Catalogue Entry: ALCH00016
'The Seven Chapters' (late 1680s-1690s) plus notes and an unrelated draft letter.
Custodial History
Bought at the Sotheby sale by Keynes for £32.
Sotheby Lot
SL30Contents
Translation [by Newton?] of a treatise on transmutation by 'Hermes Trismegistus'.
f. 1r 'The contents of ye 7 Chapters'.
f. 1v Brief Latin notes from Zetzner's Theatrum Chemicum.
ff. 4r-12r The translated text.
f. 12v Partial draft letter, undated and with no indication of addressee, on mathematics.
Related Material
Printed with an introduction in Churchill, 1967, q.v. for a discussion of sources and the suggestion that this is Newton's own translation. Dobbs (Janus Faces, 272) considers it to be a translation from the French Bibliothèque des philosophes (1672-8), and dates the translation late 1680s/early 1690s but considers the table of contents (f. 1r) to have been added in the late 1690s if not later. The main text (ff. 4r-12r) originally belonged after f. 2v of Keynes Ms. 28 (see Dobbs, Janus Faces, 272) but had been separated from it before the Sotheby sale, possibly by Newton himself. See H84 for Newton's copy of the Latin edition of the text, and H221 for his copy of the Bibliothèque des philosophes.
