Page 51 - Charnock alchemical letter
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The Oxford Man
Moreover, what and it please the Queen majesty or her honourable
council after they have perused your Epistle, with this our confabulation
following, which will now rise to a pretty volume, will command your
book to be put in print, what think you therein, is it convenient or no?
Master Charnock
I do think it most convenient, as well because I have never a copy more,
than that which I mean should be presented to her majesty, as also upon
other diverse considerations.
The Oxford Man
I believe the Queen majesty and her honourable council will send for
you, and not suffer you to lie here in this west Anglia. But will retain you
and set it a work. And you to be called by the name of the Queen’s
philosopher, which in my opinion were an honour to her highness, and to
you a fame and worship forever, for the accomplishing of this most
secret, long and tedious work.
Master Charnock
Even as you have magnified me by your words to be the chiefest
philosopher within this realm: even so do I humble, and submit myself to
a whole score more excellenter learned than I in each other of the
sciences which I do profess. And as you say, it was possible that this
work would have taken place, if I had presented my Epistle according to
my first meaning, in the first year of the Queen majesty’s reign: for then
my work had been almost finished by this time, and then her majesty
should have had come commodity by it. And afterward there would have
grown every year some profit also. And now all this time is lost and
misspent, which grieveth me very much. And this I believe will be one of
the principal matters whereby this work shall now stand at a stay, and it
is all one to me, without it be more for the Queen majesty’s and her
honourable council’s pleasure, for a trial of the truth to have it wrought
because the loss of all this time, in which space this work would have
been, well nigh finished.
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