The Alchemist, Ben Jonson [best short novels TXT] 📗

are at fixation,
A third is in ascension. Go your ways.
Have you set the oil of luna in kemia? Face

Yes, sir.

Subtle

And the philosopher’s vinegar?

Face

Ay.

Exit. Pertinax Surly

We shall have a salad!

Sir Epicure Mammon

When do you make projection?

Subtle

Son, be not hasty, I exalt our medicine,
By hanging him in balneo vaporoso,
And giving him solution; then congeal him;
And then dissolve him; then again congeal him;
For look, how oft I iterate the work,
So many times I add unto his virtue.
As, if at first one ounce convert a hundred,
After his second loose, he’ll turn a thousand;
His third solution, ten; his fourth, a hundred:
After his fifth, a thousand thousand ounces
Of any imperfect metal, into pure
Silver or gold, in all examinations,
As good as any of the natural mine.
Get you your stuff here against afternoon,
Your brass, your pewter, and your andirons.

Sir Epicure Mammon

Not those of iron?

Subtle

Yes, you may bring them too:
We’ll change all metals.

Pertinax Surly

I believe you in that.

Sir Epicure Mammon

Then I may send my spits?

Subtle

Yes, and your racks.

Pertinax Surly

And dripping-pans, and pot-hangers, and hooks?
Shall he not?

Subtle

If he please.

Pertinax Surly

—To be an ass.

Subtle

How, sir!

Sir Epicure Mammon

This gentleman you must bear withal:
I told you he had no faith.

Pertinax Surly

And little hope, sir;
But much less charity, should I gull myself.

Subtle

Why, what have you observed, sir, in our art,
Seems so impossible?

Pertinax Surly

But your whole work, no more.
That you should hatch gold in a furnace, sir,
As they do eggs in Egypt!

Subtle

Sir, do you
Believe that eggs are hatched so?

Pertinax Surly

If I should?

Subtle

Why, I think that the greater miracle.
No egg but differs from a chicken more
Than metals in themselves.

Pertinax Surly

That cannot be.
The egg’s ordained by nature to that end,
And is a chicken in potentia.

Subtle

The same we say of lead and other metals,
Which would be gold, if they had time.

Sir Epicure Mammon

And that
Our art doth further.

Subtle

Ay, for ’twere absurb
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant: something went before.
There must be remote matter.

Pertinax Surly

Ay, what is that?

Subtle

Marry, we say⁠—

Sir Epicure Mammon

Ay, now it heats: stand, Father,
Pound him to dust.

Subtle

It is, of the one part,
A humid exhalation, which we call
Materia liquida, or the unctuous water;
On the other part, a certain crass and vicious
Portion of earth; both which, concorporate,
Do make the elementary matter of gold;
Which is not yet propria materia,
But common to all metals and all stones;
For, where it is forsaken of that moisture,
And hath more dryness, it becomes a stone:
Where it retains more of the humid fatness,
It turns to sulphur, or to quicksilver,
Who are the parents of all other metals.
Nor can this remote matter suddenly
Progress so from extreme unto extreme,
As to grow gold, and leap o’er all the means.
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then
Proceeds she to the perfect. Of that airy
And oily water, mercury is engendered;
Sulphur of the fat and earthy part; the one,
Which is the last, supplying the place of male,
The other of the female, in all metals.
Some do believe hermaphrodeity,
That both do act and suffer. But these two
Make the rest ductile, malleable, extensive.
And even in gold they are; for we do find
Seeds of them, by our fire, and gold in them;
And can produce the species of each metal
More perfect thence, than nature doth in earth.
Beside, who doth not see in daily practice
Art can beget bees, hornets, beetles, wasps,
Out of the carcases and dung of creatures;
Yea, scorpions of an herb, being rightly placed?
And these are living creatures, far more perfect
And excellent than metals.

Sir Epicure Mammon

Well said, Father!
Nay, if he take you in hand, sir, with an argument,
He’ll bray you in a mortar.

Pertinax Surly

Pray you, sir, stay.
Rather than I’ll be brayed, sir, I’ll believe
That Alchemy is a pretty kind of game,
Somewhat like tricks o’ the cards, to cheat a man
With charming.

Subtle

Sir?

Pertinax Surly

What else are all your terms,
Whereon no one of your writers ’grees with other?
Of your elixir, your lac virginis,
Your stone, your medicine, and your chrysosperm,
Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury,
Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood,
Your marcasite, your tutie, your magnesia,
Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther;
Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop,
Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,
And then your red man, and your white woman,
With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials,
Of piss and eggshells, women’s terms, man’s blood,
Hair o’ the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay,
Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,
And worlds of other strange ingredients,
Would burst a man to name?

Subtle

And all these named,
Intending but one thing; which art our writers
Used to obscure their art.

Sir Epicure Mammon

Sir, so I told him⁠—
Because the simple idiot should not learn it,
And make it vulgar.

Subtle

Was not all the knowledge
Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols?
Speak not the scriptures oft in parables?
Are not the choicest fables of the poets,
That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,
Wrapped in perplexed allegories?

Sir Epicure Mammon

I urged that,
And cleared to him, that Sisyphus was damned
To roll the ceaseless stone, only because
He would have made Ours common.

Dol Common

Appears at the door.⁠—
Who is this?

Subtle

’Sprecious!⁠—What do you mean? Go in, good lady,
Let me entreat you.

Dol retires.

—Where’s this varlet?

Re-enter Face. Face

Sir.

Subtle

You very knave! Do you use me thus?

Face

Wherein, sir?

Subtle

Go in and see, you traitor. Go!

Exit Face. Sir Epicure Mammon

Who is it, sir?

Subtle

Nothing, sir; nothing.

Sir Epicure Mammon

What’s the matter, good sir?
I have not seen you thus distempered: who is’t?

Subtle

All arts have still had, sir, their adversaries;
But ours the most ignorant.⁠—

Re-enter Face.

What now?

Face

’Twas not my fault, sir; she would speak with you.

Subtle

Would she, sir! Follow me.

Exit. Sir Epicure Mammon

Stopping him. Stay, Lungs.

Face

I dare not, sir.

Sir Epicure Mammon

Stay, man; what is