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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
serttod , written by hig ancestor , the justly admired Franciscan Friar . Nowthte was a great man , and of most versatile abilities ; and lining well acquainted with his works long before , I doubted the p robability of his ever having countenanced , at any period of hi * life , the wild hypothesis of necromancy or conjuration , especially when I called to mind his express treatise against them , entitled < t ) e Nullitate Magise / In his great work , ( De Secretis
Operibus Artis et Naturae , ' and elsewhere , it is true he advocates Alchemy , and with very feasible subtlety , whatever opinion the vuTgar may entertain , who always misinterpret the question into some vague jargon about a philosopher ' s stone . But this is the croiy instance I remember in which he endeavours to proceed far beyond the apparent boundaries which nature has placed to art , since most of his other speculations , which are considered abstruse aifd vain , I conceive very practicable .
' 1 took the papers as requested . They formed a packet considerably voluminous , and appeared by the date , 1298 , to have been written in the last year anteceding the philosopher ' s death . They consisted chiefly of tracts and fragments concerning magic , some of them being transcripts and extrac t * from ancient authors , quoted , as it seemed , in illustration , or by way
of authority . That which engaged my attention above all the rest , were certain private memoranda of the celebrated Brazen Head he constructed . I had hitherto considered it as a personification of ignorance to account for an incapacity of comprehension . Bacon suffered great injustice , and was even imprisoned in his convent at the advanced age of sixty-four , from the injurious reports ' circulated by the base malice of vulgar envy .
I was deeply interested in what I found , and confessed as much to the learned man who had favoured me with the perusal . He made no reply , and we parted . It is plain , however , that what I had said was grateful to his feelings , for some years afterwards , when on his death-bed , he sent the manuscript over to me from Egypt , b y one of the natives , a trusty servant , who had closed Mb eyes and buried him with his own hands in the spot he had indicated . Here it is : —
< fl * mmentaiius secretu * Jptattte iftogni 33 aconfe : Whereas the yeares of my mortall life did long since begin to * wane unto the darknesse , and my minde seemeth toe follow its shadowe , which is the bodye , side by side towards the grave ; —I did enterprise
tot treat e and fashion an Image of brass , wherein the better portion of my seule , sublimed from earthe , shoulde reside . after its present copeiftng hadde fallen into tluste . Not mute , not unintelligent ) looked VJ ^ M in tense or human speech , but these things exercising more pur 4 eMUt jpf tpnplie than cti this present , and thereunto gifted with orqetdar ctfad QfMffull breath ofpowere .
Untitled Article
& 4 Nt Fruit * JBa&wi * Brasem Hea < t .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1836, page 506, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2660/page/46/
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