Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookd band is to conceal the wound in the neck; otherwise, this description of the statue agrees exactly with the description which Cardinal Baronius has given of the body of the saint when found in 1599. 'The ornaments round the shrine, of bronze and rare and precious marbles, are in the worst taste, and do not harmonize with the pathetic simplicity of the figure. 'At what period St. Cecilia came to be regarded as the patron saint of music, and accompanied by the musical attributes, I cannot decide. It is certain that in ancient devotional representations she is not so distinguished; nor in the old Italian series of subjects from her life have I found any in which she is figured as singing, or playing upon instruments[164].' ยง 73. THE CANON'S YEOMAN'S PROLOGUE, AND TALE. The Prologue, as well as the Tale itself, belongs to the very latest period of Chaucer's work. This is clear at once, from its originality, as well as from the metre, and the careless ease of the rhythm, which sometimes almost degenerates into slovenliness, as though our author had written some of it in hot haste, with the intention of revising it more carefully afterwards. Besides, the poet has boldly improved upon his plan of the pilgrims' stories as laid down in his Prologue. We have there no hint of the Canon nor of his Yeoman; they are two new pilgrims who join themselves to the rest upon the road. A dispute arising between the master and the man, the former is put out of countenance, and actually rides away for very sorrow and shame (l. 702); but the man remains, to denounce the cupidity of the alchemists and to expose their trickery. Tyrwhitt remarks:--'The introduction of the Chanouns Yeman to tell a tale, at a time when so many of the original characters remain to be called upon, appears a little extraordinary. It should seem, that some sudden resentment had determined Chaucer to interrupt the regular course of his work, in order to insert a satire against the alchemists. That their pretended science was much cultivated about this time, and produced its usual evils, may fairly be inferred from the Act, which was passed soon after, 5 Henry IV, cap. iv. to make it Felonie _to multiplie gold or siluer, or to vse the art of multiplication_.' He adds--'The first considerable coinage of gold in this country was begun by Edward III in the year 1343, and according to Camden (in his Remains, art. _Money_), "the Alchemists did affirm, as an unwritten verity, that the Rose-nobles, which were coined soon after, were made by projection or multiplication Alchemical of Raymund Lully in the Tower of London." Ashmole, in his Theatrum Chemicum, p. 443, has repeated this ridiculous story concerning Lully with additional circumstances, as if he really believed it; though Lully, by the best accounts, had been dead above twenty years before Edward III began to coin gold[165].' The above-mentioned volume by Ashmole, entitled Theatrum Chemicum[166], is a very singular production. And, perhaps, not the least singular circumstance is that Ashmole actually gives 'The Tale of the Chanon's Yeman, written by our ancient and famous poet, Geoffry Chaucer,' Prologue and all, at full length (pp. 227-256), under the impression, apparently, that Chaucer was really a believer in the science! He says--'One reason why I selected out of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that of the Chanon's Yeoman was, to let the world see what notorious cheating there has beene ever used, under pretence of this true (though injur'd) Science; Another is, to shew that Chaucer himselfe was a Master therein.' It is indeed true that Chaucer had examined into alchemy very closely; but it is perfectly clear that he had made up his mind, with his strong English common sense, that the whole matter was a delusion. Had he lived in the present century, he could hardly have spoken out in more assured terms. In a similar manner he had studied astrology, and was equally a disbeliever in all but the terms of it and a few of its most general and vague assertions. He says expressly, in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. sec. 4, l. 36:--'natheles, thise ben observauncez of iudicial matiere and rytes of payens [pagans], in which my spirit ne hath no feith, ne no knowing of hir _horoscopum_.' But it is evident that the believers in alchemy had to make the best use they could of Chaucer's language, by applying it as being directed only against notorious cheats; and accordingly, we find in The Ordinall of Alchimy, by Thomas Norton of Bristol, printed in Ashmole's collection, various passages imitated from Chaucer, such as, e.g. that at p. 17:-- 'The fals man walketh from Towne to Towne, For the most parte in a threed-bare Gowne,' &c. And again, George Ripley, in his Compound of Alchymie, dedicated to King Edward IV., printed in the same collection, says, at p. 153:-- 'Their Clothes be bawdy and woryn threde-bare, Men may them smell for Multyplyers where they go,' &c.[167] Ashmole's work contains several treatises which profess to explain alchemy, nearly all alike couched in mysterious, and often in ridiculous language. Such are Norton's Ordinall of Alchimy, Ripley's Compound of Alchymie, Liber Patris Sapientiae, Hermes Bird (really Lydgate's poem of The Churl and the Bird), Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale (!), Pearce the Blacke Monke upon the Elixir, Charnock's Breviary of Naturall Philosophy[168], Ripley's Mistery of Alchymists, an extract from Gower's Confessio Amantis, Aristotle's Secreta Secretorum, translated by Lydgate; and so on. On the whole, the book is equally curious and dull. It would hardly be possible to give much idea of alchemy in a brief space, and it would certainly be unprofitable. The curious will find an excellent article upon it (entitled 'Alchemy') in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and a history of it, by no means uninteresting, in the first volume of Thomson's History of Chemistry. In Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, 2nd edition, 1847, vol. i. p. 320, the following notice of it occurs, which I quote for the reader's convenience:--'Like other kinds of Mysticism, Alchemy seems to have grown out of the notions of moral, personal, and mythological qualities, which men associated with terms, of which the primary application was to physical properties. This is the form in which the subject is presented to us in the earliest writings which we possess on the subject of chemistry, those of Geber of Seville, who is supposed to have lived in the eighth or ninth century. The very titles of Geber's works show the notions on which this pretended science proceeds. They are, "Of the Search of Perfection;" "Of the Sum of Perfection or of the Perfect Magistery;" "Of the Invention of Verity, of Perfection." The basis of this phraseology is the distinction of metals into more or less _perfect_; gold being the most perfect, as being the most valuable, most beautiful, most pure, most durable; silver the next; and so on. The "Searc |