Bartholomew Fair is chiefly remarkable for the exhibition of odd humours and tumbler’s tricks, and is on that account amusing to read once.—The Alchymist is the most famous of this author’s comedies, though I think it does not deserve its reputation. It contains all that is quaint, dreary, obsolete, and hopeless in this once-famed art, but not the golden dreams and splendid disappointments. We have the mere circumstantials of the sublime science, pots and kettles, aprons and bellows, crucibles and diagrams, all the refuse and rubbish, not the essence, the true _elixir vitæ_. There is, however, one glorious scene between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon, which is the finest example I know of dramatic sophistry, or of an attempt to prove the existence of a thing by an imposing description of its effects; but compared with this, the rest of the play is a _caput mortuum_. The scene I allude to is the following: ‘_Mammon._ Come on, Sir. Now, you set your foot on shore, In _Novo Orbe_; here’s the rich Peru: And there within, Sir, are the golden mines, Great Solomon’s Ophir! He was sailing to ‘t Three years, but we have reached it in ten months. This is the day wherein, to all my friends, I will pronounce the happy word, BE RICH; This day you shall be Spectatissimi. You shall no more deal with the hollow dye, Or the frail card. * * * * * * * * You shall start up young viceroys, And have your punks and punketees, my Surly, And unto thee, I speak it first, BE RICH. Where is my Subtle, there? Within, ho! _Face._ [_within_] Sir, he’ll come to you, by and by. _Mam._ That is his Firedrake, His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals, Till he firk nature up in her own centre. You are not faithful, Sir. This night I’ll change All that is metal in my house to gold: And early in the morning, will I send To all the plumbers and the pewterers And buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury, For all the copper. _Surly._ What, and turn that too? _Mam._ Yes, and I’ll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall, And make them perfect Indies! You admire now? _Surly._ No, faith. _Mam._ But when you see th’ effects of the great medicine, Of which one part projected on a hundred Of Mercury, or Venus, or the Moon, Shall turn it to as many of the Sun; Nay, to a thousand, so _ad infinitum_; You will believe me. _Surly._ Yes, when I see’t, I will— _Mam._ Ha! why? Do you think I fable with you? I assure you, He that has once the flower of the Sun, The perfect ruby, which we call Elixir, Not only can do that, but, by its virtue, Can confer honour, love, respect, long life; Give safety, valour, yea, and victory, To whom he will. In eight and twenty days, I’ll make an old man of fourscore, a child. _Surly._ No doubt; he’s that already.