_The skill of
specular
stone.
John Donne
PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING.
l. 2. _the Worthies. _ The nine worthies usually named are Joshua,
David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur,
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick
is mentioned by Gerard Legh, _Accedens of Armorye_. Nash mentions
Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. _All the Worthies_ therefore covers a
wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and
pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled
in gold the seven [_sic_] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred
guilders'. Vere's _Commentaries_ (1657), p. 174.
l. 6.
_The skill of specular stone. _ Compare _To the Countesse of
Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30:
You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.
Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take
'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes
Holinshed's _Chronicle_, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the
specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i. e.
glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare
not affirm for certain. ' This is the 'pierre speculaire' or 'pierre a
miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent
stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians
(among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the
Moon, and even increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely
Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the
_Coelum Philosophorum_:
'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.
'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to know
and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air.
