Dabblers in Alchemy

17th May, 1653. My servant Hoare, who wrote those

exquisite several hands, fell of a fit of an apoplexy,

caused, as I suppose, by tampering with mercury about

an experiment in gold.

John Evelyn’s servant, Richard Hoare, appears to be engaged in alchemy, based on what Evelyn recorded in his diary.  Evelyn doesn’t  describe Hoare’s features, but as his diary makes clear, he is clearly impressed with Hoare’s  abilities.  Walter Scott includes some bits of alchemy in “The Antiquary”:

CHAPTER SECOND.

                          --And this Doctor,

             Your sooty smoky-bearded compeer, he

             Will close you so much gold in a bolt's head,

             And, on a turn, convey in the stead another

             With sublimed mercury, that shall burst i' the heat,

                      And all fly out in fumo.--

                                        The Alchemist

And:

CHAPTER NINETEENTH.

                 Here has been such a stormy encounter

                 Betwixt my cousin Captain, and this soldier,

                 About I know not what!--nothing, indeed;

                 Competitions, degrees, and comparatives

                          Of soldiership!--

                                    A Faire Qurrell.

The attentive audience gave the fair transcriber of the foregoing legend

the thanks which politeness required. Oldbuck alone curled up his nose,

and observed, that Miss Wardour's skill was something like that of the

alchemists, for she had contrived to extract a sound and valuable moral

out of a very trumpery and ridiculous legend. "It is the fashion, as I

am given to understand, to admire those extravagant fictions--for me,

                            --I bear an English heart,

             Unused at ghosts and rattling bones to start."