, in
1595, for the wardenship of the college at Manchester. He remained in this
capacity till 1602 or 1603, when, his strength and intellect beginning to
fail him, he was compelled to resign. He retired to his old dwelling at
Mortlake, in a state not far removed from actual want, supporting himself
as a common fortune-teller, and being often obliged to sell or pawn his
books to procure a dinner. James I. was often applied to on his behalf,
but he refused to do any thing for him. It may be said to the discredit of
this king, that the only reward he would grant the indefatigable Stowe, in
his days of old age and want, was the royal permission to beg; but no one
will blame him for neglecting such a quack as John Dee. He died in 1608,
in the eighty-first year of his age, and was buried at Mortlake.

THE COSMOPOLITE.

Many disputes have arisen as to the real name of the alchymist who wrote
several works under the above designation. The general opinion is that he
was a Scotsman named Seton, and that by a fate very common to alchymists
who boasted too loudly of their powers of transmutation, he ended his days
miserably in a dungeon, into which he was thrown by a German potentate
until he made a million of gold to pay his ransom. By some he has been
confounded with Michael Sendivog, or Sendivogius, a Pole, a professor of
the same art, who made a great noise in Europe at the commencement of the
seventeenth century. Lenglet du Fresnoy, who is in general well informed
with respect to the alchymists, inclines to the belief that these
personages were distinct; and gives the following particulars of the
Cosmopolite, extracted from George Morhoff, in his _Epistola ad
Langelottum_, and other writers.

About the year 1600, one Jacob Haussen, a Dutch pilot, was shipwrecked on
the coast of Scotland. A gentleman, named Alexander Seton, put off in a
boat, and saved him from drowning, and afterwards entertained him
hospitably for many weeks at his house on the shore. Haussen saw that he
was addicted to the pursuits of chemistry, but no conversation on the
subject passed between them at the time. About a year and a half
afterwards, Haussen being then at home at Enkhuysen, in Holland, received
a visit from his former host. He endeavoured to repay the kindness that
had been shewn him; and so great a friendship arose between them that
Seton, on his departure, offered to make him acquainted with the great
secret of the philosopher's stone. In