more than a few lines Shakspere's literary contemporaries.

There is Sackville, with his grand allegories, sad and solemn; Sidney, with his chivalrous and romantic phantasies, now grown tedious and artificial; Spencer, the Platonist and Puritan, overflowing with delicious harmonies and airy singing, yet full of learning as an encyclopædia, redundant and over long, though fragmentary; Daniel, equal and meditative; Drayton, voluminous, but vigorous; Fairfax, harmonious and fervid; Harrington, gay and witty; Davies, the profoundest thinker and closest of poetical reasoners; Donne, vigorous and subtle ; Ben Jonson, graceful, tender as he was rugged, and robust; Decker, versatile and powerful; Chapman, passionate, sublime, and energetic; Webster, who has reached the bounds of pathos; Heywood, the most voluminous and nimble-witted of dramatists; Marston, Juvenilian in satire; Middleton, and Peele the musical, Green the natural, Marlow of the swelling line, Middleton, Lodge, and Greene, Kyd, Nash, Lily,—who can epitomise them

all?

Then, for prose, Bacon's essays (his Novum Organon was not yet writ); Hackluyt's voyage, and Purchas, for travels. For translations; North's Plutarch, Holland's

F 4

Pliny, and Sandy's Ovid; Camden, Knolles, and Hollinshed, for history; Spelman and Stowe for antiquarians.

Strange lives led some of these men: Marlow dying from a bully's stab, Green of a surfeit of herrings and sack, Ben Jonson poor, and Spencer in poverty.

One age produced the finest plays, the most ideal and harmonious poetry, the most laborious and exact translations, the most vigorous paraphrases, the most amusing travels. The drama, scarcely began, reached at once its perfection, and a new system of philosophy overturned the despotism of Aristotle. Of Elizabethan wit, apart from its climax in Shakspere's comedy, we do not care much. For divinity, we have Hooker and Jewel, Parker, and a host of terse divines.

When we consider the age, and look down upon it from the future as from a tower, our wonder is, that half a century could have developed the mind of any one nation to such a degree, and that so many faculties as the poetical, historical, dramatic, and a dozen others, could have been contemporaneously stimulated in such harmony and with such power. Few nations could expect to boast many such epochs; and even the Pope and the Johnson age were not able to equal the fertility of the period of which we

treat.

CHAP. XI.

ALCHEMY.

"But many artificers have been too swift,
With hasty credence to fume away their thrift."

Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy.

"Empoisoning themselves, and losing of their sights,
With odours and smokes, and waking up by nights."

Ripley's Compound of Alchemy.

Vitality of Elizabethan Superstition. Alchemy. - The Alchemist of Edward IV.'s Reign. Alchemists in Monasteries - Itinerant. -Tricks of Impostors. — Oriental Grandeur of Terms. Arabic Words. Alchemist Books. Receipts. Mysterious Jargon. — -Two Ways of making Gold. — Generation of Metals. -Ben Jonson.-Theory of Alchemy explained. — Refutation by Boerhaave's Experiments. History of Alchemy. - Egypt and Arabia. Roger Bacon. - Valentinus. Pope John. Paracelsus, the Ashmole. — Kelly. — Lully. — Dr. Dee's Adventures. Friend of Elizabeth.- Conferences with Spirits. Kelly his Speculator. -Visits Bohemia. —Dies Poor. Dee's Enigmas and Receipts. - Rosicrucian Rhapsodies.

Arch-Alchemist. Chaucer.

Ir

It throws a mysterious shadow over the age of Shakspere when we remember that his greatest contemporaries were believers in witchcraft and alchemy.

They believed, that is to say, that it was possible for man to discover a means of turning baser metals into gold,

and they believed that there were people who had sold themselves to the Devil, in order to obtain power to injure their enemies or their rivals. The imagination of the age was lively—its faith strong. God seemed nearer to the earth in those days than now, and the power of evil too. In all sciences there were dark corners, such as are in a room at twilight, which seemed to them doorways leading from the known to the unknown, and joining earth both to hell and heaven. Men were more humble when they felt that lightnings were lurking behind every cloud, and doomed spirits were howling beneath all feet. They felt in the presence of great beings, whom they loved and feared; and the universe was not as yet mapped out, allotted, ransacked, disenchanted, and exhausted, as every public lecturer and sciolist seems now to think it.

Of alchemy, as one of the strangest and least excusable of human delusions, we treat somewhat largely.

The old monkish writers of Edward IV.'s reign are full of allusions to the class of men known as alchemists: they describe them with bleared eyes, lean cheeks, threadbare clothes, and fingers stained and black with corrosives.

They were known at a glance in a crowd as multipliers, and laughed at for multiplying broken glasses, and losing silver in a foolish search for gold. These enthusiasts spoke of Geber and Avicenna, though they had angels' visions,

and were the companions of kings, were derided in the street by any Jack or Jill happy and merry, though the hair was growing through their hood, refusing to make even a bellows for such men without receiving ready money. They were known to dabble in blood, and to use wine, and soot, and salts, and powders, and to boast of the elixir and the quintessence, but never to wax a doit the richer. The mob formed their opinions quickly, and they were right. The alchemist had always discovered the stone, but wanted 207. to bring it to light.

These alchemists promised great things: they would enable the King to win France or bring home the Holy Cross; but were much haunted by sergeants and men who had lent them 107., and were glad to get a noble. When, at last, they were pulled to Newgate or Ludgate, their pockets were found stuffed, not with coins, but with Paris balls and St. Martin's signets; and when their dupes and creditors assailed them with complaints, they used to declare they had been robbed of their elixir, and that, with help, they could soon make fine gold of tin.*

Some of these impostors crept into convents, under favour of the abbot or spiritual lord, promising, to use their own jargon, "to produce a royal medicine one upon

* Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum, p. 17.; Norton's Ordinal.