ABSTRACT
The records of Alchemy are a long-drawn chain of testimony in the Latin tongue, for it continued till the last days of the seventeenth century, and even for a few years subsequently an occasional text appeared, though the day of Latin was over and the vernaculars prevailed everywhere. All that is great in the Secret Art, all that belongs essentially to the Great Work and constitutes its canon, was written in that language, some tracts of Paracelsus excepted, soon to be enshrined therein. At the end of the sixteenth century and thence onward there was a large output in German, but it belongs to another category, with a seal of suspicion set upon the major part, because—as I have shewn elsewhere—a thriving trade was driven at that time in the putative occult sciences from A to Z, but in this one most of all. When the Latin canon originated it was reflected so directly from Greek sources through Arabian channels that the early texts—which, moreover, are few enough—usually pass as translations from the second of these tongues: it is probable enough but cannot be termed certain. The chief memorials are those which survive under the dubious names of Morien, Artephius, Rhasis, the anonymous Turba—connected, however, with Arisleus—standing at the head and front and recalling irresistibly that Assembly of Philosophers which I have cited already among the Byzantine fragments.
