Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/248

 cation of water, our unslaked lime, chalk, white of egg, diverse powders, dung, ashes, clay, waxed bags, vitriol, saltpeter, and divers sorts of fire made of wood and charcoal, salt of tartar, alkali, prepared salt, calcined and coagulated substances, clay made with horse-hair or man's-hair, oil of tartar, alum, glass, yeast, herbs, crude tartar, red orpiment, our substances for absorbing and drinking-in others; our citronizing of silver; our cementing and fermentation; our moulds, assaying-vessels and many things more.

I will tell you, as was also taught me, the four spirits and the seven bodies in their order, as oft I have heard my lord name them. The first spirit is called quicksilver, the second orpiment, the third sal ammoniac and the fourth brimstone. The seven bodies, lo! here are they eke: Sol is gold, Luna we call silver, Mars iron, Mercury we name quicksilver, Saturn lead, Jupiter tin and Venus copper, by the souls of my forefathers!

Whosoever will practise this cursed craft shall alway be poor; for all the goods he spendeth thereon he shall lose, I have no doubt. Whoso that list to display his folly, let him come forth and learn multiplying. And every man that hath aught in his purse, let him appear and wax a philosopher. Perchance because that craft is so light to learn? Nay, nay, God wot, be he friar or monk, priest or canon, or any other man, though he sit at his book day and night learning this foolish elvish lore, all is in vain and, pardee, much worse! To teach this subtlety to an ignorant man, fy! speak not thereof; it may not be. Knoweth he book-lore, or knoweth he none, in the end he shall find it all the same. For, by my salvation, both the two end alike well in multiplying, when they have done all they may; that is to say, they fail both the two.