ll. 7-8. _But if this medicine, &c._ 'The quintessence then is a
certain matter extracted from all things which Nature has produced,
and from everything which has life corporeally in itself, a matter
most subtly purged of all impurities and mortality, and separated from
all the elements. From this it is evident that the quintessence is,
so to say, a nature, a force, a virtue, and a medicine, once shut
up within things but now free from any domicile and from all outward
incorporation. The same is also the colour, the life, the properties
of things.... Now the fact _that this quintessence cures all diseases_
does not arise from temperature, but from an innate property, namely
its great cleanliness and purity, by which, after a wonderful manner,
it alters the body into its own purity, and entirely changes it....
When therefore the quintessence is separated from that which is not
the quintessence, as the soul from its body, and itself is taken into
the body, what infirmity is able to withstand this so noble, pure,
and powerful nature, or to take away our life save death, which being
predestined separates our soul and body, as we teach in our treatise
on Life and Death. But by whatsoever method it takes place, the
quintessence should not be extracted by the mixture or the addition
of incongruous matters; but the element of the quintessence must be
extracted from a separated body, and in like manner by that separated
body which is extracted.' Paracelsus, _The Fourth Book of the
Archidoxies. Concerning the Quintessence_.
The O.E.D. quotes the first sentence of this passage to illustrate its
first sense of the word--'the "fifth essence" of ancient and mediaeval
philosophy, supposed to be the substance of which the heavenly bodies
were composed, and to be actually latent in all things, the extraction
of it ... being one of the great objects of Alchemy.' But Paracelsus
expressly denies 'that the quintessence exists as a fifth element
beyond the other four'; and as he goes on to discuss the different
quintessences of different things (each thing having in its
constitution the four elements, though one may be predominant) it
would seem that he is using the word rather in the second sense given
in the O.E.D.--'The most essential part of any substance, extracted by
natural or artificial processes.' Probably the two meanings ran into
each other. There was a real and an ideal quintessence of things.
A specific sense given to the word in older Chemistry is a definite
alcoholic tincture obtained by digestion at a gentle heat. This is
probably the 'soule of simples' (p. 186, l. 26), unless that also is
the quintessence in Paracelsus's full sense of the word.
ll. 17-20. _As, in the firmament,
Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg'd, but showne.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awakened root do bud out now_.
_P_ reads here:
As in the firmament
Starres by the sunne are not enlarg'd but showne
Greater; Loves deeds, &c.
This certainly makes the verse clearer. As it stands l. 18 is
rather an enigma. The stars are not revealed by the sun, but hidden.
Grosart's note is equally enigmatical: 'a curious phrase meaning that
the stars that show in daylight are not enlarged, but showne to be
brighter than their invisible neighbours, and to be comparatively
brighter than they appear to be when all are seen together in
the darkness of the night.' _P_ is so carelessly written that an
occasional good reading may be an old one because there is no evidence
of any editing. The copyist seems to have written on without paying
any attention to the sense of what he set down. Still, 'Gentle' is the
reading of all the other MSS. and editions, and I do not think it is
necessary or desirable to change it. But _P_'s emendation shows what
Donne meant. By 'showne' he does not mean 'revealed'--an adjectival
predicate 'larger' or 'greater' must be supplied from the verb
'enlarg'd'. 'The stars at sunrise are not really made larger, but they
are made to seem larger.' It is a characteristically elliptical and
careless wording of a characteristically acute and vivid image. Mr.
Wells has used the same phenomenon with effect:
'He peered upwards. "Look!" he said.
"What?" I asked.
"In the sky. Already. On the blackness--a little touch of blue.
See! _The stars seem larger._ And the little ones and all those dim
nebulosities we saw in empty space--they are hidden."
Swiftly, steadily the day approached us.' _The first Men in the Moon._
(Chap. vii. Sunrise on the Moon.)
A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty night,
seemeth greater then in a clear.' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 326.