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Updated: June 23, 2025
Dryden, in his preface to the translation of M. Du Fresnoy, speaks more favourably of Otway; and after mentioning these instances, Gildon ascribes this taste in Dryden, to his having read many French Romances.
Fresnoy was not slow to see the aid this gave him, and pressed me hard and desperately; so that we played for a full minute at close quarters, thrusting and parrying, neither of us having room to use the edge, or time to utter word or prayer. At this game we were so evenly matched that for a time the end was hard to tell. Presently, however, there came a change.
Through this we swept on to the inn, almost running over the four evangelists, whom we found standing at the door ready for the saddle. I bade them, in a quick peremptory tone, to get to horse, and was overjoyed to see them obey without demur or word of Fresnoy.
And I will warrant them for four as gallant boys as you will ever find behind you! They were certainly four as arrant ruffians as I had ever seen before me, and I saw I must not hesitate. 'Two or none, M. Fresnoy, I said firmly. 'I gave you a commission for two, and two I will take Matthew and Mark, or Luke and John, as you please. ''Tis a pity to break the party, said he, scowling.
The Duke afterwards boasted to Lenglet du Fresnoy of his achievements as an alchymist, and regretted that be had not been able to discover the secret of the precious powder by which he performed them. Aluys soon found that, although he might make a dupe of the Duke de Richelieu, he could not get any money from him.
Not having been taught the handling of his pencil, he worked with difficulty; but MIGNARD succeeded in giving him a freer command and a more skilful touch; while DU FRESNOY, who was the more literary man, enriched the invention of MIGNARD by reading to him an Ode of Anacreon or Horace, a passage from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the Æneid, or the Jerusalem Delivered, which offered subjects for the artist's invention, who would throw out five or six different sketches on the same subject; a habit which so highly improved the inventive powers of MIGNARD, that he could compose a fine picture with playful facility.
Like most of the men of my province, I am commonly melancholic, but I have the habit of growing witty at such times as these. 'Now, M. Fresnoy, I continued, 'I am waiting your convenience. Must I put on my cloak to keep myself warm? He answered by a curse, and stood looking at me irresolutely. 'If you will come down, he said. 'Send your man away and I will come, I answered briskly.
The story of this alchymist, as handed down by tradition, and enshrined in the pages of Lenglet du Fresnoy, is not a little marvellous. He was born at Pontoise of a poor but respectable family, at the end of the thirteenth, or beginning of the fourteenth, century. Having no patrimony, he set out for Paris at an early age, to try his fortune as a public scribe.
I had thought, while I listened and wondered, of more than one whom this might be: the leech, Simon Fleix, Madame Bruhl, Fresnoy even. But as the tap came, and I felt my mother tremble in my arms, enlightenment came with it, and I pondered no more, I knew as well as if she hail spoken and told me.
Lenglet du Fresnoy, in his "History of the Hermetic Philosophy," says, "Most of them pretended that Shem, or Chem, the son of Noah, was an adept in the art, and thought it highly probable that the words chemistry and alchymy were both derived from his name." Others say, the art was derived from the Egyptians, amongst whom it was first founded by Hermes Trismegistus.
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