EASTLAKE’S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING 265

opened by the wayside, where the dust may cover them, and the foot crush them?

12. Not a few passages conceived in the highest spirit of self-denying piety would, of themselves, have warranted our sincere thanks to Mr. Hendrie for his publication of the manuscript. The practical value of its contents is however very variable; most of the processes described have been either improved or superseded, and many of the recipes are quite as illustrative of the writer’s credulity in reception, as generosity in communication. The references to the “land of Havilah” for gold, and to “Mount Calybe” for iron,¹ are characteristic of monkish geographical science; the recipe for the making of Spanish gold is interesting, as affording us a clue to the meaning of the medićval traditions respecting the basilisk. Pliny² says nothing about the hatching of this chimera from cocks’ eggs, and ascribes the power of killing at sight to a different animal, the catoblepas, whose head, fortunately, was so heavy that it could not be held up. Probably the word “basiliscus” in Theophilus would have been better translated “cockatrice.”

“There is also a gold called Spanish gold, which is composed from red copper, powder of basilisk, and human blood, and acid. The Gentiles, whose skilfulness in this art is commendable, make basilisks in this manner. They have, underground, a house walled with stones everywhere, above and below, with two very small windows, so narrow that scarcely any light can appear through them; in this house they place two old cocks of twelve or fifteen years, and they give them plenty of food. When these have become fat, through the heat of their good condition, they agree together and lay eggs. Which being laid, the cocks are taken out and toads are placed in, which may hatch the eggs, and to which bread is given for food. The eggs being hatched, chickens issue out, like hens’ chickens, to which after seven days grow the tails of serpents, and immediately, if there were not a stone pavement to the house, they would enter the earth. Guarding against which,

¹ [There are many kinds of gold, among which the best kind is produced in the land of Hevilath, which, according to Genesis, the river Phison surrounds (Theophilus, p. 265). “Iron is called Calibs, from the Mount Calybe, in which the most is known of its practice” (p. 377). See Genesis ii. 11, 12: “The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good.” The Chalybes (in Pontus) were the traditional workers in iron (Virg. Ćn. viii. 421, etc.).]

² [Pliny’s description of the basilisk is in Nat. Hist., book viii. c. 33; of the catoblepas, in c. 32: its head is “always bent down towards the earth. Were it not for this circumstance, it would prove the destruction of the human race; for all who behold its eyes fall dead upon the spot.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]