my curiosity. It was with a little trepidation that I knocked at his door. I felt a good deal as one might have felt on disturbing an alchemist at his work, at the very moment, it might be, when he was about to make projection. Come in! said the Master in his grave, massive tones.
In 1514 he was invited to Rome by Leo X., but more in his character of philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist, than as a painter. Here Raphael was at the height of his fame, and engaged in his greatest works, the frescos of the Vatican. The younger artist was introduced to the elder; and two pictures which Leonardo painted while at Rome the "Madonna of St.
Hence, water is an intimate union of hydrogen and oxygen; and, in this sense, water may be said to contain hydrogen and oxygen. The alchemist would have said, the properties of hydrogen and oxygen are destroyed when these things unite to form water, but the essence, or substratum, of each remains.
A fly = a familiar. From the common old belief that an attendant demon waited on warlocks and witches in the shape of a fly, or some similar insect. cf. Jonson's The Alchemist, I : You are mistaken, doctor, Why he does ask one but for cups and horses, A rifling fly, none of your great familiars. Also Massinger's The Virgin Martyr, ii, II: Courtiers have flies That buzz all news unto them.
"Have you ever succeeded, Señor Alchemist," said the mathematician, "in extracting gold from the other metals?" "I have not yet extracted it," the alchemist replied, "but I know for certain that the thing is to be done, and that in less than two months more I could complete the discovery of the philosopher's stone, by means of which gold can be made even out of pebbles."
In the image of man, the alchemist created his universe. In the times when alchemy was dominant, the divine scheme of creation, and the place given to man in that scheme, were supposed to be thoroughly understood. Everything had its place, designed for it from the beginning, and in that place it remained unless it were forced from it by violent means.
Alchemists believed that most of the antediluvians, perhaps all of them, possessed a knowledge of this stone. How, otherwise, could they have prolonged their lives to nine and a half centuries? And Moses was surely a first-rate alchemist, as is proved by the story of the Golden Calf.
He can be truly said to be no man's fellow but his master's, for the rest of the servants are starved by him. He is the prime cause why noblemen build their houses so great, for the smallness of their kitchen makes the house the bigger; and the lord calls him his alchemist, that can extract gold out of herbs, mushrooms, or anything.
Towards the end, however, the whole turns too much on swindling and villany, which necessarily call for the interference of criminal justice, and the piece, from the punishment of the guilty, has everything but a merry conclusion. In the Alchemist, both the deceivers and deceived supply a fund of entertainment, only the author enters too deeply into the learning of alchemy.
"Most of their new Plays are, like some of ours, derived from the Spanish novels. I dare take upon me, to find more variety of them, in one play of BEN. JOHNSON's, than in all theirs together: as he who has seen the Alchemist, the Silent Woman, or Bartholomew Fair, cannot but acknowledge with me. I grant the French have performed what was possible on the ground work of the Spanish plays.
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