Matthew Hale gave rise to an instance of the lengths a lawyer will go when
before a jury who cannot detect him. Sir Samuel Shepherd,[249] the Attorney
General, in opening Hone's[250] first trial, calls him "one who was the
most learned man that ever adorned the Bench, the most even man that ever
blessed domestic life, the _most eminent man that ever advanced the
progress of science_, and one of the [very moderate] best and most purely
religious men that ever lived."

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ON THE DISCOVERY OF ANTIMONY.

Basil Valentine his triumphant Chariot of Antimony, with annotations of
Theodore Kirkringius, M.D. With the true book of the learned Synesius,
a Greek abbot, taken out of the Emperour's library, concerning the
Philosopher's Stone. London, 1678, 8vo.[251]

There are said to be three Hamburg editions of the collected works of
Valentine, who discovered the common antimony, and is said to have given
the name _antimoine_, in a curious way. Finding that the pigs of his
convent throve upon it, he gave it to his brethren, who died of it.[252]
The impulse given to chemistry by R. Boyle[253] seems to have brought out a
vast number of translations, as in the following tract:

ON ALCHEMY.

_Collectanea Chymica_: A collection of ten several treatises in
chymistry, concerning the liquor Alkehest, the Mercury of Philosophers,
and other curiosities worthy the perusal. Written by Eir.
Philaletha,[254] Anonymus, J. B. Van-Helmont,[255] Dr. Fr. {126}
Antonie,[256] Bernhard Earl of Trevisan,[257] Sir Geo. Ripley,[258]
Rog. Bacon,[259] Geo. Starkie,[260] Sir Hugh Platt,[261] and the Tomb
of Semiramis. See more in the contents. London, 1684, 8vo.

In the advertisements at the ends of these tracts there are upwards of a
hundred English tracts, nearly all of the period, and most of them
translations. Alchemy looks up since the chemists have found perfectly
different substances composed of the same elements and proportions. It is
true the chemists cannot yet _transmute_; but they may in time: they poke
about most assiduously. It seems, then, that the conviction that alchemy
_must_ be impossible was a delusion: but we do not mention it.

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The astrologers and the alchemists caught it in company in the following,
of which I have an unreferenced note.

"Mendacem et futilem hominem nominare qui volunt, calendariographum dicunt;
at qui sceleratum simul ac impostorem, chimicum.[26