Page 53 - Scottish Alchemists

cloaks and become insatiable wordlings, usurious caterpillars, hellish pawn-
mungers, and cut the garments of the necessitous to make them riding coates
in their journey towards hell. O what a pitifull sight were it to see the offalls
of heaven, the drugges of the earth and hell’s fit fagots inuested in heaven’s
richest endowments? But what more tragical spectacle were it to behold
vertue stript naked, spoyled of her beautie, heauen’s gate which now stands
open for her close shut up, and the entrie confined to the narrow passage of
a needle’s eye, through which how hard it is for asses loaden with golde and
corruption to enter, the master of heaven when hee was vpon earth hath
foretold. I tremble as in an Ague to heare of this exchange that vice should
reach heaven and vertue enter in the right way to hell.”19

An account of the latter end of Patrick Scot is related by Calderwood in
his History,20 where he states that he died in great indigence, and was buried
at the expense of the Bishop of Ross, for the good service he had done to the
king and to the bishops.

From the notices given of the Scottish alchemists, it will be observed that
they attained not merely to local but even to European reputation. Although
we cannot attribute to their labours any great discovery by which these
would have been handed down to future times, still they kept alive in their
country that spirit of inquiry into matters pertaining to chemical and physical
science, which a century or two later produced men like Black, Playfair, and
Leslie, by whose discoveries the domain of science has been widely
increased. It is also satisfactory to know that although the former search for
gold among the bleak hills of Scotland ended in loss and disappointment, that
country has, by the discoveries of science in recent times, yielded, and is
now yielding, from her mineral treasures, truly golden harvests to a far
greater extent than could have been dreamt of in the wildest and most
visionary aspirations of her most sanguine alchemists.

19 The Tillage of Light, pp.11 and 19.
20 Volume vii, p583.

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