266 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

their masters have round brass vessels of large size, perforated all over, the mouths of which are narrow, in which they place these chickens, and close the mouths with copper coverings and inter them underground, and they are nourished with the fine earth entering through the holes for six months. After this they uncover them and apply a copious fire, until the animals’ insides are completely burnt. Which done, when they have become cold, they are taken out and carefully ground, adding to them a third part of the blood of a red man, which blood has been dried and ground. These two compositions are tempered with sharp acid in a clean vessel; they then take very thin sheets of the purest red copper, and anoint this composition over them on both sides, and place them in the fire. And when they have become glowing, they take them out and quench and wash them in the same confection; and they do this for a long time, until this composition eats through the copper, and it takes the colour of gold. This gold is proper for all work.”-Ib., p. 267.

Our readers will find in Mr. Hendrie’s interesting note the explanation of the symbolical language of this recipe;¹ though we cannot agree with him in supposing Theophilus to have so understood it. We have no doubt the monk wrote what he had heard in good faith, and with no equivocal meaning; and we are even ourselves much disposed to regret and resist the transformation of toads into nitrates of potash, and of basilisks into sulphates of copper.

13. But whatever may be the value of the recipes of Theophilus, couched in the symbolical language of the alchemist, his evidence is as clear as it is conclusive, as far as regards the general processes adopted in his own time. The treatise of Peter de St. Audemar, contained in a volume transcribed by Jehan le Begue in 1431,² bears internal evidence

¹ [Ibid., p. 432. “The process which Theophilus describes in this symbolic language appears no other than that for procuring a pure gold by the means of the mineral acids. Let a solution of gold be made by nitro-muriatic acid and copper be introduced, the latter would be dissolved while the gold would re-appear, but in a state of purity, or, as the alchemist would have expressed it, the copper would have been transmuted into pure gold. ... The basilisc, the dragon, the red and green lions were (in the symbolic vocabulary of the alchemists) the sulphate of copper and of iron. ... The toads of Theophilus which hatch the eggs are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash, which would yield one of the elements of the solvent for gold; the blood of a red man, which has been dried and ground, probably a muriate of ammonia; the cocks, the sulphates of copper and iron; the eggs, gold ore; the hatched chickens, which require a stone pavement, sulphuric acid produced by burning them in a stone vessel, collecting the fumes; these are then all digested together, tempered with a sharp acid. The elements of nitro-muriatic acid are all here, the solvent for gold.”]

² [The treatise of Peter de St. Audemar (Omer) in the Paris library, transcribed in 1431 by Jehan le Beque, is translated in the first volume of the book by Mrs. Merrifield, above referred to (p. 260 n.).]

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