by modern writers. A recent traveller tells us that at a SiameEe court where only a subdued light was admitted the diamonds and carbuncles on the king's person glittered and flashed like miniature lightning." I believe that Science herself admits that the diamond has the power of, as it were, meshing sunlight, and of keeping it for some appreciable time in its toils, amidst surrounding darkness.
"The yellow jacynth strengthning sense,
Of which who hath the keeping,
No thunder hurts nor pestilence,
And much provoketh sleeping.
The crysolite that doth resist
Thirst, proved never failing,
The purple-coloured amethyst
'Gainst strength of wine prevailing;"
it being the outcome of a metamorphosed nymph successful in resisting the seductions of Bacchus, whose purple grapes, observe, are reflected in the gem.
"The verdant gay green smaragdus,
Most sovereign over passion.
The sardonix, approved by us
To master incantation.
Then that celestial colour'd stone
The saphyr, heavenly wholly,
Which worn, there weariness is none,
And cureth melancholy."
It was perhaps in mercy to his muse, if we can suspect Drayton of such tenderness, that he forbore to dwell on the mystic attributes of lazulus, jaspis (sic), onyx, topaz, beryl, opal, pearls and agate,[1] which he enumerates as being worthy to adorn a priceless shrine to Apollo; its
"base is the carnelian,
Strong bleeding often stopping;"
and there, too, should be found the turquoise[2] or
- ↑ Onyx and cornelian are, strictly speaking, agates.
- ↑ As "true as turquoise" is an expression in Ben Jonson's Sejanus, act i. In reference to this passage Gifford quotes Swan's Speculum Mundi:—"Turcois is a compassionate stone: if the wearer of it be not well it changeth colour and looketh pale and dim, but encreaseth to his perfectnesse as the wearer recovereth to his health."
