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130 PARACELSUS
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day I
You understand me? I have said enough?
Festus. Now die, dear Aureole I
Paracelsus. Festus, let my hand-
This hand, lie in your own-my own true friend I
Aprile I Hand in hand with you, Aprile I
Festus. And this was Paracelsus I
NOTE
THE liberties I have taken with my subject are very trifling; and
the reader may slip the foregoing scenes between the leaves of any
memoir of Paracelsus he pleases, by way of commentary. To prove
this, I subjoin a popular account, translated from the" Biographie
Universelle, Paris," 1822, which I select, not as the best, certainly,
but as being at hand, and sufficiently concise for my purpose. I
also append a few notes, in order to correct those parts which do
not bear out my own view of the character of Paracelsus; and have
incorporated with them a notice or two, illustrative of the poem
itself.
"PARACELSUS (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus
ab Hohenheim) was born in 1493 at Einsiedeln, (1) a little town in
the canton of Schwyz, some leagues distant from Zurich. His
father, who exercised the profession of medicine at Villach in
Carinthia, was nearly related to George Bombast de Hohenheim,
who became afterwards Grand Prior of the Order of Malta: consequently
Paracelsus could not spring from the dregs of the people,
as Thomas Erastus, his sworn enemy, pretends. * It appears
that his elementary education was much neglected, and that he
spent part of his youth in pursuing the life common to the travelling
literati of the age; that is to say, in wandering from country
to country, predicting the future by astrology and cheiromancy.
evoking apparitions, and practising the ditIerent operations of magic
and alchemy, in which he had been initiated whether by his father
or by various ecclesiastics, among the number of whom he particularizes
the Abbot Tritheim, (") and many German bishops.
" As Paracelsus displays everywhere an ignorance of the rudiments
of the most ordinary knowledge, it is not probable that he ever
studied seriously in the schools: he contented himself with visiting
* I shall disguise M. Renauldin's next sentence a little. "Hic
(Erastus sc.) Paracelsum trimum a millte quodam, alii a sue exectum
ferunt: constat imherhern illum, rnulierumque osorem fuisse."
A standing High-Dutch joke in those days at the expense of a
number of learned men, as may be seen by referring to such rubbish
at Melander's " Jocoseria," etc. In the prints from his portrait
by Tintoretto, painted a year before his death, Paracelsus is barbatulus,
at all events. But Erastus was never without a good reason
for his faith - e.g. "Helvetium fuisse (Paracelsum) vix credo,
vix enim ea regia tale mODstrum ediderit." (De Medicina Nova.)
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