'Even old Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, who is ever ready to plead the cause of the ancients, can find nothing to say in favour of it.

From Trismegistus downwards through Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Raymond Lullius, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and the rest, there is not one who has left more than a cloud of words behind him.' 'Nor did the rogue I mention,' said Saxon.

'There was another, Van Helstatt, who was a man of learning, and cast horoscopes in consideration of some small fee or honorarium.

I have never met so wise a man, for he would talk of the planets and constellations as though he kept them all in his own backyard.

He made no more of a comet than if it were a mouldy china orange, and he explained their nature to us, saying that they were but common stars which had had a hole knocked in them, so that their insides or viscera protruded.