[53] RAYMOND LULLY: _Clavicula, or, A Little Key_ (see _Aurifontina Chymica_, 1680, p. 167). Peter Bonus (14th Century). § =39.= In 1546, a work was published entitled _Magarita Pretiosa_, which claimed to be a “faithful abridgement,” by “Janus Lacinus Therapus, the Calabrian,” of a MS. written by =Peter Bonus= in the fourteenth century. An abridged English translation of this book by Mr. A. E. Waite was published in 1894. Of the life of Bonus, who is said to have been an inhabitant of Pola, a seaport of Istria, nothing is known; but the _Magarita Pretiosa_ is an alchemistic work of considerable interest. The author commences, like pseudo-Geber in his _Sum of Perfection_, by bringing forward a number of very ingenious arguments against the validity of the Art; he then proceeds with arguments in favour of Alchemy and puts forward answers in full to the former objections; further difficulties, &c., are then dealt with. In all this, compared with many other alchemists, Bonus, though somewhat prolix, is remarkably lucid. All metals, he argues, following the views of pseudo-Geber, consist of mercury and sulphur; but whilst the mercury is always one and the same, different metals contain different sulphurs. There are also two different kinds of sulphurs--inward and outward. Sulphur is necessary for the development of the mercury, but for the final product, gold, to come forth, it is necessary that the outward and impure sulphur be purged off. “Each metal,” says Bonus, “differs from all the rest, and has a certain perfection and completeness of its own; but none, except gold, has reached that highest degree of perfection of which it is capable. For all common metals there is a transient and a perfect state of inward completeness, and this perfect state they attain either through the slow operation of Nature, or through the sudden transformatory power of our Stone. We must, however, add that the imperfect metals form part of the great plan and design of Nature, though they are in course of transformation into gold. For a large number of very useful and indispensable tools and utensils could not be provided at all if there were no copper, iron, tin, or lead, and if all metals were either silver or gold. For this beneficent reason Nature has furnished us with the metallic substance in all its different stages of development, from iron, or the lowest, to gold, or the highest state of metallic perfection. Nature is ever studying variety, and, for that reason, instead of covering the whole face of the earth with water, has evolved out of that elementary substance a great diversity of forms, embracing the whole animal, vegetable and mineral world. It is, in like manner, for the use of men that Nature has differentiated the metallic substance into a great variety of species and forms.”[54] According to this interesting alchemistic work, the Art of Alchemy consists, not in reducing the imperfect metals to their first substance, but in carrying