Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce; For which, I’ll say unto my cook, There’s gold; Go forth, and be a knight. Face: Sir, I’ll go look A little, how it heightens. (Exit) Mammon: Do.—My shirts I’ll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment, It shall be such as might provoke the Persian, Were he to teach the world riot anew. My gloves of fishes and birds’ skins, perfum’d With gums of paradise, and Eastern air— Surly: And do you think to have the stone with this? Mammon: No, I do think t’have all this with the stone. Surly: Why, I have heard he must be homo frugi, A pious, holy, and religious man, One free from mortal sin, a very virgin. Mammon: That makes it, sir; he is so. But I buy it; My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch, A notable, superstitious, good soul, Has worn his knees bare, and his slippers bald, With prayer and fasting for it: and, sir, let him Do it alone, for me, still. Here he comes, Not a profane word afore him; ’tis poison. Again, in the same play, there is an enumeration of alchemical items, many of which were, both in ancient and in medieval times, used in amatory brews: Subtle: Sir? Surly: What else are all your terms, Whereon no one o’ your writers ’grees with other? Of your elixir, your lac virginis, Your stone, your med’cine, and your chrysosperm, Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chilbrit, beautarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials Of piss and egg-shells, women’s terms, man’s blood, Hair o’ the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And worlds of other strange ingredients, Would burst a man to name? * * * * * A number of herbs, some of which were reputed to produce amatory benefits, are mentioned in Ben Jonson’s _Volpone_: Lady Politic Would-Be: Alas, good soul! the passion of the heart. Seed-Pearl were good now, boil’d with syrup of apples, Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills, Your elecampane root, myrobalances— Volpone: Ay me, I have ta’en a grasshopper by the wing! Lady Politic Would-Be: Burnt silk and amber. You have muscadel Good i’ the house— Volpone: You will not drink, and part?