Charles Mackay (1814-1889), from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds
Among the alchymists who were born in the fifteenth, and distinguished themselves in the sixteenth century, the first, in point of date, is
John Aurelio Augurello. He was born at
Rimini in
1441, and became Professor of the
belles lettres at
Venice and
Trevisa. He was early convinced of the truth of the
hermetic science, and used to pray to
God that he might be happy enough to discover the
philosopher's stone. He was continually surrounded by the paraphernalia of
chemistry, and expended all his wealth in the purchase of drugs and metals. He was also a
poet, but of less merit than pretensions. His "
Chrysopeia," in which lie pretended to teach the art of making gold, he dedicated to
Pope Leo X, in the hope that the
Pontiff would reward him handsomely for the compliment; but the
Pope was too good a judge of
poetry to be pleased with the worse than mediocrity of his
poem, and too good a
philosopher to approve of the strange doctrines which it inculcated: he was, therefore, far from gratified at the dedication. It is said, that when Augurello applied to him for a reward, the Pope, with great ceremony and much apparent kindness and cordiality, drew an empty purse from his pocket, and presented it to the alchymist, saying, that since he was able to make
gold, the most appropriate present that could be made him, was a purse to put it in. This
scurvy reward was all that the poor alchymist ever got either for his poetry or his alchymy. He died in a state of extreme poverty, in the eighty-third year of his age.
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