Add MS 72845

COLLECTION OF ALCHEMICAL TRACTS; circa 1592. Mostly copies. The principal text in this anonymous compilation is an alchemical dialogue (ff. ff. 7-23v) which, though headed 'An unknowen Author', carries at the foot of the final page the statement that 'one M^r [blank] Tayler is the author of this Booke as I am Informed'. Possibly he is to be identified with the Henry Tyler who died in Newgate on 11 July 1590 and whose experiments in alchemy are partly preserved in Sloane MS 3688, ff. 7-24^v. A short prefatory passage begins 'S^r I have comendid to y^r worshipp a confirmacion of those pointes of philosophi y^t wee latly conferred upon, touchinge y^e Elixir, or medicen. of y^e philosophors stone, w^c...I have comprehendid...in this dialogue followinge...'. The dialogue itself consists of thirty questions and answers in which the authorities mentioned include Paracelsus, Hermes Trismegistus, Bernardus Trevisanus, Ramòn Lull, Jabir Ibn Haiyan and the Turba Philosophorum of Gulielmus Gratarolus. Despite frequent deletions, interlineations, irregular catchwords and gaps left by the copyist the work appears to be complete. It is followed immediately (ff. 24, 24v) by a short exchange between a scholar and his master concerning sol and luna, at the foot of which occur deleted memoranda (f. 24v) of 'sulphur vif Imbibed', dated 6 May-2 June 1592. The final item consists of three recipes (f. 25) 'To make yncke'. Translated excerpts from the Rosarius philosophorum of Arnaldus de Villa Nova occur at the beginning of the notebook (f. 3). Purchased from Messrs. Bernard Quaritch, 18 Sept. 1996.

Paper: ff. ii+34. 198mm x 150mm. Seven gatherings, collating 1⁶ (i, vi stubs), 2⁶ (iv, v stubs), 3-6⁴, 7⁶ (i, vi stubs). Strip pasted at foot of f. 21 carried additional text on f. 21^v, now partly lost. Watermarked with variants of pots bearing letters 'P³DB': cf. Briquet no. 12794 (dated to 1591). Irregularly foliated from 1 to 16 in ink on versos of main tract (ff. 7^v-23^v). Contemporary limp vellum covers (ff. i, ii) with remains of two leather ties and along spine later inscription '104' and 'elixir' in ink. Among pen-trials jotted in an early seventeenth-century hand on the final complete leaf (f. 33) occurs the name 'Boyle' and 'To his lovinge Brother . . . Richard B'.