Catalogue Entry: ALCH00078
Notebook containing abstracts and notes drawn from various alchemical works.
Custodial History
Bought at the Sotheby sale by Francis Edwards for £48. Offered to Keynes for £60 on 18 August 1936 but returned a week later. Presumably sold by Edwards to Bern Dibner, who donated it to the Smithsonian. Previously Burndy Ms. 9.
Sotheby Lot
SL114Contents
On the flyleaf in Thomas Pellet's hand: 'Sep. 25 1727/ Not fit to be printed/ Tho. Pellet'. Main text preceded by 5 unnumbered pages prepared as an index but containing only columns of alphabetical headings (eg. 'Suo/ Suu/ Ta/ Taa/ Tae') and one blank page. The main text has the following sub-headings, though besides the sources given by these there are references on pp. 48-9 to 'Laurent. Ventura' and Ramón Lull's 'Theorica', and on pp. 50-51 to 'Anonym[us] de Arte Chim[ica] in Arte Aurif[era]'.
p. 1 'Ex Rosarij abbreviati tract. quinq[ue]' [This is not, as stated in the Sotheby catalogue, taken from the Rosarius Philosophorum of Arnoldus de Villanova, but from an anonymous tract entitled 'Rosarium Abbreviatum', which appeared in vol. 3 of Zetzner's Theatrum Chemicum as part of 'Justus a Balbian. Tractatus septem de Lapide Philosophico' (first pub.1599, though Newton is extremely unlikely to have seen that edition), Balbian being the editor rather than the author of the collection: see Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica, 2: 287 and 437.]
p. 15 'Ex Petri Boni Lombardi Ferrariensis Margarita Pretiosa'
p. 24 'Ex Dionysij Zacharij Opusculo'
p. 31 'Out of Philaletha's works concerning the extraction of [sulphur] out of [mercury]', in Latin and English
p. 51 'Ex Clangore Buccinæ'
Related Material
See Dobbs, 'Newton Manuscripts at the Smithsonian', 107. This manuscript (minus the putative index) is also reproduced on R19 of the Chadwyck-Healey microfilm, between Keynes Mss. 64 and 65 (this has perhaps come from a photostat of the notebook held at Keynes Ms. 221). This would appear to be a mistake, since there is no reference to its presence there in the Chadwyck-Healey catalogue.
